Wrong and Missing Ships: How to correct them ALL

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What we want is a balance between realism and simplicity. And I think we could achieve much more realism then we currently have without making anything more complex.

Sorry for "editing" your letter-style; but I definitely think, that this statement has to be pointed out again.
 
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Where did you get that?
Doing the math. most capital ships had 8 or 9 guns IRL and have 2 modules in the game.

individual module slots do not necessarily correspond to the number of turrets (my guideline when scripting the historical designs was 6 barrels broadside = 1 module, rounded up)
This explains why some ships like the Pennsylvania or Fuso/Ise Classes are undergunned. But 6 guns for a medium or heavy battery module seems too much. if the devs want to stich to it, they NEED to make a half-size module with 1/2 of firepower and costs.

'm hoping in the distant, darkest future to mod a ship designer where a module is one mount (with slots being weight based, so instead of generic slots and generic modules, there'll be very specific modules that will and won't fit in hull types).
I don't think that's a good enough reason. What we want is a balance between realism and simplicity. And I think we could achieve much more realism then we currently have without making anything more complex. A specific number would be more realistic, while not more complex. An abstract number no one knows about is actually more complex to understand then a simple number of guns.
This would allow to represent the armament exaclty, but would require doubling the amount of custom slots (as ships had up to 6 main battery turrets).
 
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This would allow to represent the armament exaclty, but would require doubling the amount of custom slots (as ships had up to 6 main battery turrets).

I don't think it needs doubling. It just needs more module slots in lower-tech ships, while keeping the same amount at higher tech ones. Also we could consider a maximum of 5 turrets, who had 6 turrets?
 
I don't think it needs doubling. It just needs more module slots in lower-tech ships, while keeping the same amount at higher tech ones. Also we could consider a maximum of 5 turrets, who had 6 turrets?
Fuso and Ise classes
 
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Well, yeah. But they were twin mounts, so still only 12 main-guns
Well that's true. I was answering the question literally.
 
Fuso, Ise, Rivadavia and Minas Gerais classes all had 12 guns in a 6x2 layout.

But Fuso and Ise had the same firepower as the US battleships that had a 4x3 armament. That would mean their American counterparts would have 2 more slots to use for something else.
 
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This would allow to represent the armament exaclty, but would require doubling the amount of custom slots (as ships had up to 6 main battery turrets).
Or have 1 slot for main armament, which allows a selection of turret configurations.

And either a 2nd slot for gunsize, or a click-through menu for the 1st slot.

That's how Black Ice does it.
 
Or have 1 slot for main armament, which allows a selection of turret configurations.

And either a 2nd slot for gunsize, or a click-through menu for the 1st slot.

That's how Black Ice does it.

That's drawn from the Naval Rework II mod technically (which apparently didn't have enough new techs for that monster mod). I would like to point out, however, that the one-slot for main armament defeats the whole interplay between different types of components.

Guns took up space that was potentially-available for torpedoes, floatplanes, depth charges, and extra light AA. Frequently, the problem people ran into was that putting too many torpedoes on a ship ate up room for more guns, while putting too many guns ate up room for anything else; destroyers and cruisers faced this all the time.

My one big problem with the NRM2 mod is that it removes any choice here, and enables players to build a 15-gun CL with 12 DP secondaries, 20 torpedo tubes, a floatplane catapult, depth charges, sonar, radar, advanced fire control, and a heavy AA mount. By the time an actual ship looking like that had been produced, it would have been the size of a small dreadnought, not a light cruiser. You can do similar things with 8-gun destroyers fielding 24 torpedo tubes and a depth charge thower plus 2 AA mounts + sonar/radar/FC. Because these are all cheaper than engines, armor, or guns (namely because the latter 2 slow the ship down and require more engine power), its easy to mount a crapton of these light components on ships and end up with ships that put the USN to shame when it comes to overloading a warship with firepower (and the USN made such monsters as the Brooklyn-class).

