captinjoehenry

Very interesting. What about inclined belts that angled inwards towards the bottom? Those should increase in effectiveness at range while also slightly improving effectiveness at close range due to the angling. Do you happen to know how effective this actually was? As I know this type of armor angling was used I just don't know how effective it actually was. As it's only 'downside' was the reduction in armored volume but I think that's mostly fine as the area outside of the belt was mostly covered by the torpedo protection system anyways?

Personally while I enjoy carries I'd rather them not be in the game for the simple reason that I am a massive fan of battleships and I really want to see modern BBs and other gun armed fleet units slug it out. Adding carriers to the mix largely negates this and carries are only really notably impactful in the last few years of this game and would take a lot of resources to add in any concrete way due to how complex air to air and air to surface is if you want it to be realistic compared to just surface to surface action. So end of the day I think the game will be more fun without carriers even if it isn't realistic As a side note from my time playing RTW2 carriers somehow ended up seeming to be rather worthless against large BB fleets. They were largely unable to harm super BBs and mostly just added annoying extraneous info with minimal impact while being a bitch to control or manage as heavy AAA batteries could pretty reliably shoot quite a few of them down.

I'm not entirely sure but when it comes to main battery centerline placement you can hold shift and place them anywhere along the ships centerline. The barbettes though are fixed to only the snap locations

Totally accurate to the real world. Yet ENTIRELY wrong for how the game is. In game there is exactly 0 deterrence factor or even forcing enemy DDs to maneuver. In game the DDs can just come straight in take damage from the secondaries and then dump enough torpedos at you from such a range you can't dodge to sink even super BBs. Meanwhile if you keep trying to open the distance in game and let your main guns work on the DDs you can kill them at 10km range where their torpedos are easy to dodge. So yes. In the real world things are entirely different indeed. But when it comes to gameplay you or the AI can order the DDs to go straight into sub 3km range of a BB doing no maneuvers, taking damage but not fatal damage from secondaries and then kill the enemy BB at point blank range with mass torpedo spam losing one or less DDs to the secondaries. Meanwhile IN GAME if you turn the main battery on the enemy DDs and work to open the range you can sink a good portion of them before they can close to effective engagement range. That's just the way things work in game. Frankly though what you want both in game and in real life is for a screening force of cruisers or DDs to engage the enemies light forces but failing that, with how the game works, super BBs that are not at all agile can only rely on their main battery to kill DDs as their secondaries IN GAME cannot stop, fend off or disrupt a DD torpedo attack before they've come to point blank range and dumped an undodgeable volley of torpedoes at you.

Largely I do agree with you. But at least when it comes to the ammo count you need about 300~ shells to take out an enemy BB assuming you go all in on heavy main guns. To take out a DD meanwhile takes 12 - 36 shells. Which translates to about 1 - 3% of the main battery ammo with increased ammo load and allows you to take out the enemy DD at such a range they cannot effectively torpedo your own BB. As it is in real life this is not at all the case as there are many good uses of secondary weapons in real life. But frankly in game with the need to take out DDs at 10km~ away from super heavy BBs / dreadnoughts in order to avoid them hitting you with torpedos means the only real option is either escorts or the BBs main battery guns. As once DDs get within 5km it becomes exceptionally hard if not impossible to avoid DD torpedos. Frankly if secondaries are only doing serious damage to DDs once they are close enough to land most of their torpedo salvo they just aren't useful as your more or less already dead / heavily damaged from the torpedos in the water even if your secondaries then return the favor. The ideal solution is to have an escort force engage enemy DDs and keep them at range. But failing that the main battery is the only option for large unmaneuverable ships. For heavy cruisers / battlecruisers and maybe even more modest and smaller BBs though secondaries are likely rather useful as those types of ships are agile enough to avoid DD torpedo runs while being close enough to the DDs for the secondarys to actually do something to the enemy DDs.

It seems with big BBs with quad triple turret suffer a problem where seemingly at random only half of the turrets fire. Either the two forward ones or the two rear ones.

When firing at enemy BBs with 18" super heavy AP I've seen a few ammo detonations on the enemy ships. In the previous patch that would mean massive amounts of damage. In this patch though it deals seemingly no extra damage: As you can see the Ammo Detonation dealt a whopping 72 damage. While other pens had dealt 73, 104 and 189 damage. I should think suffering an internal ammo detonation would cause massive damage instead of below average damage for a single shell.

