akd

If it shows a predicted position in relation to an actual target position, it is not a good analogy for the real world gunnery problem, where everything about the target (speed, course and actual location) must be estimated based on observations. You are correct that because of shell flight time, changes to speed and course are much more important than speed itself, but what you suggest above is that absolute speed has little effect as long as it is constant. That is true only if you have perfect knowledge of the target’s speed, or are shown a predictive solution in relation to a target moving on a constant course at a constant speed. If WoW shows both the actual target position and where your shells will land, then it is not a good analogy for the gunnery problem, where you must estimate both where the enemy is and where it will be. Where Dreadnoughts errors is not in applying significant accuracy errors related to speed, but in making the error itself a constant. If speed and course remain constant, then the speed penalty to accuracy should eventually cancel out entirely with repeated observations of target and shell spots. I’m sure it kind of works that way in WoW too, but knowing the actual position of your target is going to greatly minimize the initial effects of speed on estimates in target future position.

Based on your description, that is a terrible analogy (but I have never played WoW). If WoW shows your targeting solution in direct relation to the actual current position of the target, then it is a much simpler gunnery problem. The actual position, course and speed of enemy ships was an unknown which had to be inputted to generate a predicted future position. You were not shown your predicted solution in relation to the actual current position of the target.

Not quite that simple. Greater speed will increase the effect of errors. If a ship is moving at 15kn a 10% error in estimation of enemy speed might not cause the enemy to be out of the pattern size of the salvo, whereas a 10% error in the estimation of the speed of a ship moving at 30kn will be greater and might be sufficient to allow the enemy ship’s predicted future position versus actual to be outside of the pattern size.

If you increase the displacement of US Modern Battleship II (I assume this is based on Iowa) above 76,000t, you add length without changing anything else, so pretty similar to Montana.

You might want to consider rethinking this entirely, as it is not really an element of ship design, but a separate area of development and tactical choice. Other than shell size (shell length mostly, as weight could vary greatly based on internal shell design), the various aspects of the design of ammunition were mostly independent from the ship design itself. It doesn’t really make sense to bake the design of ammunition (other than shell size, as above) into a ship’s basic design, especially when you start looking at it in a campaign context rather than the very gamey situation of designing a ship for a single scenario. But regardless, mixing propellant choice (which really wasn’t much of choice, nations tending to simply use the best propellants they had access to) and explosive fillers is confusing, as has been noted. I would think it would make more sense to simply tie propellants to national technological development level (year-based for single scenarios, unlocks in tech tree for campaign) and instead just give players choices regarding internal shell design like fuzing, explosive fill, filler ratios, etc. that had trade-offs and advantages in different circumstances.

Looking beautiful indeed! Hope that hammocks will be in their proper place during battles.

I know you touched on this a bit already, but please don’t use fixed points with arbitrary spacing in between (at least for player). Use a line or zone system. Incredibly frustrating to have a design concept defeated by the inability to place a part in between two fixed points. Or allow holding CTRL for freedom for superstructure, funnels and barbettes, as is allowed currently with turrets. Also, fixed-sized barbette system is terrible and will just lead to constant calls for more and more variety of barbettes to make functional or good-looking designs. Would be much better to have barbettes integrated into all turret models, with option to raise turret above deck exposing more or less of barbette over deck (up to a limit of double super-imposed for the turret type). The final major designer issue is single, double and triple turrets of a given caliber all having the same placement restrictions (for example, the US 14”/50 triple turret and 16”/45 double turret were basically the same size and weight and could be used interchangeably in design studies). I think combined, that covers the most fundamental problems with the ship designer.

Some more detail on the GHG hydrophone system used aboard Prinz Eugen, from Koop and Schmolke’s book on the Hipper-class cruisers:

The Battle of the Denmark Strait provides some insight into the utility and limitations of hydrophones in a surface action: the GHG hydrophone system (the most advanced during and immediately after WWII) aboard Prinz Eugen provided early notice of the approaching British ships, giving the German ships forewarning of the Brits expected bearing and the edge in visual acquisition. However, the GHG system and its operators (now dealing with the ship steaming at full speed, probably severely degrading the sensitivity of the system) then went on to give repeated false torpedo alarms (one of which then became a visual false alarm) leading to series of maneuvers that may have thrown of the German gunnery enough to allow Prince of Wales to escape following Hood's destruction.

Found a snippet on torpedo detection via hydrophone during WWII in the Canadian navy: http://jproc.ca/sari/asd_et1.html A few notes on this relative to NA: Dreadnoughts: 1. These would have been sweeps conducted again submarine ambush, i.e. in fairly static situations where sectors that would otherwise be silent were known relative to fixed positions in a convoy. Not in the dynamic, very noisy environment of a fleet action. 2. Speeds would need to be slow (thus the comment about a cruiser's best defense being maintaining high speeds, not listening on hydrophones) to detect hydrophone effects from submarines or torpedoes. A slow target is much more vulnerable to torpedo attack. Even less speed-dependent active sonar (sending out loud pings and listening for echos) was still speed-limited to 18-24 kn max. Since escorts (at least those capable of much higher speeds like destroyers) would need to slow down to effectively search with active sonar, they could also conduct listening-only sweeps for torpedo / submarine sounds. A cruiser or capital ship in most situations would be better off maintaining a high cruising speed (20 kn +) and thus making itself a very difficult target for submarine ambush, rather than moving slowly and conducting hydrophone sweeps. 3. These detections would be bearing-only (like radio direction finding in game) and would not reveal the actual distance and course of the torpedo. Taken altogether, I still find the contribution of sonar to torpedo spotting in game currently to be near fantastical.

