Ship variant areas?

[Axe99]

Well I have already mentioned engine and reliability


Destroyers pretty much have to be able to upgrade their anti submarine abilities otherwise submarines will be uncounterable. If anti air is the other area it would make destroyers a pure support ship, torpedos would be more interesting.

Light cruisers could be your main ship if you need anti air firepower and I think torpedoes here is a better choice then armor for the same reason as destroyers.

During the period, destroyers had their AA armament improved far more than their torpedo, so I'd err on the side of AA (there were huge improvements between the late 1920s/early 1930s DDs, whose AA was often just 2-4 0.5 cal MGs, to late war DDs that had all-DP main armament and usually some 40mm and 20mm asides, and it varied a fair bit between different classes and nations as well.

As late as October, 1941, the Lexington and Saratoga mounted 8 In. guns in four twin turrets. A lot of older carriers had heavier guns because when they were built, Admirals worried about them being caught up in surface actions and thought that giving them heavy gun armaments would help defend against this. As one might expect, this was not an effective solution.

Totally agree, although you wonder if the Glorious was thinking "I'd love some 8" guns about now" when it bumped into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (not suggesting they would have saved her, more just making a joke ).

 

[MonkeyFuzz]

Totally agree, although you wonder if the Glorious was thinking "I'd love some 8" guns about now" when it bumped into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (not suggesting they would have saved her, more just making a joke ).

"Combat air patrol? Here?! Today!?! For what?... Ohhhhhhhhh!"

*Glub-glub-glub*

 

[Midden]

I hope destroyers have some shore bombardment, as they were used for close support i.e. Omaha beach and Cherbourg, after action reports at the time credit Destroyers with "most effective combat support" at 1800 yards with army spotters.

 

[MonkeyFuzz]

Destroyers and cruisers were also effective in the Italian landings for beach support, placing direct fire on German tanks that were counterattacking.

 

[Mannstien]

Don't think I've seen the stats on a DD or CA/CL yet and I know I've seen some somewhere of a BB but if a CV has 184 Shore bombardment I would imagine that ships designed to use their guns in such a manner should have it in proportion to their firepower.

 

[Orlunu]

During the period, destroyers had their AA armament improved far more than their torpedo, so I'd err on the side of AA (there were huge improvements between the late 1920s/early 1930s DDs, whose AA was often just 2-4 0.5 cal MGs, to late war DDs that had all-DP main armament and usually some 40mm and 20mm asides, and it varied a fair bit between different classes and nations as well.

The variation in torpedoes was massive. Just comparing the Mk.8 in use on US DDs and the Type 93 in use on IJN DDs, both in '36, the Type 93 has more than twice the payload, half again the run speed, more than two and a half times the running distance, was far harder to spot, had a far better reliability, yadda yadda yadda. And that's just the variance in the '36 DD slot.

DD AA armament went from useless to useless.
Fun fact: according to US post-war analysis, at the end of the war in the Pacific, when the enemy were flying straight at the guns trying to kamikaze, were untrained, and were largely flying scrap with wings, it'd still take a fully modernised DD firing on full cyclic with all guns 4 mins 45 seconds on average to down a plane. Then factor in that you can't bring all the guns to bear against a target, then factor in how quickly the guns suffered stoppages when you fired them like that... Destroyer AA's main contribution was providing morale and maybe confusing enemy pilots.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

DD AA armament went from useless to useless.
Fun fact: according to US post-war analysis, at the end of the war in the Pacific, when the enemy were flying straight at the guns trying to kamikaze, were untrained, and were largely flying scrap with wings, it'd still take a fully modernised DD firing on full cyclic with all guns 4 mins 45 seconds on average to down a plane. Then factor in that you can't bring all the guns to bear against a target, then factor in how quickly the guns suffered stoppages when you fired them like that... Destroyer AA's main contribution was providing morale and maybe confusing enemy pilots.

Those are the same guns used on cruisers, battleships, and carriers, so essentially you're arguing that AA armaments are useless in general. (which probably has some truth in it)

 

[Orlunu]

Those are the same guns used on cruisers, battleships, and carriers, so essentially you're arguing that AA armaments are useless in general. (which probably has some truth in it)

Ship AA was fairly useless in general, but cruisers, for instance had two times as many barrels as the DDs did, so they cut the average down to just a couple of minutes. Still horribad, but much better than DDs.