Edit: Removed unfinished sentence :rolleyes:
 
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But Fuso and Ise had the same firepower as the US battleships that had a 4x3 armament.
On paper. In reality there were some drawbacks to having 6 twin turrets instead of 4 triples (and one advantage), although they weren't apparent at the time the ships were designed due to the lack of a real air threat.
Advantage:
One destroyed turret would only lose 16% of the main armament instead of 25%.
Disadvantages:
Turrets 3 and 4 couldn't fire directly forward OR rearward so those arcs were only covered by 1/3rd of the broadside armament.
Less deck space for secondary/AA weapons.
 
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Well, yeah. But they were twin mounts, so still only 12 main-guns
Fuso, Ise, Rivadavia and Minas Gerais classes all had 12 guns in a 6x2 layout.

But Fuso and Ise had the same firepower as the US battleships that had a 4x3 armament. That would mean their American counterparts would have 2 more slots to use for something else.

The way I'm looking at it is weight-based slots, and possibly different hulltypes for "lots of twin turrets" vs "smaller number of large turrets" (so there'd be a choice of a BB hull with heavier slots for a given sized hull, but fewer of them - I've still got a lot of work to do though getting the ideas together). As per previous comments, it's not for the base game - it'd be waaaayyyy beyond the needs of the average player - but the idea is to give real choice in ship design, and in a way that would feel intuitive to someone broadly familiar with the key factors that influence warship design.

Which seques into:

Turrets 3 and 4 couldn't fire directly forward OR rearward so those arcs were only covered by 1/3rd of the broadside armament.
Less deck space for secondary/AA weapons.

There's also the issue of it creating difficulties arranging machinery spaces, and an elongated citadel (so more space to be covered by armour). One of the big benefits of the A-B-X-Y (or A-B-Y) was it created a short-ish citadel, with good arcs forward, broadside and rear, with no magazines or barbettes poking down into the middle of the machinery spaces.
 
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Fuso, Ise, Rivadavia and Minas Gerais classes all had 12 guns in a 6x2 layout.

But Fuso and Ise had the same firepower as the US battleships that had a 4x3 armament. That would mean their American counterparts would have 2 more slots to use for something else.

Ok, for the sake of simplicity I think we would need to have 3-guns per module then. Something like this:

1 main gun module -> 1x3-gun turret (also use for ships with 2x2-gun turrets)
2 main gun modules -> 2x3-gun turret (also use for ships with 3x2-gun turrets)
3 main gun modules -> 3x3-gun turret (also use for ships with 4-5x2-gun turrets)
4 main gun modules -> 4x3-gun turrets (also use for ships with 6x2-gun turrets and 5x3-gun turrets)

So only 4 slots accepting guns would be required, but would be needed in every tech level.

Unless we want to have different modules for 1-gun, 2-gun and 3-gun turrets.... but why would anyone use 2-gun turrets in the game if they are simply worse in all aspects?

My main problem with guns really is with destroyers, not BBs. The game represents almost identically large Destroyers with 6x guns to large minesweepers / large torpedo boats with only 1 main gun ... this can't be right. Every module should increase the hull cost by a small %, so that it is possible to builds small cheap ships and larger more expensive ships with the same hull. Right now I know that AA has this, but really every module should have it, and decrease the base hull cost.
 
....

My one big problem with the NRM2 mod is that it removes any choice here, and enables players to build a 15-gun CL with 12 DP secondaries, 20 torpedo tubes, a floatplane catapult, depth charges, sonar, radar, advanced fire control, and a heavy AA mount. By the time an actual ship looking like that had been produced, it would have been the size of a small dreadnought, not a light cruiser.
....

Yeah, this "CL" would have a real freeboard of 30cm or 1ft and a max speed of 10-12kn ( if it doesn't toggle over after making its first course-change ) Area of task: swimming-lake.

In general:
People often underestimate shipbuilding aspect of hull-stability, "swim"-stability and water resistance.

