AurumCorvus

No. Well, at least not until the full map and campaign, at which point I might (still retaining strong skepticism) encourage something like that. The fact of the matter is that naval wars are not fast paced, with rare chances for an actual fight. In World War I, the North Sea area had (over four years) barely 25/26 encounters, if you include everything remotely resembling an encounter (including some air raids). Of those, Heligoland Bight and Jutland would be the two major encounters. For the World War II in the Pacific (three-ish years depending on when you stop the naval war because Japanese naval forces stopped engaging), I quickly counted 19 naval encounters (though, I did leave off the kamikaze encounters as I had no way to accurately count or sort them on short notice). While there are a few more 'major' encounters thanks to CVs being able to be "in battle" while being hundreds of miles apart, most of these are also destroyer and cruiser actions.

They have just realized the brilliance that was the Ise-class a few decades ahead of time.

Absolutely not contesting this. Like I tried to emphasize in my post, The 16"/50 is a very, very good gun, and the US Navy did a very fine job with it in nearly everything. All I'm urging is proper disclaimers to the very specific superlative of "historically best ever." Not entirely. Iowa had a very odd mix of some parts being upgraded and some not. If you go back to the article I linked for the post, you'll note the mention of a Mark 160 FCS. That's a much more modern system, often used with the Mark 34s on Arleigh Burkes and Ticonderogas. At the moment, I am lacking specific written sources. I will however direct you to Drachinifel's interview with Captain Larry Seaquist at the 22:35 mark, where he mentions comparing both modern and original fire control equipment. Also, please note that Captain Seaquist was the captain of the Iowa during the 1987 Crete firing test that gives the 16/50" its moniker of the the "historically best ever". Captain Seaquist himself states that the original system was more accurate, of course. I am, of course, inclined to believe him (he was the guy on the scene), but I will note that the Iowa had both systems.

One of the oddest little bugs: If you type in a displacement, the slider is set to the displacement *before any beam or draught modifiers*. As an example, the AH CA I'm building atm is set to the thinnest beam and draught. I type in 4000. The slider jumps to 3482 because that's where the slider for 4000 tons would be w/o the beam and draught sliders. If I set the beam and draught to maximum, and typing in 4000 becomes 4552, but still in the same position as the slider.

Course change time and turning rate are disconnected because the longer ship must make a bigger circle (note the turn radius difference). The chunky ship is taking advantage of its deceleration to make a tighter turn. It's a smaller circle, and the difference is big enough that it can get through the circle much faster despite it's lower speed. As such, it's on its new course much, much faster, and is uniformly better at dodging torpedoes. The turning rate issue is an angular speed/frequency issue (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_frequency). My brain is refusing the variables right now, but the illustrative picture is the one of the spinning globe, just flattened into a pancake for our purposes. Essentially, the longer ship is getting through *more* of its turn per second. However, that turn is longer, and therefore the course change time takes much longer, despite the angular speed being faster. It's not really intuitive, and right now I'm honestly struggling to process it into an easier format. Sorry. Nonetheless, the course change time and turning radius do show that a fatter ship is more more agile. It gets in its new course much quicker and with much less wasted distance.

For a locked tonnage, yes. The UAD beam increases tonnage, though, with length being locked, which is not the correct premise. Admittedly, I haven't played around enough to check this, but you might be able to find conclusive proof through the turning radius. If, for a given tonnage both before and after the beam change, the turning radius (it's one of the right hand stats) does not decrease, that's a problem. If on the other hand with the same conditions, the wider ship has a lesser turning radius, then it's modeled correctly. I'd be interested to find out in your tests! Otherwise, I can try it tonight.

Apart from @Candle_86's video (in which he does explore it quite a bit), he obliquely references it in a lot of drydock answers. It's one of his standard examples of why gun accuracy doesn't just rely on barrel and fire control. Well, that and the Japanese Type-96 AA guns' mounting. But more specifically, in Drydock Episode 23 at the 11:21 mark, he points out that the Italians were often straddling the target, but failed to actually hit British cruisers. He also talks about very specific weights and tolerances in Drydock Episode 78 at the 32:51 mark as well as more generally in Drydock Episode 37 at the 23:28 mark, where he explains that even a 1% tolerance can be huge. In Episode 37, though he defers on the exact weights, he does mention some of the more extreme spreads, where he mentions you can fit a ship underneath some Italian spreads.

