akd
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Posts posted by akd
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AI does not get any bonuses that you can’t also employ. Player has huge advantage against AI in regards to torpedoes because you can use divination to observe what’s happening aboard any spotted ship.
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11 hours ago, Phelidai said:
Although more than a bit innacurate, it was quite amusing to see mighty Bismarck reduced to a faceless merchant vessel.
No doubt we will eventually encounter the mighty German BB...Pinguin. (I was already forced to build a big armored cruiser named Cormorant in last campaign).
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Likely because fleet-type battles are "rolled" relatively rarely, and groups of BBs are not suitable for the more common mission types that are generated. If you are saying that if you only build BBs then you should only get full fleet battles, well I'm not sure that makes sense. You really should immediately lose the campaign do to inability to properly project power and protect own coasts.
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Then likely the issue is only having BBs. This probably pulls a BB where normally it would pull a cruiser.
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3 minutes ago, SPANISH_AVENGER said:
I only set them in Sea Control now as someone above recommended it, but nothing has really changed...
Do you think, maybe, they were wrong?
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5 minutes ago, SPANISH_AVENGER said:
ALL my ships in sea control in the same port... yet I keep getting into battles with just one ship.
I don't think Sea Control is a task for BB fleets in game terms. You are probably telling all your BBs to go out and raid or patrol individually.
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I think if you put ships on Sea Control they are much more likely to go out raiding or patrolling on their own. I only put fast CLs and CAs on sea control and have not had this happen to me, although I've had several 1 enemy vs. many of mine battles.
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5 minutes ago, Littorio said:
...Nick stated they are waiting to finish the "environment graphics" before looking at spotting more, which makes total sense. Since, in an ideal spotting system as we conceive of it, and as was in reality, the only visual impediment short of the horizon will be weather and time of day, we will need actually functional visuals and mechanics of this nature working in tandem in order get this done. I suspect this may take some time to do since anything like rain, lightning, volumetric fog, etc. will add to the horsepower needed to to run the game. Thus they will need to test more to make sure it is stable and continues to perform as well as possible on current hardware requirements.
I sort of agree, but everything I've said above applies to the current system only looking at the conditions, not the visuals. The visual discrepancies just reinforce the weirdness of it all.
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7 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:
Admirals,
A new hotfix has been deployed. Please read the info here:
HotFix 1.02
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1069660/view/3118178418897076922- Made the AI ships in campaign to not desire to retreat so often. If they desire to engage from too far away, this is something different, that if it is an issue, we will fix it in another update.
Probably flogging a dead horse here, but there is going to be constant friction between the relatively realistic system of gun range and penetration (thus creating realistic immune zones) and the very unrealistic spotting (far more restricted than reality in many circumstances, too influenced by artificial tower tech setting a hard visual range bubble that has nothing to do with reality) and targeting ("borg" targeting where if any ship can see a target, all ships can engage the target without regard to their own visibility). This creates the impression that ship's are running away out of possible visual range (the only hard limit should be the horizon unless obscurants like precipitation, mist, fog, smoke are present; everything within that should be a probability of spotting based on conditions and target visual signature) when they are in fact seeking effective gun range which often exceeds the artificial visual limits in game.
1. Ships should only be able to target ship's they can themselves see with their eyes. This would mean that in restricted visual conditions ship's cannot run away out of vision to more effectively use their guns.*
2. In clear conditions, the limit of vision should exceed the possible range where guns can be targeted at all (at least for capital ships), much less targeted effectively.*
*Only second-generation radar overcomes this limitation. First gen might allow a ship to find a potential target and spot it easier visually once brought within the limit of vision based on conditions, but second-generation fire control radar is required to circumvent the need to see a target to effectively use guns against it. Note also that under clear conditions finding an enemy by radar and by sight are largely the same since funnel smoke is likely to be visible beyond the visual horizon (which is also the radar horizon in these conditions). To some degree second-gen fire control radar may be able to overcome the need to have a ship within the visual horizon (or range of vision based on obscurants) to effectively target it, as it may be able to range on large shell splashes extending above the horizon, thus being able to judge short and long fall of shot without seeing the ocean surface out to the range of the fall of shot.
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29 minutes ago, Norbert Sattler said:
Did anyone figure out how the refit works?
