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Post by dorn on Jun 3, 2023 6:43:31 GMT -6
So 10-inches of armor for an 1890 start before development of Harvey steel is equivalent to approx 7-inches of Krupp (then presumably approx 8.5 inches after you gain Harvey, but obviously only on newly built ships), but the gun penetration tables are always given in Krupp equivalents regardless of your current armor development level? I.e. you can only really trust your immune zone information once you have Krupp armor developed? Penetration table gives you penetration of your actual AP shells vs. your actual armour technology.
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Post by dorn on Jun 3, 2023 6:47:29 GMT -6
Thank you for the interesting links (I did not know the first), but I would like to know what type of armour my RTW3 ship has. For example, if I gain a research progress to Harvey or Krupp armour and I laid down a new ship of the same class of another ship that I am building, I suppose that the two “equal” ships will have different armour, so different protection value (as in the historical case, for example Japanese AC Asama/Tokiwa and near sister Idzumo). I would like to ask that, if feasible, the game system could label these differences. To spoke freely, the labels could be even useful in later decades, when there were a number of progress in krupp armour. Armour quality of the whole class is at time you design a ship. After design is completed you can make changes and if better armour is developed and you do changes to your original design, than your updated design has best armour available. After that all your ships of that class have same components including quality of armour.
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akd
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Post by akd on Jun 3, 2023 19:12:55 GMT -6
So 10-inches of armor for an 1890 start before development of Harvey steel is equivalent to approx 7-inches of Krupp (then presumably approx 8.5 inches after you gain Harvey, but obviously only on newly built ships), but the gun penetration tables are always given in Krupp equivalents regardless of your current armor development level? I.e. you can only really trust your immune zone information once you have Krupp armor developed? Penetration table gives you penetration of your actual AP shells vs. your actual armour technology. Are you sure this is working correctly? Got tech "improved AP shot design" and checked 12-inch -2 gun penetration table and it says 6.572 at 1000 yards. Loaded the turn before I got the tech and it also says 6.572 at 1000 yards. It does, however, show a change from an even earlier save before the introduction of Harvey armour where it showed 6.944 at 1000 yards. So I see a difference from the change in armour tech, but not from AP tech?
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Post by cormallen on Jun 4, 2023 8:58:09 GMT -6
So 10-inches of armor for an 1890 start before development of Harvey steel is equivalent to approx 7-inches of Krupp (then presumably approx 8.5 inches after you gain Harvey, but obviously only on newly built ships), but the gun penetration tables are always given in Krupp equivalents regardless of your current armor development level? I.e. you can only really trust your immune zone information once you have Krupp armor developed? Penetration table gives you penetration of your actual AP shells vs. your actual armour technology. As in your actual armour technology on a new ship or on the one you're currently checking?
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akd
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Post by akd on Jun 4, 2023 9:56:09 GMT -6
Penetration table gives you penetration of your actual AP shells vs. your actual armour technology. As in your actual armour technology on a new ship or on the one you're currently checking? In all cases, open ship designer, create new design with 12-inch -2 in local yard then open gun data table.
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Post by axe99 on Jun 4, 2023 17:07:37 GMT -6
Nathan Okun knows a thing or two about armour In case useful, some rough figures of merit from the things I've read over the years - my "notes" tab on armour is pretty limited, but if it's of interest to anyone PM me and I can send a link. My reading on armour is limited (I haven't read much Okun, and all of that was before I started taking notes) but these figures of merit give a rough idea of the relative strength of different armour types in a more digestible format than the linked pages (not for you William, but for others) - note of course that it is a rough figure, and different armour was good for different things (for example, while face-hardened armour was used on belts, it wasn't (at least generally) used on horizontal surfaces like decks or turret roofs because (to quote "The Battleship Builders" by Buxton and Johnston) "face-hardened armour did not work well under highly oblique impact - it could inhibit the ricochet of broken projectiles, and could crack through and throw large armour pieces out of its back even if the projectile bounced off". There were also different optimal thicknesses in terms of the hardened proportion of face hardened armour for different situations/shell types. In terms of interpreting the figures of merit, my understanding is they can be compared in a simple percentage sense - so 1930s face hardened armour with a figure of merit of 3.47 is about 36% better than original Krupp face hardened armour (with a figure of merit of 2.55).
