SpardaSon21

Regarding the ammo weight, the overall idea would be to have ammo weight become simply shell weight to allow for more realistic weights and possibly velocities and firing angles. The current setup in the game has propellant and shell both being chucked out the barrel, which makes for very awkward firing setups. As to the range and velocity, yes, that is true. But this isn't my first time working on a mod for a historical game, and unfortunately certain decisions must be made due to how the game itself handles matters. Chief among those with UAD is the fact boosting range automatically boosts accuracy due to how the tables are computed, and to a far larger degree than boosting the accuracy stat itself does. As a result of that mechanic being so lopsided, I'm hesitant to have propellant boost it without there being significant downsides. I am very aware the actual figures are rough and there's a great deal of room for changes, but this was more of a basic concept pitch than anything else. If you think the idea works, I'll be happy to go back and smooth things out. If you have any more questions on why I chose things on either a gameplay or historical basis, let me know. Additionally, when swapping out brown powder for smokeless charges, the British used a powder charge that was a mere fraction of what had been used prior precisely to avoid the guns blowing up from overpressure. And the USA did in fact have several guns explode from overpressure as a result of using smokeless powder. Regarding my primary sources: here and here. And I'd like to request an open single mount 8" gun for the USA.

@o Barão I finally got around to working on those propellants and explosives. Shell types and weights next, but first let me know what you think of these. Completely untested, so don't blame me if your PC spontaneously explodes, but the CSV plugin for Notepad++ didn't throw any errors or inconsistencies at me. https://mega.nz/file/ockmDBJL#EpD719pB_nataSdkOQ8mgb2WpqHtBnHhlqL_jqQQssA For a basic overview of the changes: No changes to ammo weight, velocity, or range, since those are all inherent to the gun/shell combination. Penetration is affected solely by the lyddite fillers. More powerful propellants need smaller magazines for reduced hull weight, but the tradeoff also more barrel wear and reduced accuracy until the late game, but less powder to move to the guns also means a faster reload rate. Fillers were based on the NavWeps data, TNT being used as the absolute baseline as it was for the time period, all damages based around it. No artificial boosts to HE damage over AP, and fire chances were increased for both AP and HE equally. Its a basic first draft I whipped up in an hour or two or cross-referencing a few things so don't expect a whole lot of balance. I did try to make sure they were reasonably close to IRL values, especially the fillers. I also added what I changed each of them to at the end of each line.

Kiatschou Bay/Tsingtao is a German home territory as well. They both need to be changed to colonial ones.

Oh, I know. I was mostly referring to vanilla. You should still get rid of the weight increases and reduce or reverse the cost increases.

Vanilla-wise, assuming @o Barão hasn't touched them, Rangefinders (towers), Gun Layout (guns and barbettes), Gun Mechanisms (guns), Torpedo Size (torpedoes, obviously), Shells (shells), and Submarine Survivability (Subs) all increase the weight of the components I put in parentheses by them. This is bad not just because they weigh more, but also because all of those things getting heavier contribute to increased pitch and roll. The only weight you can add to decrease those two factors is on the citadel armor (belt and deck, deck contributing more than belt for some odd reason!) and the engines, and both of those decrease in weight with the repeatables. Naturally you also wind up paying more for all of these upgrades, when in reality the overall trend is for simplification and ease of manufacture as technology improves, not complexity. There's an exception to be made for things like microchips, but even then the US military has largely stagnated since the 90's or even earlier since they're good enough and nobody's felt like dumping in the money to EMP harden the newer generations of microprocessors with the end of the Cold War.

For sure.

I know, and I was also referring to those hull-specific limits the devs added in this update. It would be a nice way to further differentiate between hulls with regards to tech levels (later hulls carrying more,) type (scout CL's typically less than a fleet CL), and nation, so even if a hull is identical between nations one may have a higher max armor than the other.

Personally I'd replace Turbo-Electric II with a Diesel-Electric. It was already in use during the WW2 period on some smaller designs like modern coastal defense ships and even larger designs like icebreakers like the Wind-class because it was even more durable than a steam-electric design. Slow as hell obviously since it needed a ton of space, but by making it a post-war turbocharged design you'd drop the tonnage requirements down by a lot. As to armor stuff... oh boy, I'd love it if all but the latest destroyers had a half inch of armor or so at most because that's typically what they had solely for splinter protection on the conning tower and turrets, most completely lacking anything on the hulls. The Fletchers were a massive step forwards in that regard since they were the first DD's out there with a splinter-protected hull, AFAIK.

A request: can we get max armor levels listed on the hulls same way the speed limits are listed?

Great to hear! They've needed proper pre-dreads for a while. As to hull complaints... Cannot mount guns on the US flush-deck destroyer's elevated areas on the bow. There are unusable mounts inside of them but you cannot put a gun on top. Those barbettes on those sections should be able to mount up to and including 5" single mounts and 4" twin mounts as on certain ships of the Clemson-class. Can only fit the "Refit Dreadnought IV" tower on the US Large Scout Cruiser hull. I and II versions of that tower will not fit inside the gap between the raised areas on the bow. You also cannot mount a larger gun than a 4" on top of that raised section and 3" on the ends when they should be able to mount 6" guns for something akin to the Omaha. Said raised section is also far too forwards, heavily restricting the fire arc for the bow guns. The Scout Cruiser II hull does a much better job of being an Omaha. All it needs is main and secondary towers that can fit 6" guns on them.

