>>>Combat Feedback<<<

[RAMJB]

On 4/15/2020 at 7:34 AM, Steeltrap said:

My recollection is her TDS succeeded in preventing any damage making it through the armour scheme inboard of the TDS. In other words, the TDS area flooded, but nothing else. Isn't that more or less the definition of a successful TDS?

Circunstancial.

Registered and confirmed torpedo hits on Bismarck were three aerial torpedoes from Swordfish planes, and couple from Dorsetshire when she was on her last gasps and sinking. Rodney claimed a torpedo hit on Bismarck, but this was never confirmed and most sources consider it highly unlikely.

Now, two of the three aerial torpedo hits did strike Bismarck's TDS and the TDS contained the blasts. Nothing inordinarily unexpected here, Swordfish torpedoes were 18'' units with quite small warheads and extremely limited ability to do much to any modern battleship TDS other than causing flooding on the void spaces of the TDS (and forcing according counterflooding to keep the list neutral). The surprise here would've been that those torpedoes would actually do something to her, given their very limited damaging potential. So that Bismarck's TDS held them is no proof of it being excellent - it's proof that it wasn't desperately flawed.

the third swordfish torpedo hit happened on the rudders, well out of the TDS and with well known results. None of it is relevant at the time of discussing Bismarck's TDS system.


Now, to Dorsetshire's impacts. Those were straight up 21'' naval torpedoes with quite large warheads and had Bismarck's TDS held against them well, it'd been proof of a good quality TDS indeed.
The problem is that those impacts didn't happen on the TDS. By the time they hit the german warship Bismarck was already more than decks awash, she had parts of her deck already submerged as she was listing. There's this famous drawing of the known damage suffered by Bismarck by the time she sank, produced out of eyewitness accounts and the expeditions to her wreck:

 

 

It's impossible to not notice the gaping holes on her port side more or less at the same placement of her catapult. Reportedly those gaping holes were the result of Dorsetshire's torpedo hits hitting the already underwater deck of the by that time heavily listing ship.

Which obviously means those hits didn't happen on the TDS. Which also means Bismarck's TDS couldn't hold  their effects, and which means whatever damage those 21'' torpedoes did has nothing to do with how good or bad that TDS was.


In pure engineering terms the Bismarck class battleships had exactly the same TDS the Twins had, only as deeper as Bismarck's bigger beam would allow. Of course more depth meant a better TDS but the problem is that the starting point was not a good one. Scharnhorst class' underwater protection system was mediocre at best, as the torpedo and mine impacts the ships of the class suffered proved (acasta's hit caused 2500 tons of flooding on her own hitting straight into said TDS and jammed a turret, as mentioned avobe, but it also destroyed one shaft, threw another one out of line and sent her to the repair dock for six months, just to name one instance - not a good performance by any reasonable measurement).

Bismarck had a better (deeper) TDS, but keeping in mind how innefective that layout proved to be on Scharnhorst, I wouldn't hold a candle for it to do THAT much better than Scharnhorst or Gneisenau did when they suffered underwater damage. Better, for sure...but MUCH better, unlikely. And the Twins were quite bad in that regard, as I already mentioned.

Edited May 2, 2020 by RAMJB

[madham82]

5 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Yet there are multiple instances of big battleships ordering the flooding of their own magazines to cancel out the danger of a magazine going off due to a torpedo impact. One famous instance was Scharnhorst when she was hit by Acasta; the blast not only caused extensive flooding but jammed Caesar and produced a lot of smoke. The crew feared something had caught fire and the order was issued to preventively flood the turret's magazine because of the risk of detonation. Though it was reversed shortly thereafter when it was certified no fire was ongoing.

Unlike many opinions seen around here ,a magazine going off due to the damage caused by a torpedo hit was a real threat and possibility, even in big ships with big torpedo defence systems. Was it likely?. On ships with big beams and good enough TDSs it wouldn't be likely, no. Was it possible even then?. Certainly it was.

 

Go back and read the many posts about this. The very fact they flood a magazine after a hit is a secondary fire caused by the hit is the danger (i.e. HMS Barham). The game does not simulate this period. It simulates a catastrophic magazine explosion occurring at the same time as the torpedo hits. That's a factor of damage control, not torpedo protection. 

Magazine explosion caused by fire should be simulated. 