I am looking for this info from a source. Also just did some testing with super heavy BBs 120k ton to be exact. The 5" secondaries are good vs DDs at sub 5km. The problem is if there are DDs within 5km of you you are pretty much already dead. And the 5" are not really effective till sub 3km at which point it's just a matter of hurting them a smidge before you die to mass torpedo. Meanwhile ditching the secondaries for an increased ammo main battery of 18 inch guns starting at range of 8km ( With the enemy formation putting the closest DD at sub 5km ) resulted in the main battery slaughtering the DDs within 10km or farther in a single or maybe 2 salvos per DD. Making their torpedos worthless due to constant maneuvering at that range. From this test it seems in game where we don't need to worry about aircraft and for super heavy BBs specifically secondaries do you no good whatsoever and you are better off just going all in on the primary battery and engage the enemy DDs from range. As for the problem of running out of shells having increased ammo on the main battery gives you plenty of ammo. And for shell load you'd probably want to go rather HE heavy such as using the whole bonus ammo from increased ammo load on HE and maybe 600~ AP shells and 1000~ HE shells. As the AP shells currently in game are only really good VS light units that die to 18" HE and the rare occassion of having a flat broadside of an enemy BB to shoot at.

Totally agree with you. And there's the fact that American WWII 5" secondaries had an effective range of about 10km vs DD sized targets. Which is VERY much not the case in game. Not to mention as it is in game the darn secondaries end up feeling like a total waste of deck space unless you want to let DDs get so close to your ship that your ship has no chance in hell of dodging and even then the DDs don't take all that much damage from even obsene amount of secondaries. Frankly it takes the main batter like 2 volleys at 10km against manuvering DDs to completely kill them. It takes very very little time to kill a whole fleet of DDs using the main battery while the whole time the secondary battery will probably land less hits than the enemies have DDs which is just and renders the secondaries more or less worthless. Your better off investing that weight in more torpedo protection to negate the torps and then just nuke the DDs with main battery as things are now even if secondaries end up being able to kill DDs at point blank range. As at point blank it's far too late.

I mean you say that and I agree. But it's still a problem even having 30 5" guns blazing away every few seconds with fully modern everything and failing to hit. With 30 rounds flying towards an enemy DD every couple of seconds you'd expect to get a single hit per volley fairly often instead of only rarely as it is now.

One other annoying thing I've found is that ammo detonations seem to do less damage now. I've had a few of them vs enemy BBs penetrating their main belt but it doesn't actually do any real extra damage and any damage it does do seems contained to a single compartment. I'm sure it works fine otherwise. But when fighting enemy BBs and seeing: Ammo Detonation and then the enemy taking no real damage it seems a bit silly

Your entirely right. I'm more complaining about the amount of hits 60 5" secondaries end up scoring at combat ranges. Between 5 and 10 km. Each hit the 5" hits does pretty good and notable damage. But unless the DDs come into point blank range even a massive secondary battery of 20 triple 5" turrets struggles to even hit the DDs in the first place. Super Heavy High TNT 5" shells though do pretty good damage for what they are. Knocking engines and steering and causing flooding as such. It just feels odd that when you have about 30 5" rifles blazing away at a DD and scoring so few hits. Espicially when you gave the Scharnhorst as an example which has 28 secondary barrels total and the BB I made in game has 30 5" barrels per broadside.

Your not wrong. But most of the time when a DD takes a single heavy cruiser or larger HE shell they are massively messed up which is definitely not the case here in game. And the same with lower caliber shells. DDs take a decent amount of damage from them but they are so hard to hit with small guns that the small guns are near worthless making the odd situation of BB main guns being the best if not only practical way to kill DDs instead of the quick firing lower caliber weapons that were actually used for that job in real life.

I do agree with you. As it is though I feel 5" secondaries should have a larger effective range than just 2.5km just due to how those types of secondaries functioned in WWII where 5" where common secondaries.