For one of the most extreme cases ever, there is the IJN's Hiei (wikipedia link). To comply with the interwar naval treaties, she gave up her entire belt armor, a good portion of her armament, and some of her boilers. She was demilitarized and turned into the training ship. After Japan exited the naval treaties, they miraculously found Hiei's belt lying around in pristine condition, put it back in, and strengthened it to a uniform thickness. They also reinstalled turrets, made the ship longer by adding to the stern, changed the powerplant, added floatplanes, and did extensive work to the tower and secondary armament. However, there's nothing that would've stopped the Japanese from fitting a completely new belt to the Hiei apart from the cost and industrial work to manufacture such a thing. For less extreme versions, the British did a lot of refits to strengthen deck armor after Jutland. I know the Renown class had a lot of completely new deck armor added. Combining with the above, there's really no reason that ships are truly completely bound to the armor scheme that they came out. It's (like you mentioned) a cost and effort vs effectiveness argument. You'd have to rebalance the ship and make sure the belt is thick enough if you change from turtleback to AoN, but there's nothing really that stops you. Superstructure can be removed to get access to the deck armor (after all, towers are often changed around; just see the Queen Elizabeth's gaining the Queen Anne's mansion superstructure). There is one practical limit to adding armor, though: the face-hardening process. You can add as much backing as you want; that's the relatively soft metal and doesn't require much. However, you can't make "more" face-hardened armor. That's one of the reasons refitted armor is slightly less effective than true designed-for armor. It lacks the same ratio of face-hardened to soft armor that would otherwise be present (because it only has the 'face-hardened' amount that it originally had). The one part I am concerned about is the double/triple hulls, though. I'm not aware of any refits off the top of my head that would give historical justification. But it kinda makes sense if you consider that you're carving out space on the inside to add a hull? Maybe? It's not like a torpedo bulge where you get more displacement; your displacement is fixed, you're just changing the internals, and mostly with structural steel, I would think.

Kinda curious; is there a reason why BB armor cap has been dropped to 25in, with the 20" turret caps at 30in of armor? Was it a gameplay issue, realism issue, or something else? The main reason I'm asking is because with the ability to push the German super-BB hull to 158k tons, there's a lot more tonnage that I could dedicate to armor. Also, it restricts the ability to give an immunity zone to 20" guns.

I would be a bit careful with the 16"/50 Mk7 claim. Technically, yes, the American 16"/50 Mk7 is historically, across all naval guns, the most accurate. However, the NavWeaps article (linked) that started/spread that claim has some important caveats. The claim is based out of a test firing in 1987, with the main guns having radar-aided fire control, a modern digital fire control system, and better propellant consistency. But, that's not to say that the Mk7 was a widely inaccurate gun that relied on modern systems to become useful. The barrels and the gun were built very well, and it was definitely a match for the top-end of battleship guns (especially since it was a 16" gun that probably handily defeat the other guns in damage potential). It's just the claim of "historically most accurate" requires proper disclaimers. That test firing used improvements from a bit more than 40 years after the end of WWII, which pushes it over the top of every other gun.

Iirc, 12" are a breakpoint. Like how 15s and 16s (or to a lesser extent 16s and 17s) are vastly different, with one being far more accurate, but the other being much more powerful. My belief is that part of the reason for the 12in gun in particular, is that it was used a lot in the real world, and IRL designers got really good at designing it (especially since 12in guns had their final heyday during the Anglo-German naval race.) Unlike the bigger calibers past 12, 12in was somewhat used in the pre-dread era as well. Tl;Dr 12in guns were built a lot, RL designers got really good, stats are biased. I disclaim liability for inaccuracies.

Well... not really. You're making a (very) common mistake here. But, first, references: http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/metalprpsept2009.php#U.S._Carnegie_Corp._Special_Treatment_Steel_(STS)_Armor%2FConstruction_Steel http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/metalprpsept2009.php#Average_WWII-Era_Class_"A"_Armor STS is, true, not face-hardened Krupp. Not going to contest you there. It is however, *Krupp-type* armor. The difference is between alloys used, and is in fact more concerned with Harvey armor alloys rather than the face-hardening. As such, we reach our first point: despite the lack of face-hardening, STS is still a part of the Krupp components if we use the right definition. Secondly, while it is an excellent deck-plate, to my best knowledge it is not a true warship belt armor. It was used in turret faces and superstructure, but it was not a belt armor (or Class "A" armor, to use US naval terms), even in cruisers. In fact, the US's error in design of Class A actually made cruiser level Class A armor nearly unmatched in the world (which, for obvious reasons, STS simply has no chance of beating). The battleship turret face use of STS was because the US wanted to increase protection after discovering that battleship-level Class A had less protection than they thought, and STS is much easier to layer/make rather than true Class A armor. So, when given the chance, the US put a stopgap measure of extremely thick STS armor for battleship turret faces and just hoped that it wouldn't be a huge problem because they layered it really, really thick. A true Class A armor turret face would've been thinner for similar effectiveness, but it would've required more time and effort to make, and the US kinda wanted these new battleships sooner to escort their carriers. That's a very long-winded way to say that STS was not the main armor, and it cannot be counted as "the" armor of a ship. So, in closing, STS doesn't need to be a new component because (a) it still is a Krupp armor and (b) it is not the 'main' armor that could justifiable get a special component. I hope I made my side clearer than my initial super short post. If you have any questions, please let me know!

Either directly give them a lot of cash, or increase their national wealth by a lot so they keep getting money. Or both. Obviously, no idea about how it will change or not with this upcoming patch.

STS is still a Krupp-type steel, though, and is kinda what you'd expect from Krupp III/IV. From what I can kinda feel, Krupp I and II is more for WWI and immediate post war Krupp steels. Krupp III and Krupp IV are meant to encompass the various improved Krupp armors that existed in WWII or immediately afterwards. Regardless to that exact classification, a mechanic does exist to simulate the type of gradual improvement STS was: When you reach the end of the armor tech tree, there is a repeatable tech that gradually increases armor quality because you gradually tweak the elements and technique.