[DarkMaid]

Can we mount medieval catapults? Because I think those would hit better at close range than modern naval artillery (they could keep them in armored lockers and the crew could roll them out when ranges get to <1 km).  Obviously I'm being facetious but the (lack of) accuracy due to a certain accumulation of factors becomes comically bizarre at times. For example:

Mission: Prove  Your Might
Option: Main Guns & Fire Control

In this mission you are a British BC trying to sink the equivalent of the Bismarck & Prinz Eugen while defending your convoy. You also get a couple of destroyers (that are usually useless because their torp range is rarely over 9 km).

So for this battle except for a couple of early salvos fired at the battleship at >20 km I headed bow on towards the accompanying cruiser firing at it with two triple 17" Mark III turrets. (It's a tactical decision whether to just ignore the cruiser and concentrate on the BB or you can spend a bit of time eliminating a relatively squishier target so that you aren't peppered with 8 or 9" guns the whole time not to mention torpedoes. I've done both approaches in previous tries in this mission). Anyway, leaving that aside, during the whole time it took my ship to get to point blank range (0.9 km) I hit this enemy CA the grand total of TWICE for any decent damage (not counting a few bounces/non-pens). The enemy cruiser was not some 46 kt destroyer zig zagging around under smoke, it was a big CA doing around 26 kts (its top speed is listed as 34 kts) and most of the time presenting a broadside target. 

I did not have the best towers but as far as bonus go there wasn't a whole lot of improvement and I needed to trim the weight or cost down for that particular design. I did have Radar 2 , Stereoscopic V, Oil fuel. When the range got to about 7 km I did lose my front tower (red damage) and it was yellow damaged before that.

Looking at Shoot Info, specifically the red numbers:

-15% 3 barrel Turret tech -- normal for all 3 gun turrets

-25% Fire Control Damage -- front tower become red damaged at about 7 km to target (doesn't explain not getting more than 2 hits before that)

-7.7% Hull Stability & Tower -- ship was level with normal pitch. Ship was balanced for weight (< 1% fore or aft offset).

-22% Target fast speed -- enemy was doing about 24 kts. Seems realistic I guess.

-68% Target maneuver -- enemy was making a very sharp turn; I think the ai was trying to make use of loaded torpedo launchers on its disengaged side. Again, for most of the engagement it was steaming in a straight line broadsides on. As I got much closer it started turning to make use of its torpedo launchers.

-49.6 Damage instability -- I had zero flooding. I don't get this one at all. My ship was trimmed with no roll.

Personal comments:

1) Central fire control and radar should only be a big deal at longer ranges for noting fall of shot (short, longs, straddles). As ranges get down to under 10 km losing central fire control should not be as large a factor as it appears to be made out in this game. Turrets had their own rangefinders to fall back on if central gunnery control was knocked out and at short ranges (frozen rope trajectory) as long as the turret could be made to bear it should be over 50% to get a hit WORST CASE at that range (900m) or about 2.5 ship lengths away.

2) Damage instability. As noted I don't know what this is. I had no flooding; ship was level in all directions. -49% clearly it's meant to simulate something important that is affecting gunnery that isn't already covered by some other factor.

3) Target fast speed and maneuver. Together it added up to -90%. Against that there is a +91.8% Target ship size positive factor. So that evens out? But most of the time the enemy CA was steaming in a straight line broadsides on and I still only got a couple hits. "Speed tanking" also seems to be a bit of an issue in decreasing hits more than should be expected. Remember that most salvos are going to be a group of 4 or 5 shells (assuming broadside firing situation) spread in a pattern so it's not about "dodging" one shell but a group of shells. Fire control's job is to get the shells close to where the target will be and after that it's the number of shells in the salvo that up the percentage of a hit or two. That's one of the points about all-big-gun, uniform caliber ships that made long range firing viable: it wasn't two or four shells landing plus all the medium and small caliber splashes, it was that group of five or six of identical ballistics shells that really upped the chances of a hit and allowed centrally controlled gunnery from a tower position rather than every gun crew doing their own spotting.

Anyway, please take this as constructive critique. Maybe there needs to be some "reality check" final equation or something because looking at the screen shot I can't believe 12% to-hit chance: is that per gun? Shoot info also lists salvo hit (any of 6): 53.4% and Half-salvo hit (3 of 6): 5.2%. Watching my 6 gun salvos sail over or land anywhere BUT the target was surreal. Truly a medieval siege engine would do a better job (if it wasn't for all the shrapnel flying around). Golf clubs? Tom Sawyer's slingshot?