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akd
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Post by akd on Jun 4, 2023 17:52:08 GMT -6
Nathan Okun knows a thing or two about armour In case useful, some rough figures of merit from the things I've read over the years - my "notes" tab on armour is pretty limited, but if it's of interest to anyone PM me and I can send a link. My reading on armour is limited (I haven't read much Okun, and all of that was before I started taking notes) but these figures of merit give a rough idea of the relative strength of different armour types in a more digestible format than the linked pages (not for you William, but for others) - note of course that it is a rough figure, and different armour was good for different things (for example, while face-hardened armour was used on belts, it wasn't (at least generally) used on horizontal surfaces like decks or turret roofs because (to quote "The Battleship Builders" by Buxton and Johnston) "face-hardened armour did not work well under highly oblique impact - it could inhibit the ricochet of broken projectiles, and could crack through and throw large armour pieces out of its back even if the projectile bounced off". There were also different optimal thicknesses in terms of the hardened proportion of face hardened armour for different situations/shell types. In terms of interpreting the figures of merit, my understanding is they can be compared in a simple percentage sense - so 1930s face hardened armour with a figure of merit of 3.47 is about 36% better than original Krupp face hardened armour (with a figure of merit of 2.55). View AttachmentYet, as noted above, change from steel (presumably nickel-steel) to Harvey steel leads to only a 4% reduction in penetration in game.
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akd
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Post by akd on Jun 5, 2023 18:29:05 GMT -6
Interesting to note that the 3rd tech, Improved Smokeless Powder, researched under AP Projectiles does lead to significant change (23% increase from previous) in the penetration table: The first tech, Improved AP Shot Design, either does something different than described, or just "unlocks" the research category, despite "AP Projectiles" being available from the game start (which would be confusing).
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Post by TheOtherPoster on Jun 6, 2023 9:48:00 GMT -6
So our gun data table always reflects our latest technology, i.e. actual penetration of our AP shells against our actual armour technology Which means data is close but not totally precise against older ships (which may have worse armour technology) or against foreign ships (as they may have different AP shells and armour technologies than us). 1. We cannot be totally sure about how much enemy armour our guns can penetrate: more than stated in our gun data table if shelling older ships; but maybe less penetration if we’re fighting a navy with more advanced armour technology than us. 2. The same way, the enemy may have better AP shells than us so just looking at our gun data we cannot know exactly at which distance we will be able to withstand their shells. I think this is a very good set up, instead of the more simple gamey way of telling us exact penetration values against any particular ship that always produce the expected effect. RTW way is more historically accurate and more fun to play.
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A further issue regarding armour in 1890 is that it seems all ships from the legacy fleets, building and that we may start building straight away (i.e. before we get any new technologies), probably have the same armour quality: the 70% Krupp strength williammiller mentioned. I’d wish legacy fleets in every start would use the previous, inferior type of armour than the one we start with (so in 1900 start: kind of Harvey for the legacy fleet, but for new builds we would use Krupp as we do now). This is probably a more contentious idea for the 1890 start. Because it means they would have to set up a weaker type of armour (maybe 50% strength of Krupp) and specific ship templates that would be used only by AI when building the legacy fleets; because new builds in 1890 would still use this 70% Krupp strength armour as we do now. It may seem a lot of work and setting up if it’s just going to be used by the AI when building the 1890 legacy fleets. But to be honest, in my opinion it would be precisely the 1890 start the one that would benefit the most from having its legacy fleets built with inferior armour than available to the player in 1890. 1. Because the actual values for armour strength for 1890 seem a bit too high. So letting AI build our legacy fleets with thick inferior armour, we would get ships with narrow thick belts that truly make sense; and at the same time we would avoid the complication for some new players of having to build themselves ships with very thick belts in 1890 but not in 1900, which may be confusing for some. 2. And also, using a set ship templates only for the 1890 start would allow Fredrik W to design legacy fleets with more ironclad designs, instead of often having to include in them big pre-dreadnought battleships or very fast cruisers like now because the same templates are used both for the 1890 legacy fleet and all new builds well into the 1890s.