 

[Wyrm]

The variation in torpedoes was massive. Just comparing the Mk.8 in use on US DDs and the Type 93 in use on IJN DDs, both in '36, the Type 93 has more than twice the payload, half again the run speed, more than two and a half times the running distance, was far harder to spot, had a far better reliability, yadda yadda yadda.

The type 93 did however have the draw-back of being extremely volatile due to the compressed oxygen. Shocks from near-misses could cause the torpedoes to explode in the launch-tubes, causing massive damage to the ship. Often torpedoes were jettisoned when ships came under attack in order to avoid this.

 

[Wyrm]

The Grossflugzeugkreuzers that were in Plan Z would have had some shore-bombardment with their 28cm guns

 

[SchwarzKatze]

The type 93 did however have the draw-back of being extremely volatile due to the compressed oxygen. Shocks from near-misses could cause the torpedoes to explode in the launch-tubes, causing massive damage to the ship. Often torpedoes were jettisoned when ships came under attack in order to avoid this.

Oxygen and explosion are two different matters entirely; the oxygen made damage control harder as damaged torpedoes would greatly strengthen any fire nearby, but they wouldn't cause more sympathetic detonations than compressed air. Bigger explosion were due to the warhear being larger, since explosives explode with its own oxidizer, not oxygen in the enviornment, the easier sympathetic detonations were probably due to the sensitive fuze on the torpedoes, which sometimes exploded prematurely before impact.

And it's the only torpedo that could hit three ships with one salvo and sink two of them.

 

[Wyrm]

Oxygen and explosion are two different matters entirely; the oxygen made damage control harder as damaged torpedoes would greatly strengthen any fire nearby, but they wouldn't cause more sympathetic detonations than compressed air.

Yes and no. The dangers of compressed oxygen compared to compressed air is that if you have a rupture, the compressed oxygen will only need the tiniest spark to start a fire that will burn hot and fast. And having a huge explosive warhead near this hot and fast fire...

 

[Axe99]

The variation in torpedoes was massive. Just comparing the Mk.8 in use on US DDs and the Type 93 in use on IJN DDs, both in '36, the Type 93 has more than twice the payload, half again the run speed, more than two and a half times the running distance, was far harder to spot, had a far better reliability, yadda yadda yadda. And that's just the variance in the '36 DD slot.

DD AA armament went from useless to useless.
Fun fact: according to US post-war analysis, at the end of the war in the Pacific, when the enemy were flying straight at the guns trying to kamikaze, were untrained, and were largely flying scrap with wings, it'd still take a fully modernised DD firing on full cyclic with all guns 4 mins 45 seconds on average to down a plane. Then factor in that you can't bring all the guns to bear against a target, then factor in how quickly the guns suffered stoppages when you fired them like that... Destroyer AA's main contribution was providing morale and maybe confusing enemy pilots.

I'm not saying there wasn't variation in torpedoes, just that DDs didn't tend to improve their torpedo armament throughout the war (if anything, the DDs with the strongest TT armaments were mid-1930s, with DD designs tending to focus less on TTs and more on AA as the war went on).

For example, the US Bagley class (first commissioned in 1936) had a whopping 16 TT, but only 4 50-cal MGs for it's close-in AA. Go to the Gearings late-war, and you've got 10 TT (still the same size torpedo as well, 21") but they've now got 12 40mm Bofors barrels (in two quad and two double mounts) and 11 20mm Oerlikons. There's a similar progression in Commonweatlh destroyers.

It is the case that Japan was a little different, as while they didn't increase TTs in most of their DDs, they did go large with them for the Shimakaze, and they weren't as good with their close-in (or DP) AA, but they were still using the same size (and model) torpedoes. That said, I'd see upgrading the torpedoes on a DD not as an upgrade in torpedo model (no-one made specific torpedoes for DDs), but rather in the number of tubes and torpedoes carried.