Tbh it shouldn't even get to this point in daylight with 1940's tech. It's not 1866 or even 1896. The curve for hits landed as ranges approach 10 km or so should get so severe that ships would have their guns knocked out long before this (or their powerplant or magazines destroyed by penetrating hits since no belt armor would suffice other than possible deflections).

Edited May 4, 2020 by DarkMaid

[Steeltrap]

On 5/2/2020 at 6:54 PM, RAMJB said:

Unlike many opinions seen around here ,a magazine going off due to the damage caused by a torpedo hit was a real threat and possibility, even in big ships with big torpedo defence systems. Was it likely?. On ships with big beams and good enough TDSs it wouldn't be likely, no. Was it possible even then?. Certainly it was.

 

On 5/3/2020 at 12:14 AM, madham82 said:

The very fact they flood a magazine after a hit is a secondary fire caused by the hit is the danger (i.e. HMS Barham). The game does not simulate this period. It simulates a catastrophic magazine explosion occurring at the same time as the torpedo hits. That's a factor of damage control, not torpedo protection. 

Magazine explosion caused by fire should be simulated. 

As I pointed out, I found ONE example from WW1 where this happened to a pre-dread BB as the game portrays it, namely torpedo hits, magazine explodes, ship is usually sunk. Not aware of it happening to any other example of a BB class, and indeed my reading suggested that mines proved more dangerous in general terms (not that I'm for one second suggesting torpedoes weren't devastating and something naval architects, naval high commands and sea-going captains rightly had fits about).

What @madham82 said is really the issue here.

It's not that damage resulting from a torp hit may lead to flooding of the magazine, as the example you gave illustrated, it's the fact the game simply treats it as an instant effect. Again, as I pointed out, it's the torpedo equivalent of hitting a magazine outside the armoured citadel as can be seen frequently under the right circumstances as the armour model is incomplete.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Steeltrap
typo

[Latur Husky]

On 5/3/2020 at 8:56 PM, DarkMaid said:

 

Personal comments:

1) Central fire control and radar should only be a big deal at longer ranges for noting fall of shot (short, longs, straddles). As ranges get down to under 10 km losing central fire control should not be as large a factor as it appears to be made out in this game. Turrets had their own rangefinders to fall back on if central gunnery control was knocked out and at short ranges (frozen rope trajectory) as long as the turret could be made to bear it should be over 50% to get a hit WORST CASE at that range (900m) or about 2.5 ship lengths away.

2) Damage instability. As noted I don't know what this is. I had no flooding; ship was level in all directions. -49% clearly it's meant to simulate something important that is affecting gunnery that isn't already covered by some other factor.

3) Target fast speed and maneuver. Together it added up to -90%. Against that there is a +91.8% Target ship size positive factor. So that evens out? But most of the time the enemy CA was steaming in a straight line broadsides on and I still only got a couple hits. "Speed tanking" also seems to be a bit of an issue in decreasing hits more than should be expected. Remember that most salvos are going to be a group of 4 or 5 shells (assuming broadside firing situation) spread in a pattern so it's not about "dodging" one shell but a group of shells. Fire control's job is to get the shells close to where the target will be and after that it's the number of shells in the salvo that up the percentage of a hit or two. That's one of the points about all-big-gun, uniform caliber ships that made long range firing viable: it wasn't two or four shells landing plus all the medium and small caliber splashes, it was that group of five or six of identical ballistics shells that really upped the chances of a hit and allowed centrally controlled gunnery from a tower position rather than every gun crew doing their own spotting.

1. True, at small ranges FCS shouldn't matter, but it should affect long range accuracy for stereoscopic and medium for the other one. Ranges of below 5 maybe 7.5km should not be affected at all by loss of FCS at least for some gun calibers and tech levels.

2. Your ship was on roughly 30% structure, XD I guess that's your damage instability.

3. I think at the moment each time you fire you get separate chance for each gun as you can't decide on fire mode i.e salvo or gradual.

 

[Hangar18]

On 5/2/2020 at 10:14 AM, madham82 said:

Go back and read the many posts about this. The very fact they flood a magazine after a hit is a secondary fire caused by the hit is the danger (i.e. HMS Barham). The game does not simulate this period. It simulates a catastrophic magazine explosion occurring at the same time as the torpedo hits. That's a factor of damage control, not torpedo protection. 

Magazine explosion caused by fire should be simulated. 

check the new patch notes.

[madham82]

18 minutes ago, Hangar18 said:

check the new patch notes.