I see a refit button on the ship design page, but it's always greyed out...
Since it is not in the change notes, I think we can assume WIP.
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31 minutes ago, Grayknight said:
well problems with CA hull number 1 and AI ships
CA number 1.... well there is mounting for 6 inch turret and you have to put there 6 inch (main battery) but it does not work. you can put 11 inch gun on stern which does not fit hull and there still is collision causing overlaping on 2ndery battery
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2697093150
You can mount 6-inch Mark I and II singles in these positions with normal arcs showinng if you rotate them from their default mounting positions.
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15 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:
Do the guns overlap? If they overlap with each other, we cannot allow them to mount. Can you provide image with the exact issue?
It doesn't even show as a possible mounting location for 6-inch, even with nothing mounted in the main wing turret position, so there is no way to check for possible interference.
6-inch selected, no mounting points shown. It looks like her main side turrets were in reality taller than they are in game, and possibly the side center secondary positions somewhat lower in the hull.
Maybe the main barbette in the hull side could be raised to get the main turret up a bit higher and allow for a greater variety of guns to fit in the secondary positions?
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1 hour ago, Nick Thomadis said:
New *"French “Ironclad Battleship III”* available from 1890 to 1906 with a displacement between 8,400 and 11,800 tons. This hull type can faithfully recreate the French Battleship “Massena”.
French Ironclad Battleship III cannot mount either 10-inch or 11-inch single turrets in the center side hull positions. Massena had 10.8-inch single turrets in these positions. The largest you can place there are single 8-inch guns.
On French Battleship II, you can mount 10- to 11-inch guns in the wing positions as on the Bouvet (actual guns 10.8"). However, you cannot mount 6-inch single turrets in the positions immediately next to and below these wing main turrets. You can mount 5-inch guns, but as the actual ship had 5.5-inch guns, I'd argue 6-inch should be allowed also (and interference with the main position adjusted if needed). You can mount 6-innch guns in the front and rear side hull positions abreast the 12-inch gun turrets. Also, you can't mount 4-inch shielded secondary guns anywhere in the towers or funnel superstructure, whereas Bouvet had 4-inch (10cm) guns in several superstructure positions.
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38 minutes ago, Nick Thomadis said:
@akdThe improvement of weight offset is dedicated to you fellow player, who have urged with your feedback to fix it. I hope you like it.
Thank you for looking into this Nick! It does appear to be working now. That said, we still need more ways for the player to adjust weight distribution within hull itself. Armor is now the only real working lever the player can adjust, but most designs tend to bias toward a strong fore weight offset, and adding more armor to the back of the ship versus the front is not really a logical design choice.
One other thing I just noticed is that conning tower armor weight appears to be applied to the center of the ship rather than the forward superstructure. While some designs did incorporate both forward and aft conning towers, the aft conning towers seldom were of the same size and protection as the forward conning tower. However, applying the conning tower armor weight to actual location would exacerbate the tendency toward forward weight offsets, and as noted above, there is little the player can change to offset this in a realistic way.
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27 minutes ago, AurumCorvus said:
What I never understood was why barbettes weren't just linked directly to the turrets. You choose your caliber and then you choose if you want the superfiring w/ barbette or just the turret (or the extra tall barbette for the small guns capable of it). Rather, we have a lot of excess barbettes in an awkward situation that honestly doesn't do much. You have the optimum barbettes, and anything bigger is wasted weight.
That would certainly work a thousand times better.
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11 hours ago, Friedrich said:
Diesel II provides a 75% boost to capacity, which is at least on par with induced draft boilers, but there's no bonus provided at all to gas turbines, which strikes me as odd since unless I'm mistaken gas turbines are quite efficient in terms of exhaust.
Yes, doesn't make sense. Powerplant design in general could use a rework as there are several elements that really don't make sense and are a detriment to authenticity:
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5 hours ago, Grayknight said:
Over all i will say when it comes to french in early years they are very fun. Their ships can be very very very powerfull especially CA with alot of torpedo underwater placment. In fact i would say that those CAs are the most powerfull ships when it comes to ships that are not bb in this time span.
