|
Post by tbr on Oct 17, 2015 20:21:28 GMT -6
In no turn did I see one or more of my raiders being successful while one or more others had been thwarted by patrolling ships. It is always either success (albeit that to different degrees) or failure for all mentions of raiders in the turn messages.
Does the RNG get either "stuck" after the success/fail roll or is there just one roll per turn? I for one would like to see more diversity within a turn even if the success/failure rates stay the same over all turns.That is the general success probabilit for raiders can stay the same, I woud just like more rolls within a turn.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 17, 2015 14:04:40 GMT -6
However this is all semantics, as it has little effect in the game. At that we can agree. The biggest effect of crew numbers, if accomodation effects are neutralized, might be the potential for ging score by rescuing survivors, if the crew number has any relation to the survivor number. As to heavier turrets needing more crew it is not just the battle-stations crew but the attendant onboard maintenance needs. Heavier shells need more power, more power means more machinery in turn needing more maintenance. Sheer crew size is also needed to maintain the ship's hull, the bigger it is the more crew you need. Regardless of whether you do it like the RN today, where every non-officer grade is responsible for maintaining a part of the hull (painting, rust sraping etc.) or like other navies where even nowadays between 5-8% of the crew are "deck gang" for seamanship in maneuvers, boat crews, small arms guncrew and, not in the last nor least, painting and rust scraping. That figure used to be a bit over 10% in earlier ships like my first one, a steam turbine DDG. In that one propulsion engineering, that is without systems, electrics and weapons engineering, crew was another 16% IIRC.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 17, 2015 8:49:03 GMT -6
The crew figures posted are obviously in error, but the differences between these bigger classes of ships don't have to be too great, just a quick look at 'Wiki'. HMS Warrior (CA) - crew 712 .... HMS Temeraire (BB) - crew 733 (similar engine power, both coal fired boilers), both at Jutland 1916. OK, not an extensive survey, but many tasks are the same on each ship, whether your are punching out 9.2" shells, or 12", there are still the same levers to pull and same fire control work. If you have installed a similar turret plan, the gun crew requirement could be similar, it is things like engine room crew where the size starts to have an effect, if you are still using coal. The crew requirement rising towards 2000 comes with WW2 ships, where there is much more technology to handle and with an AA gun fit, as the bigger hulls have more guns, sometimes many more. Example, the BB posted above is oil powered, whilst the CA is producing more HP on coal, which will need a much bigger engine room crew in the CA. The turret plan is similar, so the gun crew requirement will be similar. So the figures are wrong, but they don't have to be that far apart on these big ships, of the same time period. HMS Agincourt has 7 main armament turrets and over 1200 crew. By 1919 HMS Hood has a complement of 1400, for a similar armament as the 'Queen Elizabeths' that started with about 950.You miss the huge secondary battery of the BB in the example and that there is a huge difference between the crew requirements for a 10inch turret and a 16inch turret. Also, both these ships are at the same tech level. HMS Warrior was significantly older in technology terms (if not in years) than HMS Temeraire. The less numerous secondary and tertiary battery and the turbine plant of Temeraire were huge crew savers in comparison to Warrior, outweighing additional crew requirements of the primary armament (if any as those turrets would also have better rammers and hoists). WWII crew levels would probably be too excessive as the huge AAA armament those WWII BB's were refitted with will not be present in the current RTW tech timeline. Still, a 52kton "super-duper" Montana-like BB with such high numbers in secondary and teritiary guns still would have around 2000 crew, which is about 800 less than Iowa's WWII complement.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 16, 2015 21:22:46 GMT -6
With AoN ships (and other unarmored or partially unarmored designs), the "belt" zones are a bit of a misnomer, but they still exist. A BE hit on an unarmored ship is just a fore/aft hull hit. Similarly, you can have "belt hits" destroyers and AMCs even though they don't have armor. It's a little confusing, but it keeps the system simpler by treating the unarmored zones as "zero-thickness belt". So is the "belted zone" in an AON ship fully covering the critical areas and a "BE" hit will only affect (and noncritically at that) floatation with a chance for fire and/or shrapnel damage to unarmored guns etc.?
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 16, 2015 16:02:31 GMT -6
I am still getting BE hits to ships with "flat deck on top of belt" armor layout and "AON" researched before design. Of course, since there is 0 amror there all thos hits are penetrations. Shouldn't a "AON" ship have no BE hitzone at all?
