RAMJB

Fair enough, but keep in mind that given the era this warship represents (late 1900s, early 1910s) 27 knots for a capital ship was thought as being VERY fast. 33 knots would be the equivalent of a rocket ship or something like that ;). (In fact I think the designer calculations are too lenient on machinery weights and volumes, allowing for far too large speeds too early, but that's a topic for another post).

Ah, OK I see now what you mean. You say that with the "straight deck, extended belt" you'd save weight. I COMPLETELY misread your post. Again, my apologies, I should really focus on doing one thing at a time. I'll come back to this post later on and read it properly. This is a good proof that after a long day having half a dozen internet tabs open simultaneously is not really good for your brain XDDDDD.

uhhh I totally misread that paragraph you quoted, but that's because you labelled it wrong. You're mentioning armored DECK...you're extending the armored BELT there ;). I somehow thought you were substracting the angled portion of the deck from the total. I didn't check the calculations, only the final number. My mistake. It would read like this: The caveat is that in this, then, you're not substracting the sloped deck weight?. You're adding a straight extension to the deck, you're adding up extra belt height, but you're not taking away the inclined portion of the deck you are substituting with the straight deck extension?. Sorry if I'm missing things here, I'm doing seven times simultaneously atm and is hard to focus on one alone ;).

that's the thing. If you want the belt extending up to the level of the flat deck you're going to need a lot more weight of belt armor to extend it upwards with it's nominal thickness, to thin it down so with the same total weight you cover that extra area, or a mix of both, adding a bit of extra weight while giving up a bit of protection simultaneously. Your calculations show that the sloping of the deck meant it ended up being heavier than a flat one. No suprise there - but you're not calculating how much weight you save in belt armor you don't need to add...or the extra protection you're retaining by not thinning it down to keep the weight the same :).

I love those raised secondaries. That's a nice touch. Perhaps you could move the A turret a little bit more forward to balance out the ship, you can get rid of a bit of that 1.8% aft offset and you'll give it slighly better arcs of fire on the process. It's really a small change and the bonus you gain won't be very big but every little helps, right? ;). Othar than that my only concern is that 6 guns is not a lot - I'd just go on cutting off speed somewhat (27 knots is plenty for that mission) and upgrading the turrets to triples. but otherwise that design is lovely :). And yes, I'm pretty sure that the only reason people can have trouble with this particular scenario is because they focus too much on the warships when there's no need to :).

My take on the armed convoy scenario

Well that's kind of the thing, right?. If it isn't a turtleback, well then...it isn't a turtleback and should not be qualified as such ;). As for the reasoning behind why it was done, I think that the designers realized that the only way to form an armored enclosed "box" with the main armore deck at that height, was to slightly slope down the deck in order for it to meet the top of the armored belt. Had the deck been "straight" all the way instead, the deck immediately below the armor deck would've been lower than usual, while the deck level of the armored deck itself would've been higher. It also would've meant a slightly lower volume of the ship within armored protection when for almost no weight cost, you could raise the deck a bit and get a higher volume of the hull under citadel protection. Which is not a bad idea on itself. A picture of Yamato's layout can help so I'll attach one. At any rate, no, that's not a turtleback at all. At least it's not what it's commonly known as such so let's not call things for what they're not, to stave off confusion ;). as for why was done in Tone, you only have to see your first illustration. Without that "sloping out", the top of the machinery would've been left out of the armored deck level. The japanese had to a) accept an unarmored gap between the armored belt and the main armored deck, and place that deck higher to cover the machinery (unnaceptable) b) accept part of the machinery left out of the main armored area (unnaceptable) c) raise the belt to the same level of the armored deck (needing a lot more weight for the armored belt, or reducing it's thickness for the same weight, both unnaceptable) Or, finally: d.) do what they did: emplace the exterior parts of deck in a slope down for it to meet the main belt and produce a fully enclosed armored "box" that covered the whole machinery areas, resulting on a slightly larger vulnerability at longer ranges, but guaranteeing protection for the machinery. It's the sensible choice through and through, so it's normal they did it that way.