Also - looking at the effect of AA on Kamikazes isn't entirely fair, as kamikazes were a different type of target than an aircraft trying to survive. Instead of disrupting a bombing run, the AA had to destroy the aircraft to the point it was no longer heading at them with momentum (a far, far harder task). Shipborne AA shot down thousands of aircraft during the war (according to the link you provided, the US alone shot down 2773 aircraft, or 36 per cent of all aircraft that came within range of shipborne AA), so rating it as useless might be a bit of a stretch.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know whether the Japanese Type 89 torpedo tubes (designed for Type 90 torpedoes) were compatible with Type 93 torpedoes (normally launched from Type 92 torpedo tubes)? Type 93's were half a meter longer than Type 90's so I'd wager they were not, but I'd rather not embarass myself, so if someone with a book can confirm it, it would be much appreciated.

 

[Orlunu]

That said, I'd see upgrading the torpedoes on a DD not as an upgrade in torpedo model (no-one made specific torpedoes for DDs), but rather in the number of tubes and torpedoes carried.

Also - looking at the effect of AA on Kamikazes isn't entirely fair, as kamikazes were a different type of target than an aircraft trying to survive. Instead of disrupting a bombing run, the AA had to destroy the aircraft to the point it was no longer heading at them with momentum (a far, far harder task). Shipborne AA shot down thousands of aircraft during the war (according to the link you provided, the US alone shot down 2773 aircraft, or 36 per cent of all aircraft that came within range of shipborne AA), so rating it as useless might be a bit of a stretch.

Well, there were some fairly important advances in fuses and the like, and having the same tech system for all nations means that it does have to represent the variance in torpedoes used by the different nations too.

I looked at the end of the war data because they actually became more effective at the end of the war. Kamikazes made easy targets and generally flew really slow planes, and the Americans counted it as an AA kill if they clipped them and the Kamikaze completed its mission anyway (they gave themselves 88% kills against Kamikazes, and 47% of Kamikazes got through). I'm not denying the ship-borne AA did shoot quite a lot down, but that was almost entirely from cruisers and heavier. Creative accounting on the kill stats aside, the AA suites of the heavier ships both require vastly shorter exposure times to down enemies, and had longer ranges.

Both factors varied a lot, yes, but I think that the AA is more easily put at a static value, since it mostly provided disruption rather than actual damage when fired from DDs, than torpedoes, which varied from next to useless to devastating.

Anyway, what I'd really like is to be able to add in more than four values that can be adjusted.

 

[Axe99]

Well, there were some fairly important advances in fuses and the like, and having the same tech system for all nations means that it does have to represent the variance in torpedoes used by the different nations too.

Totally agree, but those advances weren't generally at the 'individual DD model' level, but more for all torpedoes of a certain type - I'd think (ie, just my 2 cents, I could be completely wrong ) it would be better to model the torpedo tech differently by nation (and, if we wanted more detail, by nation/torpedo type (ie, naval/air-dropped and so on)), and then have any torpedo variance at the DD level be a reflection of more/less tubes.

I looked at the end of the war data because they actually became more effective at the end of the war. Kamikazes made easy targets and generally flew really slow planes, and the Americans counted it as an AA kill if they clipped them and the Kamikaze completed its mission anyway (they gave themselves 88% kills against Kamikazes, and 47% of Kamikazes got through). I'm not denying the ship-borne AA did shoot quite a lot down, but that was almost entirely from cruisers and heavier. Creative accounting on the kill stats aside, the AA suites of the heavier ships both require vastly shorter exposure times to down enemies, and had longer ranges.

Again, from your link, the final action of the war was a DD successfully knocking out an enemy plane . In terms of your "4 mins 45 seconds", are you inferring that from the rate of fire and success rate of just the 5" guns, or are you including the 40mm and 20mm as well? I crunched the "rounds per bird" figures with the various guns with the rates of fire for those guns from Navweaps, and for a Gearing-class DD, assuming only half of its battery of the gun in question can be brought to bear on the target, and I got:

5"/38 - 6 barrels total, 3 able to be trained on target, 15 RPM per gun - one target ever 14.5 minutes of fire, but not terribly surprising given these guns are engaging at very long ranges.
40mm Bofors Mk 1/2, 12 barrels total, 6 able to be trained on target, 120 RPM per gun - one target every 2.4 minutes.
20mm Oerlikon Mk 1/2/4, 11 barrels, 5.5 able to be trained on target (half of 11 ) - one target every 3.8 minuntes.

