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I'll take good ships over pride.MeatloafCat posted:Here's my entry for the Spanish battleship design contest. Not bad, but with such a need to squeeze in as much as possible in a small tonnage, I'm surprised you didn't go with cramped accommodations. For comparison's sake, here are a few "Mini-Bs" that I've designed lately, all broadly similar to eachother.    The first design is simply a slightly enlarged El Toucan with 11" guns instead of 10". A weakness of both is the deck armor's vulnerability to splinter penetration from HE shells exploding in the superstructure. I actually built 5 of the Osmaniye class in my aborted Ottoman game (played up until 1906) 3 as part of the legacy fleet and 2 halfway built at the start of the game (a great way to save cash if you don't mind eating up your budget for a year+) however they were almost a non-factor in my brief war with Austria-Hungary, which largely refused to engage my battleships and most battles were destroyer or cruiser level skirmishes. Semi-related, and because I like thinking about playing more than actually playing, a modified version of Spain I created (that assumes the Spanish-American war happened, unlike the current Spain) has, on Very Large Fleet Size Historic Resources, just under 196 million funds for its legacy fleet. How would you budget that poo poo? Its so tight. My budget plan is this: Battleships: 100 million (about three Mini-B style Battleships) Cruisers: 65 Million (about two small CLs and a modest CA) TBDs: 18 Million (about twelve 400 ton Destroyers) Discretionary Funds: 5 (covers either overages or ships under construction at start) Reserve/Start of game Funds: 8 Its just so little... Even my Ottomans get about 10 million more. A-H gets about 50 million more! Default Spain gets about 28 million more. Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 02:04
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I finally took a nation through to 1950 and what a ride it was. (Very Large Fleet Size, normal resource/research etc.) Starting with my manual legacy fleet, I designed and built with the following principles (usually) in mind:
  My main bases in Finland, Sakhalin, Eritrea, Rhodes, and the Philippines all have powerful defenses and enough facilities to service a battlefleet large enough to enforce a blockade. Previously we had to rely on the support of our gallant allies, and when they failed to aid us, we had to hope that before the ports of neutral nations were clogged with our interred vessels, victory would be achieved. However, a terrible price was paid for these overseas treasures...  Hard lessons were learned and far greater achievements are there to be had!
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Oct 6, 2016 02:37
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Not bad, but with such a need to squeeze in as much as possible in a small tonnage, I'm surprised you didn't go with cramped accommodations. I usually prefer normal accommodation so I sort of just did that by habit. I went ahead and tried changing it to cramped quarters. At first I was concerned because that freed up weight but didn't reduce the cost, so the ship would be even more over budget if I added armor or guns. Then I tried lowering the displacement, which did save a lot of money. Unfortunately 12" guns have a penalty for ships under 10000 tons. I could go with a smaller gun but that seems to spiral out of control into a totally new design (it would also give up 1" of penetration). I really do enjoy trying to build the most efficient ships in this game, but that could just be my OCD talking. Edit: Roumba posted:
I'd be very interested to see some of your designs if you don't mind. I almost always go for around 10x16" and heavy but not 18" armor. MeatloafCat fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 04:28
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MeatloafCat posted:I really do enjoy trying to build the most efficient ships in this game, but that could just be my OCD talking. No, thats me too. Hence why I'm sitting here  about Lilliputian battleships.
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Oct 6, 2016 04:32
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Is it known whether or not mtb squadrons contribute to mine field generation at ports?
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Oct 7, 2016 04:07
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So on the official forums, there is a thread about Coastal Fortifications and in it there is a guy who has modified the build files for coastal forts to drastically improve their effectiveness.quote:Maintenance cost severely reduced, 20% bonus on rate of fire and 150% bonus on accuracy of coastal batteries, all batteries have quality 1 guns and increased elevation. They start with central rangefinders and get the better firecontrol through technology progress. Dangerous in early game they become deadly in mid- to late game. This all sounds a bit much to me, but i like the idea of giving them increased elevation. I might have to add in at least that to my files. Edit: Got a "historical design" question for xthetenth or anyone else with better knowledge of this aspect of ship architecture. Why did the British, Germans, and even American battleships continue to use twin turrets for so long when nations like Italy and Austria-Hungary were using triple turrets? Because they could afford the extra tonnage and didn't need to squeeze blood from that stone? Because it was easier/simpler/cheaper? Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Oct 7, 2016 |
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Oct 7, 2016 21:32
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I'd imagine a combination of didn't give a poo poo about costs/displacement, better quality guns giving more firepower per gun and that if something happened to a turret you only lost 2 rather than 3 guns. Also early triple turrets were far from reliable, I'd imagine the big 3 were quite happy with their double turret BBs but the smaller nations were desperately seeking whatever edge they could find. The same logic that lead to the US using superimposed turrets 20 years earlier. Pretty much everyone went on to triples once their kinks had been ironed out, but I don't think Britain felt they needed to try risky strategies at the time.