Angling is not a thing. Just get it out of your head. REpeat with me: "Angling is not a thing. I should not give a damn about angling, because it will make me create wasteful designs." It's true that at certain cases of end-on-firing ricochets tend to happen more. It's a current limitation of the game due to how the armor layout is currently modelled (something with at some stage will have to be corrected) and due to the gunnery hit chance modifiers still not accounting for bearing rates and range rates. To put it in simple term: the bigger the bearing rate ,the harder finding a valid solution on you it is. If you're going nose in towards the enemy ,or at a high "angle" your bearing rate is reduced to almost 0. Meaning, the more broadside you give to the enemy, the more "lateral" displacement you'll achieve from his point of view, the far harder it will be for him to hit you. But if you come nose in your bearing rate is 0, and the enemy will have a solution in no time. A second consideration is range rates. On an end on scenario (be it nose in, be it rear-out) your range changes quickly. Early analytic FCS had problems accounting for that. The problem is that most fleets went with synthetic FCS, which didn't give much of a damn about range rates. This is compounded by the fact that guns tended to spread more in distance than in bearning. Meaning, a full salvo landing pattern was an ellipse longer in range than in bearing. If you're nose-in, you're fitting your ship nicely and squarely into the dispersion pattern of the enemy salvo, guaranteeing more hits. So in general terms - going nose in or rear out towards an enemy was pretty much giving away your solution for the enemy to drop shells on you, and makes their salvoes more likely to hit you. NOT GOOD. NOT GOOD AT ALL. To top it off, this becomes even more relevant the longer the range. Deck hits don't give a damn about your relative "angling". Deck hits are deck hits - if your deck is enough to bounce shells off all fine and dandy (as long as your main armor deck is high enough on the ship - turtlebacks are going to get trounced). If it is not enough, you're going to eat a shell into your vitals, no matter if you're nose-in, rear out, full broadside, or dancing a polka. Finally the nail in the coffin is that armors thick enough to cause ricochets were only present in the waterline area (something currently not modelled in game). The rest of the hull was less protected with far thinner armor, which would not be enough to bounce off big caliber shells no matter the angle. By going in you're asking to get a shot through your nose and directly into the guts of your ships (Where your transversal bulkhead -again still not modelled in game) might, or might not be enough to stop it. But even if it does stop it that means a shell going off inside your ship. NOT GOOD. So repeat with me once again: "Angling is not a thing. Angling will get me killed. When engaging with an enemy I want to give them the hardest shot possible, because if I get hit it's not going to be good, which means maxing out my bearing rate, which means going broadside on. Angling is not a thing". Now, I know most of what makes that true is not yet in the game. End-on firing is unrealistically represented at the moment and "angling" kind of works atm. Keyword is *YET*. Developers are on record stating the armor model needs a rehash, and gunnery modifiers at some point will have to be included to properly represent FCS guided gunnery (meaning modifiers for bearing and range rate vs the kind of FCS used, analytic or synthetic). Once those are in the game, you can forget about angling because it's going to get your ships killed. Also, and I'll have to insist on it, 360º turrets were not a thing in capital ship construction. At all. Uh, no. Cruisers are cruisers and capital ships are capital ships. There's a lot of merit in putting torpedoes on cruisers. It's a tradeoff because if hit, those torpedos will tend to explode (not yet modelled in the game, will be in the future). There's nothing incorrect in NOT putting torpedoes in your CAs... but it's not "ill advised" to put them on either. One would not understand the lack of secondary armament even if screened by friendly forces. Main batteries in ships of the time had a quite limited ammount of shells in the magazines. Usually ranging from 80 to 100 rounds per gun. Assuming a rate of fire of one round per minute that means that in little more than hour and a half of sustained fire, you'll be out of rounds for good. If you shoot at small buggers, those shots are not fired at the big buggers. Meaning: you're wasting your main caliber shots. To compound it magazines had a limited ammount of shells per tipe. To simplify it let's say you had 80% AP, 20%HE (it's a VASTLY and GROSS simplification of both the distribution and the kind of shells involved, btw). Meaning, once you expend your HE shells (in this case assuming a magazine size of 100 rounds per gun, it'll be 20 rpg), you'll be firing AP to destroyers. Not that destroyers take either HE or AP well (overpens from large caliber guns were massively damaging anyway), but once again - a huge waste. On the other hand, Big caliber guns have a barrel life that (depending on caliber, shell weight, and muzzle velocity) would range from as low as 100 shots to up to maybe 300-ish. At any rate each time you fire your main guns that's one more shot into your barrel life, and one less shot until the next barrel replacement or relining. Otherwise the barrel would degrade up to the point where you might end up shooting blanks all across the place with no accuracy whatsoever. Barrel wear treatment was simple in theoretical terms: either the barrel was relined or replaced. Relining a barrel could range from expedient and not very expensive to a nightmare: depending on the guns, some were FAR more complicated to reline than others to the point that relining was not worth it. Rebarelling meant a whole new barrel. Expensive by default. Both needed time in a port with the appropiate installations, equipment, and workshops. Might not be a problem for some nations, might be a huge handicap for others. In the meantime secondary guns had barrel lifes that went from hundreds to thousands of shots before new barrels were needed (it usually wasn't worth it to reline a 5'' gun, for instance). Replacing barrels was far easier because of them being far smaller and lighter, which could be done in places not as well equipped. All this translates into: if you're forced to shoot at small DDs with your main guns because you have no secondaries, you're doing something seriously, SERIOUSLY, wrong in your design. No. It's incremental vs All or Nothing. Turtleback is simply a design layout where the main armored deck has sloped extremes. It can happen in All-or-nothing layouts. And in fact some DID happen in AoN layouts - the Nevada class had a turtleback, for instance. But it's counterintuitive because turtlebacks are terribly vulnerable at long ranges while AoN designs are, naturally, designed to fight at long ranges. So in the end turtlebacks in AoN designs dissapeared. Incremental armor means putting different thicknesses of armor across different areas of the ship. All or nothing meant that nothing out of the main armor area would receive any armor, other than splinter protection. Implied was the need of the AoN layout to provide for a large enough citadel as to support the whole ship and allow it to float even if all the other areas were flooded as long as the citadel was not breached, and hence, flooded (what's called the "citadel raft" concept), which is a very big point central to AoN designs wich incremental designs never had to worry about. This was not new, and was't exactly pioneered by AoN designs, even while it's true that AoN designs exploited it to the best, because the incremental&turtleback layout natural vulnerability to soft killing due to the protected areas being very low on the hull. Fire control systems weren't located in the superstructure. Or rather, properly designed FCS weren't. Rangefinders were on the superstructure of the ships (and on turrets too). Directors for gunlaying were both in superstructures and in turrets aswell. Neither were fire control systems - they were gun laying and rangefinding equipment. The Fire Control Systems was the main center of the system where all the plotting equipment vital for accurate centralized fire was placed. That center was placed well within the hull (sometimes even below the waterline), behind the solid protection of the citadel. It was called the "Trasnmitting station". Inputs would come from the rangefinders and directors on the ship to the transmitting station, there solutions would be calculated and sent to the turrets for central fire. If you wanted to knock the FCS of a ship you had to go through it's citadel armor. Or, alternativelly, completely severe the connection between the transmitting station and the guns (which is the most likely reason why Bismarck's FCS went off, the vital cabling going to and from the transmitting station had to go through areas of the hull out of the main citadel - even while those links ran through armored paths themselves, they were rather exposed to enemy fire. And Bismarck's turtleback layout meant those paths had to go through a far longer unprotected area than in AoN designs with armored decks being much higher and covering far larger volumes of the hull as a result) Knocking out rangefinders and directors would be damaging, but would not KO centralized fire. Specially because some of those directors and rangefinders were placed on turrets themselves (behind very heavy armor themselves) and were very hard to knock out. No. If a ship had an AoN scheme, it was using, by default, the citadel raft approach. Even with all out-of-citadel floodable areas flooded, the ship would have still a very large flotability reserve to keep the ship afloat. Barring capsizing, It was impossible to sink an AoN design without breaching it's main citadel area and flooding it too. Phwew...that was long. I left some things out because of being debatable in a given context, but I have just so many time :). Hope that helps to complete the OP's exposition :).

