Query on the subject of autoloaders

[midnightflame]

I’ve been wondering for a time wether or not autoloaders are worth it on larger cruisers. Does cruisers like the Des Moines class or similar work in rtw 3? What about something like the Annapolis from world of warships?

Does Worcester class designs work?

What is the consensus on 7 inch autoloaders? Personally I don’t see a use for them but that might be because I don’t see a use for the 7 inch gun.

what about the smaller caliber weapons, are autoloaders to be used there as soon as they are available?

all in all I am curious, since I have the attention span of a goldfish and never get past 1920 so I’ve never used them

[dman1791]

6 inch autoloaders could potentially be useful if you want a DP armament without secondaries but don't want to drop down to 5" guns, since non-autoloading 6" DP is just not particularly effective as AA. IIRC when trying it out, a 6" autoloading DP battery I tried out was a similar weight to a battery of 6" main guns (non-autoloading, non-DP) with an equivalent HAA factor battery of 4" DP guns. It had the benefit of a higher rate of fire out of the main guns, but I think it was also more expensive overall and it of course means less short range firepower due to not having a secondary battery.

I've made use of 8" autoloaders as a supplement to missiles in my late CAs. The idea there was that armor was becoming generally less used and useful, leading to 8" guns being enough to take out basically anything except older BBs or BCs. Essentially I was going for volume of fire since the difference in penetration between 8" and 10" guns is not large in vanilla, and the extra weight and cost was perhaps better spent sending more shells downrange. To be honest, though, I don't think it's generally worth the expense or extra weight. IIRC they're 25% heavier and more expensive, and give 30% ROF against straddled targets or 10% ROF otherwise. They might have a place if you're using, say, 3 autoloading turrets in place of 4 standard ones, since you save on all the extra weight and armor of the fourth, likely superfiring, turret. The CAs I made were either 2x4 or 3x3 all-forwards; they were pretty much exclusively for mopping up after the missile exchange. Honestly, the extra ROF probably wasn't necessary since it likely only took a few good salvos to put down most ships an 8" can be expected to dispatch, and anything larger is probably either too much to handle anyway (BB/BC) or can't fight back particularly well (CV).

If I were to build those CAs again I would probably just stick with standard guns, unless 2x4 autoloaders happen to be lighter than 3x3 standards due to one less gun and turret.

It's thinking like this that makes me really want more data available in the designer (namely expected ROF at various crew qualities, as well as accuracy against some standard target) as well as a non-campaign designer that would let us fiddle around with things at various tech levels. Something as simple as a year option that sets what tech is being used based on the tech's date would work great, I think.