Naval Enthusiast

Advanced Radar *should* be gamebreaking. If it wasn't, the game would be lacking in historical accuracy The Japanese and Italian navies can sing a song about that.

Didn't trials by the USN find that this was only a serious issue for aluminium fittings and equipment on ships that were subject to nuclear bomb tests? Edit: Found the source sort of. Ministry of defence — design of ship's structures, Chalmers, 1993. I don't have access to the book itself, but here's a little tidbit from Ian Raymond's article "A Design Criteria for the Optimisation of Naval Transverse Bulkheads": "Chalmers (1993) and others state that thermal loads from an explosion need only to be considered for aluminium and composite super structures subjected to a nuclear blast criteria. This is outside my area but, in the situation of a nuclear weapon detonation close to nuclear missile silo, you will have a thermal load. The thermal load will weaken a structure, by melting or softening it, and additionally make the structure more brittle. Brittleness comes from re-solidification of the materials. Like seen in welding with the heat-affected zones." Overall, probably not something that'll be a factor in-game, unless nuclear shells like the 16'' Mk23 that were developed for the Iowas are added.

I believe the whole "armor weight" thing is being misunderstood. It's just a matter of what standard you use. If you want 300mm of armour "x", you could use 300mm of "x" armour which is going to weigh a specific amount. Let's say you develop a new type of armour. This "y" armour is twice as effective as your "x" armour and now you can achieve 300mm of "x" protection by using just 150mm of your shiny new "y" armour. Both are pretty much identical in density since they're steel based, but suddenly you have reduced the weight of your armor by half, whilst keeping your protection the same. Alternatively you could use 300mm of "y" amour so it would weigh the same, but suddenly you have 600mm of "x" grade protection. tl;dr: Armour improvements should work like this: Either you get the same level of protection (as your older armour) at a lower weight, or an increased level of protection at the same weight. Currently, the game does *both* which is obviously a bit overpowered.

@Christian Don't have the game yet, just going to chime in on a historical/technical point. There were innumerable types of armor that were employed against Torpedos. You're right that the belt doesn't help against Torpedos, but that's not what the belt is for. Torpedo protection systems can usually be found in the shape of a relatively thin plate (to trigger the torpedo) followed by a whole load of air, water, coal or whatever else there is (the British Nelson-class famously being designed with massive water reservoirs in its torpedo protection array as a way to bypass the limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty). This room is followed by another room that is very similarly structured and you repeat the process depending on how well you want to protect against under-water threats. It's essentially very similar in concept and principle to the double/triple bottoms that were developed against mines. The other factor protecting large ships from torpedo damage is compartmentalization (aka, how many bulkheads you have and how thick they are). The flooding that a successful torpedo hit can cause is catastrophic, but can be easily localized and diminished by properly closing bulkheads and appropriate pumping efforts. For every famous story of the Yamato and Prince of Wales being sunk by torpedo attacks, there are dozens of lesser known stories about multiple US cruisers having their entire bows literally blown off by Japanese "Long Lances" and happily returning to a friendly port with minimal casualties. The Bismarck was famously crippled by a hit near the rudder, but few people mention that most other torpedo hits scored against it in its final battle did no discernable damage. Overall, I think that the true effectiveness of Torpedos is heavily overstated in the community at the moment. I cannot comment on their current state in-game (but from the footage I've seen they do look like they need to be buffed), but they shouldn't be some invisible, competition-less godkillers like some people make them out to be. Their warped reception might be because the cases in which torpedos sank ships are far more famous than the many more cases in which ships survived torpedo hits, obviously because ships sinking are a big deal that is talked about, whilst ships surviving is what you'd expect of them and what they were designed for.