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Oct 7, 2016 23:37
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So I know that for nations with "undeveloped shipbuilding industry" eventually an event can fire that removes that trait. I'm curious as to how long that takes, if anyone has played those nations (Russia, Spain, Japan, CSA, my Ottomans, etc) has paid attention to that sort of thing. What removes it? A certain year? Tech advances? Building docks above X size? Random chance? Is it also possible for the Poor Education trait to go away? I've never seen that one vanish. Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Oct 8, 2016 01:01
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Galaga Galaxian posted:So on the official forums, there is a thread about Coastal Fortifications and in it there is a guy who has modified the build files for coastal forts to drastically improve their effectiveness. The US' first ships that could have really benefitted from triples are the Delaware class, and it appears that for them (and the Floridas when the 14" wasn't ready in time) that weight at the aft end of the ship was very limited, to the point they accepted only one turret able to fire straight backwards to avoid even the extra weight that making the number 4 turret superfiring would have added. Unfortunately I don't know what was up with the Wyomings. The New Yorks ended up like that just because they were designed before the triple was really finished, the Delawares are the real mystery and I don't know why. The US went with triples because they'd seen just how clumsy the five and six turret layouts that resulted otherwise were. They were still concerned about excessive weight aft it seems, the first draft of what became the Nevada was based on the New York with the number 4 turret eliminated and number 3 raised before all turrets were turned into triples rather than eliminating number 3. It's also worth a quick note that all this is with 14" guns rather than the 12s on previous triples, which makes the weight on the ends a much bigger problem. Only after Delaware's magazine cooling was reported a failure did they push the turrets all the way out on the ends. The triple was actually adopted after the New York class as a weight and length saving measure. The USN was actually very tightly limited in ship cost by its political setup, with a lot of repeat ship classes out of a desire to not raise costs. That translated into a direct limit on armor and machinery weight. The US had previously considered triples (and they'd had de facto quads with the Virginias) all the way back in 1905 (I don't want to know what "semisuperposed" means incidentally) for the South Carolina. The biggest problem for them seems to have been getting the turret working the way they ran things, since each gun was elevated by a single pointer per and they weren't sure where the middle gun's pointer would go. The solution was a single pointer per turret with the guns elevating as a unit, but that left concerns about a single blow knocking out the entire turret and the alignment of the guns in the unit. They also used a very strong front plate to make up for three holes, and tried to get a turret prototyped (it took until two classes with it had been contracted though). Incidentally this is where the US got a lot of their information on gun interference. They hedged their bets by considering twin 15 inch turrets. Later on BuOrd wanted to avoid working on twin and triple turrets at once when going to 16 inch turrets, preferring a New York style layout (BuEng wanted to keep the machinery the same and go with four turrets). General Board went with five doubles based on fleet experience with doubles and inexperience with triples, as well as theorycrafting that another double would be pretty cheap weight-wise and turboelectric machinery would allow a layout that wouldn't heat the middle turret's magazine. Josephus Daniels said gently caress this noise we're building a repeat of last class, pick the caliber you want and that became the Colorado. I'll point out that the Dante Aligheri and Gangut classes both had two midsection turrets, while the US seemed to have sought to minimize the amount of turrets there. The Tegetthoff class was the familiar ABXY layout, but I don't know if they had any issues with the layout. Frankly I don't take inclusion on that class to be an automatic sign that something doesn't have significant problems, and I'm sure you'd agree there. Jello's probably the one you want for the UK stuff, he's got better sources. Edit: Best bet is they were already moving to the 13.5" and then the 15". xthetenth fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Oct 8, 2016 02:01
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Anyone got a decent color(ized) photo of a Chinese warship from the period covered by Rule the Waves? Best I can find that doesn't have a huge semi-transparent watermark is this sad old thing:  I mean, its kinda cool, but its a freaking ironclad, obsolete a decade or two before RtW even starts (though I guess that would be apt for China...)
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Oct 8, 2016 03:29
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Pretty sure that's the best they had. The Qing Navy was pretty much destroyed in the first war with Japan (in 1894, the Qing hadn't upgraded their fleet or even maintained it really for a decade, for a few reasons) and they didn't rebuild afterwards
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Oct 8, 2016 03:35
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Oct 8, 2016 03:41
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They had a few "training" cruisers in the 1910s.
