Quadruple turrets and gun reload animations

[NuclearNadal]

Quadruple turrets as we all know are quite characteristic of the Dunkurque and Richelieu (je ne pe parle francais lol). In game currently the maximum # of guns is a turret is three. Quadruple turrets I feel are important to the French (see Lyon class) and should be considered.  

 

Another small thing I have noticed whilst browsing videos of the Iowa class is that after firing, the guns come back down to be reloaded with the “auto” loader. I have also read up on the Des Moines CA in which it mentions that it’s auto loaded 8in guns could be loaded at any angle (say 45 degrees of elevation, they still can be loaded). This isn’t much of a priority but would this be an animation we will see in game at a later point in time? 

[Skeksis]

For the campaign maybe? Dev’s always keep somethings in reserve, you know for surprises etc.

[Absolute0CA]

47 minutes ago, NuclearNadal said:

Quadruple turrets

They are coming, and to correct you the French Quads weren’t a four gun turret with each gun having its own cradle and it wasn’t a Quad turret where they all shared a cradle, they were “Two Twins” as in they were 2 pairs of 2 guns with each left/right pair having its own cradle.

[NuclearNadal]

1 hour ago, Absolute0CA said:

They are coming, and to correct you the French Quads weren’t a four gun turret with each gun having its own cradle and it wasn’t a Quad turret where they all shared a cradle, they were “Two Twins” as in they were 2 pairs of 2 guns with each left/right pair having its own cradle.

I am aware yes but for the sake of game mechanics it should be "Quadruple". I highly doubt that it would be modeled to include the historical reasoning behind it (prevention of one hit wonders screwing the entire turret). This is of course unless they change the "Gun damaged" mechanic to include specifics such as this.

[The Fundamentalist]

46 minutes ago, NuclearNadal said:

I am aware yes but for the sake of game mechanics it should be "Quadruple". I highly doubt that it would be modeled to include the historical reasoning behind it (prevention of one hit wonders screwing the entire turret). This is of course unless they change the "Gun damaged" mechanic to include specifics such as this.

I would presume this aspect would also be implemented 

[Mycophobia]

I wouldn't mind "spacing the guns" just makes it slightly harder for the turret to be knocked out if its too much work to actually model the two-halves turret.

[Cptbarney]

3 hours ago, Mycophobia said:

I wouldn't mind "spacing the guns" just makes it slightly harder for the turret to be knocked out if its too much work to actually model the two-halves turret.

nah you just use the symmetry modifier in 3dsmax or mirror for other 3d modelling software, modelling for blocky shapes like turrets isn't hard for those who have some modelling experience.

And with animating you can just create some bones for one gun and then duplicate said bone onto the other gun barrels and the animation should be the same if done correctly.

[Andy98]

Not only the French. The British also use quadruple turrets on King Geogre V class. So I think the devs should consider adding it into game. And more historical hull designs also. 

[RAMJB]

I'll just add here for the lols that quintuple and sextuple mounts were seriously considered at times. Thankfully never beyond the drawing boards, quadruples were a nightmare as they were to operate and reload, better not to think what a sextuple monster turret would've been like (and the fun they'd have in the turret well trying to bring all that crap up from the magazines in anything somewhat resembling "timely fashion" XDDDDD).

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, RAMJB said:

I'll just add here for the lols that quintuple and sextuple mounts were seriously considered at times. Thankfully never beyond the drawing boards, quadruples were a nightmare as they were to operate and reload, better not to think what a sextuple monster turret would've been like (and the fun they'd have in the turret well trying to bring all that crap up from the magazines in anything somewhat resembling "timely fashion" XDDDDD).

pretend smoll babies are teleporting into the turret with shells.

[HusariuS]

5 hours ago, Andy98 said:

Not only the French. The British also use quadruple turrets on King Geogre V class. So I think the devs should consider adding it into game. And more historical hull designs also. 

And after Battle of the Denmark Strait they said:

Oi chaps, never do it again shall we?

[Not_Cerberus]

6 hours ago, Andy98 said:

Not only the French. The British also use quadruple turrets on King Geogre V class. So I think the devs should consider adding it into game. And more historical hull designs also. 