The new French Armoured Cruiser II and III are the only pre-dreadnought Armoured Cruisers in game that can mount anything near a proper battery of 6-inch guns (I think; definitely can't on Brit and German armoured cruisers as I've found in the campaigns so far), like almost all armoured cruisers carried historically, which is ironic because the French were one of the few not to consistently mount 6-inch batteries on their armoured cruisers (although 6-inch in game is probably the best equivalent to the 5.5-inch guns the early French ships did typically carry before they moved to 6.4-inch batteries on ACs). That alone makes them much more powerful in their intended role compared to the others, but the super-firing main turrets put them quite literally far into the future compared to their contemporaries. Still under-armed with 6- to 8-inch guns compared to their historical counterparts, however.
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2 hours ago, TAKTCOM said:
The new French look great. However, they fell through in your typical "too little space". This beautiful 16k battleship cannot use turrets larger than 10 inches, there is simply no room for them on the ship bow.
It works on the front with the Mark I guns up to 13-inch, but of course that doesn't help with the weird academy mish-mash missions that make you use later mark turrets.
The later mark 12-13" turrets (at least the Mark IIs) will fit on the back, but you have to hold CTRL to place them further back than the default mounting points. Part of the issue here is that many of the French pre-dreadnought towers includes davits with boats behind them that you are forced to fit onto the front of the hull severely limiting your ability to gain more deck space up front with smaller towers (and also obligating you to either place a funnel immediately behind the tower or leave a weird empty deck patch).
@Nick Thomadis could the boats on davits included with Tower I-III automatically be removed if we place the tower back past a point where they will fit, the same way that boats on the hull are automatically removed when an object added to the hull would interfere with them?
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12 hours ago, The PC Collector said:
3- Spain should be able to build destroyers from the start, since their first destroyer (the Destructor, which would end naming the whole ship type) was launched in 1887.
This was not a destroyer in the form of the torpedo boat destroyer / destroyer hulls in game, but something more in line with a Torpedo Gunboat. However, torpedo gunboats were important in the 1890 timeframe and are a good suggestion for an addition to the game.
Also probably reading too much into Destructor’s name as the originator of the concept. There were quite a few different concepts being tried out at the same time to serve the purpose of destroying torpedo boats and the term “torpedo boat destroyer” was in use before Destructor was laid down.
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4 hours ago, TheRealJostapo said:
BB's don't appear to get anything but "you've been ambushed" missions. At least from a player perspective. Given you can play an entire campaign in 30 minutes, I've tested this 4 or 5 times. The only missions my BB's got was "ambushed".
Are you putting them on "Sea Control"? I've only had one of these missions and it was vs. AI BB.
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One ship designer item that desperately needs a rework is the boiler draft selection and tech development. This makes no sense at all currently, as both induced and forced draft were already developed before 1890 (and balanced also, since it was simply a combo of the two), and forcing was more a choice in engine operation not design (using forced draft to achieve maximum power and thus maximum speed had limits). You couldn't have the top trial speeds listed for warships of this era without forcing, and in fact speeds for ships from the start of this era are often listed as both max speed with natural draft and max speed with forcing. Draft as the sole choice of boiler design also provides a rather limited selection of possible developments and tends to tie them to somewhat fake stat items (e.g. smoke production / interference would be a product of using forced draft to push speed, as well as wind direction in relation to the target, not to the design of the boiler to be able to use forced draft). Rather than selecting draft type, we should be selecting boiler type / design (which might have some elements of the draft / draught system in it).
I’ve been reading Norman Friedman’s British Cruisers of the Victorian Era recently, and the intro includes a nice overview of early developments in warship boiler design, which were central to the pursuit of more power (and thus more speed) in cruiser development (I will underline and bold some key developments and their time frames):
QuoteThrough the nineteenth century merchant ships, particularly the large Atlantic liners, led in engine and boiler development. The Admiralty naturally took a conservative point of view: it could not afford the consequences of large-scale failure. However, it did pioneer important improvements. In 1860 Engineer-in-Chief Thomas Lloyd told a Parliamentary Committee on marine engines that the Admiralty had led in the shift from flue to fire-tube boilers; the direct-acting instead of the beam engine; the screw propeller in place of paddles; and fast-running engines instead of slow-acting geared-up engines.35
The ships in this book burned coal. Each furnace was fed by hand, and a stoker could move only so much coal per hour. Boiler arrangements had to allow not only for stokers standing in front of them, but also for access to the mass of coal that each stoker used. Boiler spaces had to be massive, and high-powered ships needed large numbers of boilers. Coal was also an essential part of the protection of many British cruisers. Oil, whose advantages included ease of handling and a much higher energy content, was proposed as early as 1865, but was not adopted until after the turn of the twentieth century, mainly because coal was so much less expensive, and because large supplies of the best steaming coal were available in Wales.
