akd
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Posts posted by akd
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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.-
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34 minutes ago, Bluishdoor76 said:
What a chonker of a ship that was, I too want to recreate this thing!
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.
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On 10/10/2020 at 11:43 AM, admin said:
there will be watches, crew will tire and will have to sleep and all what comes with it. You will have to be sure you have some part of the crew rested in case of sudden appearance of the enemy vessel.But will the dog watches be curr-tailed?
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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:
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I’m pretty sure it already sent an image of screen when you hit bug report button, but now you see a preview.
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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.
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On 8/27/2020 at 8:09 AM, Entropy Avatar said:
It seems like it would relatively simple for the game to change how it calculates which sections are covered by main belt and deck. Instead of the main belt always being the central 3 and the extended being the outer 4, you say that any segment with a primary turret or an engine is covered with main belt and deck. If you decide to cover your entire ship with primary turrets, congrats, everything is covered by main belt and deck (and you pay the cost in terms of weight and dollars).
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.
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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.
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Oops, n/t
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2 hours ago, Skeksis said:
shore bombardment is not historical
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.
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6 hours ago, Cptbarney said:
Forgot about illumination rounds too be honest, for smoke rounds we could limit those to certain classes as smoke is too the lighter ships atm (although i think any ship could use smoke, i guess it was just the case of it being on a smaller ship made more sense since it could cover a large area quicker).
Could do with more round types as well, as a nod to shell type evolution and tech advancedment and also as another area of the game you could deal with (they could have an option to turn it off).
Not sure what you are talking about here. Smoke rounds were not used in naval combat. Illumination rounds were essential to nighttime naval combat.
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7 hours ago, disc said:
Well, the US, UK, and France used dyed shells, too. The Soviet Union at least experimented with them, and may have used them in general service. Not sure if Italy or Germany tried them.
My understanding is that they were a rather late innovation. Difficult to dig up, but it appears they first started showing up about 1928 in the US and some years after that in the other navies -- 1936 in France, 1941 in Japan, and 1942 in the UK. A little unclear when the Soviets first started using them, but I think by about 1931.As for tracers, the US Navy used them on many shells for big guns. I am unsure when tracers were introduced, but I suspect from some time before WWI. Shells from the 20mm up through the 16in on battleships had tracers: all AP and the great majority of HE/HC and target shells were traced, although illuminating shells and some other specialty shells like smoke or Window were not. Some (not all) VT shells were also untraced. Big US guns had orange tracers. Small ones (~3-4in and less?) had red or white tracers. I don't know how visible they would be in daytime, but probably they would be hard to see at longer ranges.
Japanese guns >40mm lacked tracers (at least about the 1930s-1940s), although there were experiments with big-gun tracers in 1937 and later in WWII. Therefore, this seems to have been a conscious decision to not use them. Light AA weapons like the 25mm naturally did have tracers.
Don't know much about tracers in other navies, but they at least were used in 6in guns in the Royal Navy during WWII.
Sources: Naval Firepower, Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War, French Cruisers 1922-1956, documents from the Naval Technical Mission to Japan, OP 4, and OP 1664This 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.
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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.
QuoteWhich rangefinder system is superior remains a matter of controversy to this day. The Germans immediately adopted the stereoscopic rangefinder, while the British and most other navies went with the coincidence system. The biggest advantage of the stereoscopic system is that it allows ranging on objects without a strong vertical element, such as shell splashes and airplanes. It was also generally considered more sensitive in bad lighting and areas of low contrast. However, it did require operators with perfect binocular vision, which the British claimed made it difficult to man them. They also claimed that stereoscopic rangefinders were fatiguing to use.
As best I can tell, the claims are entirely baseless. The US adopted the stereoscopic rangefinder in the interwar years, and never had any issues finding sufficient personnel. On the difficulty of use, a US report summarized the results of US research by stating “Indeed, the general conclusion to be drawn from the experiments outlined in this chapter of the present report is that stereoscopic range finding is curiously, and gratifyingly, resistant to psycho-physiological changes in the operator. This is true for fatigue, loss of sleep, drugs such as metrazol, oxygen deprivation, and postural changes.”