Ok, your last line claims that you're giving historical background - I'll make some historical corrections (which also are valuable for in-game designs). Please don't read this as an attempt to undermine your post, only a means to correct it slightly where it isn't really right, and maybe complete it in places True torpedo boats rarely carried guns bigger than 3'', and in numerous times not even that. I know that Germany produced some WW2 "Torpedo boats" with 105mm guns but those were the size of a normal destroyer of any other navy - they weren't torpedo boats in anything but name. Torpedo boats stop being a thing more or less in the 1910s, a time by which destroyers completely take over all their "torpedo-bearing" roles for the remainder of the era. Most nations don't even have a torpedo boat hull after 1915 or so in the custom battle designer. So, they stop being a thing before they can truly "deliver large spreads of torpedoes" because for most of their existance they'll be restricted to single torpedo mounts - they may carry twins by the end of their viable life, but even then packing a lot of those is not really viable in hulls of historical displacement. Both are incorrect. Destroyers barely carried any armor, even splinter protection out of gunhouses was rare, so they're equally armored to a torpedo boat. They aren't descendants from torpedo boats either, the "Torpedo boat destroyer", as they were born as, clearly implies their true origins: they were designed to chase off and destroy Torpedo Boats...not to replace them. They ended up replacing them anyway but that was more of an evolutionary thing than an intentional one. In what regards to armor, it's far more nuanced than that. Protected cruisers did not have any external armored belt - instead their side protection depended on a "turtle" configuration for the deck, where it's sides would be inclined down on the extremes to provide angled armor protection against side penetrations. Other than that, and coal bunkerage on the side compartments to slow down shells, they had no side protection at all. Hence, it can barely be argued that this ships were "heavily armored" at all, when the other significant armor was put on the deck- which wasn't that thick either (2in in the flat areas and 4-5in on the sloped ones was more or less common). Also protected cruisers carried far larger weapons than just 5 or 6 inches. guns in the 7-10in ranges could be regularily found aboard them. British protected cruisers had weapons up to 9.2'', for instance. The most extreme cases (japanese Matsushimas) saw a 13'' canet gun on a single mount. Largely impractical, but still goes on to prove that the kind of weapons used on those ships wasn't just a handful of light-to-medium caliber rifles. Most light cruisers were built with armor to keep off 6'' guns (6'' being more or less the natural top-end weapon caliber for this class). Of course there were lighter ones with armor that even barely qualified for that (in particular the italian scout cruisers), but those were the exception, not the norm. Also, most cruisers had torpedoes, not "some". The only nation that gave up on them as a matter of course were the americans, and it can be argued that their "light" and "Heavy" cruiser distinction was more nominal than anything else, because when it came down to displacement alone, all the non-torpedo bearing american cruisers displacements would put them in the "heavy" cathegory. The only real american "light" cruisers were the Omahas and Atlantas. Both carried torpedoes. This is probably the entry with the most corrections needed. Let's see. - the heavy cruiser was born out of a Naval Treaty. It was an artificial class born from established artificial self-imposed limits. Had no naval treaty happened this class would've never existed, certainly not as it did. One has to be very careful when talking about this class. With no treaties in place the light cruisers of the 1930s would've carried 8'' guns or bigger (The Pensacola class was classified as a light cruiser initially, with 10x8'' guns), and the heavy cruisers would've probably ended being lightweight versions of the WW1 battecruisers with 9, 10, 11 or even 12 in guns. -There were very few heavy cruisers with single mounts. Top of my head the british Hawkins class only (the first two furutakas had 8'' in single mounts but were rebuilt with dual turrets pretty soon). - Heavy cruiser armor was highly variable and increased through the years, but in no way we can say as a general statement tha they were "better protected than light cruisers". One only has to take a look at the comparative armor of a british Town class cruiser with that of a Pensacola - the "light" one has far better protection than the "heavy" one. Again, heavy cruiser protection was highly dependant on the displacement limit, and the fact that it had to carry 8'' guns while light cruisers were limited to 6''. Carrying heavier weapons meant less displacement free for armor. Most heavy cruisers of the Treaty Era ended up being woefuly protected as a result, while light cruisers of the era almost always had balanced protection. -and finally all heavy cruisers in all nations had torpedoes - except for the americans. They were the exception. A notable one, but the norm was to always mount torpedoes on cruisers, heavy or not. No. Just no. The Battlecruiser is a very fast capital ship, faster than the normal battleline by an order of 4 to 7 knots, depending on the era. They were designed to act in the van of the battlefleet to wipe out enemy scouting forces and *THEN* either form a fast flanking force or form up in the van and rear of the main battleline, to duke it out against the enemy battleline in both cases. Fighting cruisers was part of their role, but wasn't their only role. Those ships were designed to fight capital ship actions too. This could be achieved by reducing armor to cruiser level, but by no means it means it had to be done that way. Reducing the main caliber of guns and their numbers vs what was standard in battleships while keeping capital levels of protection was perfectly viable. Those ships tended to be much larger than battleships too. For instance, German Battlecruisers of WW1 had equivalent (and in some cases, superior) armor than contemporary british BattleSHIPS, let alone battlecruisers. Amagi class battlecruisers (as designed) had armor layouts at least comparable to those of most battleships of the era, if somewhat thinner, while sporting speeds of almost 30 knots (4 knots faster than their nagato counterparts, 9knots faster than the whole american battleline). HMS Hood as completed was 7 knots faster than their battleship equivalent (the Queen Elizabeth class), yet had better armor and weapons. The catch?, she displaced 15000 tons more at full load. In fact she was arguably the first (can be debated the first were the german Derrflinger) "fast battleship". Battleships with cruiser speed. Hence, to design a battlecruiser you don't have to underarmor it. Battleship armor thickness is perfectly valid. What makes a battlecruiser a battlecruiser is it's speed, far superior to that of same era battleships. The means through which you achieve that speed (sacrificing armor, weapons, both, or neither and going for a much larger displacement) is completely irrelevant. The "russian" model wasn't russian. It was pioneered by the italians before them. And neither had 360 degree turning center line turrets, that's just incorrect. The japanese had a large number of dreadnoughts at the beginning of World War II - compared with any other navy than the USN or RN, but they rarely used them in combat. The only japanese ships that saw regular combat were the Kongos, rebuilt WW1 battlecruisers. The rest of the japanese battleline rarely fired their guns in anger until the Phillipines campaign, 3 years into the pacific war. Super-dreadnoughts were never a class. They were just dreadnoughts, just bigger than the original generation. Nothing special about that classification. Uh. No. Japan gave up the inclined belt concept after their Nagatos (Yamato was a full AoN design). And the yamatos were the only "modern" japanese battleship design that got built. And Germany stood with pretty much the same armor layout that was common in WW1 - incremental layouts and low laying main armored decks with sloped extremes to back the side armor. Those ships were terribly vulnerable against plunging fire, I don't know exactly what part about plunging fire comes from, but is incorrect. Scharnhorst, Bismarck and H classes were all ships with serious weaknesses to long range plunging fire and specially vulnerable to soft killing (due to the low laying deck and how large of a volume of the hull was out of the main protected area). No. Yamato had AoN armor layout. I don't know where the idea comes from that she had a turtleback - but she did not. This is getting quite long. Making a stop. Will go on later :).