Also this does not seem to be the case that well. Having 60 6" barrels in 20 tripple 5" turrets as a secondary battery failed to do any real damage to enemy DDs within 7 - 10km. They scored about 10~ hits doing notable but light damage. While all 10 of the DDs I tested against were simply sunk by the 18" primary battery

Alright. First impressions: Pluses Awesome new ships! Cool new missions! Custom battles show potential! Minuses I can only control the design of a single group of ships in custom battles. This is annoying if not surprising but it leads DIRECTLY to the rest of my complaints In custom battles the enemies seem to like to bring out random ships even in the 1940 setting. This is highly annoying as I like to build massive super Battleships. The problem is almost all the time the USA just brings out an old and obsolete dreadnought weighing around 55k~ tons while I'm using a 120k ton monster BB that sort of makes the whole fight feel pointless and not even worth fighting This lack of being able to fight a high end fleet leads me to severely miss the unlock tech and ship hulls cheat codes as naval academy missions have constant and fun enemies to fight against with a super BB especially now with the added modern scenarios. But I can no longer take out a super BB in any of them due to the removal of the cheats. This would not be a problem if I could design at least the ship hulls that the enemies use in custom battles but I can not do that right now. This leads me to being highly annoyed at the removal of the cheats for hulls and tech as I want to bring out a super BB vs a competent and high end enemy fleet and I could do that if the cheats were still in place. The custom battles should solve this problem except for the fact that the enemy AI in custom battle almost never brings out an actual modern BB for me to fight against.

Drats. Custom battles would be the ideal place for saving designs

What does the bold part mean exactly? Is this unlock setting only in custom battles? Or is it a general setting that can be used in multiple places? I'm mostly asking as using the part / tech unlock is a lot of fun in the naval academy and I can see it also being fun if over powered in the campaign mode

Yeah I get that. I still give as much belt armor as I can and then stack a buttload of extended belt as well. At least 7.5 inches and usually more to help minimize any pens from the front. So yeah I'm well aware of not over doing it. And as for the 360 turrets that more has to do with how much I personally like that design Plus when looking for the more extreme arcs for heavy angling you end being able to rotate 360 anyways. And at least in this game it doesn't add too too much space. Mind you you're quite right that it's not really useful most of the time.

Ah neat! Honestly though the reason I placed the turrets where I have has more to do with their firing angles and allowing them to rotate 360 degrees. As while I know it isn't realistic I have found that angling armor in game works rather well. It has allowed me more than a few times to take lightly armored BBs into close range of really large guns by keeping the hull angled. And having good firing arcs really helps that. So I actually end up sacrificing main belt armor to up armor my turrets as with angling I can get away with a decent amount less main belt.

Interesting! I'm not sure though if a level deck would still be idea with the 105k ton design we have in game though. Mostly just due to the sheer amount of deck space available and the smallness of the tower we have in game. Makes me think you could save a lot of weight by lowering the main belt, with slanting up to the machinery space, and extending the barbette downwards considering how much unneeded citadel space would exist if the citadel wasn't lowered. Also I just did some really crude math. And it turns out as a guess the BB design I made in game has a citadel about 70%~ of it's hull length. Which is actually an identical % as the BB design that you posted. The Montana design that I found is about 58% hull length in citadel and the Yamato is about 53%. Which makes me think my design, while large, isn't entirely out of line with reality.

Ah! Thank you for this detailed reply! It makes a lot of sense! I was mostly just thinking that the turret infrastructure is notably smaller than the machinery such as the boilers and such. Or at least narrower. I know full well the designed I showed up above is unrealistic but I find it a lot of fun to play around with designs like it and was just thinking that there's bound to be some way to save weight on the citadel armor considering how huge the area that needs protecting is and how much empty space would be left if you used the normal full beam citadel along 80% of the length of the ship. I know cruiser design isn't like BB design but I figured you might be able to do something like this: Where the entire machinery area is raised up while the area for the ammo magazines are sunken down due to them being so much shorter than the machinery. Which also helps put the magazines deeper beneath the water line and harder to hit. Mind you cruisers are so different from BBs I have no idea if this is actually a functional choice for BBs So like what they did with the Scharnhorsts but for the whole machinery space instead of just a hump

Fair enough. But at least being able to narrow the citedal or something would be nice. As with the max tonage BB hull we already have there's a lot of unused deck space. Like a citadel like this would save a lot of weight VS going all the way to the hull edge

Currently Diesel engine ships can run on coal and semi-oil even though that's both not really possible and the in game tooltip says diesel engines can only run on oil Diesel engines can run on coal water slurry or coal dust mixed with oil in. The issue is that that technology only really showed up in the 1950s which is out of timeframe for the game

Totally agree with you. It does seem though that the devs are progessively working away at the HE problem. Both in this upcoming patch and the one before it they've nerfed HE which makes me think they'll keep nerfing it until it works right.