[Alpha-3 News! [26/11/2019]]

6 minutes ago, disc said:

As near I can tell in the game, turrets placed directly on the deck don't have an ammunition supply chain of any kind. At least, we have no indication showing they do. This gives them a certain advantage over barbette-mounted guns.

Well I think there is something along those lines and the barbette directly effects it.  As when you suffer an ammo detonation most of the time it's centered beneath one of the turrets that got hit and penetrated.  The Barbettes seem to work wonders in this case and using the Barbette IV seems to completely negate any and all ammo detonations that are based under a turret.  Still doesn't save you from a massive citadel penetration but using Barbette IV definitely works for protecting the various turrets ammo supply.  Just not the placeable Barbette that seems to have near 0 armor

[Alpha-3 News! [26/11/2019]]

10 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

well the barbette is what houses the bearings that let your turrets turn. It also has inside the mechanisms that link the magazines to the turrets. Destroy the barbette, or damage it enough to render the equipment inside inoperable, your turret might be fine (it also might NOT be fine at all, more of that later) , but might not be able to turn, or might not be able to receive shells from below. Or both.

It's not unprecedented that hits that couldn't perforate the barbette to still cause enough damage to leave the turret inoperable. Even glancing blows have been known to do that, just by deforming the plate itself and lodging it stuck into the turret above it was possible to jam a turret frozen in place. Repairs to restore the mobility of the turrret could be done "on the field" (cutting the plate wit blowtorches, for instance, to free the turret) but could take hours, not to mention that doing that under enemy fire wasn't the best idea ever.

A penetrating hit detonating inside the barbette would kill the turret allright. Best case scenario all the reloading mechanism will be gone. A worse scenario is a flash fire that goes up into the turret and makes a flambee out of the crew. Worst case scenario a flash fire going down the barbette right into the magazine. You can guess the results. Thankfully that was quite uncommon for post-WW1 designs (which incorporated flashtight doors that were opened and closed when needed to bring shells and powder up to the turret), but still wasn't something that could be discarded outright.

At any right annoying as it might be, barbettes were key for the operation of the associated turrets. Get a barbette KO, the turret is KO aswell.

(And yes, I'd also like very much to give the barbettes the armoring I choose, instead of choosing it in the equipment menus. Then again I understand the rationale of doing it that way)

Yep all makes perfect sense to me.  But if Barbette hits kill turrets as they should I really need to be able to custom armor them.  Because right now enemy BB shells OVERPEN my barbettes while being unable to harm my turrets.  

So yes right now it just doesn't work with the equipment menu.  Tying it to the turret thickness could work and would probably be the easiest way to do it.  Or at least if you select barbette IV it's thick enough to protect against your own guns at close range or something.  Because as it is choosing IV barbette already adds a % of weight based on the weight of the turret and the amount of armor you put on the turret.  Just making it so the barbette inherits the amount of armor on the turret should work just fine

[new hulls and structures]

I'd love to get a flush deck destroyer, light cruiser, heavy cruiser and battle cruiser hull.  As flush decks are just so much easier to use.  And they end up being the norm towards the end of the time period the game covers.

[Alpha-3 News! [26/11/2019]]

1 hour ago, khang36 said:

Well as far as damage goes the training equipment has to be designed to work with the recoil of the guns that sit ontop of them so for a twin 13 inch turret it would make sense for them to get jammed for say an 11 inch shell but somthing as small as 5 inches would for all purposes do nothing to to the barbette. And even then most problems of jammed turrets can be resolved with in an hour.

Eh...  I can't speak to that.  But my tripple 18 inch turret got it's Barbette knocked out by 15 inch shell fire that couldn't even harm my turrets past green and yet they easily knocked out both of my barbettes from decently long range.  Right now it's annoying but not a big issue.  But if knocking out the barbette also knocks out the unharmed main gun from a shell that can't at all hurt the main gun then that's a massive pain in the butt and annoying.

[Citadel rework suggestion]

9 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Uhm. What was considered as the "armored citadel" was the armored area that covered critical spaces within the hull. Those were magazines, of course. But also were engineering spaces, and more importantly, machinery. A shell in the machinery areas could be as crippling as a shell on a barbette or magazine space. It didn't cause the fireworks a magazine going off did, but a shell on the machinery areas could very well leave a ship dead on the water...which means alive, but just waiting to die.

So the machinery had the same priority to be protected as the magazines, And the machinery was generally placed amidships, in separate boiler rooms, turbine rooms, etc. General layout differed a lot from design to design (much of the final machinery layout also depende on how many turrets and magazines the design had, for instance), but the placement usually didn't - amidship in the middle area that went from the fore turrets to the aft turrets.

That's why you needed continuous protection from the fore turrets right down to the aft ones.

I was more referring to situations where you might want to place the turrets towards the ends of the hull.  So instead of having a continuous citadel running most of the length of the ship you would have one around the machinery and then seperate ones around each turret.  So you can save some amount of weight in cases where turrets are placed far from the center of the ship

[Armor Type for Pen Table?]

Against what armor type is the armor pen in the table calculated from?  Iron armor so +0% or something else?

[Citadel rework suggestion]

Honestly I like this idea.  But I would want an option to have main battery guns outside of the citadel and then chose just to up armor their magazine.  That would of course increase the amount of weight you need to carry in citadel armor but I can't think of a reason you'd need a full citadel underneath all guns considering you just need a tunnel to bring them power and then armor on the turrets internals.  You should just need the full sized citadel around the machinery.

[Alpha-3 News! [26/11/2019]]

11 minutes ago, brucesim2003 said:

I've had a battleship with the heaviest barbette armour, 15" belt, and 18" turret face lose a barbette to a 5" shell.

Same.  It's a massive pain.  It's not terrible as it is right now as it just means you take a decent sized hit.  But if it takes out your main gun that's immune to the enemy shell fire then it's a massive pain in the butt.

 

7 minutes ago, akd said:

Barbette armor / protection was supposed to be addressed also, I think.  Either it needs an adjustable value, or should inherit from turret face value or something.

I do hope so.  As I REALLY don't want to lose main BB battery cannons to light AP shells.

[Alpha-3 News! [26/11/2019]]

On 11/26/2019 at 1:57 PM, Nick Thomadis said:

BATTLE MECHANICS

• Barbette damage now causes damage to its attached gun and vice versa. You will no longer see barbettes becoming individually damaged without any effect to the attached gun.

This worries me.  As while it makes sense and is the way it should work I can't armor barbettes as much as I can armor turrets or other parts of the ship.  As even with the Barbette IV selection Barbettes still die all the time to heavy BB shells even if I can armor my turrets so much to be near immune to BB shells.  Which is fine in the current version where the Barbettes just die all the time.  But if they still die as often as they do now and I can't up armor them having them take out my main gun that's near immune to shell fire with the barbette I'm unable to protect well enough will be highly annoying.