As might be imagined, engines came in a bewildering variety of forms, which are not described in any detail in this book. Through the 1870s warship engines typically let into one or more cylinders (in parallel) and then condensed. Low-pressure steam did not have enough residual energy after the first expansion to be worth re-using. Some engines had double-acting cylinders, steam being let in alternately to one and then the other side of the single piston.
The associated boilers were, in effect, oversized teapots, vessels (often called boxes) filled with water and heated externally from below. Hot gas passed through flues below and around the mass of water and then up the funnel. Steam was drawn off at the top. These boilers could not withstand pressures much beyond 20lb/sq in (pounds per square inch, or psi); the boilers of the 1830s and 1840s operated at about 5psi. At such low pressures, engines operated by having their pistons driven by atmospheric pressure against a vacuum created when steam on the other side of a piston condensed. Boilers used sea water, which left a salt scale in them; it protected some iron parts (not the steam spaces, which pitted due to oxygen liberated from the water surface as it boiled) but also reduced heat transfer from flues to the water inside.
It seems to have been understood by the mid-1850s that a boiler working at high enough pressure could leave considerable energy in the steam exhausted from a cylinder.36 That turned out to be the key to greater efficiency. A double-expansion or compound engine exhausted the steam from its high-pressure cylinder into a low-pressure cylinder. The first practical double-expansion engine in the Royal Navy was installed in the steam frigate Constance, launched in 1862. She successfully raced her sister ships Arethusa and Octavia between Plymouth and Madeira in 1865. Compound engines first went to sea in the 1830s and were introduced in merchant ships in 1853. The French preceded the Royal Navy by ordering such an engine from its British inventors, Charles Randolph and John Elder, for the sloop Actif (which ran trials in 1862). Constance had an alternative type of compound engine, on ‘Woolf’s Principle’. The 1872 Committee on Designs strongly favoured compound engines for all future British warships.
Compounding became worthwhile for pressures above about 40psi. That in turn required stronger boilers and a more efficient way of turning heat into steam. By the 1850s a solution had been conceived in the form of a tubular or fire-tube boiler.37 Hot gas passed through fire-tubes inside the mass of water, sucked up by a funnel or smokestack. The area of boiler water touched by hot gas was far greater than in a kettle boiler. Flat-sided box boilers could not take the higher pressure, so from the 1860s on boilers were being made oval or cylindrical. Oval boilers could handle pressures up to about 75psi; above that boilers had to be cylindrical. Designers resisted this change because the new cylindrical (Scotch) boilers wasted considerable space in a flat-sided stokehold.
By about 1890, most battleships and large cruisers typically had single-ended return-tube boilers with four furnaces each (some earlier cruisers had double-ended boilers). Second-class cruisers typically had three-furnace boilers, some with single and some with double ends. All had one combustion chamber per furnace. Single-ended boilers made it easier to subdivide power, but were heavier. Return-tubes meant that the nested fire-tubes passed back and forth through the water volume before exhausting. A typical fire-tube might be 2½ins in outside diameter, with a 7in water space down the middle of each nest of tubes. The grate area on which coal was burned was about 3 per cent of total heating area (i.e., the area of the fire-tubes), the latter typically amounting to 2.5 square feet per IHP at natural draught.
To generate more heat, hence more steam, boilers needed more air. Fans were used to build up air pressure and hence air volume in a closed stokehold. In mid-century advocates of such forced draught claimed that they could increase steam output by 30 or 40 per cent, even with low-quality coal. Greater temperatures in turn increased stress on the boiler itself. Typical British (and, presumably, foreign) naval practice limited machinery weight by using thinner boiler plating than in commercial practice. Boilers had to be rigid, to contain steam pressure, but they also had to expand at high temperatures (typically they were corrugated, to allow for expansion). This was not a good combination. To avoid bursting boilers, the Admiralty typically limited forced draught runs to a few hours, and it distinguished between a ship’s performance using forced versus natural draught. During the 1880s and 1890s DNC Sir William White often claimed that foreign cruisers reached high speeds by using high rates of forcing which could never be repeated in service; the rated speeds of the cruisers he had designed for the Royal Navy were far more realistic because they reflected much more realistic conditions. In its 1892 report the Boiler Committee recommended that specified forced draught be limited to 25 per cent beyond specified natural draught power for standard navy boilers, and 45 per cent for torpedo gunboats (presumably meaning for locomotive boilers).
