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Why are the numbers for smoke interference for towers and funnels not equal? If my tower has -31 smoke interference and I add a funnel with +15 smoke interference I end up with +25 smoke interference on my ship design. That makes no sense. If the tower has -31 smoke interference then adding a funnel with +15 smoke should result in -16 Smoke interference on the ship statistics. Please make the numbers equivalent.

Id like there to be no upper or lower, especially lower limit on the armor for ships. This is especially needed on heavy cruisers or certain BBs and BCs. Some ships historically had lower armor due to treaty restrictions or the need to maximize certain other traits. Things like the Kongo cant really be replicated easily. Or certain heavy cruisers like the Pensacola or Furutaka only have 76mm belts which isnt allowed on Heavys.

Hi all! After leaving my feedback regarding the Ship Designer - in my opinion the most interesting and unique selling proposition of the game - in multiple threads I decided to write up a summary of what I would like to see. The whole thing is aiming to improve flexibility and create more interesting (and less repetitive 😞 ) Designs! As a Start I would expand on what we can do on the Hull! These steps are marked as H1 to H11: H1. Hull Selection Fewer hulls needed as the hull itself becomes part of the design process. Example: tumblehome, pre-dreadnought, dreadnought, fast battleship. Each hull comes with a tonnage restriction (eg. something like 20.000 - 50.000 t for dreadnoughts, 30.000 - 100.000 t for fast BBs, etc.). H2. Tonnage Slider As today but instead of simply lengthening the hull it would make the hull bigger in the whole (lenght, beam and draft) -> scale in all dimensions instead of just lengthening H3. Lenght-to-Beam Slider Change the hull form within the tonnage. Has impact on seakeeping, speed, turning, accelaration, stability, etc. H4. Freeboard Slider (UPDATED) Has an influence on stability, buoyoncy and target size (hit propbability of the enemy). Alternatively a simple high / medium / low option as proposed by @Cpt.Hissy . For me it is important that this is represented in 3d meaning a „low“ freeboard ship would sit deep in the water. H5. Speed Slider Desired top speed as today. Determines needed power output. H6. Selection Bow-Section The bow has influence on seakeeping, speed, stability, etc. and is visually represented in the 3d model. - Ram pronounced - dreadnought bow - straight bow - slight positive - pronounced positive / clipper bow H7. Selection Stern-Section The stern has influence on seakeeping, speed, stability, etc. and is visually represented in the 3d model. - cruiser - round - transom H8. Selection Flush deck or step? (UPDATED) Possibility to add: - Forecastle - step - or flush deck As @Cpt.Hissy mentioned, maybe there are better ways to achieve that. But in general iT would be good to shape generally the form, and decide if you want a step in the deck, a forecastle or just a flush deck. H9. Selection Propulsion As today (triple expansion, turbines, diesel, etc.). H10. Place machinery Spaces Machinery space volume required based on all above criteria is calculated and represented as a couple of slices of the hull which can be moved fore / aft to be placed within the ship. These could be split up or placed next to each other, eg. in the center. Machinery spaces will not allow centreline primary guns over them. I would suggest to allow "side" primary gun turrets over machinery space though. Funnels can only be placed over machinery spaces. There should be a couple of seperate sections of these to be placed, eg. three. Machinery Space Section marked yellow (red means no placement of primary guns at the very ends of the ship). H11. The osther selection boxes could mostly remain as they are in my opinion. However - I don't like the "Bulkheads" Slider at all! It is simply a matter of "the-more-the-merrier" thing. I would replace it with some selection box potentially like the one for double bottom. General remark to the Armor: I am one of the few who don't mind the armnor settings through thickness on certain parst. However there is currently an issue how the program determines "main belt" - it is the center three sections of the ship regardless of what's inside. I would propose a dynamic "main belt" calculation based on the first main gun or main gun barbette and the last one and including all the machinery spaces. Once the hull is defined we can come to the modules which are currently added in the center section in the lower part of the designer. To give the player the possibility to create much more diverse designs the current modules are split up into more granular categories - named M1 to M7: M1. Casemate Deck (UPDATED) Possibility to add an additional deck below the actual superstructure. As mentioned by @Cpt.Hissy a few predefined models would most likely suffice here. It would be great though if the length of the deck could be changed to create longer or shorter ones and if Barbettes could „snap“ into the very ends of the deck (same for the step in the deck btw). M2. Bridge Module Lower half of the current "main tower" module. This module includes basic fire control, damage control, spotting, etc. values M3. Mast Module On top of the bridge we would put a mast which provides different bonuses to the bridge base values - Spotting top (mostly spotting bonusses) - Tripod Mast (spotting and long range accuracy) - Pole mast (spotting and long range accuracy) - plus some more modern masts, such as the thick Bismarck mast, the Dunkerque mast, etc. as stylish elements (spotting and long range accuracy) M4. Rear Tower Module Mostly like today but it must be easier to combine them with other modules, eg. smaller modules M5. Funnel Module (UPDATED) We certainly need more funnely, bigger funnels and so on! But most importantly I want to place funnels ANYWHERE over the machinery spaces and on the superstructure and casemate deck over machinery spaces. And we need these thick trunked funnels and such 🙂 Edit: after thinking about it again and reading the comments I think every machinery section should have their own funnels. So the program should allow for placing funnels anywhere over the machinery spaces. Funnels should „cut“ through casemate decks and bridge structures if possible — with some exceptions like the coming tower part. M6. Main Guns and Barbettes With all of the above it become easy: you can place main guns and mnain gun barbettes ANYWHERE on the ship - safe bow and stern and machinery spaces for centerline armament. I would propose to allow side mounted main guns over machinery spaces to simulate that they sit to the side of the engines, boilers and such. Plus: make it so barbettes are represented in the correct size in the 3d model which should be relatively simple to do as the program knows the turret ring size - as proposed by @SonicB M7. Secondary guns and Barbettes Secondary Guns should be able to be places ANYWHERE safe the very bow and stern section. It would be awesome if placing such guns could "CUT" into the casemate deck if placed there. No idea how difficult that would be to do. AI Designs: we discussed multiple times that the AI needs support to avoid these "Clown Car" Designs - well for them just put a couple of hardpoints and presets in the background - but leave the players the freedom! Thanks all for reading and hope you like it!

