akd

Realistic simulation (of the technological and physical factors that influenced ship design) is not the same as historical determinism (not allowing the player to make different choices under the same set of “rules” that are grounded in reality that were present historically). Kerbal Space Program, for example, has no connection to any actual history and clearly does not force the player to recreate a particular history, but is nonetheless is built on a fairly realistic simulation of spaceship design and the various physical constraints and real world trade-offs that influence it.

If it's not a simulation of the real factors that influenced ship design, then what is the point? The real driving interest here is how alternative designs perform in relation to historical designs. If the game is not grounded in that, I'm not sure what the appeal is in a historical wargaming market. Also, please don't compare to MP games. That is a completely different dynamic.

I believe this ship exists as a design solely in a WoWs reddit thread and nowhere else either as an actual project or even paper design. The armor and topweight costs of triple super-imposing battleship turrets would not be workable. Sadly, Dreadnoughts as of now does not give a fig for topweight stability effects.

But will the dog watches be curr-tailed?

The new screen formation has no connection to actual tactics until very late in the era as an anti-aircraft screen and to a lesser degree anti-submarine screens (but more in regards to convoy defense for the latter). This complex formation would pose insurmountable command and control problems during a fleet battle for a good portion of this era. There is a good overview of formations and maneuver during WWII here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44888020

I’m pretty sure it already sent an image of screen when you hit bug report button, but now you see a preview.

Big mistake baking caliber = turret diameter into the design. Will constrain and mess with the system from here on out, not allowing for historical trade-offs and balance, and requiring lots of fake offsets for balancing choice of less or more guns in the design. If the space required for a 1x XX-inch gun versus 4x XX-inch guns were the same, every ship historically would likely have mounted quadruple turrets. The overwhelming increase in firepower with no effect on hull dimensions required or deck space consumed would far offset the minor issues that occurred (and were mostly solved) with multiple gun turrets.

The “sections” would then need to be variable in size and number. I mean, having the area armored increasing by 20% because a turret extends maybe 1% into a section would be a bit daft.

The presence and relative location of shorelines and bases shaped the majority of naval battles, often at the tactical level (i.e. how and why ships conducted some part of their maneuvers, not just the strategic reasons for an encounter). That doesn’t mean ships were dodging in and out islands like first-person shooter cover.

Oops, n/t

When was this said? I could only find the statement about “distant” land / islands, which may have been a response to an assumed request for WoW style nonsense, where ships are cruising around through narrow channels and using islands like FPS cover objects. That they noted that the underwater topography would have been more of a constraint than the actual shoreline would suggest that might be the case. Hopefully they are not saying that land will just be an ever-retreating skybox visual effect that has no tactical influence on battles whatsoever.

Not sure what you are talking about here. Smoke rounds were not used in naval combat. Illumination rounds were essential to nighttime naval combat.

This is actually extremely important, as one of the things the game treats as a “default” behavior is all ships in a division firing on the same target. In reality this was impossible due to the fire control confusion that would result. Making the shell splashes of each of the different members of the division a different color (and thus immediately distinguishable) was one of the first practical technological developments allowing effective concentration fire (multiple ships firing on one target). Nothing else really advanced this significantly until radio comms and fire control computers progressed to a point where firing data could be shared and integrated in real time. Funny that some would treat that as trivial or silly. Doesn’t necessarily need to be visualized, but it should certainly be present as a technology, along with not treating concentration fire as a default behavior.

There is really no justification. Just a fake choice to provide more choices, but ends up undermining the tactical impact of the actual technology. The more meaningful decision was how long of a base to use and where to mount it, not coincidence vs. stereoscopic. https://www.navalgazing.net/Rangefinding

That has very little to do with actual gunnery. You don’t “know” definitively where the target is in relation to your estimate of future target position. Showing an aiming point in relation to an actual position is a gross simplification of the gunnery problem that removes a number of important variables (rangefinder error and course error in particular). An abstracted system could produce more plausible outcomes, although the current abstracted system does not.

