Whomst'd've

The Scharnhorst class was armed with triple 11 inch turrets because of the treaties after WW1 restricting their max gun size to 11 inch. The Scharnhorst's triple 11 was also build around a barbette wide enough to be switched out for dual 15 inch turrets as that was preferred. So I would not say that arming the Scharnhorsts with 11s was just because of raiding convoys.

A simple question that I think would greatly improve the game if implemented, in custom battles could we be given the ability to design the opposing warships as well? It would enable us to test out design philosophies to see which works best, as well as have the ability to compare personal ship designs against others (I would imagine a forum page where your ship stats would be posted to compete against others in an AI only match etc).

It does seem weird that while using max equipment and still being unable to achieve hits is odd, cant say it has happened to myself. I found however that accuracy does depend on a lot in speed in a rather unrealistic fashion. When developing my battlecruisers I found that sticking to realistic armours and speed I would get rather normal slugging matches, but if I dropped everything for speed I was borderline untouchable. Maybe the AI you have encountered have a much greater speed difference leading to a drop in your accuracy?

Here is the 1918 Italian Battleship Vittoria, built to deal with the French turret farm Brenus and the British fast battleship Queen Elizabeth. She has 5*2 13 inch guns (smaller than a Queen, but more of them), a 13 inch main belt (same as a Queen), and a speed of 26 knots (3 knots faster than a Queen). Also side note, my first design that has perfect stability without looking god awful, as i usually go for realistic looking designs which tends to result in front heaviness (my battlecruisers for example), but here it worked out fine!

Holy crap 49 knots!? You madman!

Will more modern torpedo boats be added rather than being unable to be built past like 1900s? These could come in the form of s-boats, vospers, PT and MAS boats etc.

In 1911 the americans are seeing the battlecruiser arms race that the British and Germans are currently in, and realize if they wish to be in any competitive stance navally on the world stage, then they should also have their own battlecruisers to destroy the enemy's screening fleet etc. The start of construction in 1911 would begin the "battlecruiser panic", as other nations put great importance on battlecruisers in their overall doctrine. The American battlecruiser Idaho was built to be able to run down or out run the fastest battlecruiser in the royal navy at that time (HMS Lion, 28 knots) at 31 knots top speed. The choice of 12 inch weapons (4*2) were in keeping with the rest of the dreadnought battlefleet. This would result in her being lightly armoured like her british counterparts, as to enforce this ship to be used for screening conflicts and cruiser killing, rather than to fight in the battleline with her much slower 21 knot battleship compatriots.

And to finish off my mediterranean battlecruisers we have the Austro-Hungarian entrant, the 1914 battlecruiser SMS Pylades. She was designed amidst the "battlecruiser panic" the sprouted the Levrette and San Gennaro battlecruisers. The Austro-Hungarians position was quite fragile navally. Her army was the focus of the nation, leading the navy to be worse off funding wise. Also the states position geographically did not improve the situation. Therefore the battlecruiser design would have to be able to perform two main objectives. She was to be fast enough to catch any hostile shipping that was travelling within range to engage, and fast enough to not be run down by her counterparts. She was also to be protected enough to be able to rejoin the main battle line of the Austro-Hungarian fleet to assist in facing off again the enemy battle line that was lured in by her. With these aspects in mind, she stuck with 12 inch weapons as the rest of the battle line had those weapons as well, (the italian 13 inch was not seen as much of an advantage due to her lacking armour). She was the fastest capital ship at a blistering 32 knots (Levrette 28, San Gennaro 30). She was also the most armoured with a 12.4 inch belt and 14 inch turret (Levrette being the next best with an 11 inch belt and 12 inch turret). She also has a spit boiler/engine room so that one well placed shot could not completely disable her engines and leave her a sitting duck.

I revised my 1913 Italian battlecruiser San Gennaro as she looked very front heavy and was actually a smaller size to her French counterpart Levrette which didn't make any sense. Same backstory as before, built in response to the French Levrette plan, has bigger guns (13 > 12 inch), is faster (30 > 28 knots), but less armored overall:

These turrets I assume were modelled off the twin 6 inch secondaries seen on the Royal Navies Nelson class of battleships.

