SonicB

There's a book on amazon called Code Name: Habbakuk - can absolutely recommend. Your original question intrigued me, and to be honest I can't think of any really outlandishly large pre-dreadnought designs, possibly because the engine technology of the day simply didn't allow it (triple-expansion engines weren't as simple to scale up as turbine machinery) and also because armour schemes of the day weren't exactly well thought-out in terms of structural strength. In terms of main battery, you've got the ridiculous 1880s 110-ton (16.25in) Armstrong guns on Benbow and the Victoria-class, which carried two, and the Andrea Doria which carried four in two turrets. If the Royal Navy had straight-up matched Doria and built an enlarged Admiral-class ship to carry twin turrets fore-and-aft, rather than the single mounts on Benbow, it would probably have been by some measure the largest battleship in the world... for ten years or so.

Agreed. It was an unusually lucky (or prescient) decision by the Japanese to encase Mikasa in concrete back in 1923, otherwise it's fairly certain she never would have survived her neglect during and after the Allied occupation. That said, here in the UK we have the significantly older SS Great Britain which is now permanently drydocked, but we also have HMS Warrior which is still afloat at Portsmouth - it's worth noting that both iron hulls actually spent over a century in salt water with questionable-to-nonexistent maintenance before being restored, so it can be done if the will and money is there. Both are beautiful old ships, and well worth a visit if you ever get the chance.

Ah, Project Habakkuk... a very elaborate British excuse to just shoot Admiral King.

I don't think so - the only modelling of damage effects on gunnery appears to be a temporary accuracy nerf. As far as degraded performance goes, I'd welcome examples to the contrary, but iirc either a turret's rotation worked or it didn't (except early/light weapons which could be trained hydraulically or manually.) Individual guns could certainly be knocked out, and conditions in the turret, magazines or ammunition hoist could also definitely impede the rate of fire. A potential list of temporary or permanent turret malfunctions: One or two guns knocked out Decreased accuracy/range due to rangefinder damage (turret under local control) Jammed or restricted rotation Reduced ROF due to crew incapacitation or loading mechanism damage I would expect a significant chance of one of these after a penetrating hit, yellow-red change in structure or a fire below the turret, and there should be a permanent malfunction applied after any ammo detonation.

Just to pop in another, earlier example of relative turret weights: the Conte di Cavour (1914) and Caio Duilio/Andrea Doria (1915) classes carried their 12" battery in three triple turrets weighing 670t each, and two twin turrets weighing 500t each, again with the same armour thickness on all turrets. (source)

Well, let me be the one to throw in the Tillman Battleships... Drach did a great tl;dr video on them too.

As a general point, I've noticed the chances of turrets getting knocked out on an adequately-protected design are next to nothing, so there's no real redundancy penalty not to go with triples and quads as early as you can get them. Compare and contrast with the turret reliability and resilience we see in historical battles, where turrets being rendered inoperable, permanently or temporarily, by mechanical failure in battle was a genuine concern - even caused by relatively minor damage to ancillary systems outside the armoured belt and barbette. If this can be added to the game then there should be no need for (largely artificial) nerfs to ROF and accuracy for multiple turrets, as well as what I agree is a rather heavy-handed weight penalty. The King George V class gives us a good starting-point to set accurate turret weights, as its 14" quad turrets weighed 1,582t each, while the twin turret with the same armour thickness and type of gun weighed 915t. The guns themselves only weighed about 79t each. (source.)

I love this ship. It's like a teenager fitting 20" rims and a paint tin exhaust mod from Wish to their first car. It's okay, kid, you'll be a County class when you grow up.

That's a matter of opinion, but if I recall from my own reading, general historical consensus is that it was the 1922 treaty that actually codified the post-WWI tilt away from big-gun warships as the sole measure of naval power. Be nice. This isn't a WWII game, but it shouldn't be a matter of debate to point out that the concepts and technologies are grounded in real-world history. For example, the distinction between 'heavy' and 'light' cruisers is largely an artifact of the treaty era. There was also comparatively little innovation post-1940 in battleship design as wartime priorities changed, hence why we saw no significant design work around the 20" calibre beyond German and Japanese napkin designs. This seems to me a good argument for 1940 as a cut-off point, not vice versa. Let me ask you a question: if you were designing this game and had to pick an 'end' date, balancing the priorities of reflecting the entire dreadnought era and minimising the ahistoricity of the lack of airpower, which would you choose?

Bear in mind that the Washington Treaty and its capital ship restrictions really supercharged the development of aircraft carriers. As such, if there's such as a thing as a 'carrier-friendly' timeline, we're in it. Furthermore, 1940 makes a logical cut-off point because it was in 1940 that aircraft carriers first actually had an effective impact on WWII.