Yes, but if both observers are in the highest possible position in their ship (the observers' eyes are the respective mast heights), then they would both see each other (I mean the observers at the highest point in the ships, not the entire ships) at the same distance (this is ignoring complicating factors like refraction). Of course spotting was not one guy standing on a masthead looking for another guy standing on a masthead at distances where you couldn't even make out a single person standing on a masthead. But in theory, just looking at simple visibility to horizon (and to objects beyond the horizon), if observer X can see observer Y, then Y can see X. That does not mean they have the same visibility to horizon itself, but that the lower observer can see the taller observer further beyond its visual horizon at the surface than the taller observer can see the shorter observer beyond its own (greater) visual surface horizon.

If the both observers are at the highest point in their respective ships, then they (the observers) would see each other at the same distance. But that’s not particularly useful information for most of this era. If we are talking clear conditions with visibility out to the horizon, both likely would have seen funnel smoke already, and just seeing mast tops over the horizon does not provide enough additional information to target what you’ve spotted. Also, the topmost spotting position in a ship wasn’t necessarily the tallest point of the ship structure. And radar, especially early radar, should not be thought of as simply extending visual distance (really unfortunate that the game treats it this way). Visual spotting retained several advantages over radar, in particular the ability to ID your target and have a precise bearing on target. This is particularly important when we are talking about clear conditions.

It's also based on visibility conditions, which can invert the relationship, making the lower/smaller ship more likely to spot to the higher / larger ship first (think battleship silhouette against a starlit sky versus destroyer below the horizon relative to the BB and a max visibility because of conditions that is less than the maximum possible horizon based on height). You are simply incorrect that height of observer will determine which ship is spotted first in all conditions, but in the current set of possible battle conditions allowed in Dreadnoughts, the top spotting position height should be the dominant factor. And it should be based on height, not on "modernity" of the tower as the added tech did not really contribute to visual spotting (which was done by lookouts in 1890 and in 1930). Arguably it would be better to simply have fixed horizon distances for classes of ships, e.g. torpedo vessels (TBs / DDs), cruisers (CL / CA) and capital ships (B, BB, BC) under conditions that allow visibility to the horizon. But when conditions in scenarios allow for more restricted visibility (bad weather, night) target signature should play a much greater role. To be clear, I do not like the current spotting system, even more so since it is not a true relative system.

Sorry, but the statement that a BB should always spot a destroyer first because it is taller is wrong.

no one claimed it was harder to estimate the speed of a faster vessel.

Size penalty should also be removed or minimized at point blank ranges (ranges at which simply laying the gun on target and firing would lead to a hit).

That depends on visual conditions. If we are talking nighttime with limited visibility, the destroyer might be much more likely to spot the BB before the BB spots the destroyer.

I think you are generalizing from submarine sim experience in a way that does not fully reflect the long range gunnery problem, especially when we are talking about fleet engagements. But the conclusions are the same. Whether precisely known or not, target speed itself is not the dominant factor in accuracy, but it is also not irrelevant.

1. It is being used as a direct input to accuracy, not because “it is known” and being inputted into the calculations the ship would be making to produce a gunnery solution. Note how it changes instantly and precisely. There would be no way to gather such precise information instantly in reality. Lack of proper fog-of-war is leading you astray. As noted above, if the speed of an enemy ship were known precisely and constantly updated perfectly, it would basically be a non-factor in gunnery unless target course or speed changed after the guns were fired. 2. Yes, it is a constant because it is not a variable being deduced from observation and used in gunnery calculations, but a constant malus that has nothing to do with what your ship does or doesn’t know. 3. Estimates are not, as per above. It is just a fixed malus based on absolute speed. That is a problem with the gunnery model.

We (the players) “know” the speed because enemy information is displayed without proper fog-of-war. There is no reason to assume that this being known (viewable in UI) is factored into the game’s gunnery model in any way (and I don’t believe it is a factor in the accuracy table), just like the AI totally ignores and can not make use of the “known-to-player” torpedo launching status viewable in enemy ship panel. That is a big problem with not applying proper fog-of-war to information: it creates unrealistic expectations or assumptions about AI behavior.