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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.
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4 hours ago, madham82 said:
In theory, that would not be correct due to the curvature of the earth (i.e. the highest observer sees farther).
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.
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10 hours ago, Skeksis said:
But not so good for the ship that is out gunned.
I've been researching this too, if just over the horizon and observers are at different heights, is the lower observer view obscured more by the curvature of the earth? haven't found an answer yet.
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.
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2 hours ago, Skeksis said:
IRL visibility is based on the ‘height of the observer’, please research, coincidence range finders, spotters etc. and why they're at the topmost position.
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.
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Sorry, but the statement that a BB should always spot a destroyer first because it is taller is wrong.
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no one claimed it was harder to estimate the speed of a faster vessel.
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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).
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24 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:
Also spotting should be tied in with how high the ships are, since it makes more sense for a BB to spot another ship first than a DD somehow outspotting a BB.
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.
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8 hours ago, Hangar18 said:
Sure there is. I can do it in a sim. This is not a long process, it takes more time to properly ID ships than to create a solution. Once you have the ship ID, and therefore length (you only need to be in the ballpark), probably about 5 minutes to have a perfect solution. I mean 99% accurate. I'm not good at it, and it is generally done by more than one person anyway. I suspect you could form a full solution in sub 1 minute with people who are in practice. I've seen some people who can eyeball the angle off bow (usually takes me about 2-3 for a confident result).
How fast you are going doesn't matter to me. honestly if you are going faster, it makes things easier because your time to cross distances becomes shorter, which therefore decreases the time I need to make my solution. Instead of taking bearing every 20 seconds, I can take em at every 10. When a targets are slow, you have to wait an eternity for them to travel to the point you can take bearings with a high confidence.
The same is true for getting speed. I may have to wait awhile for a ship going 6 knots to travel it's length (around a minute), but when you are doing 30 knots it's only going to take a couple seconds.
Ships don't change speed quickly for the most part, you'd almost need a course change to bleed off a meaningful amount.
Unless you have no visual, poor visual due to weather, or range, unknown ship type (with no nearby known references), and no radar, the process to get the targets speed should not take more than a minute.
Technically you only need course and range to solve for speed.
Yeah but the speed penalty has zero maneuvering involved. That's the issue.
None of that is really related to speed. The errors were caused by external factors which caused an incorrect speed. And the amplification of the errors is a function of range.
Hopefully I mathed right, I'm exhausted.
Time of flight for AP Shell with MV = 2,500 fps (762 mps)
10,000 yards (9,140 m): 13.2 seconds
20,000 yards (18,290 m): 29.6 seconds
30,000 yards (27,430 m): 50.3 seconds
36,000 yards (32,920 m): 66.1 seconds
40,000 yards (36,580 m): 80.0 secondsIf we are to take the center of a DD (Fletcher) as a point of aim we would have 57M to bow or aft before we will shift our point of aim away from the ship due to error. At 10ky
57/13.2*1.94 = 8.4 knots of error. At which point you are so far off you would be unlikely to not notice you have made an error. If you were in a pinch you have enough room for error, you could just assume 30 knots, and you're still likely on target. Even then the dispersion is so large, the ship is unlikely to be safe.
Because destroyers are small (and we already have size penalty) that's the best case scenario
If we are to take a BB (Iowa) and aim at the center of the ship, we have 131m of error. At *40ky*
131/80*1.94= 3.2 knots
At this range it is technically possible to not notice your error, but even if you are off by (what coincidentally happened to be 10%) 3.2 knots, you aren't off by much. If you overestimated speed, I would suggest you would actually notice, because a BB at 36 knots is odd. The dispersion pattern of the shells is 200m across, which means almost half the ship will still be inside an area you will expect to hit anyway.
This is a range the navy has zero data on in terms of accuracy. They never bothered with anything above 30ky.
Someone re math if I messed up, like I said, I'm tired, and I'm also, pretty garbo at math anyway.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Alpha-9 News Update
in General Discussions
Posted · Edited by 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.