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 16, 2015 11:36:14 GMT -6
I think we need to look at it also in game balance terms, not just in purely historical terms. Coastal artillery above all needs to become cheaper and ideally somewhat more effective to become a vaid part of the game. At the moment it is barely more than a money sink for the AI and there is historical evidence for balancing measures.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 15, 2015 18:00:45 GMT -6
And then there is another factor that makes coastal defenses more dangerous. They can put lookouts on top of cliffs, mountains etc. that are significantly higher than a battleship's tops. With the view distances we see in the game Height of Eye in a to-the-horizon calculation would to be at 40-50m, that would mean looking at the "edge of the horizon" from the upper tops of a BB. This is where the game oversimplifies since the target also has a height, the significant superstructures can reach up to 20-25m and can be seen a lot earlier than the ship's hull, let alone the smoke, especially of a coal burner. In really clear weather battleships should sight each other at around 35-40KYD But that is sighting distance, shooting on top-spooting was notoriously inexact, even if the guns had the range, since the heavier ranging apparati could not be installed that high. In clear weather a BB or BC actually should even have a sighting advantage over a DD or CL since it could spot them with only its very tops above their visual horizon which would be very difficult to reverse-spot. When I had the bridge at sea I could see the superstructures of heavy tankers etc. in clear weather far far earlier than their hulls, and that was with my eye height at around 14m. In my first ship we had a signal/spotting bridge above the sailing bridge to get some 5-6m more spotting height. In my last the optical sensor platform was mounted at the very top for that same reason, just among he EW sensors above the APAR, which are mounted that far up for the same reason:
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 15, 2015 8:36:54 GMT -6
If I play around with the designer and delete all secondaries and tertiaries as well as reduce the main gun calibre to 2inches, without changing anything else I get a complement of "-45". There is definitely something off here.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 15, 2015 2:52:33 GMT -6
Here a massive BB as well as the CA scouting for it. The crew numbers for the BB and CA show what I mean. The CA has a similar layout to the BB, smaller main guns and no tertiary battery, is less than half as big (albeit with the stronger powerplant) yet has 90 more crew at 963! I would expect the BB here to have around twice the crew of the CA, if not more, due to the heavier main guns, tertiary battery and larger hull, so around 1750-2200 crew.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 14, 2015 21:12:12 GMT -6
Even "smaller" guns like the British BL 9.2 inch gun Mk IX and X had up to 36700 yards range in a high elevation mounting (in this case up to +35°). link
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 14, 2015 21:06:01 GMT -6
Yes, often they came from decommissioned ships but often the guns, while they came from the production lines of battleship guns and shared thier design, were new from dedicated production for coast artillery.
In any case the typical coast artillery mount (but for idiocies like the casemate 16inch guns an already obsolete US Coast artillery installed in WWII) had a FAR higher elevation than the same gun mounted in a battleship. the upthread mentiones 12inch gun had maximum +13.5° elevation when first mounted in battleships, giving it 16200 meters (ca. 17700 yards) range. In the most used coast artillery mount it had a maximum of +49.2° elevation, giving it 41300 meters (ca. 45170 yards) range, with most shots being "plunging", even at fairly short ranges where the battleship goun would fire over a flat arc. Even the highest ballistic arcs achievable by battleships are fairly flat when compared to those of the same guns in coastal mounts.
One additional point: also look at traverse, I think currently all coastal defense guns are wing guns and turrets, which restricts their traverse arc. Considering the high arce and the artificial abstraction in the installations model I recommend giving them a 360° traverse. Would mean that Fort Corregidor can fire in all directions.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 14, 2015 0:34:23 GMT -6
Using the flotilla attack button (to the right of the hold fire buttons) helps. The DD's and CL's maneuver more aggressively to get into a firing position.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 13, 2015 16:37:21 GMT -6
Ideally we would be shown this information when we can decide whether to seize a ship in construction. This would lead to far more rational decisions since sometimes seizing them is not worth it (bad stats and/or still long remaining construction time).
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 13, 2015 16:31:56 GMT -6
Currently the price for land fortifications is excessive. The "top of the line" turreted 14inch installation costs 44 million (4.4 million times 10 months). One can design a very decent small "station" BB for that price which would have both more tactical as well as strategic utility. It would just take more time to complete but when you need to "surge" capability the last thing you build is land installations. A 14 inch double turret with 13T and 3TT armor costs around 6.5 million. Even four would come to 26 million. But for landbound (or modified) turrets construction/modification with extra armor was cheaper than for ship's turrets. The magazines, hoists etc., that is all paraphernailia of the turret and its guns, could also be built/designed to be significantly cheaper than on board a ship. The other thing is that concrete and land construction labour is and was waaaaay cheaper than steel and shipbuilding work. Then there is the fact that a land installation does not need propulsion... Not just the top of the line "turreted 14inch" but all land installations need a severe reduction in price. Else it stays a-historical and they are just not worth building in the game. I recommend a reduction in price by at least 50% and a 16 month build time, so the 14inch turreted installation would cost 22 million total and 1.375 million per month to construct, with the other installations modified accordingly. There is also the range and fire control issue. Land installed heavy coast defense artillery had significantly more range, with higher elevation than in even "high elevation" ship gun turrets, and more accuracy (dispersed fire control stations for triangulation and prepared as well as shot local firing tables) than ship mounted guns of the same calibre and calibre length. So those installations should also be waaay more dangerous to ships. At the moment, whenever there is an enemy land installation in a scenario, and one has heavier CA's, BC's or BB's, it does not represent a threat but "bonus points" if one can spare the ammo. With installations which have superior fire control and longer range with a higher ballistic arc (which means more turret top and deck hits in proportion) this would change and having your valuable BB's and BC's in the range of such installations would be a huge risk. I recommend generating an additional firing table for every "land defense gun", not just using those of the ship version. Some data on the topic is to be found at Nathan Okuns excellent website: www.navweaps.com/Weapons/index_weapons.htmOne example: With the German "12inch" 30.5 cm/50 SK L/50 the initial shipboard maximum elevation was +13.5 degrees, later increased to +16 degrees. The coast defense mount with the same gun had a maximum elevation of +50(!) degrees. I would also like to see more possible installation sites, as currently their number is a bit limited with multiple installations overlapping if one is overeager in producing them for test reasons.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Oct 13, 2015 12:15:05 GMT -6
At the moment we do not get any bonus on intel when ships are ordered by other nations in our home yards. But in reality nations like Britain had full access to the information about the ships being built in domestic yards for foreign nations. So we should have full information on any ships ordered in our yards (speed, armament and full armor information) as well as the "contract status" (i.e. the build progress).
|
|