French battleship Brennus AKA the 12 inch turret farm:

1913 Italian Battlecruiser San Gennaro. Built in response from leaked plans of the the French Battlecruiser Levrette, she has bigger 13 inch weapons compared to her counterparts 12 inch guns. She's faster by 2 knots (30 knots), but sacrifices armour protection for the speed increase, making her more susceptible to the 12 inch guns on the French ship. (I might make some lore behind these battlecruisers, got a design for Austria-Hungry as well).

Thank you for your help I just edited my comment cheers!

1913 French Battlecruiser Levrette: Her enemy not having a great time:

Will the turret sizes in the future be revised to reflect real life? As in will turret sizes be determined not only by gun caliber but also but number of guns the in the turret? Because seeing a single gun variant turret of the same gun size as a triple gun variant, and still be the same exact size turret and barbette size really limits possibilities and realism. Pictures to show what I mean: In game: https://imgur.com/gallery/vL22xqw Real life: King George V battleship Giulio Cesare battleship

Gotcha forgot about that, just last time i posed I was able to post pictures. Here are the pictures: https://imgur.com/gallery/cDCULM9

Hi there. I think there is a problem with the medium superimposed barbette. It is the perfect size for the dual 12 inch turrets (I know size is based on solely on gun size and not gun number, alas i digress). However I cannot seem to be able to place it down unless it is connected with a larger and pointless barbette in front of it (they both stand at the same height so it makes no sense), and when the larger barbette is removed, the medium barbette becomes invalid. Now I'm unsure if this is a bug, or if it is intentional. If it is intentional, then why? (also I would post photos but apparently I have reached the limit??) PS: would it be ok to allow the option to remove the restrictions to barbette and superstructure placement in the unlock mode?

Yes I have heard about this idea before and I agree that it would be a better option, making the barbettes auto form for the turret. This idea i figured would be easier to implement in the mean time

Another idea: The ability to plate over casements should be allowed like what happened in refitted WW1 era ships, as well as having an option to remove the area for casements in the first place should also be an option

Been thinking up another idea. I think the player should be able to see where the boiler/engine rooms are with respect to the funnels placed and the ability to move them around, hence, shifting the center of mass of the hull. Being able to see the center of mass of the hull should also be allowed. eg: That way if we have a nelson layout type ship, with the funnels at the back, the boiler/engine rooms should also be at the rear, bringing the center of mass along with it, which would balance the all forward armament of the ship and keeping it is stable. The ability to finetune the boiler/engine room placement could be done with a slider like what is done with displacement of the ship. Another thing that could be added to the sliders to the left would be the ability to increase/decrease the beam and length of the ship (which would respectively affect the displacement) eg: Comment what you guys think of this!

Really glad to see these update notes, and especially glad to see an expansion on barbettes into centerline and side mounted! Now just waiting for the turrets to be revised to have appropriate barbette diameter due to both gun size and number of guns to put the icing on the cake!

Something similar to this?

Revised OP and polls to include the echelon layout idea

Something more akin to this?

Got an idea. As turrets mounted in en echelon layout was quite common for WW1, I think it should be easier to replicate this idea on the shipbuilder. When a side mounted large caliber turret is placed, individually (without the auto mirror option), a line of anchor points appear on the other side of the ship as the exact same distance as the turret from the center of the ship but mirrored so (assuming your placing the same type of gun turret) you should have no lateral instability, eg: This suggestion also uses left ctrl to finetune the position of the turret, but you are locked into moving your turret only lengthways up and down the ship to make sure you keep the stability. If you want to widen your echelon layout, you have to move the original turret and replace the second one. I know you can kind of already do this with left ctrl, but it's really finicky and easy to screw the lateral stability. Plus you can only really make one wide echelon layout, else the stability goes way off, eg: This doesn't really make too much sense when there were ships like the invincible battlecruiser with a tight echelon layout (yes I know I wider layout is better but these options should be available to players).