Oh yea saw it shortly after Nick posted it. Was very unexpected to see it implemented so quickly. They also did some rebalancing to torpedo detonations. Looking forward to testing out all the new fixes/features. 

[KtBear]

"Meet the American battleships" it said. Built a ship with 12x18" guns, as you do. Crammed in the autoloader, level two radar, the best (read only) superstructure, 18" armour on the turrets and conningtower and sailed forth. Got hit by the second enemy salvo before my crew even figured out where the enemy was and returned fire. Got hit by 61 enemy 18" shells and eleven 8" shells and sank. Not bad for a ship with only 8x18" guns, with an 80% chance to hit mind you. The end. The reason I write, "The end" there is because my ship failed to hit the enemy, even once. I guess a 3% chance to hit will do that to you. Working as intended, right?

[Cptbarney]

5 hours ago, KtBear said:

"Meet the American battleships" it said. Built a ship with 12x18" guns, as you do. Crammed in the autoloader, level two radar, the best (read only) superstructure, 18" armour on the turrets and conningtower and sailed forth. Got hit by the second enemy salvo before my crew even figured out where the enemy was and returned fire. Got hit by 61 enemy 18" shells and eleven 8" shells and sank. Not bad for a ship with only 8x18" guns, with an 80% chance to hit mind you. The end. The reason I write, "The end" there is because my ship failed to hit the enemy, even once. I guess a 3% chance to hit will do that to you. Working as intended, right?

18inch armour on the conningtower? what was your belt deck and extended? sounds like you made a ship of a paper. Can we have images of your ships so we can see what is actually wrong?

[Shaftoe]

16 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

18inch armour on the conningtower? what was your belt deck and extended? sounds like you made a ship of a paper. Can we have images of your ships so we can see what is actually wrong?

A paper ship carrying a very heavy and very large thick metal pipe. Lol.

[DerRichtigeArzt]

2 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

18inch armour on the conningtower? what was your belt deck and extended? sounds like you made a ship of a paper. Can we have images of your ships so we can see what is actually wrong?

Conning tower does not take that much weight so 18 inch is not hard to get. Honestly I think that big guns can penetrate too much armor and small guns penetrate too little. Iowa had an invunrebility range from 10km to 15k from its own guns I think tho it may have been some other ship. In game its impossible to do with the armor values and penetration values. Tho it is still better than what we had in alpha 2 and 3 when ap was useless. It's gonna be hard to balance but I bet the devs will find a way. 

[BeachedWhale]

Hey devs!  I love the game so far!  Can't wait to play it after release when it's polished!

So far, I only have a couple things to mention:

First, the ironclad mission with the Merrimac/Virginia.  It's impossible to destroy both Monitors in the time allowed.  I can destroy one, but I barely get to the second one before time is up.  The Monitor mission is perfect because you build one Monitor to fight the Virginia.  If you're going for a historic accuracy for the Virginia (Battle of Hampton Roads), there should only be one Monitor.

Second, the mission where you protect two transports with one battleship, two heavy cruisers, or three light cruisers.  I've played this mission using all three ship classes and a wide range of loadouts.  I haven't been able to sink a single cruiser before they sink the transports.  The moment the transports are sighted the enemy cruisers fire only at them, and they never seem to miss.

That's all I've got so far.  Keep up the good work!

- BW

[ThatOneBounced]

Some good news.

Recently did a Falkland island inspired battle with 1915 tech. I found my battlecruisers (using 13in guns) and when switching to HE shells against a Armored cruiser around 8 kilometers away, shots were 80% less effective than AP shells.Shells would not pen even a 8in at most armored cruiser. perhaps at least at WW1 era tech the balance between shells has finally been implemented as HE spam was way less efficient in this action even against opponents of smaller size.  

[admiralsnackbar]

I was replaying the destroyers vs torpedo boats mission and I noticed that at the ranges the destroyer guns were effective, even a 2 inch, liddite I, light HE shell, would overpenetrate a torpedo boat hull. 

[Latur Husky]

On 5/12/2020 at 6:00 PM, BeachedWhale said:

Hey devs!  I love the game so far!  Can't wait to play it after release when it's polished!

So far, I only have a couple things to mention:

First, the ironclad mission with the Merrimac/Virginia.  It's impossible to destroy both Monitors in the time allowed.  I can destroy one, but I barely get to the second one before time is up.  The Monitor mission is perfect because you build one Monitor to fight the Virginia.  If you're going for a historic accuracy for the Virginia (Battle of Hampton Roads), there should only be one Monitor.