I have felt for a while that the tonnage cost for certain capabilities are to light in the game so I set out to document what I could find. So I set out to work on this a bit and see what happens. Here is my methodology. I am going to hold all factors but one (armor, main guns, speed) constant. I will build a baseline design and then will see what I can get done on additional tonnage if available. I want to see what the system seems to think is a necessary tonnage to replicate historical hulls, what the SHP is for the design and go from there. All I am looking at here is the relationship between armor, speed and armament and how the three drive displacement. I am looking to determine if I feel like you get a reasonable amount of additional capability for the increased displacement. I am not looking at systems, particulars of gun performance or armor performance at this point. I am going to do this stuff in a series for which this is the first post. First Baseline My first baseline ship is a reasonable facsimile of the North Carolina/South Dakota type fast battleships. I am using 1940 hulls for the US using Modern Battleship Hull 1. I don't have enough secondary guns because the superstructure is a bit odd but we are close enough for our purposes. Ship does 27 knots on 131,000 SHP and weighs 48,630 tons. I would say we are about 10% heavy and as a result we need about 10% more SHP than historical (45,000 tons loaded and 121,000-130,000 SHP historically). We are closer to a South Dakota Class but it works. Speed Adjustments So the first set of adjustments we are going to make would be speed changes. What does it cost us to buy 6 more knots of speed? Historically the Iowa was pretty much the answer to that question for these ships. Its an extended hull South Dakota effectively and that extension and added weight bought 6 knots and longer main guns. So we are at 54,130 tons and 242,000 SHP. The weight seems light (Iowa was 58,460 tons loaded) and only had 212,000 SHP so we are running light but oddly need more SHP to make the speed. So things start to get a little wonky. Indeed if I push the weight of this hull as close as I can get to Iowa's actually displacement (57,500 tons game) the system will let me install 300,000 SHP and make an absurd speed of 35 knots. Speed Conclusion Overall I think the game is handling speed fairly ok (SHP is a bit high for each given weight but doesn't get bonkers until you go to unrealistic speeds). If you capped SHP at some total (higher than historical unless you reprofile the calculations in the system) I think that would clear out the unrealistically fast and large ships at least with this model making it appear workable to me. Gun Adjustments So going back to the first baseline we are now going to adjust the main armament and see what happens. To go to 18 inch guns it cost me about 11,000 tons (I am around 56,000 tons) to make it all work. This is with no additional armor or speed. Is this a reasonable number is my next question...well the best I can come up with is maybe. It would be a very odd ship in that it would not be protected against its own guns really at all. But I think in theory it could be done. The ship would just be a very odd combination of not really being a fast battleship and not really being a ship designed to take a pounding either. I can just about fit another 3 gun 16 inch turret on there but I have to lose the the tower for the 5 inch gun aft of the superstructure. Gun Conclusion On this particular hull I think the guns are largely driving correct displacement requirements for the hull. It is close enough for the purpose intended. Keeping all else the same I could either get another turret and keep the same speed or I could get 18 inch guns for 11,000 more tons displacement. That seems reasonable to me. Armor Adjustments My adjustment from the first ship is to bump the armor up to levels you don't really see on ship this size more in line with a Yamato type. 16 inch belt, 8 inch deck, 8 inch turret top, 20 inch turret faces. I can clip this in under my 57,500 cap by sticking with the original guns and speed. Armor Conclusion The armor I can put on seems reasonable. Basically from the baseline ship I could up armor it to a Yamato, up gun it to a Yamato or up its speed to an Iowa. These strike me as reasonable compromises for this hull. Overall Conclusion Within this one hull I think that the changes the design system forces on you are pretty reasonable. I have stated and will continue to state that SHP should be somewhat limited to prevent some of the absurd speeds we see. Otherwise I think the choices can and should make for unique ships if proper limits are set on the AI as far as making it choose proper baseline technology across the other categories (enough bulkheads, double bottoms, TDS ect) so it isn't way out to left field. I have to say I was surprised at how well it did. Having done this I am going to compare it first to some other US hulls that allow more displacement and see if the system breaks down on the extremes (based on the game I expect it does but am doubting my conclusions now that I did this). I plan to look at the other two modern US battleship hulls and see how they work out. I am then going to look at British hulls from the 1910's or so and see how the battleships and battlecruisers compare. At this moment I would have to say I think the developers are on the right track more than I thought from casual impression. Ships seem to run a bit heavy which makes SHP run a bit higher than historical. That seems an easy fix or simply something we can overlook as long as its balanced. The only real hard recommendations I would make that I do think need to be here is some sort of cap on overall SHP. With that in place I think I would feel very comfortable that what the system is spitting out on this one particular hull is pretty reasonable across the range of options. Next Installment Will in the next couple days be taking a look at if things break down at the extreme when you have a lot more ship displacement to work with than anyone historically put to sea. Based on in game experience I don't expect to see reasonable numbers on the very large hulls but I am open to being surprised again.