The mighty KGV class - compromised perfection and interestingly, the second most heavily armoured battleship class after the Yamato class. Would be great to see the hulls of KGV, Dunkerque, Richelieu and Nelson in game and of course, quadruple turrets...I do quite like playing with all guns forward. Would certainly be interesting to have quad 18inch guns

[Muttdog1945]

would be an interesting addition, cant say i wouldn't give it a try myself. Turrets like those could lead to some interesting ships with a chase turret layout like the Dunkerque. I would find more utility in smaller caliber quads found on some french battleships. Though if im not mistaken the french quads would fire in pairs of two rather than all four at the same time.

[Cptbarney]

Quads, quintuples and sextuples would be fine, i mean the main the purpose of the game afterall is to design your own ship essentially.

You can apply special bonus and negatives to them as well which are further enhanced by the nation you pick, how you researched them how long they have been in development, quality of turret design etc.

[Illya von Einzbern]

more variations the more possible tactics and more possible battlefield roles.
Assault ships, brawlers, snipers and torpedo battleships (yes this was a thing) are all good to have.
More excitement and more ideas for design  

[RAMJB]

I've never been aware of a "sniper" battleship, or a "brawler one". Certainly none of them were built alongside neither principle. Can you elaborate where you got the idea that those were a thing?.

And "torpedo battleships"...well, some battleships had torpedos, mostly as an afterthough. Up to and during WW1 most battleships and battlecruisers were fitted with underwater tubes (which proved to be more a hazard for their own ships than an asset). But after the Nelson class no other battleship as designed ever mounted them (and while the Nelsons did, even those were slam shut and retired in their modernizations).

And yes I'm aware of the Scharnhorst and Tirpitz classes being fitted with surplus launchers taken from their useless light cruisers, during WW2, as part of the usual german practice at the time to cram all they could on those hulls, wether it was useful or not. Those torpedoes were fitted, in theory, to allow those ships to destroy the merchants they were supposed to sink on raider sorties without wasting main gun ammunition - but that didn't make them "torpedo battleships" (it also raises the question about why to use 35000 ton warships to drop torpedoes on merchants when a long range fast cruiser with 6'' guns could do it for a far lesser price).

In game you can already put torpedoes on battleships ,and I'm sure that in the future you'll be able to mount them on deck torpedo mounts aswell - it was done in history, it will be possible to do it here. I guess that would make a true "torpedo battleship" viable in game. Cram a lot of torpedo mounts on the sides of a BB and let it loose. It'd even be a fun experiment to conduct, in all due honesty (specially the part about the unprotected torpedo mounts blowing up by naval gunfire and causing huge damage on the process ;)). Don't expect it to be any effective, though ;).

But historically no, "torpedo battleships" were not a thing.

Edited November 25, 2019 by RAMJB

[Illya von Einzbern]

3 hours ago, RAMJB said:

I've never been aware of a "sniper" battleship, or a "brawler one". Certainly none of them were built alongside neither principle. Can you elaborate where you got the idea that those were a thing?.

And "torpedo battleships"...well, some battleships had torpedos, mostly as an afterthough. Up to and during WW1 most battleships and battlecruisers were fitted with underwater tubes (which proved to be more a hazard for their own ships than an asset). But after the Nelson class no other battleship as designed ever mounted them (and while the Nelsons did, even those were slam shut and retired in their modernizations).

And yes I'm aware of the Scharnhorst and Tirpitz classes being fitted with surplus launchers taken from their useless light cruisers, during WW2, as part of the usual german practice at the time to cram all they could on those hulls, wether it was useful or not. Those torpedoes were fitted, in theory, to allow those ships to destroy the merchants they were supposed to sink on raider sorties without wasting main gun ammunition - but that didn't make them "torpedo battleships" (it also raises the question about why to use 35000 ton warships to drop torpedoes on merchants when a long range fast cruiser with 6'' guns could do it for a far lesser price).

In game you can already put torpedoes on battleships ,and I'm sure that in the future you'll be able to mount them on deck torpedo mounts aswell - it was done in history, it will be possible to do it here. I guess that would make a true "torpedo battleship" viable in game. Cram a lot of torpedo mounts on the sides of a BB and let it loose. It'd even be a fun experiment to conduct, in all due honesty (specially the part about the unprotected torpedo mounts blowing up by naval gunfire and causing huge damage on the process ;)). Don't expect it to be any effective, though ;).