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Post by dorn on Jun 6, 2023 10:36:34 GMT -6
Inventions in shells (AP projectiles, Explosives shells) have effect immediately, not when ship is designed. So older ships have not older shells but up to date shells. This is not case of armour, as ships has armour quality at time of design.
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Post by cormallen on Jun 6, 2023 11:56:24 GMT -6
Inventions in shells (AP projectiles, Explosives shells) have effect immediately, not when ship is designed. So older ships have not older shells but up to date shells. This is not case of armour, as ships has armour quality at time of design. Sadly this doesn't apply to the various Compound and Ironclad protected things that make up the legacy fleets (which were obviously designed some time beforehand, IRL often a decade or more)? Also, and I know this would not be possible in the game engine, many of the shells available for these older types of guns would be precisely the same as they had when the ships first received them. Even the RN still had a lot of old Palliser chilled iron shot in it's ships magazines until the late 1890s and that stuff basically shattered on impact with any steel faced protection. They didn't buy whole new supplies of the latest ammo for their Rifled Muzzle Loaders but as IRL it was really hard to make any of the face hardened armours at less than c.4-6 inches (this early anyway) then most cruiser protection would have just iron or steel so that was not necessarily a huge problem and probably why the RN was satisfied with often leaving these ancient cannons as the main battery of the old 2nd and 3rd class Ironclad Battleships re-tasked as colonial cruisers during the 1890s?
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Post by TheOtherPoster on Jun 12, 2023 9:18:06 GMT -6
As things stand, we cannot find out how good (or bad) the armour of our older ships is. Gun data values are unrelated to any particular ship. It always shows the penetration values based on our latest shells and our most recent armour. So it’s true for any ship we are building or want to build. But over time with improved armour wne sort of cannot check any more our older ships’ armour, as it’s inferior to our most recent one and hence it’s not shown in the gun data.
Well, I’m OK regarding the ships I design and build myself. I know that a ship with Krupp armour from 1900 will be less protected than another one with 1940 Krupp of the same thickness.
My only question is: What happens with the legacy fleets? Do they use also the best armour available at the start, or do they use an inferior type of armour? Because if they do, there’s no way we can find out ourselves other than… asking the NWS team.
I wish legacy fleets were built using an inferior armour (it would make more sense: after all, we’re talking about the legacy fleet, made up of older ships) but I got the feeling the answer will be: they use the best armour available at that start. Anyway, I’d like to know if the gun data in, let’s say the 1900 start, applies to all our ships from our legacy fleet too (i.e. they all have Krupp armour)
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ck07
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Post by ck07 on Aug 5, 2023 20:17:30 GMT -6
Ship design files include a line for ArmorMod. This is definitely armor tech dependent: 1890 ships have -12; I have seen +27 in the mid-1940s. Does anyone know what this does? The obvious interpretation would be a % modifier to effective armor thickness, but it does not affect penetration as shown in the Gun Data tab.
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Post by cormallen on Aug 7, 2023 3:38:12 GMT -6
They seem to have been rather "cautious" with making pre Krupp/Harvey bad enough. There's legacy B with "14 inch" belt armour when the best guns are only penetrating 7-ish inches!
The "Quasi-Historical" fleets I'm slowly designing for 1890 starts have much lower armour levels to better mimic the effective strengths actually around in these Ironclad (or at best Compound/Mild Steel) legacy ships.
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