I know for a fact that the unity game engine is capable of much more complex calculations of visibility and target-to-target spotting than you are implying. It is not a fundamental limitation of the game engine.

Well, to be fair that ship should be totally incapable of gunnery in that damage state, but of course guns / crews behave like automatons. The main guns shouldn’t even be able to depress to aim at the destroyer!

This has been raised many times, even at beginning of alpha.

There is a deep misrepresentation of the effect torpedoes had on tactics in the game because it is entirely focused on spotting torpedoes and then reacting to the torpedo itself. This means that if it is spotted early (and the game gives very generous, even near fantastical [sonar], means of spotting torpedoes), the torpedo will miss and the destroyer will be ineffective. If you are attacking the AI and torpedoes are not spotted early enough to dodge individually, the AI will be hit. The AI won't take proactive action to prevent that from happening if it doesn't see torpedoes. (There is of course a huge imbalance here between player and AI, as the player is given multiple "meta" means to know if and when torpedoes have been launched, but the AI must spot the torpedoes themselves in the water.) That is generally not what happened in fleet battles. Maneuver and tactics were shaped more by the threat of torpedoes that would probably not be seen or not seen early enough for a battle line to maneuver against. If a destroyer division maneuvered to make a torpedo attack, an opposing fleet had to react, even if that meant spoiling its gunnery against an opposing fleet. This meant that battles could be shaped by torpedo vessels even if they average torpedo vessel alone was highly unlikely to ever score a hit with a torpedo. Individual vessels could be "ineffective" while still collectively shaping a battle. RTW2 reflects this reality much better. You have to react to the apparent intent to attack with torpedoes as you are not given any indication whether they have been launched or not. The AI player likewise has to react to the threat of your torpedo vessels and has informational parity (although it is obviously far less capable of micromanaging attack and defense than the player).

There might be differences by doctrine (the expected load out of a set of guns in battle, not an on the fly change issued in the middle of the loading cycle), not on a per gun basis, but for example all quarter deck carronades might be loaded with canister because of the short range function and position relative to a target (ability to sweep the opposing deck), whereas gun deck cannon would be loaded with round shot, as canister would be useless firing into the side of a ship, even at close range. Another example would be single shot in carronades (they could not be double loaded) while long-guns were at the same time double-shotted. I would suggest allowing different ammunition a per deck or gun type basis.

That’s not entirely correct. What really drives the equation is relative movement. Two ships sailing on a parallel course at 30kn is a completely different gunnery problem than the same ships on steeply converging courses. But yes, relative to a constant course, adding changes to course and speed would increase the problem. But speed itself not as dominant a factor as the game portrays.

Yes, it is what drove real tactics and technology of the time, but: They should not be so easy to spot. They should not be so easy to store in huge numbers and reload. The threat of torpedoes shaped battles more than known torpedoes themselves.

Rewriting history is why many of those objects were erected in the first place.

Some underwater installations had limited rotation, and later installations (e.g. Nelson / Rodney) relied on gyro steering. https://www.navalgazing.net/Battleship-Torpedoes-Part-1

Yes, HE in game seems to behave more like Common or Semi-AP shell, not like thin-cased, quick-fuzed HE shell. Generally the latter was reserved for shore bombardment as it applicability to naval combat was limited. If it is common shell or Semi-AP, then it should behave like AP just with less penetration and more post-penetration damage. Splinter damage is a complex topic that is handled poorly in game. I don’t think there is any accounting of secondary effects from splinters beyond hit point damage. No splinters are generated by near misses and hits don’t seem to ever have splinter effects like you might see generated in the log during an RTW game.

What do you see odd about this, or did a “not” get left out?

This all sounds amazing, but I am concerned about the “industry standard” day / night cycle. Haven’t played KCD (damn, keep meaning to pick that up), so I don’t have that reference point, but consider that the passage of time and visibility were central to 18-19th sailing. One of the iconic age of sail encounters would be the chase into dusk, trying to reach a prize before the sun sets and your quarry disappears into the gloom (and probably changes course so you have to guess his intent). That is all undermined if 1.) transition to / from day to night and back is just a quick visual event and 2.) if visual conditions do not radically alter during transition. It would seem that a “captain’s cabin” time compression mechanic would make fake day / night cycles unnecessary. Likewise, consider that day and night cycles (and even moon cycles!) are essential to smuggling and need to at least conform to the scale of the world to be used in a meaningful way. One of the big disappointments of NA was never getting to enjoy a battle at sunset. You’d blink and it would be over. Also, will weather be local or global? Would there be the possibility of escaping into a fog bank or a rain squall in the distance?

The way to fix it is to modify accuracy using relative speed (i.e. rate of range change and rate of bearing change) not absolute speed. There is no difference in the gunnery problem (ignoring own ship speed effects like vibration, spray, etc.) presented by two ships sailing on parallel courses at 20 knots and two ships sailing on parallel courses at 30 knots.

The problem is there is no way to know which of the many torpedoes they took sealed their fate. Was it number 5 or number 10? Nonsense. It is not like armor. Once used in a area it can no longer protect the ship because it works by absorbing blast through deformation of the elements. Like the crumple zone on a car, if you get front-ended again, you’re in trouble. Working TDS almost always leads to some loss of buoyancy also (part of the TDS may include air spaces), although it not supposed to be fatal.

Based on an enormous amount of first hand accounts of battle, complete fog of war on the enemy beyond the basics of position, class and easily observable conditions (think “on fire” or “sinking”) would be much closer to the type of information feed tactical decisions were made on, but I agree various different sources of information could come together to provide knowledge that was less than none, but nowhere near perfect, and would generally be offset with a large amount of completely wrong information.