But historically no, "torpedo battleships" were not a thing.

true but in this game you can build ships with these combat roles.

Super armored and decently armed close quarters ship,
Deck torpedo armed with vast quantity you have torpedo BB,
Snipes is like said. Long range focus in mind, relatively weak armor, good speed and good guns with range finders.
Assault ships well basically bow tankers that crosses T with not massive loss in fire power.
All these are possible in the game. It's some what good to leave realism out when designing ships but good to have also some limitations.
 

Torpedo retrofit for Kongou.... yeah they were a (going to be) thing  

[RAMJB]

Well, for sure you're in for some enjoying of the game and experimenting a lot ;).

Eventually I think you'll find out that "specialist" ships are really OK, but on much smaller hulls that don't cost a fortune. When you invest the ammounts of money a big gunned battleship costed (and will cost in the campaign) you're putting a lot of bankroll on a ship that's going to have to last as an useful asset for pretty long time in order for that investment to be worthwhile. 

In that regard specialist ships are a very dangerous bargain. You get very unidimensional designs that if caught out of their area of comfort are dead meat. Furthermore, if you mix it up with a lot of different "specialist" classes in your fleet you'll find out that big fleet actions become a massive problem. It was quite hard to coordinate big fleet actions as it was (with homogeneous lines of battle maneouvering in concert). If you have a mish-mash of "short range brawlers" with a handful of "snipers" with the ocassional "torpedo BB" here and there you'll find out that your line of battle is nothing like homogeneous. Fight it out at one range or another, part of your capital ships will be out of their confort area. Maneouvering to drop torpedoes will (until very late) demand impossibly close ranges to the enemy where those torpedoes will be as dangerous to yourself as to the enemy (because if they get hit by gunfire, the explosion won't be small), etc etc etc. All the while complicating what's already a complex thing (maneouvering a long line of battle isn't the easiest thing to do in the middle of a shootout), and making your big resource investment in those ships less benefitial than if you went with a more moderate approach.

It's for reasons like those that a balanced approach for capital ships was deemed to be the best during the age of the battleship. The ideal battleship was thought to be a ship equally capable in most scenarios she would encounter, even while possibly more weighed for one type of encounter than another, reasonably fast, reasonably well protected, reasonably well armed, and which design would mix and blend in with the already existing battleline to allow for the easiest co-ordination possible in battle. This game will probably end up teaching you the same lesson. And don't be worried, a "balanced approach" is anything but boring. In fact there's nothing as challenging and fun than trying to milk out the last drop of tonnage out of your ship to make it as all around competent as you can, while trying to cover as many bases as possible, and leaving it vulnerable to as less threats as possible (which will never be enough ;)). It's a constant juggling between different things, little compromises here and there, to make the ship as best as possible in one area, at the cost of making it a bit worse in another area, while trying not to sacrifice too much in any area in particular as to make it a dangerous weakness.


I'd also tell you that there was nothing of the sort of "assault battleships". No ship was ever designed to allow itself to be fired from dead ahead while "bow tanking". Bow tanking is something that never existed. And there were very good reasons why that was the case. So will be here.

I know games like WOWS make it seem like it would be a thing - it wasn't. "overmach" does not exist in real life, certainly not the way it's represented in that game. If you get hit by a big gun in an area without similarly big thickness of protection, you're going to feel it...no matter the angle. There's nothing easier to hit that a ship that's pointing directly at you (And if he's not moving, or moving slowly, all the best) as there's no lateral lead to be accounted for. Meanwhile shooting from a standstill or slow speed was quite problematic (due to the ship being a lot more vulnerable to wave motion ruining or at least limiting the accuracy of guns), specially when shooting towards the ends of the ship (ships tend to roll a lot more than they tend to pitch- the rolling motion can really ruin the dispersion that's shooting directly ahead).

But I'm sure you'll still try - and find out it doesn't work on your own :). Which is great, trust me, no better way to find out what works and what doesn't than through experimentation and having a blast trying different stuff :).

Edited November 25, 2019 by RAMJB

[Illya von Einzbern]

can't really say what campaign gives.
That's why i can only dream of all the possibilities and stuff.

No bow tanking? *looks at nelson* Sorry Nelson your design does not exist....
You were never meant to be the front ship in crossing the T

[RAMJB]

9 minutes ago, Illya von Einzbern said:

No bow tanking? *looks at nelson* Sorry Nelson your design does not exist....
You were never meant to be the front ship in crossing the T

The Nelson did exist.