Second, the mission where you protect two transports with one battleship, two heavy cruisers, or three light cruisers.  I've played this mission using all three ship classes and a wide range of loadouts.  I haven't been able to sink a single cruiser before they sink the transports.  The moment the transports are sighted the enemy cruisers fire only at them, and they never seem to miss.

That's all I've got so far.  Keep up the good work!

- BW

All those missions are doable one way or another   

Unless something have changed.

Videos in spoiler section.

 

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by Latur Husky

[Xenol]

Now, to me the combat aspect of this game was of secondary interest to the building phase – after all the unique construction aspect is what sets this game apart from its competitors. Because of this, I can look at this aspect of the game with less preconceptions and perhaps can review it with more fairness. (My thoughts on construction can be seen here)

 

I am going to start by saying that I am still very much a novice at the combat part of the game. Although I have sampled a fair number of the missions, my success rate has been very low. Therefore I am going to focus most my comments on the UI, since I do not feel competent enough to critique the actual mechanics of fighting at this point.

 

My first comment actually comes before a mission even starts. You are given a screen which tells you the makeup of both your and the enemy’s fleets. Ideally I would like to be able to adjust my divisions before the mission actually starts. Say I have 4 battleships and I want to put them into 2 divisions; currently I must load the mission, pause, then go through the rather clunky system of changing things about.

 

On the topic of pausing, I found myself instinctively hitting the space-bar to stop the action. I don’t know if this is just because of years using video and audio editing software though. Just seemed the most intuitive bind to me!

 

I personally found the division controls at the bottom pretty unintuitive during gameplay. My natural instinct when I wanted to — say — detach a ship or add to another division — was to right-click on its icon, which instead changed its course. I would suggest potentially removing the separate icon, and consolidating those controls in a right-click popup menu. (mockup below)

A further optimisation could be the ability to simply click and drag a ship’s icon between divisions. Anyone who has used a software like photoshop would be familiar with this, like you are sorting layers.

These are my initial thoughts regarding the combat section. Once I have played a bit more I shall make some more comments. I will say, there does seem an unfair bias against the player in some scenarios. There’s been missions where I’ll pause almost as soon as I load in, and the enemy will already have shells in the air, before I have a chance to target them or my turrets can traverse. In another situation I spawned with an enemy torpedo boat a few hundred metres away who immediately launched a salvo of torps into my flank sinking me, giving me no opportunity to manoeuvre whatsoever.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Xenol

[ThatOneBounced]

2 hours ago, Xenol said:

Now, to me the combat aspect of this game was of secondary interest to the building phase – after all the unique construction aspect is what sets this game apart from its competitors. Because of this, I came into the game with less preconceptions and perhaps can review it with more fairness. (My thoughts on construction can be seen here)

 

I am going to start by saying that I am still very much a novice at the combat part of the game. Although I have sampled a fair number of the missions, my success rate has been very low. Therefore I am going to focus most my comments on the UI, since I do not feel competent enough to critique the actual mechanics of fighting at this point.

 

My first comment actually comes before a mission even starts. You are given a screen which tells you the makeup of both your and the enemy’s fleets. Ideally I would like to be able to adjust my divisions before the mission actually starts. Say I have 4 battleships and I want to put them into 2 divisions; currently I must load the mission, pause, then go through the rather clunky system of changing things about.

 

On the topic of pausing, I found myself instinctively hitting the space-bar to stop the action. I don’t know if this is just because of years using video and audio editing software though. Just seemed the most intuitive bind to me!

 

I personally found the division controls at the bottom pretty unintuitive during gameplay. My natural instinct when I wanted to — say — detach a ship or add to another division — was to right-click on its icon, which instead changed its course. I would suggest potentially removing the separate icon, and consolidating those controls in a right-click popup menu. (mockup below)

A further optimisation could be the ability to simply click and drag a ship’s icon between divisions. Anyone who has used a software like photoshop would be familiar with this, like you are sorting layers.

These are my initial thoughts regarding the combat section. Once I have played a bit more I shall make some more comments. I will say, there does seem an unfair bias against the player in some scenarios. There’s been missions where I’ll pause almost as soon as I load in, and the enemy will already have shells in the air, before I have a chance to target them or my turrets can traverse. In another situation I spawned with an enemy torpedo boat a few hundred metres away who immediately launched a salvo of torps into my flank sinking me, giving me no opportunity to manoeuvre whatsoever.

Absolutely love this idea!