With high enough steam pressure, enough was left at the outlet of the second cylinder to make a third or even a fourth cylinder worth while: triple or quadruple expansion. Higher pressure and more cylinders meant greater efficiency and thus longer range. Each boost in steam pressure bought greater economy.38 Because triple expansion increased the number of cylinders, it made crankshafts easier to balance and thus reduced vibration.
The most extreme fire-tube boilers were the locomotive boilers installed on board small fast ships from the 1870s on. In the Royal Navy, the first such boiler was on board the prototype torpedo boat Lightning (1879), and these boilers were later tried on board small cruisers. There was no pretension to efficiency; the object was to generate as much steam as possible in the smallest possible dimensions. Cylindrical boilers used relatively large-diameter fire-tubes, which could not easily be blocked by cinders from the coal fire. Locomotive boilers used the smallest possible tube diameters, for maximum heating area inside a cylinder filled with water. The tubes were straight, from firebox to smoke box (leading to funnel). Tubes could easily be blocked (and burst) by unwanted grease or cinders, but in the 1880s there seemed to be no other way to produce enough steam within small dimensions.
The alternative to fire-tube boilers was conceived (and used in a few cases) as early as the 1850s: the water-tube or tubulous boiler.39 The relationship between water and hot gas was reversed. Feed water was led through tubes passing through the furnace. Much greater water surface could be exposed to heat. Limited diameter tubes could withstand greater pressure than a large cylindrical boiler. The outer skin of the furnace did not have to withstand steam pressure. Water-tube boilers could generate higher-pressure steam, which was exactly what high-powered warships needed. As early as 1873 some liners were operating at 100psi. Proponents argued further that because the mass of water in them was relatively small, it took less heat to start them: they could start much more quickly, and they could more quickly answer demands for more steam. They were also expected to be more durable, capable of longer runs at high power. The British found themselves unable to get enough power from the available heating space, using conventional boilers.40 In 1892 the Boiler Committee recommended installing tubulous boilers in two ships for trials (Thornycroft on board the torpedo gunboat Speedy, Belleville on board the torpedo gunboat Sharpshooter), and that one at least of the new cruisers be so fitted if the trials proved successful. A third torpedo gunboat, Spanker, was fitted with French du Temple boilers. Bellevilles were chosen for the cruisers Powerful and Terrible before the Sharpshooter trials were complete because they needed so much power. The only ones considered should have relatively large-diameter straight tubes which could easily be cleaned and examined. It happened that the French Belleville fitted this description.