And then you had the USA that made a couple dedicated commerce raiders (Columbia class) with 8" singles mounted aft because we could. Its a real big mess... Honestly it wouldn't be so bad if these ships could mount their historical gun counts though to compensate for the lack of twin mounts. So many of them had sponson mounts out the ass for secondary guns.

Armor scales incredibly quickly once you start teching up, and it also gets significant weight reductions. Modern II is +145% armor, as in 2.45x what the listed armor thickness is, and at half the weight. Your main tower will weigh over twice as much as a 10" belt of Modern II if you make a US BB in 1945, and that 10" of armor will with the +17.5% boost from AoN come out to 2.625x effectiveness, or 26.25 inches of effective armor. A 12.1" belt like on the Iowas will come out to 31.7625" effective armor. Or in other words a same-tech 14" gun with Triple Base, TNT IV, Super Heavy, and Ballistic Capped II will need to close within 20km to pen the belt... assuming it hits flat-on and doesn't impact at an angle, which it likely will, and since the thicker caps and super heavy shells actually increase your ricochet chances you're rolling the dice on a successful pen instead of a bounce even inside your own supposed safe pen distance. Never mind that the USN went with super-heavy shells with massive AP caps specifically for their ability to maintain effectiveness even when impacting at an angle, but oh well!

Same. I don't know how he does it!

The "Enhanced Modern Tower" and "Modern Tower" series of main towers for the US Modern Destroyer hulls lack any buffs to Communications Range. EDIT: Neither do the "Modern Tower", "Enhanced Modern Tower", or "Heavy Modern Tower" for the two Advanced Destroyer hulls.

Judging by the starting army force numbers, I believe that in the 1890 start at least (not sure about any others) Kiautschou Bay (Germany) and Kwang-Chou-Wan (France) are classed as homeland territories instead of colonial ones. Obviously as Asian colonies there's no reason for them to count as homeland territories.

Unfortunately the game itself was designed around those arcade mechanics. It might just be me but ships just look larger than they should, and the distances involved just seem shorter than they should be. The proportions just don't look right when you try for realistic ranges.

You should use it as an upsized destroyer leader, so convoy raider and screening/ASW ship. Can't sweep since its a CL, but by then you should have some decent DD designs for that job. @o BarãoWhile I won't say no to a new hull or parts, I was mostly referring to the Brooklyn/Cleveland/Fargo series, and then potentially a super-CL akin to the Worcester.

The USA could really use a Modern Light Cruiser II around the late 30's to represent our CA-styled hulls.

I'll need to start another campaign thanks to you doing these updates so quickly, especially with the recent string of updates from the devs. Not that I mind since you're doing great work. Once again I'd like to request you adjust the powder/filler/type modifiers to be truer to history at some point. If you'd like I can try to come up with at least the filler stats for you, if you think that would help out. I'd need to do some more research into shell types and powders to come up with something reasonable for them, which would take a fair bit of time.

Your design also didn't take into account the unit system where boilers and engines would alternate.

Several light/protected cruisers of the USA mounted 8" guns, including one class explicitly designed as a commerce raider. The other was one of our first steel-hulled warships, USS Chicago. The Pensacola and Northampton classes were laid down under the Washington limits that didn't discriminate between light and heavy cruisers (that would come with the London Naval Treaty in 1930), and were classed as light cruisers as armor had to be compromised to fit those 8" guns in the 10,000 ton limit. Further, they even carried torpedoes in their initial configurations to aid in their role as light cruisers. As for classes with 6" casemates, you've got Omaha, St. Louis, and Diadem, the first of those being scout cruisers, the latter two semi-armored cruisers.

No, I think I know what you're trying to say here. If minelaying worked the same as it did historically, I would absolutely agree with you. However in the game right now surface minelayers are unable to deploy active minefields of any sort, and can only deploy defensive minefields and while docked in port, so even if a ship could realistically carry only two mines, shore facilities are right there for it to grab two more after it drops them. And considering that the first minelaying tech is 10 tons... that's something you could fit on an early TB without too many problems if you were willing to make sacrifices to armament and/or speed.

Fair on the torpedoes, but as for mines on TB being unrealistic, at least in US service anything that could carry depth charges could carry mines, and in fact we even used auxiliary tugboats as minelayers. The US Mark 6 we deployed in 1917 weighed 1,400 pounds, or .63 tons, and for the weight of the Adv. Layer V at 170 tons you're looking at 269.8~ mines for that tonnage. Here's how complicated it was to deploy, too. That's USS Ute, a 1,200 ton tugboat shoving it off the side. Navweapons outright mentions it lacked any need for specialized deployment methods. Yes, the photo was taken in 1978, but I somehow doubt we never developed a means of rail-deploying WW1-era mines until after WW2. USS Gamble was a 1,000 ton Wickes class of the same displacement as the Modern TB hull and she carried 80 mines in addition to her ASW gear and torpedo armament.

Shame, but oh well. Also, I miss the mines on PT boats. They made excellent layers and passive escorts to sit in port with, especially the modern ones. That said, would it be possible to remove the need for torpedoes on destroyers? Some DM's like Robert H. Smith didn't have them.

To add to what @Astorsaid above, the US 5" Mark 3 is a L/45 on destroyers but an L/36 on light cruisers. Is that to represent the 5"/51 versus the 5"/25? Also, if possible, can be the Mark 5 be the 5"/54, since the Mark 4 already does an admirable job of emulating the 5"/38? I understand if the 5"/54 is a bit late for the game, though.