Do you think we will see the "ridiculous" hull designs?

[Cdodders]

Can't be any more ridiculous than Submarine aircraft carriers or Submarine battleships

 

[WelshZeCorgi]

Maybe designing these impractical monstrosities can give small tech or industrial bonuses just for researching them. Building them can also give their own little tech/strategic bonuses, but the ship itself would be impractical and useless in actual combat. 

Edited January 10, 2020 by WelshZeCorgi

[akd]

In 1941, Lord Fraser, Controller of the Navy, requested a design study of a hybrid carrier based on the Lion-class hull:

Quote

The Director of Naval Gunnery's assessment was that "The functions and requirements of carriers and of surface gun platforms are entirely incompatible ... the conceptions of these designs ... is evidently the result of an unresolved contest between a conscious acceptance of aircraft and a subconscious desire for a 1914 Fleet ... these abortions are the results of a psychological maladjustment.

Pretty sure that is the 1941 equivalent of “that’s effing stupid dude.”

[Commodore Sandurz]

Every minute of development time spent on implementing unrealistic 120 thousand ton monstrosities is a minute that is not spent on other far more critical elements. Adding ships which would never have been constructed simply takes away from the development of those things which did exist or could have existed and are currently not implemented or could be implemented better.

 

On 12/28/2019 at 7:16 AM, Knobby said:

Every naval warfare enthusiast has at least once imagined what it would have been like if naval aviation had not developed like it did in real life, or what crazy ships we might have seen if the arms race had gone on longer without the london and washington treaties or WW2 to restrict or cut it short.

To comment on this bit specifically, I don't expect we would have seen any "crazy" ships without the treaties. I have seen a plot of the general trend of battleship tonnage increases over the years before the treaties, that then extrapolated that trend into a hypothetical no-treaties 1920s-1940s, and Yamato ended up fitting right on that trend. So Yamato is effectively a historical example of a treaty-less battleship. But as has been pointed out, it would still likely have been exceptional, just not by as great a margin as it was. Docking, canal and economic limitations would have likely capped most navies' largest battleships at around the 50 thousand ton mark. Eg. see the Royal Navy's late Lion design studies from the mid 40s and the RN imposing a 50 thousand ton limit there.

 

[RAMJB]

8 hours ago, Commodore Sandurz said:

So Yamato is effectively a historical example of a treaty-less battleship

Except for the fact that she'd been never built. Japan didn't have the resources (money, industrial capability) to complete what they actually intended to build in the first place. The WT saved them from either quitting the naval arms race and "lose face", or bankrupting themselves into oblivion if they kept their naval building program up as it was in 1922; let's not even think of them upscaling it with even larger ships of yamato size.

Ditto with the UK, a bankrupt nation after WW1 and one that had trouble completing the much humbler Nelsons with the very low (for the task they had) interwar navy budget they had to live on, let alone go wild with N3s and G3s, let MUCH MORE alone going wild with 65000 ton battleships.

The ony ones with a confirmed will to expand their navy like crazy AND the finantial, industrial, and shipbuilding, means to achieve their intended goal was the US Navy (and even then, they'd been strained to fullfit it). And the US Navy was NOT interested in battleships that size, as the story of the Tillman designs prove (designs complete to satisfize an, let's say, extravagant senator, but that the US Navy had absolutely no interest whatsoever in seeing completed).

Without the treaties naval construction would've grinded to a halt by the late 20s. You can't build what you can't pay for.

Edited January 14, 2020 by RAMJB

[Celtic]

As I mentioned in the wishlist thread, the ridiculous designs have their place in the game, simply because look at some of the real world pictures we have - the French Tumblehomes, the British fascination with turrets stacked like wedding cakes...all these designs that until we hit Dreadnought were being seriously considered, if not built.  I say bring them on, let us design our ridiculous Monitor style monstrosity. BUT make it so that it has the actual trade offs that such a design would incur.  Let me put a 12" twin turret on a raft, but make it capsize in all but the calmest sea - because at some point somebody either considered building it, or did build it - and it failed miserably. the beauty of a game is that I can be the one to try it, and try it in a shooting fight against an enemy without accidentally killing off 400 real sailors. 

[Marshall99]

This is a pretty ridiculous hull design. This ship functions like a real Dreadnought. All of the main guns can fire at a target, though only at a low angle. Anyway, this pre-dreadnought design is very competitive.

Main battety: 4x2 279mm

[RAMJB]

I ****NEED**** to see the stability ratings for that thing xDDDDDD

[Marshall99]

41 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

I ****NEED**** to see the stability ratings for that thing xDDDDDD

Super Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Marshall (Naval legends theme intensifies)

Specification of battleship Marshall:

Total displacement:16500t

Lenght: 155m

Beam: 24,3m

Draft: 13,4m

Main armament: 4x2 279mm

Secondary armament: 6x1 152mm; 22x1 102mm

Torpedo tubes: 7x1 18 inch submerged beam torpedo tubes

Armor: Belt: 330mm; Belt ext.: 220mm; Deck: 40mm; Deck ext.: 35mm; Conning tower: 330mm; Main battery: 60-300mm; Secondary artillery: 160mm

Power plant: Steam M-Exp.; Natural boilers (I love smoke stacks); Auxilary Engine I.

Top speed: 18 kn

Crusing Range: aprox.: 2-4000 nautical miles at a speed of 11 kn

 

[arkhangelsk]

I tried building something similar. The roll and pitch numbers look atrocious:

 

As for the actual, in-game effect ... well, it's probably still worth it - you are still more accurate than the enemy, and the extra guns means more chance to hit.

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by arkhangelsk
Recover quota by deleting attachments

[RAMJB]

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

[Evil4Zerggin]

So I was experimenting in Destroy a Full Fleet, thinking about how I could reduce Target Signature and improve my secondary power which I felt was a bit anemic. So I thought, what if instead of putting multiple big turrets on one ship, I put only one big turret on each of multiple ships, and used the rest of the centerline for secondaries? This resulted in Le Transperceneige:

Since all the secondaries were on the centerline, Roll was almost nothing, and even Pitch was quite reasonable. Sadly, it was again accuracy that ultimately prevented this plan from working out as well as I had hoped, since BC don't get very good towers compared to BBs, and ladder aiming might also go more slowly. Another major issue is that I would have liked to have had the big turret forward of the superstructure, but the front tower mounting points do not make this possible without making the ship wildly unbalanced, so I ended up with a midships turret firing close by the front tower. (As well as a train of secondaries---the 20" secondary armor would probably be more to protect against the ship's own 16" turret muzzle blast than against enemy fire!)

Edited January 18, 2020 by Evil4Zerggin