When the Royal Navy adopted water-tube boilers, the great advantage cited was that it was no longer necessary to force boilers to reach and maintain high power (the Germans, however, wrote that water-tube boilers were more heavily forced than cylindrical ones). The 1902 report of the Boiler Committee explained that there was greater fire-grate area for the same floor space, hence less forcing to reach full power. There would be less damage if the boiler were struck by a projectile, since there would not be a large pressurized vessel to burst. A water-tube boiler could also carry a higher steam pressure, and it was lighter for the power it generated. However, it took relatively little scale or corrosion to ruin a water-tube boiler. The Royal Navy adopted fresh water as boiler feed and its ships had to carry stocks of reserve feed water for the first time.41 With so little water in the boiler, there was no reserve to make up for slight irregularities in feed, so the rate of feeding had to be automatically controlled, and very quickly altered when more steam was demanded. Similarly, a water-tube boiler would react more sensitively to irregular stoking, and the type of fire used had to be changed. The boilers had to be fed more continuously, and with greater care than before. Water-tube boilers were not necessarily more efficient than their cylindrical predecessors – and cruisers needed efficiency as well as compact high power: the boilers worked best at a high fraction of their designed output. The solution to economical cruising was to have a large number of such boilers, only a few of which were lit off for cruising. Unfortunately, a ship in a combat zone would want most of her boilers lit all the time, so she would be quite uneconomical. Some British armoured cruisers designed about 1902 had a combination of cylindrical and water-tube boilers, the cylindrical boilers acting as, in effect, the ship’s cruising power plant.42 The agonizing period during which the Royal Navy decided both to adopt water-tube boilers and which boilers to adopt became the storied ‘battle of the boilers’.43
The first practical water-tube boiler was the Belleville, invented in France in the 1850s and first adopted by the French Navy in the 1880s. Its water-tubes formed a series of flattened spirals built up of straight tubes with cast-iron junction boxes connecting them. They rose from a feed box in front of the boiler to a cylindrical steam drum at the top. Most ships had economizers, which preheated the feed water and controlled steam output when it had to be changed suddenly, for example to increase speed. Pressure inside the boiler was typically 350psi, reduced to 250 for the engine (the greater pressure inside the boiler was later considered a serious defect, though it came to be commonly accepted). Observation of Bellevilles on board the French mail steamer Laos prompted the Royal Navy to try it on board the torpedo gunboat Sharpshooter and then to adopt it for numerous large cruisers, such as the Powerful class. The Belleville used large water-tubes, and it was attractive because it appeared to be sturdy, and because it was already in successful service. It offered more fire grate area (for overall size) than any other boiler then known, and its small elements did not require a large opening in a ship’s armour deck. The Admiralty did not appreciate that Bellevilles, introduced at the same time as much higher steam pressure (300psi or more instead of 160), were a considerable technological leap. There were serious breakdowns in service; HMS Hermes had to come home after only a year in commission. Europa showed extravagant fuel consumption on passage from Portsmouth to Sydney: of eighty-eight days she had to spend thirty coaling (partly due to leaky condensers and leaky steam joints). The big cruiser Terrible burned 200 tons a day on a 1902 voyage to China at an average of 11.8kts, but two years later she burned only half as much at an average of 12.6kts.
Early problems with the Bellevilles were critical because it was adopted so quickly for so many important ships. By 1900 there were calls for a Committee of Enquiry, one engineer calling the Belleville ‘the worst boiler in existence’. In September 1900 the Admiralty formed a Boiler Committee under Admiral Sir Compton Domville.44 All but one member (Chief Inspector of Machinery J A Smith) were associated with either the merchant fleet or with Lloyd’s. The first interim report was issued in 1901 and the final one in 1904. In 1904 Domville was flying his flag in the Belleville-boilered battleship Bulwark; he considered her boilers entirely satisfactory. Many of the problems attributed to the Bellevilles turned out to be due to other changes, including machinery packed too tightly together because with higher pressure it could be made more compact.
The interim report recommended fitting both cylindrical and water-tube boilers and abandonment of the Belleville as it seemed to have no particular advantages over other types. The committee listed thirty-six other water-tube boilers, of which it favoured four, already being fitted on a large scale in foreign navies: the Babcock & Wilcox, the French Niclausse, the German Dürr, and the Yarrow large-tube boiler. Of these the first two had already been tested satisfactorily in the Royal Navy, and were being adopted on a limited basis – two sloops (Espiegle and Odin) and a second-class cruiser (Challenger) were receiving Babcocks, and one sloop (Fantome) and a first-class cruiser (Devonshire) were receiving Niclausse boilers. The Babcock & Wilcox was already being tested on board the torpedo gunboat Sheldrake, but the type now contemplated was different. At the committee’s suggestion, the cruisers Medea and Medusa were reboilered with, respectively, Yarrow and Dürr boilers, as it was difficult to draw conclusions fully applicable to larger ships from torpedo gunboat trials. In addition, in 1897 and in 1899 the small cruisers Barham and Bellona were both reboilered with Thornycroft water-tube (small-tube) boilers (not as part of the Boiler Committee program). Similarly, in 1900 and in 1901 Blanche and Blonde were reboilered with Normand small-tube water-tube boilers.
That only really takes us through 1900 plus or minus a few years with the cylindrical fire-tube boiler as the 1890 baseline, and already there are several important developments that could serve as authentic design decisions in game, replacing the fake boiler draft choice that is inherently limited and requires somewhat made-up stat bonuses / maluses. Developments from there would continue in pursuit of higher and higher pressure with new boiler technology, culminating for the game’s era in the U.S./German-type very high pressure systems. @Nick Thomadis, any chance we could see this replaced and improved?