Some thoughts on your design: 0'' of armor for secondaries is asking to lose them to almost anything they get hit by. Even with firepower option your chances to hit are worse than theirs, if anythign because how many guns are firing at you and how fast they do so. In this scenario you're going to get hit. A lot. Anything you don't armor well enough isn't going to last in an operational status...and your firepower is something you want to protect at all costs - even secondary guns. Lack of antitorpedo protection is .... bothersome in a scenario where all three enemies can bring them to battle. Same with the basic bulkhead option - armor can keep damage out but fires are going to happen no matter what. With the basic bulkheads that fire can, and will, spread, and quite fast at that. Only one funnel is dangerous - you can't armor it, it's not a rare thing to see getting hit, and if it goes down your ability to accelerate goes down the drain. Any speed you lose in maneouvers, is speed gone almost for good. While you'll never be a speed demon you need that speed up if anything to avoid incoming torpedoes - lose too much and you won't be able to comb them. That compounds your lack of antitorpedo protection and can mean the end of a scenario if unluckly. Meanwhile you're going with 13''. Which really hurt when they hit but have a slightly lower ROF than the 12'', and 12'' is far more than enough to deal with any armored cruiser. 13'' is a bit overkill and you're using up a lot of weight that would help you solving the other issues. So I'd downscale the main battery to 12'' guns, use the saved weight to up the armor on secondaries, put at least antitorpedo and bulkeads II, and drop a small funnel as a backup for the main one. Downgrade other armor as necessary to accomplish that. In general 12'' should be enough to give you a large range of safety against the guns the AI usually brings to battle. Not saying that the design doesn't work - but it has some flaws that can make it fail with an unlucky hit or two. Part of the design process is to try and cover all your bases as good as you can, and this design leaves some open for the enemy to exploit ;).