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Oct 8, 2016 03:42
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Quoting from last month, but I just updated the OP, and I'm tempted to make "A collection of experiments in shipbuilding surpassed in exoticism only by the Russian Navy" the new thread title, but its too long. Maybe "Experiments in shipbuilding surpassed only by the Russian Navy"? Then again, I still like the current title.
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Oct 8, 2016 05:19
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Anyone got a decent color(ized) photo of a Chinese warship from the period covered by Rule the Waves? I'm not sure how accurate they were when painting the model, but I imagine they did did some pretty good research on it.  http://www.hksw.org/ting%20yuen.htm
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Oct 8, 2016 05:26
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Nice, looks like that'd be a cool thing to visit. No good for creating a nation banner like those in the new OP though. Oh well, China just gets to be lumped in with the other minor custom nations.
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Oct 8, 2016 05:30
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I'm really enjoying the design competitions in TriggerHappyPilot's LP. I almost want to see what people would do in other, possibly stranger, circumstances. Mostly because I'm poking around in the designer right now and trying to build a Habsburg style Austrian "Mini-B" similar to what the AI of the smaller nations loves to start out with. Are you sure you don't prefer an armored cruiser? They were designed to sail in the battle line anyway, and the designs available at the given specs are quite formidable.
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Oct 8, 2016 05:48
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For the cost of a Mini-B an Armored Cruiser probably would be a better choice. But then the [Government Leader] looks at the latest issue of Jane's and cries bloody murder that we have no batleships! Also "Battleships" are worth a lot more blockade points than armored cruisers, and those points don't care if the Battleship is a 9000 ton Austrian Habsburg and the armored cruiser a 14000 ton British Powerful. [edit] IIRC the blockade value of each type of ship: 12 - BB 10 - BC 08 - B 05 - CA 03 - CL 01 - DD Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Oct 8, 2016 05:50
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^^^Those values are consistent with my memory, too.Galaga Galaxian posted:Edit: Got a "historical design" question for xthetenth or anyone else with better knowledge of this aspect of ship architecture. Why did the British, Germans, and even American battleships continue to use twin turrets for so long when nations like Italy and Austria-Hungary were using triple turrets? Because they could afford the extra tonnage and didn't need to squeeze blood from that stone? Because it was easier/simpler/cheaper? I don't see any evidence of the Brits considering triples in a battleship until the post-WWI design cycle, prior to the Washington Treaty. During this time there was a lot of discussion around the armament of the next generation of ships, with the American and Japanese 16" ships leading the RN to want an increase from the 15" of the QEs and Rs to ideally 18". At the same time, they ran an experiment using the monitor Lord Clive, installing three 15" in a combined mount to test whether firing them together would result in interference. The results were apparently satisfactory enough to warrant consideration of a triple-turreted armament in the new generation, and a mix of designs with either three triples or four twins followed. Without direct evidence, I'd guess that triples were not considered (or, at least, not adopted) earlier due to a combination of factors, including inertia, the rapid pre-WWI design cycle (recall that a new class was ordered every year, but took about two and a half years to complete, meaning any lessons would take a few classes to be learned), and balancing innovation with conservatism in different parts of the ship (Dreadnought aside, it's risky to change everything at once). Savings in weight and length were likely not believed worthwhile held against the cost of redesign and potential risks like interference. And, in fact, a lot of early triples experienced problems. Those in the Nelsons were quite cranky, for example, while the American triples did experience aerodynamic interference when fired simultaneously, resulting in diminished accuracy.
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Oct 8, 2016 07:19
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Why are armors in guns in imperial when pretty much every country other than the US uses metric?
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Oct 8, 2016 14:22
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Stairmaster posted:Why are armors in guns in imperial when pretty much every country other than the US uses metric? Because England uses Imperial.
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Oct 8, 2016 14:26
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Stairmaster posted:Why are armors in guns in imperial when pretty much every country other than the US uses metric?
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Oct 8, 2016 15:10
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:And, in fact, a lot of early triples experienced problems. Those in the Nelsons were quite cranky, for example, while the American triples did experience aerodynamic interference when fired simultaneously, resulting in diminished accuracy. What I've seen indicates that that worked out when they put a delay coil in to separate the middle shell from the others by 75 feet, after which it was down to the outer pair, which were better spaced than previous twins had been. That was actually the first interference testing the USN had done and it seems that helped them figure out the inaccuracy that'd been plaguing their twin designs. Also the British turrets tended to run heavy. The US turrets eliminated shell rooms, hydraulic machinery walking pipes, used a fixed loading angle and eliminated supports behind the barbette armor, which let them fit three 14-inch guns or two 16-inch guns into a barbette 6 inches wider (31 feet) than the UK needed for two 15-inch guns. Their twin 16-inch turret weighed 927 tons and the UK twin 15 weighed 884 tons. Director of Naval Construction liked them, Director of Naval Ordnance really didn't. He cited the US using less power transport of projectiles (which meant possible problems with keeping a reliable feed as well as a larger turret crew which increases weight, just not in a way the USN had to worry about as much), as well as using air and electric power while the British preferred hydraulic, and having worse arrangements for flashtight movement of propellant.