At a guess, the time period is because they were hoping to sidestep the issue of aircraft carriers... honestly, I'd love to see a little extension for AU purposes, but I don't think it'll happen unless there's an air power expansion or DLC much further down the line.

Some great floating Travelodges, though.

Thanks for the detail! I'm not as familiar with late nineteenth-century design, when designers were still trying to figure out the basic construction of a barbette or turret armament. Bertin may well have been right; however, as you said, by the core era of this game the basic problems with multi-barrel turrets had been solved, and the choice of double, triple and later quad (or 2+2) turrets came down mainly to weight distribution, firing arcs and redundancy. I think that a technology gate, increased cost, and (perhaps) a higher chance of malfunction in earlier versions, if this is ever implemented, is easily enough to reflect these concerns.

And that includes turrets of different sizes but the same calibre, as we see with King George V (4+2+4), Conte di Cavour and Andrea Doria (3+2+3+2+3), and Nevada (3+2+2+3). All classes had a unified fire-control system and fired broadsides in unison, with no appreciable difference in rate-of-fire or accuracy between the larger and smaller turrets - assuming the quads on KGV actually worked as designed. The lesson here is very simple: guns should be grouped only by calibre. Furthermore, the difference between turrets of multiple sizes within that calibre should be in cost, weight, technology and (in campaign) reliability. Accuracy or rate-of-fire shouldn't be a factor.

Yes, and the aiming calculation is different too. I really hope this gets fixed. It's a shame that HMS Dreadnought, the original all-big-gun battleship, doesn't have a unified main armament in the game named after her.

PLEASE. (And also please allow optional barbettes for towers that currently have mandatory ones)

Not to mention the inevitable screams for 'balance' that wrecks the campaign from PvP-only players who just got kerbstomped by some min-maxing douche with a 100-torp DD.

sounds... half-assed

I mean much as I don't want this to turn into yet another designer thread... I entirely agree, we need tower versions with the same stats but without barbettes and so does the poor AI. Putting a couple searchlights or some boats on an unused barbette was a nice gesture last patch but it's still just polishing the turd. Also I mean they did have interwar 'heavy cruisers' with hardly any protection like the Hawkins class, but really they were just light cruisers with the benefit of a personal trainer and great camera angles. Gorgeous ships though.

I've noticed this latter issue is clearly something they haven't fixed yet. Most ships are happy with secondary or tertiary batteries, the AI wants quarternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary and even nonary batteries (I'll let you guess when I stopped and had to google.) Sometimes they are simply the same calibre with different mounts - which frankly could be fixed whenever devs decide to group batteries by calibre, but that clearly ain't happening. Anyway those two are bloody classic examples of what happens when you design a warship from the stern forwards and run out of money half way.

I've noticed on this hull that the forward and aft 2" positions also seem to block the arcs of fire for the main armament.

Jackie Fisher would be proud.

For real? Rozhdeestvo is hilariously stern-heavy. Ioann's B turret can't fire straight ahead. Both ships have appalling and completely unnecessary distribution of weight towards the ends that would make them downright dangerous to sail in anything more than a light sea, as well as requiring a main belt almost the entire length of the ship. Yes, you could build one if you really wanted, but there is no sane reason why you would. It looks ridiculous because even the craziest naval architects in history (ohai 19th century Russia) wouldn't have built it, and they had a reason behind every design choice. More to the point, even if you don't care about historical accuracy one bit, they're badly unstable designs that hand a significant accuracy advantage to the player, which you don't want even if all you care about is game balance. The B barbette is far too high and would add serious longitudinal and lateral stability issues (bear in mind it has to be armoured.) There's no aft turret behind the aft barbette (a problem that persists with the AI autodesigner.) Finally, as my previous post stated, it's a 75,000 ton battlecruiser and there is no reason /at all/ to arm such a large ship with cruiser-calibre guns. It's bad for the balance of the scenario.

What really stuck out to me was that ridiculous forward barbette. Only then did I notice that this 75,000t super battlecruiser had an industrial-scale farm of 9" turrets, which is also inherently a pretty dumb idea for multiple reasons I could go into at length. If you were specifically ordered to design a ship like that (hence my commentary) then I suppose it's not the worst thing you could do. Maybe stick a couple turrets sideways on the main tower like elephant ears, idk. I genuinely believe (as I said to Nick a few days ago) that this thread already shows how the AI designer has improved. But... my reason for posting stuff here is simply that it made me go WTF - this is an inherently sensible and balanced criterion and I will not be taking questions at this time.

Ah, then it has changed since my version because (iirc) they used to be two older casemated light cruisers. They nearly always had at least bow/stern or one side tube, usually two.