As promised:

Ok, gave a try to the survivability option too. Plainly stated, it's by far the best option. And by a very VERY large margin over the other two (I don't consider "funds" an option at all xDDDDD) First try I failed - I was not doing all that bad but I still was taking far too damage on the ship's extremities. By the time I was able to finish one of the enemies I was down to 50% structure, suffering from large hit penalties, and slowed down by both structural damage and some flooding in my extremity compartments. The remaining two came far too close with me not being able to do anything to prevent it, and they began being able to pen my main belt too - game over. I recorded myself today on a 2nd try, this time with a different design with almost as much armor on the extremities as in the middle of the ship to prevent that kind of thing happening again. The result: On a ship with maxed out bulkheads, most options to the max, 18 knot speed, twin 11'' main mounts and 4x2 9'' main wing mounts, you can pack up 14'' of belt armor, 13'' of turrets and secondaries, 12.5'' of extended belt armor, and 3.5'' deck everywhere, which is rather ridiculous, specially because that's Krupp IV. With the way the armor system currently works (armoring your whole hull instead of the belt) your hull becomes an impregnable fortress to whatever the enemy ships bring, as long as you keep your distance at 4-5km or so. Your funnel and towers are still vulnerable but you can shrug off whatever they shoot at you. It'll either bounce or at the best get minimal damage semi-pen hits. Yes, the enemy will have vastly superior FCS than yours. It's going to be A LOT of hits, but in the test I gave I ended up the battle at circa 75% structure and no flooding - given that with both firepower and maneouver options I ended up with terribly mauled ships (on the 30-40% structure range), that says enough. It was quite literally a walk in the park. So meanwhile the enemy is bouncing off your ship like mad or doing absurdly laughable damage at best, you'll be scoring far less hits, but each individual hit being a 9'' or a 11'' it's going to be REALLY telling for them (specially because I went with heavy shells). They don't have the armor to take the hits at all while they can spend the whole day shooting at you for no real result. Keeping a chase profile is massively important. Torpedoes are key in this setup too - keeping the enemy at range is vital. Anything that comes close to 4.5km or so, you throw a torpedo at him to force him to turn away. If you're VERY lucky, you'll score a hit. Don't count on it tho - those torpedoes are crappy slow and they can see them from Saturn, so they will avoid them. But the point of those torpedoes is not to hit with them - it's to force the enemy to move away when they come too close for comfort. You'll need to be aware of which enemy ships have torpedoes too, and do regular changes of course to throw any incoming's aim off. Just by following those steps the scenario wins itself. I'm rendering a video right now which shows both the design and the try I gave to it. It's a design I'd change a bit (needs a 2nd funnel as backup in case one gets destroyed), but otherwise passed the test with flying colors. Will link it when it's uploaded.

No, not all extremely big. You'll note in the screenshot I linked avobe, my firepower ship had 12'' guns. Firepower allows you to get 13'' Mk3s too, but those ended up eating too much into my armor to be used. I was using 7'' secondaries too, when the hull allows to up to 9'' in turrets on twin turrets onthe sides (four per side, but still), or the same number of 8'' secondaries (in both cases the lower rate of fire loss was too big to be interesting enough for their extra weight cost, specially so when 7'' guns are enough against the ships you end up fighting). So it's not a case of going "all big gun". Rather that one of the bonuses the firepower option gives is two extra Mk3 main battery turrets that with other options are Mk2 at best. Given the pretty large effect the extra damage those big guns bring to the table, it's kind of counterproductive to go for the firepower option that allows for them, to then not use them at all.

With firepower option going for bigger guns makes more sense. You get the bigger dudes up to the 13'' turret on their Mk3 versions, while with the other options only the 9, 10 and 11'' turrets have Mk3 status, the 12'' and 13'' ones being Mk2s (and suffer accordingly from lower accuracy and reload). Not saying that smaller guns won't work, but it makes sense, if you go with firepower bonus, to at least load 12'' guns, to "milk" the bonus you receive :).