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Oct 8, 2016 19:00
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How do you import saves? I'm interested in signing up for the LP but I can't seem to get the save to take, even though I've copied the files to the Saves folder.
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Oct 8, 2016 20:06
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That is weird, are you using the latest version? 1.33? You should be able to just delete your current Game1, put the zip in the saves folder then unzip it and it should work just fine.
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Oct 8, 2016 20:18
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I'm really enjoying the design competitions in TriggerHappyPilot's LP. I almost want to see what people would do in other, possibly stranger, circumstances. Mostly because I'm poking around in the designer right now and trying to build a Habsburg style Austrian "Mini-B" similar to what the AI of the smaller nations loves to start out with. Absolutely, I have the design that the Armada Espaņola needs to compete in the modern era. Behold:  At 9000 tons and a mere 32.5 million, it comes in under budget but with specifications well in excess of competing designs. 18 knots, an 8 inch belt, an 11 inch main battery, and 20 secondary guns. There are significant gains of 11 inch guns over 10 inch guns, and the 12 inch British Mark VIII are even more formidable. Unfortunately any design using them will exceed the listed budget unless it makes significant sacrifices, like halving firepower by using single turrets. Moreover, the 5 inch secondary has ranges comparable to the main battery, while still being fully effective against destroyers. A mixed secondary battery of 5 inch and 3 inch guns does not have this characteristic, as range falls off quickly in guns smaller than five inches. I expect there may be criticism over the thinness of the deck and lack of armor on the secondaries, but sheer quantity makes up for a few losses in pitched battle, and modern guns cannot fire down onto the ship's deck anyway. Such concerns over so-called "plunging fire" are overblown, indicative of designers who have played too many wargames and lack experience in the real world.
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Oct 8, 2016 20:37
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Thats the thing, your significant gains of 11" over 10" still can't reliably penetrate even a 7" belt at even close range. I've actually come around to the idea of smaller caliber guns for something like that thanks to the official forums, where I posted something similar. The shittons of 5" is appealing though, how many can you get as 6" instead? That said the thin deck armor is off putting, plunging fire may not be a concern, but splinter damage from HE exploding in the superstructure is a serious concern. Honestly from my limited experience it seems like a good way for early pre-dreads to fight it out IS slinging as much HE at eachother as they can, hoping to maul the target with structure damage, topple funnels, penetrate thin areas with splinters, start fires, whatever they can to slow the ship down so a finishing blow can be applied via torpedo. With that sort of stuff in mind I eventually have moved towards a design more like this:  9" guns (yes the same guns I sneered at) providing a decent mix of RoF and explosive power, 19 knot speed (which I deemed excessive!) to help control the range (either to close in to slug it out or to run away from a superior force), a powerful battery (for the size) of 6-inch guns, torpedoes for the finisher (need to try that prow torpedo Jello suggested though). I'd love to up the deck armor to 2", but I just can't find the weight unless I go back up to 10,000 tons and add 2.4million to the cost. Also, completely unrelated to this. An idea for RtW2 I just proposed on the official forums was increasing the granularity of the map regions to something like this:  but making it so ships could interact with ships in neighboring zones. EG: Ships stationed in the North Sea region could interact with ships stationed in the Baltic and Bay of Biscay/Eastern Atlantic regions. Also make it so ships can travel 2 zones per turn (except maybe certain large zones which'd take a full month). This just got posted to the official forums, and probbaly something Xthetenth has already seen, a catalogue of American design proposals that prove real naval architects were as insane (or moreso) than us: "SPRING STYLES," 1911-1925 Here is one gem. A 16,000 ton "Scout Cruiser" that goes 35 knots, has two 14" guns, and 4" belt armor.  
Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Oct 8, 2016 21:06
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Jesus, how'd they get the tech to make a 16000 ton CA go 35 knots in 1915? I think they must have hacked the game files or something. In all seriousness, I like it. Those 14 inch guns will maul any CLs it comes across while also dueling with other CAs.