Set reputation and respect to "NaN" (including quotes). That sets it to infinite.

@Norbert Sattler is actually correct here. It automatically saves each time you click new turn. In fact, you can try this: Start a brand new campaign, and click Next Turn. Open up task manager and kill the UAD process to make sure nothing weird is going on. Restart UAD. You start at turn 2, not turn 1. (If you try this with Create Fleet, remember that the first two turns are on the same month, as the "first turn" is just a chance for you to build ships). Otherwise, I really, really agree with your rant. OP was critically deficient in understanding how this game works. In fact, the automatic saving is one of the best things of this game because it literally means you can only lose whatever you did in the very turn you were playing. Everything else gets saved automatically.

That's kinda what surprised me though, as I thought it was the somewhat same logic you just stated if we didn't touch the AI side. However, the AI not "completing" a ship. Lacking armor (with some tonnage to spare) isn't "finishing a ship". Sure, it had a brilliant 4x2 20", with 6 5" guns, but it didn't put armor on it. Even more ridiculously this morning, the AI chose a German 130k super BB I made... that had 2x1 9" guns (it was a design to test differing armor schemes). That was a horrible design. The AI made no attempt to put on more guns, secondaries, or anything. It just shipped that wholesale. Either this is a bug (which needs to be fixed) or the AI chosing incomplete/bad designs is an oversight by the devs (which I respectfully suggest they fix).

I'm not sure if this is an issue with this patch or something holding over but: The AI seems to be stealing player designs for use in custom battles, even if you leave design to the AI. This is a problem when it takes an incomplete design or a test ship, and it gets quickly blown up. For example, I was playing an AH BC, and opponent was to be a Russian BB. I had "built" a Russian BB before, but I had never completed it and it had no armor (key point; the AI wouldn't do this). Russian BB was exactly that same ship, down to having no armor.

And, if you use Notepad++, place your cursor before the starting '{' right before "Key":Year The matching parenthetical is highlighted in red by Notepad++. Copy everything in between (shift+click works best).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Agincourt_(1913) Seven centerline turrets with about 3/4s that displacement with a bigger caliber. Your point? Also, convenient that you completely omitted how much armor and engine you were able to fit into that after your guns. You almost certainly had weak armor or speed. And yes, weaker speed can make room for better armament (see Montana vs Iowa for a very obvious and well documented differences. N3 and G3 as well.). For armor, there are plenty of Japanese capitals that demonstrate that you can get better firepower by sacrificing armor. Finally, on 43k dreadnought, using 11s is horribly weak. That's generally 13s or 14s (maybe 15s) range. The organic limit works. There is no need for the devs to tie our hands with an artificial limit and stifle interesting possibilities. On a related/separate note, why are you so worried about this? It's a single player game. If you feel it's immersion breaking, let me give you one awesome tip (drumroll please): just don't make these ships. Surely that's not hard?

Just no. You're trading an organic limit for an artificial one. In fact, it's not even necessary to do so given the current state of the game. Fact of the matter is that you're looking at the wrong area(s) for the limit. Actually try to fit a full 7 turrets on a ship. You'll run up hard against quite a few organic limits. First, sheer tonnage. That point about crowding the powerplant and stuff? It's already modeled in a sense because you have to dedicate a lot of tonnage to this. You have to drop a lot of armor and engines to get it to fit. Second, length/width of the ship. You have to fit superstructure, funnels, etc. In most ships, you can't fit more than five centerline turrets unless you optimize and fit them extremely closely (which hurts your firing arcs). The fact of the matter is that while the community puts up meme ships with extreme guns, they are horribly flawed and not practical designs. To actually hit the 7 turret limit, you have to be using fairly small guns on the largest of hulls (while your opponent will bring a few 18-20s and just blow you out of the water). As a final note, in the campaign, it's not like the game just hands you 7 turrets from the start. That's actually a very late tech, and most of the game, you're actually limited much more strictly.

As a baseline and using my main gun, I try to armor from 0.5% accuracy to whatever I consider "close" for that era and gun. For really early, it might be down to 1000, while late game cruisers might be to 7500. Early-game I'll match CT to belt, late-game to deck. After I finish designing the ship, then I'll throw the extra armor usually on the belt for cruisers.

Also, if you want to do a (very) basic search of this forum, the devs have extremely clearly stated multiple times that the AI gets no cheats. Usually in very public threads, as well. The balance might be a bit wonky, but it works in your favor just as well.

Sure, why not. Let's try it out. Give me a nation, and let's find out just how bad I am at designing ships, lol. Quick edit: Also, how would you prefer the images sent to you? Discord, private message here, email?

Personally, I'd really like upper limits removed. Yes, DDs and CLs are supposed to have weak armor, but (since there are no pesky treaties in this world) it would be very interesting to pursue armored DD and CL designs. Also, BBs and BCs have a "limit" of 100in, well in excess of any reasonable design you can build for them. The same "limit" should be extended and made uniform for any ship class.