I had no problems with this scenario at all. Used both the firepower route, and the maneouverability route. Haven't tried the survival one though (might give it a try at some point) Firepower route is self explanatory. Pick the predreadnought hull and pack a sensibly strong main battery alongside a strong secondary one and let the class III rangefinders do their job. Given the rather limited range of the engagement, both coincidence and stereoscopic do a good job out of it. I went for stereoscopic out of personal practice (anything capital ship gets the long range version of the rangefinder in my designs). In battle position yourself between the transports and the enemy, try to keep a mostly safe range waiting for hits to happen. 12'' hits will truly disgrace whatever they touch, and the 7'' are more than enough to grind down an enemy cruiser at the ranges involved. Once you deal enough damage for an enemy to be seriously impaired, switch targets and move on to the next. Once all three are seriously wounded, and if you've sunk none due to an ammo detonation (which do happen) move in for the kill. The key is keeping your ship at the correct covering position between you and the transports. Don't be afraid of doing full reversals if needed. Act as the shield to prevent them from engaging the transports, while forcing them to shoot at a target they can deal very limited damage to. And to not go gung ho at the beginning - the enemy has more guns but most of them of limited caliber meaning they'll overpower you at close enough ranges where they begin being able to go through your armor. You have the FCS advantage (compared with the other options) and the armor to bounce most of what they lob at you - so use both. Maneouvering route was more challenging and convoluted but I had a heck of a time with it. You can get an exceedingly fast, yet very well armored and armed, AC out of the options that choice gives you. This one relied a lot more in correct tactical choices, positioning and grinding. Your FCS is notably worse but your main guns fire a lot kicker and still do pretty big damage per hit while guaranteeing pens at pretty much safe ranges for your main armor (nowhere close to a 12'' though). Accuracy can be helped by keeping the speed at 26-ish knots, more than enough to outmaneouver the enemy and making yourself a harder target to hit, while getting the accuracy bonuses for going at speeds close to cruise. Your secondary guns become firestorm spitters but their lower accuracy hurts - still at the ranges involved 5'' can, and will, hurt the enemy. Again, the key is to disable and move on while acting as a shield. Don't go looking for straight up kills, rather soften an enemy enough so it maneouvers out of the line, and target the next one in line. Once all three are injured enough, move in for the kill. It's a lot more touchy as 3'' extremities means you're far more vulnerable to hits on the extremities, but you still have a thick as heck main belt - keep outside of the range they can pen it and you'll be mostly good to go. In both cases you'll end up with a very very beaten up ship - but both routes allow you to win as long as you make the right tactical calls.

The player should be given those choices. The game however should be able to pretty much ruin your choices by forcing those ships to fight out of their element. Not all the time and not in the "in your face" way RTW did, but that you build an AAA ship specialist doesn't mean it won't be deployed in your line of cruisers during a surface engagement. That you design a class for commerce raiding doesn't mean it won't end up in the middle of a full fledged surface battle. There's just too large a sample of historical precedents of ships being put in spots they were never supposed to be in, to just ignore it and give the player total immunity against the uncertainties of war in what regards to specialized ships. other than that I'm largely in agreement with your general feelings.

For very much the same reason most other planes were launched. Spotting means that, to spot the enemy: to keep a look on the enemy forces. Spotting does not equal gunnery correction roles (not necessarily). Specially not when said artillery spotting could (and probably would) do more to screw the firing solution, than help the firing ships (it was rather easy, specially with the numerical superiority of the japanese, to end up messing up the spotting, and the firing corrections done by an overhead spotter could be misleading for someone looking at the fall of shot from a firing ship, as the relative positions of fall of shot for both would be different, specially bearing corrections being complicated to measure). By far and large every mention to the campaign of the java sea states that the reason why floatplanes were an issue for the allies was that they were picking a fight against much larger forces, yet they couldn't do anything without being observed. So we have lots of information about how disruptive those planes were for the allied fleet. There was no effective disengaging when the enemy had floatplanes overhead all the time that let the enemy know your whereabouts and your heading. There was no option for getting the tactical surprise when the enemy knew you were coming and from where well before you actually arrived. There was no chance to withdraw and reposition properly when the enemy knew which way you were heading and at which speed. The allied fleet was fighting a far superior enemy in strenght and the only weapon they could explot to try and present an effective opposition (surprise, hit and run attacks, the enemy being unaware of their wereabouts), was taken away from them because they were being under a constant watch of japanese floatplanes. The books I mentioned also make plenty of comments about how much of a moral sapping weapon those things were - each time a floatplane was seen, the allied force knew the japanese knew exactly where they were- most of the times when themselves didn't know the exact position of the japanese, something that of course wasn't missed by the crews aboard of those ships. They make no comment about japanese gunnery being any better when those things were overhead vs when they were not, however. I'll have to insist once more than Gunnery correction is a very particular role where those planes didn't seem to have done much at all. That several books covering in truly painstaking detail the destruction of the allied surface forces across the actions that happened during the japanese offensive in the DEI make only one mention of floatplanes doing gunnery correction roles (against Edsall), but that meanwhile they are almost continuously highlighted as the main operational reason why the allies couldn't either flee nor try to fight, is revealing. Or should be. That anyone who knows about Fire Control systems and practices of the 40s can tell you that a plane overboard could do a lot more harm that help to a ship's firing solution is just the final nail in the coffin. That japanese torpedoes, not gunnery, accounted for the most important kills kind of underscores it all. So I'll have to insist that the main role those planes covered was the operational one - intelligence and observation roles. I'm interested in your source tho. I'll try to find the online translation you mention :).