Example for water-resistance: Ideal conditions, smooth sea, no wind, blue ocean - a destroyer ( ~ 4000t, ~50.000kw ) drives with 27kn and uses 50% of its engine-power. To reach its maximum speed of 36kn, the DD has to use its whole engine power of 100% -> means 50% ( 25.000kw) only for a surplus of 9 kn.
 
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Has Paradox implemented any of these things yet?

Partially; the limitation of equipment you can build in mirrors that a little bit. But for sure that does not cover the whole sum of aspects. To be honest, I didn't know any other game which does it quite "well"
 
There's also the issue of it creating difficulties arranging machinery spaces, and an elongated citadel (so more space to be covered by armour). One of the big benefits of the A-B-X-Y (or A-B-Y) was it created a short-ish citadel, with good arcs forward, broadside and rear, with no magazines or barbettes poking down into the middle of the machinery spaces.
But this can't be recreated in the game. The prolem is that Armor is defined entirely by the module in the designated armor slot and it's not possible to inset additional armor in custom slots.

My main problem with guns really is with destroyers, not BBs. The game represents almost identically large Destroyers with 6x guns to large minesweepers / large torpedo boats with only 1 main gun ... this can't be right. Every module should increase the hull cost by a small %, so that it is possible to builds small cheap ships and larger more expensive ships with the same hull. Right now I know that AA has this, but really every module should have it, and decrease the base hull cost.
Carriers and Subs are even harder to recreate properly in the ship designer. It seems it was originally developed for capital ships and the other ship classes were added later.
 
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My one big problem with the NRM2 mod is that it removes any choice here, and enables players to build a 15-gun CL with 12 DP secondaries, 20 torpedo tubes, a floatplane catapult, depth charges, sonar, radar, advanced fire control, and a heavy AA mount. By the time an actual ship looking like that had been produced, it would have been the size of a small dreadnought, not a light cruiser. You can do similar things with 8-gun destroyers fielding 24 torpedo tubes and a depth charge thower plus 2 AA mounts + sonar/radar/FC. Because these are all cheaper than engines, armor, or guns (namely because the latter 2 slow the ship down and require more engine power), its easy to mount a crapton of these light components on ships and end up with ships that put the USN to shame when it comes to overloading a warship with firepower (and the USN made such monsters as the Brooklyn-class).

Edit: Removed unfinished sentence :rolleyes:
As long as each added component adds an appropriate IC cost and other penalties, I don't see a problem there.

Yes, you can make an 8-gun destroyer with all the goodies. How are you going to produce enough of them to maximize screen efficiency?

It's still a choice between the capabilities you like vs what you can afford - which is the real choice navies faced.
 
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Carriers and Subs are even harder to recreate properly in the ship designer. It seems it was originally developed for capital ships and the other ship classes were added later.

Yes, my honest feeling is that they had great plans for MTG and then at a certain point they realised they were getting near the deadline and only a few things were working. Then they rushed the rest, simplified the combat and released. Still, I think it is much better then before. Before the naval side of the game was terrible. Now it is half-baked, but it's a significant progress. And I think that with some more changes, like those proposed here it could improve a lot.

About Carriers, my main problem is that there is no way to make an Escort Carrier. They should decrease the fuel usage and cost of the cruiser-carrier hull at the very least so you could build some cheap escort carriers.

Also the battles without range are bad. I think the battle should have tactics and a total range. Each admiral chooses a tactic, maybe he has a lot of Destroyers and chooses a "Torpedo Hit&Run" tactic to get close, launch torpedoes and run away. Maybe he has carriers and will keep a distance. Maybe he has BBs and will want to keep at an optimal distance to out-range the enemy. They start at a distance X which can be far or close, depending on positioning and a little randomness and the selected ideal distances by the admirals. And then depending on speed difference and positioning they can get closer or further away during battle. Not sure if the end result would be balanced, but I think it would be worth to try.
 
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Adding range is a fairly large change. An easier change would be give Carriers a few free attacks before the main battle starts. The main balance issue with that right now is that Fighters don't shoot down any planes in naval combat while they really should.
 
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