Ok look at this picture. You see the AA guns on top of the turret. I think this will be pretty good to have in the game especially if Aircraft Carriers become a thing. I think the way it should be is guns from 2inch to 3inch and should be able to be placed on top of turrets from 6inch all the way up to 20inch. The amount of turrets the can be placed on the the larger one depends on how big it is. Suppose you have a 20inch gun then you can place three or four 2inch guns on top and if you a 15inch or 16inch gun you can place two 2inch guns. With this you can add a lot more guns with out cluttering the deck of a ship. But this is my opinion what do you guys think?

If this doesn't make sense allow me: the Scharnhorst class had 3x11in gun turrets. These were planned to be replaced with the 2x15in gun turrets which would be used on Bismark and Tirpitz. Same turret ring size. Try doing this ingame. Yeah... why this is a necesary alteration should be self explanatory. So turrets should go Barbette ring>gun caliber>barrel number. Too many barrels in too small a turret? Accuracy and RoF penalties. Length of the guns should also be taken into consideration, not just the bore diameter.

While designing my ships it happens from time to time that somehow I end up accidentally picking up placed components. This is particualrly annoying if said components are rotated, placed on the finer grid or have other stuff on them. What I would suggest is a lock-mode of sorts. When it's active, you can not change any already placed components and only add new ones. This could be switched on and off either via a check-box in the interface or with a dedicated toggle-key accompanied with a UI element that shows whether you are currently in lock mode or not. There's plenty of room for such an indicator at the top left and right of Exit and Launch respectively. As a bonus this mode might allow to rotate turrets and launchers in place, which would make the rotating process potentially easier.

Just 2 simple questions. What do you want the ship designer to be like in the future? (For example, how restrictive do you want part placement to be) And do you feel like the designer will be updated anytime in the near future? For me personally I would want complete freedom for where stuff can be placed on a hull. I could see some players who play this game for more of its realism not being a fan of that so maybe make a setting that controls how much restrictive it is on placing stuff. Sorry for any poor grammar or spelling.