[roachbeef]

Once a ship lists severely enough, I feel like guns should not be able to fire if their elevation cannot counteract the list.

See this enemy BB firing 15" guns even though visually they will be shooting at a point about 20 yards away from the ship.

[Somhairle]

I had one the other day fire with it's aft turret completely submerged. 😅🤦‍♂️

[IronKaputt]

3 hours ago, roachbeef said:

Once a ship lists severely enough, I feel like guns should not be able to fire if their elevation cannot counteract the list.

See this enemy BB firing 15" guns even though visually they will be shooting at a point about 20 yards away from the ship.

Counterflood mechanics is very much needed indeed.

Also flooding against flash fire.

[madham82]

12 hours ago, IronKaputt said:

Counterflood mechanics is very much needed indeed.

Also flooding against flash fire.

No need for counter flood to be modeled when the float percentage is supposed to represent this, but there should be something about list being used to disallow firing of the guns if the list is too great to maintain the firing angle. No need to micromanage damage control by counter flooding sections manually. 

You wouldn't flood against a flash fire, since that would imply you knew you were going to be hit and experience a flash detonation. You are also basically rendering unusable large amounts of ammo when you do flood a magazine. What you are thinking of is flooding a magazine because there is a risk of fire reaching it. We aren't quite there yet with the damage modeling. Even still this wouldn't be something we would do manually, but the game simulate in the background maybe with a message and then ammo reduction:

"Forward magazine flooded due to fire risk"

They would need to do some big changes to below decks damage modeling to make it anything but a random event. 

[admiralsnackbar]

1. Magazines:
a. Is it realistic for ships to use ammo from the magazine of one turret to supply another turret? 

b. Is it realistic for ships with more guns per turret or torpedo tubes per launcher to have more total ammunition? My assumption would be that a triple gun turret would not necessarily have 1.5 times the ammunition that a double gun turret would have, because the turret size and magazine size isn't increasing proportionally. 

2. I have noticed that over penetrations of destroyers and torpedo boats are almost impossible to avoid, unless you hit the ship at very unusual angles. This seems reasonable if you're shooting high velocity armor piercing rounds at the target, but in some missions I have deliberately tried to engineer guns with the lowest penetration values possible, firing HE at targets, and still getting almost exclusively over penetrations. Does UAD have a Fuse-time mechanic? 

 

[IronKaputt]

4 hours ago, madham82 said:

No need for counter flood to be modeled when the float percentage is supposed to represent this, but there should be something about list being used to disallow firing of the guns if the list is too great to maintain the firing angle. No need to micromanage damage control by counter flooding sections manually. 

You're against doing it manually or agains the whole idea of counterflooding?
Trading some additional flood points for angles, lowering the whole ship, so we'll have something like this

 

instead of shells flying through the roof? Or am I missing something?

4 hours ago, madham82 said:

"Forward magazine flooded due to fire risk"

That's what I meant of course, not "Your ship won't explode if you sink her in advance".


 

Edited May 22, 2020 by IronKaputt

[IronKaputt]

2 hours ago, admiralsnackbar said:

1. Magazines:
a. Is it realistic for ships to use ammo from the magazine of one turret to supply another turret? 

Iowa-class seem to have such feature called Broadway. Would be great option for ship design indeed.

[disc]

 

2 hours ago, admiralsnackbar said:

1. Magazines:
a. Is it realistic for ships to use ammo from the magazine of one turret to supply another turret? 

1.a. Yes, ammunition could be transferred between magazines. This was sometimes done in battle, under duress. The process would probably be very slow and somewhat dangerous if the magazines were not immediately adjacent.

2 hours ago, admiralsnackbar said:

b. Is it realistic for ships with more guns per turret or torpedo tubes per launcher to have more total ammunition? My assumption would be that a triple gun turret would not necessarily have 1.5 times the ammunition that a double gun turret would have, because the turret size and magazine size isn't increasing proportionally. 

1.b. Typically a fixed minimum rounds-per-gun system was used. For example, 100 rounds per gun. A triple turret therefore required, and would have, a more voluminous magazine.

For torpedo tubes, it varied widely. After rebuilds, all the 10 and 8 gun Japanese heavy cruisers carried 24 torpedoes, even though some carried 16 torpedo tubes and the others 12. US destroyers usually carried 4 reload torpedoes, total, without regard to the number of tube launchers. Many other arrangements existed, especially for fixed or underwater launchers.

Edited May 22, 2020 by disc