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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 31, 2019 18:35:00 GMT -6
No, I've never used the protected cruiser scheme for anything other than early game CL. I know the British built some massive First class cruisers (11,000-14,000 tons) using the scheme in the late 1800's but as far as I know they were never put to the test of combat.
It's hard for me to see an armored deck only battlecruiser standing up to a peer opponent. Of course you can make them smaller and faster for less money so if you wanted to try a BC raider strategy that might be what I would do. Even though I wouldn't try it myself I'm interested to know how they work out if you get you get a chance to test them.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 31, 2019 8:08:50 GMT -6
Sword of the Stars is probably the closest to the RTW format. Turn based strategy and real time battles. Good tech tree system and excellent ship design system as well.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 31, 2019 8:06:24 GMT -6
While looking at aeson's picture, I tried to clear the message window by clicking the "close" button. I may have too many hours in this game, lol.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 29, 2019 9:22:21 GMT -6
Which brings me to the game. In the game all of the weight savings are linked to the "Flat Deck on Belt" armor scheme and NOT to the AoN research unlock, which is just plain wrong. After AoN is "Unlocked" every ship should benefit from the weight savings because, historically speaking, every ship was designed using at least some of those principals from that point on, regardless of what armor was applied. Even Bismark, which clearly did not have an AoN armor scheme, had a compact armored citadel with sufficient reserve buoyancy to keep the ship afloat. In the game you can select a belt and deck value, leave both extended values at 0 and toggle back and forth between "Flat Deck on Belt" and any other scheme and see a huge weight saving which just should not be there. Once you have unlocked AoN designs EVERY armor scheme should offer the same savings in weight for the belt and deck armor, and you should be able to add BE and DE armor if you want without losing that saving (you just pay full weight price for the BE and DE armor). Remember, the weight savings represent the fact that due to AoN design the volume that the belt and deck armor have to protect is smaller, requiring less armor plate. NOT because by the application of putting a flat deck on top of the belt the armor plates got magically lighter. The weight savings comes from the fact that there is less surface area for the deck in a flat design compared to a sloped design. If you take a design in-game and remove the deck armor and then shift the armor schemes between flat deck and sloped you will see that the weights and available displacements don't change. To my best understanding, in-game, AoN provides two main benefits. One, the ship is significantly less vulnerable to progressive flooding from the bow and stern areas of the ship. Two, because of that, you can leave the ends of the ship unarmored. This means that all of the hull's armor tonnage is used in the man deck and main belt areas giving you greater protection in those areas for the same total weight of hull armor compared to a distributed design regardless of whether it's a flat deck or sloped. I don't know why you believe that the turtleback is the overall superior design. It's more effective than the American and British flat deck AoN schemes only at short range. Significantly shorter than was typically expected in post-Jutland battleship combat. Therefore, there are indeed a set of circumstances where the turtleback design would have the advantage. At night without radar or in regions that frequently had poor daytime visibility like the Arctic in winter or the North Sea. That's a pretty small percentage of the world's oceans and night time battles can be mostly avoided by doctrine (see every war I fight in RTW1 now after many bitter teaching moments, lol). I certainly don't consider myself an expert on the subject but you need to ask yourself why the actual experts, the battleship architects for virtually every country still allowed to build battleships after WW1 all came, to slightly varying degrees, to the same conclusion, one that is directly contradicting to yours.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 28, 2019 18:59:40 GMT -6
For anybody who hasn't seen it before, here is an interesting article from a frequent contributor to the Navweaps site regarding torpedo protection systems. From reading it there doesn't seem to have been much positive innovation after the WW1 time frame. Most of the features added after the war seemed to have had flaws in design or implementation that undermined any major advantage over the conventional multi-layer void/liquid loaded system. Also, the most important factor, the depth of the system from the side of the hull to the final holding bulkhead, is a conflicting requirement with fast battleship designs that need a relatively finer hull than their slower, Standard and pre- Queen Elizabeth cousins. You can see that with North Carolina whose TPS was (or nearly was) defeated near the forward main magazine by a submarine launched torpedo. So I would conclude from that there doesn't need to be a higher level of TPS than the 4 levels in RTW1. There are certainly things that could be tweaked though. Bonuses for extreme tonnage ships like Yamato or for ships that use turbo-electric drive if the game ever tracks what types of engines are installed. Battlecruisers and eventual fast battleships below a certain tonnage threshold might be assumed (if they don't already) to have a bit of a penalty because their finer lines and large propulsion spaces reduce the max possible depth of the system. Inclined armor belts might incur a small penalty to torpedo protection as well. You could have an event where an engineer approaches the navy with an innovative design for a new TPS. You then have the option of investing in it like the mad scientist event. If you choose to invest then when the next TPS level is "researched" that TPS level will have the new system. The twist is you don't know for sure if the design is better or worse than a conventional TPS. So if you just researched TPS 3 then you may have a system that works as well as TPS 3.75 or one that is actually only as effective as TPS level 1.5. That would simulate historical cases like the Pugliese system.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 28, 2019 7:24:08 GMT -6
cwemyss - I have a set of more Imperial French ship names. If you want it, PM me with an email address (we can't attach files to PMs). Is that the same names you posted in the custom ship name thread?