Drachinifel also has a compact overview on the subject:
We could start to put together a basic tech progression for boiler design:
1. Cylindrical Fire-Tube Boiler (lightweight Locomotive Boilers should also be an option, but impractical for large ships or long range due poor efficiency and reliability at sea)
2. Water-Tube Boiler
3. Three-Cylinder (or "Three-Drum") Water-Tube Boiler
4. Small-Tube Water-Tube Boiler
5. High Pressure Small-Tube Water-Tube Boiler
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French Ironclad I-III are a bit odd as their rear tower and main turret placement positions allow for easy placement of super-firing main turrets at the back long before this was really "invented" as a technology. The displayed anchor points for the rear tower are actually limited and preclude this if you use them, but holding CTRL you can place the rear tower forward to past the center of the ship. While this is kind of "cool," and I do prefer more flexibility in placing towers and funnels, it breaks logical design progression as you then lose this ability with all the post-1890 pre-dreadnought battleship hulls that are supposed to be more "advanced" (and of course isn't allowed on the other nations' pre-dreadnought hulls).
That said, it is great to see some more early designs making their way into the game.
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My guess is your not supposed to be able to win the 1920 German campaign if it starts in an at war condition. I mean, it should be unwinnable if historical starting conditions are used. You are basically starting a war as an already defeated naval power with a wrecked economy. I’d just edit the files to get the 1930 start as the whole unlocking thing is stupid.
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Torpedo boats are absurdly resilient to gunfire. Just had a seemingly unending battle to attempt to finish off a force of 1x CL and 2x 200-ton TBs vs. my CL. Circled the last TB repeatedly pouring fire into until it had taken 31x 4" HE and 5x 6" HE hits and was reduced to single digit hull and flotation. Decided to stop firing to see if it was actually doomed at that point (surely it must be). Nope! Continued to fight its 2" guns and started to recover both hull and flotation, then moments later destroyed my forward 6" turret with a flash fire following a 2" hit. Well now, guess I'm not finished yet! Took at least 6 more hits to finally put it beneath the waves. Never stopped fighting its guns and continued to spin stationary in place constantly pointing its stern at me (the bow was where the miraculous flotation reserve was located). This was all HE ammo, but every hit over-penetrated, even if shooting down the length of the ship.
IIRC, British tests in the early 1900s (I believe, would need to look up the reference) indicated that a single 4" hit would be sufficient to knock a TB out of action. Shells bursting in these ships would have nothing to stop splinters from passing through a good portion of the boat. A hit just about anywhere would tear holes in the hull and probably kill multiple exposed crew members and wreck equipment.
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>>>Patch 1.01/1.02 Feedback<<<
in General Discussions
Posted · Edited by akd
The (hilariously absurd) last stand of the Zulu against my five German Large Torpedo Boats in 1910 campaign:
Zulu eats 5x 18-inch torpedoes from two separate volleys. Flotation falls low...then starts rising again...stabilizing at 17%.
Two minutes later, flotation still stable at 17%. Dodge 3 more torpedoes from multiple bearings at close range? She doesn't mind if she does...
One minute later...I guess she needs two more torpedoes...to get her to 1% flotation...and again stabilized there while she continues to fight and turn in place.
Let's approach a bit more slowly to try and get some torpedoes into her miraculous bow flotation reserve. Surely she is just a floating wreck and really I am just removing the now detached bow as a navigation hazard from the sea as her few remaining crew jump ship? Nope! Still fighting and spinning away basically in place. All the damage seen above to my boat except for one flooding furthest toward the stern dealt by Zulu over the course of a minute or two.
Two more torpedoes and...not an immediate sinking, but a flash fire in, presumably, flooded magazines!
Fire continues to spread forward through what should be a nonexistent two-thirds of the ship and with one more flash fire the final 1% is gone and we fade to black on the not-so-true-to-life story of the Zulu.
The real HMS Zulu after a single mine strike on her stern:
HMS Nubian after her bow was removed by a single German torpedo at the Battle of Dover Strait:
Later they were joined together to create HMS Zubian.