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Oct 8, 2016 21:56
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Thanks for that actually, I had a link to the same book of spring styles but it turned out it was dead.
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Oct 8, 2016 22:34
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So I finally bit the bullet and bought this game, and I've been having a blast. Had an interesting first game as the CSA, somehow beat the poo poo out of the UK in 1910 for all of their Caribbean colonies, then went to war with France 10 years later and lost my entire fleet in 4 sorties.  The perils of overconfidence. I love that Europe's map is still ~100 years off.
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Oct 8, 2016 22:35
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Hey, I used the first decent sized map I could find. t
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Oct 8, 2016 22:39
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Moving ships from zone to zone is already by far my least favourite aspect of the game. Unless they find away to make that far less tedious a map like that would be terrible, imho. edit: 10k tons and "no armour protection"  
Pharnakes fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Oct 8, 2016 22:46
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^make the ui slightly better. I'd be more interested in seeing how you'd handle splitting up the pacific considering europe isn't that good a theater for carrier warfare.
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Oct 8, 2016 22:55
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Pharnakes posted:Moving ships from zone to zone is already by far my least favourite aspect of the game. Unless they find away to make that far less tedious a map like that would be terrible, imho. Its funny, it'd be greatly improved by just one little addition. 
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Oct 8, 2016 22:57
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Thats the thing, your significant gains of 11" over 10" still can't reliably penetrate even a 7" belt at even close range. I've actually come around to the idea of smaller caliber guns for something like that thanks to the official forums, where I posted something similar. The shittons of 5" is appealing though, how many can you get as 6" instead? That said the thin deck armor is off putting, plunging fire may not be a concern, but splinter damage from HE exploding in the superstructure is a serious concern. That's why I say you can make some absolute monster CAs. 9 inch (which are very similar to 10) are good enough and then I just stuff them full of 5 inch and 4 inch secondaries and tertiaries to burn everything. Since you're going to have to sail in close anyway penetration does improve, 5k range penetration is actually fairly long range early. And it does improve as the game progresses with ammo techs. I'd much rather have 12 inches actually, maybe I'll look into what can be fit on a 9k design and just take the -10% RoF hit. 5 inches over 6 is because 6 inches can magazine detonate. Since they're unarmored, I go with the 5s. 6s might require armor and the weight cost goes way up. Splinter damage is still reduced by thin armor, just not prevented altogether. I've found that splinters happen occasionally but is still worth the trade-off.
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Oct 8, 2016 23:26
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6 inch guns are a lot more effective though. I love the 6 inch gun. It feels like one of the most cost effective guns in the game. Jello can probably comment more on the effectiveness of the various calibers, since he's dug through the files and done actual experimentation I think.
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Oct 8, 2016 23:30
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For some reason RTW hates 10"s. 9"s are almost as good throughout the game in pen and range terms (presumably slightly less HE effect), and 11"s are dramatically better, far more so that pretty much any other adjacent guns. I've always wondered if this is just a quirk or is there historical precedent for 10" guns just not being very good for some reason?
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Oct 8, 2016 23:32
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If I were building these pocket Bs just for fun, I might build this: Yes, it's stupid. I hate Short and Cramped both, but just look at that firepower and armor... e: Oh, that screen is when I was still playing around with ammo and conning tower armor. 6 inch tower armor, or more ammo, one of the two. Probably tower armor. Galaga Galaxian posted:6 inch guns are a lot more effective though. I love the 6 inch gun. It feels like one of the most cost effective guns in the game. Jello can probably comment more on the effectiveness of the various calibers, since he's dug through the files and done actual experimentation I think. Agreed there. You'd need to add some tertiaries for destroyers, though. I used to make my CAs with 6 inch secondaries. It worked great the vast majority of the time, but sometimes they exploded.
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Oct 8, 2016 23:34
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I thought the 5" gun counted as a medium gun and could thus explode as well? Honestly I thought all secondaries were vulnerable to explosion.Pharnakes posted:For some reason RTW hates 10"s. 9"s are almost as good throughout the game in pen and range terms (presumably slightly less HE effect), and 11"s are dramatically better, far more so that pretty much any other adjacent guns. I've always wondered if this is just a quirk or is there historical precedent for 10" guns just not being very good for some reason? Actually judging by Gundata.dat (the one bit of gun related data fill I can mostly make sense of) the 10-inch gun has about 35% more weight (and thus probably room for boom) than the 9-inch. code:
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Oct 8, 2016 23:39
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Does anyone have any colored photos of real life dyed shell splashes? I'm curious just how dyed the water is and how clearly visible the splashes are from 10+ km. A quick GIS came back empty
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Oct 9, 2016 01:39
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