Shouldn't different gun groups share targeting information?

[goduranus]

I often see that small calibre guns would be locked on, while the large guns are still aiming. I am no expert in this matter, but I thought different gun batteries would targeting information, so once a single battery locks on, all guns on the ship would be able to lock on.

[Hellstrike]

Different guns are affected differently by conditions such as wind (shell size and weight) and the roll of the ship (centerline mounts for the main battery vs mounts near the sides for secondaries). You could obviously calculate the difference, but that would require knowledge of all the factors involved. And later on, you had seperate directors and fire control, so getting the information from one to the other would probably be a challange on its own (since there was no local network where you could transmit MB worth of data each second).

At point blank range, you could probably forego the ranging shots, but at longer distances, they are still necessary.

[Zak MacKay]

It would probably actually be the opposite with smaller guns making it harder to aim larger guns. Example is the pre dreadnoughts they started getting issues with telling which shots where the main battery and the secondaries. Which splash was from the 12"guns and which the 9.2"gun? So dreadnought ships had a uniform battery size so everything was the same.

Its not just range they need to compensate for things as they fly differently. A smaller shell may be blown more by the wind for example. Side mounted should probably have the same targeting as center line though.