But no, she was never meant to be the front ship in crossing the T of anything. She had all the guns forward to limit the extent of the area that needed to be covered by the thickest armor. By grouping up all the main battery in the same end of the ship  it allowed for the area that needed the thickest protection to be quite smaller than had she been of a "traditional" 2-and-1 turret layout (that would require the main armored belt to go all the way from the A turret to the aft turret, ditto with the main armored deck). Hence, it was an engineering decision to limit the size, tonnage, and cost of the ship. Not a design decision based on the wish of anyone to just sit dead on the water firing ahead in front of an enemy that's shooting back while moving at speed. Which she was never intended to do. Because ,simply stated, that was akin to suicide.

The Nelson class was designed and suited to fight as every other battleship in the world at the time: broadside to broadside with the enemy, firing to the beam. And BTW her layout was effective in saving weight and cost but caused quite a lot of practical drawbacks that made the class a nightmare to sail and it's main battery placement a very big liability in battle. So much so that when the time came for the british to design their next battleship (What would end being the KGV class) a ship where the primary design concern was to make it as affordable, and tonnage efficient as possible, they didn't even gave a serious thought about repeating the experiment they had done with Nelson, even while on paper saved both weight and cost, because they knew, first hand, how underwhelming and problematic it had ended up being in practice.

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by RAMJB

[Illya von Einzbern]

uhuh.... right.
Sadly that design was so bad for regular BB combat. 

[RAMJB]

17 minutes ago, Illya von Einzbern said:

uhuh.... right.
Sadly that design was so bad for regular BB combat. 

Yep, she was a deeply underwhelming ship. 23 knots of top speed (on a good day without crosswinds) in an era where it was already accepted that battleships needed to be quite faster than that. 16'' guns much heavier than the preceding 15'' ones used to big sucess in the Revenge and Queen Elizabeth classes, but offering almost no extra penetration bonus, firing too light shells for the caliber with tremendous dispersion problems, and deeply unreliable and prone to jamming issues. Lots of practical problems derived from the design's compromise to put all guns forward. Her armor layout wasn't very well thought out either, was one of the first All of Nothing designs (the first one out of the US), but her belt was too narrow, so much so that there was a running joke in the Royal Navy that went that "the only thing hardest to do for an enemy shell than to penetrate Nelson's belt...is to hit it in the first place". The horizontal protection was also very suspect -her deck armor was very strong over magazine areas, yet unsettingly thin over machinery ones. The torpedo defence system was suspected inneficient as designed, and WW2 went to prove on those suspicions as right. And a long etcetera.

Deeply unsatisfactory ships indeed.

Edited November 25, 2019 by RAMJB

[Illya von Einzbern]

Quite a few Royal navy battleships broke down from just being used
Then again they did build good ships for other nations

[RAMJB]

lol, that's true. but they also built some really awesome ships for themselves. Not even the vaunted Iowas could pride themselves to have the resumé ships as Warspite had by the end of her useful life, even while they served for more than 50 years ;).

Sadly for the Royal Navy the interwar period budgetary limits forced by the prevalent antibellicist opinion reigning in the UK up to almost the very moment WWII broke out meant they had to compromise in a lot of places with their designs. The KGV was also an underwhelming ship but more because of what was spared in her design and cost, rather than because any design deficiencies caused by being "creative" with the design process.

Then again they managed to produce some truly awesome ships even when held by such a tight budgetary leash, like the Ark Royal, or the Counties...and it usually goes on overlooked but the british submarine service had some of the most efficient submarines of WWII.

But in what regards to capital ships...yes, their golden age was the immediate pre-WW1 years with the Queen Elizabeths, and they never produced another battleship design of the same spectacular quality and efficiency.

Edited November 25, 2019 by RAMJB

[Hellstrike]

Depending on how exactly the campaign will end up designed, we might very well run into issues such as treaty restrictions and small budgets after a big war (or even have to surrender the entire battlefleet). So the "suboptimal" designs might very well have a place, even if they are dissatisfying from a "more dakka" point of view. And that could even turn out to be one of the best parts of the campaign, forcing us to make really tough decisions rather than just build the best we can as often as the budget allows us to.