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 26, 2019 18:01:57 GMT -6
Hey, garrisonchisholm , sorry if you have explained this before but what is the significance of the (amidships) tag next to the 20inch belt? Is that related to the new box protection feature? The (amidships) disclaimer has been there since RtW1. Pretty sure it's just to signify that the BE may be thinner and IIRC belt armor is implied to thin out the further from the center you go, which can explain how a round with less pen than a belt can occasionally punch through.
Hahaha, wow. What a brain fart. As many hours as I've put into RTW1 and I looked at that picture and didn't realize that it was normal. Thanks.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 26, 2019 9:20:05 GMT -6
Monstrocity is a turret farm though which should have a higher percentage chance of going boom in RTW2. Course you have to get through that armor first. Hey, garrisonchisholm, sorry if you have explained this before but what is the significance of the (amidships) tag next to the 20inch belt? Is that related to the new box protection feature? Oh, and what are you doing in-game in 1956? Is that just for play testing purposes or have they already decided to move back the end date?
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 26, 2019 8:56:48 GMT -6
I don't know for sure but since the weight of the hull and fittings changes when you select different ranges I've always believed that it included the fuel so I've always assumed it's closer to normal or deep load. Could just be an error in logic on my part since for a 10,000 ton ship in 1918 with oil fuel the weight for the hull and fittings for a 10,000 ton CA only goes up a little over 250 tons from medium to long range. I wouldn't think you would need 250 tons of steel for bigger fuel tanks but maybe the hull is actually stretched (kind of like going from a Sumner to a Gearing class destroyer). But in that case I would think 250 tons is too little to stretch a 10,000 ton hull. Sorry, I wish I had a more definitive answer.
As far as I know, the developers haven't clarified what type of displacement the game uses.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 23, 2019 17:27:01 GMT -6
Building submarines goes considerably faster when you dont bother with quality control. Lack of quality control also helps submarines submerge. I understand it's a little less helpful when it comes to getting back to the surface, however. As a former submariner I can can confirm that it is important to keep the surface/dive ratio = 1 at the end of every mission.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 19, 2019 8:23:38 GMT -6
Would be a way to circumvent treaties. Also if possible I would welcome some loosening on game strictness, allowing say 10200 ton ships with a 10 000t limit. In RTW1, the non-Liberal Democracies (Everyone but France, UK and USA) can exceed the tonnage restrictions of a treaty by up to 10%. No cheating on gun caliber though.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 19, 2019 8:13:38 GMT -6
I don't know, you sent five on one with one Dreadnought and one battlecruiser along with the three armored cruisers. I would have expected the French ship to concentrate on one of the bigger ships so I think you just got unlucky.
Very entertaining write-up. Bravo Zulu.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 19, 2019 7:56:56 GMT -6
I went to war against Germany and sent my battlefleet from the West Coast to Southeast Asia. The turn they were in Northeast Asia the admiral in charge of the fleet decided to exercise some personal initiative and invade Kiautschou Bay. While in transit. I rolled my eyes and spoke some unkind words about that admiral's parentage and decided I wasn't going to leave those marines to their fate. So I spent well over a year rotating ships in from Western USA and Southeast Asia trying to maintain superiority in numbers while not engaging too directly. Problem is you have to win the missions in support of ground combat which generally means you have to get up close and take your licks. I had way more ships interned that war than I had sunk. After the war when the interned ships were released some of them were already on the West Coast still with time needing to be repaired so somehow they moved from Northeast Asia to the West Coast before the internment mechanic got them. That whole campaign for Kiautschou Bay was both frustrating and fascinating at the same time. I finally succeeded and won and since the defenders held out so long with very little support from the German navy I granted them the full honours of war.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 19, 2019 2:00:13 GMT -6
Yikes!
I don't know if it's a glitch but occasionally I've been able to get ships with only 1 months of necessary repairs to move the next month.
Of course I've had that happen after a fight in Northeast Asia and still have the ship be interned in the North American West Coast area. Which if I recall means Vancouver. They got almost all the way to Washington and got interned in Vancouver. How would you like to have to be the one to send that message to the Admirals?
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 18, 2019 11:44:48 GMT -6
I believe, and I'll have to do a bit of research through Fredrik's posts but what happens when a shell strikes above the main belt varies. If I remember, older, distributed armor designs had an upper belt region above the main belt. Then above that would be the casemates for the secondary guns and then above that the ship's superstructure. I believe the upper belt is rolled into the belt extended value. So the shell could strike the belt extended armor, the secondary armor (casemates), or it could strike the superstructure.
For all-or-nothing designs the hull above the belt is essentially superstructure for purposes of damage and hits tend to be called as such in the logs.
I'm not 100 percent certain of the above. If one of the other regulars is more familiar with the topic and has a better answer I'm sure they'll step up to help.
Some people have tried using a narrow main belt with an equally thick extended belt. It seems to save some weight. Supposedly, there is a risk with narrow belts of the shell missing armor entirely but people who have tried stated that they didn't notice it happening to a significant extent. I know the forum member that I first heard of the idea from tried it and said it seems to work with very little downside but he quit using it because it's essentially an exploit or gaming the system. I happen to agree with him but it's a single player game so no harm no foul if others want to take advantage.
[Edit - I just realized I didn't really answer your question. The manual states that a narrow main belt means an increased chance that the shell will strike the extended belt (i.e. upper belt) or miss the armor altogether. Like I wrote above, the latter doesn't seem to happen very often but I can't tell you for sure from personal experience because I never use it. You don't normally have to make those kind of design sacrifices as the USA which is what I normally play.]
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