Note: Could have made a mistake, but gave them a quick once-over to make sure they weren't crazy bad at least.

So while it takes a while to down planes far out, you're looking at closer to three planes every four minutes if they get in close, assuming the DD can train half its guns on the target (which should be the case a good deal of the time). Now, I'd wager (and you're welcome to ask me to crunch the numbers, but I'd be surprised if you contest the general point) if we were to crunch those numbers for a Bagley in December 1941 (four 5"/38s, four 0.50 cal MGs), we'd find a very, very different rate of AA protection, and substantially fewer aircraft being shot down.

Anyway, what I'd really like is to be able to add in more than four values that can be adjusted.

Totally - I started a thread today which would make me disagreeing with you on this make me look more than a little crazy . I'd be surprised if we can't mod in more than four as well .

 

[Orlunu]

Again, from your link, the final action of the war was a DD successfully knocking out an enemy plane . In terms of your "4 mins 45 seconds", are you inferring that from the rate of fire and success rate of just the 5" guns, or are you including the 40mm and 20mm as well?

No, all the guns. I just made the kind of mistake which reminds me why I always set up several auto-check mechanisms for number crunching when it's important.

Anyway, main DP guns stayed the same on all but a couple of DDs (HNlMS Marnix is the only exception that comes to mind), and the close in AA was pretty much only good against planes attacking that individual ship, giving very low exposure times.

Torpedo techs for the nations would be a good idea, but destroyers quite frequently had massive changes in torpedo tube number and placement too. In fact, so did some light cruisers... Eh, now I'm just convinced that we need to run with, say, six variables for each ship type.

 

[Denkt]

I would not call ship anti air useless, it was a big reason why USA did so well in the pacific. Light anti air guns was proved to be rather useless, HMS Vanguard for example don't seems to have had any light anti air guns, bofors 40 mm have pretty long range and the dual purpose guns can shoot even farther with larger payloads.

By the late 40s you could build ships like the Tre Kronor class. Its 1950 anti air armament is listed as:

• 7*152 mm Bofors M/42
• 21*40 mm Bofors M/36
• 6*40 mm Bofors M/48

This represent a more effective anti air arnament then probably most battleships had in the 1930s and maybe even 1940s. This ship class did also carried 120 mines.

 

[xtfoster]

I think you guys are getting confused about what the variant system means. It doesn't mean that the system is any better (on a mount by mount basis) if you upgrade, just that you have more of it. So if you upgrade AA, then you sacrifice something (like -2% speed/range, and -4% reliability) for it (like +10% AA).

What the variant system is going to be best for is something like the USN parallel Destroyer classes. Pre-war the US tended to build 2 series of destroyers at the same time. One was mainly a Torpedo armed version (Gridley/Bagley/Benham classes), and the other was armed with DP main guns (although initially in surface action mounts) and heavier AA armament (Porter/Somers classes) (although not really effective until late war when the 1.1 inch quads (and most if not all torpedos) were replaced by Bofors 40mm). In game we can simulate this by creating two variants, one with max Torps and the other with max Main Gun.

 

[Axe99]

I get confused all the time . That said, as far as I understood it (which could be off), the variant system just represented more effectiveness for that particular element of capability, traded off with reliability. We are rambling a bit though - I'll be quiet now .

No, all the guns. I just made the kind of mistake which reminds me why I always set up several auto-check mechanisms for number crunching when it's important.

Anyway, main DP guns stayed the same on all but a couple of DDs (HNlMS Marnix is the only exception that comes to mind), and the close in AA was pretty much only good against planes attacking that individual ship, giving very low exposure times.

Torpedo techs for the nations would be a good idea, but destroyers quite frequently had massive changes in torpedo tube number and placement too. In fact, so did some light cruisers... Eh, now I'm just convinced that we need to run with, say, six variables for each ship type.

Aye - I definitely think there's value in being able to vary the TT armament as well as the AA - I just think that if we had to choose, I'd put AA in ahead of torps, as variance in AA armament was relatively more important in terms of outcomes. As you say, I'd rather have both (and given I'll be modding some other stuff in, if it's moddable, then I'll almost definitely mod that in as well).