I own two books about the Java Sea Campaign of 1942. Both cover the battle of the java sea in detail. Both of course make extensive reference to the japanese use of their floatplanes to keep the allied ships under constant vigilance. They also mention the use of flares in the night part of the engagement (first time anything like that had even been done, it took the allied officers totally by surprise). All of that happened. All of that is pretty much operational rules of searching&shadowing. No reference is made ,on either book, of actual gunlaying done by any of the japanese planes in any of the encounters you mentioned. For one exception, as it mentions the desperation of the japanese in the engagement again Edsall and that Hiei's floatplanes were launched with the specific task of trying to help with the gunnery - as for how well it worked and for how effective that gunlaying was, I'll put in the same words as one of the books I currently have on my lap: "it didn't do any good." (literal words). None of the books mentions spotting (as in radioing gunlaying info to the gunnery crews of any of the ships involved, obviously they spotted a lot in what refers to looking for the enemy and keeping it under watch) in any other part of their narration. Which I think it's significative because when spotting for gunnery was done, it's mentioned. The books in question are "Java sea 1942: Japan conquest of the Netherlands East Indies" by Mark Stille & JimLaurie, and "Rising sun, falling skies, the Disastrous Java Sea Campaign of World War II" by Jeffrey Cox.

Actually it wasn't that uncommon. I'll quote a passage from a book here... even while I hate to transcribe from books lol :D: Once the aircraft was in the air, there were four recognised methods by which it could land and be recovered aboard the ship. In keeping with the phonetic alphabet of the time, these were known as Able, Baker, Charlie or Dog recoveries. The first two were used when the ship was at anchor or not underway. In both cases the aircraft would land near the ship, but in the case of an Able recovery the pilot then shut down the engine and one of the ship’s boats would tow it under the stern or alongside, to a position where one of the crew could catch the crane hook and attach it to the aircraft’s hoisting slingpoint. With a Baker recovery the drill was similar except that the pilot would taxi the aircraft into position under the crane and only shut down the engine when it was safely secured to the crane. The Charlie and Dog recoveries were made while the ship was underway and utilised a sled streamed alongside or aft of the ship. The Charlie recovery was used when sea conditions were rough and when the ship had some freedom to manoeuvre. The process started with the ship steaming at approximately 45 degrees to the wind. It would then turn 90 degrees through the wind and this turn would create a slick of relatively smooth water in which the aircraft could alight and then taxi up to the sled. This consisted of a canvas-covered wooden spar from which trailed a rope net. As the aircraft ran over the net, a spring-loaded hook in the bottom of the float engaged the rope webbing and the pilot could then shut down the engine as the aircraft was then towed along by the ship and one of the crew could engage the crane hook. The sled was normally streamed from the end of one of the catapults, which was trained outboard for the purpose. In a Dog recovery the ship streamed its sled but did not alter course and the pilot landed on any suitable area of water before taxiing to catch up with the ship and running onto the sled. In either case, once the aircraft was on the sled and the crane hook was engaged, it could be hoisted out and lowered onto the deck or back onto its catapult trolley. This required great care and skill by the handling crew, who controlled the swing of the aircraft by means of wires streamed from the wing-tips and using long poles with padded ends to prevent accidental contact with parts of the ship. Needless to say, these evolutions demanded constant practice and were often carried out under the eyes of captains impatient to alter course and increase speed in order to carry out other tasks and assignments." This comes from "Catapult aircraft" from Leo Marriott. Basically what Rice seems to have done in that particular time looks very similar to a Dog recovery in the US Navy. Sans the sled (the sled wasn't always used in US Navy ships anyway). At any rate none of the recoveries was for the fainted-hearted, specially not the ones used when the ship was underway. The guys who flew those things had balls of steel.

Oh it *WAS* a tremendous contribution in the tactical level. But for what was mostly bombardment spotting - something I already made clear in one of my posts in the last page, I'm not denying that from floatplanes at all. Floatplanes did a lot of work at naval bombardments, and a very good job at that role, too. But we don't have bombardment in the game, do we?. Nor we do have fighting in restricted waters. That's what I point out - that the most prevalent (And almost only) reason to put floatplanes in the tactical level in the game at this stage is for a role the game doesn't cover yet, to begin with. Why would we put planes because they spotted for bombardment, when there's no bombardment in the game yet? ;). Aren't more urgent things to do far before? (like...adding bombardment scenarios and make sure they work properly, to begin with? ;)) And that goes back to the points I repeatedly make: First bring the game foundation and make it work. THEN, add planes on top of it. I'm not saying they don't have a place here - on the opposite, they do (Even while maybe not in roles some people give them too credit about). But add them at the right time, when the other pieces are in place and working well. As for the sinking of the submarine off narvik - that's either port attack or ASW roles - both fall squarely into the operational level where I also stated floatplanes did a good job too. And here I make no argument: floatplanes had big influence on the operative level (what would be the campaign), at least until carriers were so common that their value decreased drastically.

Another one for the list of books to purchase :D. I don't understand why that isn't in the report I found. I know the one about the battle of the river plate makes ample mention to the Seafox, it's problems with the radio (was configured for search frequency upon launch, had to be readjusted midflight, which wasn't easy on a radio like the one the plane had), and it's problems with spotting the fall of shot of Achilles instead of Ajax. Why this one makes no mention of what the quote you posted here says, really I don't understand - for it's clear the plane was indeed spotting the fall of shot so it should've been mentioned accordingly. Really, really good find! Btw the quote about the battle of narvik I knew about. But the destroyers the floatplane corrected Warspite's fire on were the ones at anchor - that's land bombardment spotting duty, not fall of shot correction on a ship-to-ship engagement ;). That floatplane did detect a couple german destroyers on the move trying to ambush Warspite, but on those there was no fall of shot correction done, just a contact report to attract Warspite's fire to them. There was little correction to be done anyway because they were pretty much massacred in no time as soon as Warspite (and the rest of the fleet) opened up on them.

Nah, that was just a sarcastic comment aimed at he-knows-whom. Probably should've not even mentioned that at all Back to the fight at punta stilo and answering Akd. Found this: http://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/LondonGazette/38273.pdf Includes an AAR summary by Adm. Cunningham himself, and a very in-depth chronology of the battle as seen by the Royal Navy. That report mentions that Warspite launched one plane (Duty Q) after blasting the other one off her platform with her guns (seems a recurring theme in WW2 naval engagements to destroy your own floatplanes in the catapult, lol). No mention it's made about it doing any kind of fall of shot correction (which the report would mention several times, as the report about the battle of the River Plate did), but it makes repeated mention of it's observations, which means that plane was just keeping an eye on the italian fleet to radio back their maneouvers. Hence, no spotting of fall of shot nor anything of the sorts. Still, regardless that the plane was not doing shooting correction, this is a combat use of a floatplane in a surface engagement I did not know about until I read this source. Whatever you read that mentions it too must be one I've not read. So I have to ask again, where did you read about that? :). At any rate, good find!

Just did a fast visit to wikipedia and it's entry on Punta Stilo makes no mention of any british floatplanes doing anything. It mentions the british CV (Was Eagle, btw, not Formidable), mentions the floatplane being hit (the cruiser it was aboard was HMS Neptune), mentions the battleship firing on incorrect fall of shot (HMS Malaya being the culprit), of course mentions Warspite's hit on Giulio Cesare... But there's no mention of any floatplanes involved. Not that Wikipedia is any kind of bible, far from it, but, well, one would expect that if a floatplane was involved, it'd be mentioned. They do so in battles where they did pretty much nothing after all (the komandorski entry mentions the japanese one, for instance, and that one truly got nothing done at all)...

Valid point, to an extent. But maybe only to an extent. I'll openly admitting here I'm out of my element here because top of my head I just don't recall salvo dispersion pattern sizes at top range for battleships of the era. I'm sure that data exists somewhere, but I just don't recall specifics about it. If you have any source citing those we can take a look and see exactly how bad (or nonexistant, depending on the case) the dispersion problem would be at max ranges. IT certainly didn't look like anything serious for Yamato off Samar, that's for sure, and all accounts about the battle of Jutland mention that dispersions achieved by both british and germans were far too narrow, for the detriment of both sides (as with wider patterns more hits would've probably been achieved). Keeping in mind Jutland happened at 20-15km for the most part, that doesn't really seem like promising huge dispersion patterns at 30km or beyond. But as I said I'm out of my element so I won't go any further than speculation - until we find some hard data to look at and to comment on :). No, I was not aware of that. I know the italians launched a few floatplanes more or less at the same time the first reports of contacts were radioed from the scouting italian ships. I also know they didn't get anything done. I do remember that at least one british cruiser had to dump her floatplane off the board because (seems a recurring theme, doesn't it? ;)) a hit had set it aflame. I do remember Formidable was around and some british planes were around, but top of my head none of them were spotting. And I remember one of the british battleships shooting wide for most of the engagement as she was incorrectly spotting some other battleship's fall of shot (which doesn't really point at any kind of "spotting" done by aircraft, to be honest) But I don't remember reading anywhere that any british floatplane was doing any kind of "correction of fall of shot" during Punta Stilo. In fact a book I have, which is specifically about the history of floatplanes and their use by all the warring nations of WW2 makes absolutely no citation of something like that (I've just checked it), even while that should be one of the obvious highlights achieved by those planes. Where does that info come from? O.o

That's my experience too. I did design a couple 8x11'' ships with predreadnought hulls (using four single wing turrets and being very creative about their placement) When I saw the accuracy penalties I got really discouraged about further going down that route XD