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we really need Transverse Bulkheads modelled (AKA: no more unrealistic bow-tanking pls!)


Accipiter

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pretty much what the title says.

World of Warships already gave me PTSD of 2 Battleships standing bow-on 100 metres away from each other and doing zero damage with all shells bouncing. no more pls. this isn't how it ever worked in real life. please don't make another warship game where going broadside to the enemy is a Mistake that only a noob whould do.

i was playing around in custom battle today, and a dreadnought hull BB that was sailing away from me, with only 300-something of max armor and not even the best armor quality multiplier (it had like 80%) was totally 100% invulnerable to yamato 18inch AP shells even at less than 2km, it took HUNDREDS of those shells as i put the game in fast forward and kept sailing away like no one's business. all this because ships become invulnerable as soon as they are not broadside, i've seen similar things happen with even cruisers too! this is just wrong.

currently the game models angle of the belt but not the transverse bulkheads at all. the result is when the target is bow-on or stern-on, all shells count as if they were hitting the belt (ie: the side belt) at like one or zero degrees of angle.

you need to model the transverse bulkheads that close the front and back of the citadel. that way, the more bow-on/stern-on the target is, the worse your angle get on their belt yes, but the easier your angle get to penetrate the transverse bulkheads. just like in real life.

being able to set manually their thickness in the ship designer whould be nice, but not nessesary. if you approximate them as having the same thickness as the belt, heh, whatever, it's good enough in my book. but you need to at least model it because this bow tanking is annoying and ridiculous.

please tell me this is planed; eventually...?

Edited by Accipiter
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At least with the HP system of WoWs, you can damage ships more easily since fire and flooding takes away from the HP of the whole ships, where here it seems the diffent sections have their own HP as structure. This seems to mean that even if you hit and penetrate say the top decks, stern of a fleeing ship, guns, or superstructure but it is already knocked down in the red, any damage done does nothing. It shows a damage number, but the health bar (structural integrity) remains the same. Fires ends up being the only way to damaged them further as it'll spread down, but only if the AI cutted out on bulkheads as it'll be put out too soon. Flooding of course is also its own health bar, not that you'll hit a flooding hit on a fleeing ship anyways.

 

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The problem is not lack of transverse bulkheads.

The problem is that you're armoring your hull with the equivalent value of your belt armor. Which is, like, not believable at all. Belts covered a limited area on the waterline, above and below it. Avobe that you'd get an upper belt, much lesser in thickness, or barely more than some splinter plate (in AoN designs).

Ships ends are the same. You get equivalent protection on the whole hull at that place as you put in your "extended belt". Which again, wouldn't be the case at all. The result is that at extreme angles ricochets happen all the time. As they should against thicknesses like those at angles like those.

I'm pretty sure the whole armor model is just a placeholder. Adding transverse bulkhead values won't change anything until proper armor distributions are modelled and in place, so don't sweat it too much. For now if an enemy is stupid enough to give you a direct shot to his nose or rear, open up with HE and massacre his end compartments. Something that is modelled and in place is the progressive loss of fighting capacity through cumulative damage. If the enemy is stupid enough to cut his firepower by a half and give me his nose, he's going to end with a bloody one. An on fire one too. And by the time he recapacitates he'll be so damaged that his chances to hit me back are going to be much less.

I know it's not the way you'd deal with a situation like that historically (AP through the nose hurt a lot), but the limitation by now is the armor model, which, again, I'm sure is a placeholder (there's no way the game can be released as a believable naval combat game with the current one) :).

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2 hours ago, Bry7x7x7 said:

 not that you'll hit a flooding hit on a fleeing ship anyways.

 

HE hits on the rear end of fleeing ships inevitably end with the fleeing guy without a rudder and with the rear 2-3 compartments completely flooded.

So it is a thing indeed.

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8 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Eh its only alpha 3 so im guessing alpha 4-6 is where we will see major overhauls of the armour system.

A game like this is majorly complex so well done to the team so far with the job they have managed so far too.

'w'

Is that confirmed? Where did you got that from?

I would welcome a armour overhaul. The ability to go for the "all or nothing" armor scheme would be nice. What would be even better we had to care about layout inside the hull. Like engine and ammo box placement. All of it would restrain where you can place stuff on deck and influence how long the main belt is. That way making a Nelson would be something.

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7 hours ago, RedParadize said:

The ability to go for the "all or nothing" armor scheme would be nice.


Those times will be fun. Remember that "all or nothing" was an armor layout specifically designed to fight battles at long ranges (beyond 20km) where main battery hits have a good probability of happen, but where smaller guns (cruiser sized or less) have a very low or nonexistant chance to hit.

Also AoN didn't preclude designs from adding plating armor beyond the citadel. Or more. Some nominal "all or nothing" historical designs actually had large chunks of armor on spots nominally not to be armored according to the concept. Yet the average player will expect that once that armor model is in place they can go with 0 armor on the extremities of the ships (and elsewhere not on the citadel). And do so. And there'll be consequences for that for players who use that layout without understanding it's purpose and realities and put their battleship 10km away from the nearest opposition, only to have their ship's large unprotected areas ruined by relatively light guns, and their battleship ability to fight subsequently compromised by the ensuing structural damage.

So I do expect a lot of yells of terror and forum posts about the "useless" armor model when that happens. People will completely ignore armor on the extremities (based on the wrong idea that those areas should receive 0 armor), and ignore the long range nature of the layout. And the subsequent ammount of end-ship fires and floodings that will stem from that, from hits of guns of all calibers, will cause many an instance of people saying that armor is not worth it and that it needs a buff ;).

Edited by RAMJB
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Well, you could always choose a different scheme if you intend to go brawling. The turtleback layout would be much better to fight at close range because you are (somewhat) protected against smaller guns, but it would be less effective at range and against large guns.

Which is one of the reasons I have high hopes for this game. You design the ships, which means that you can decide how you are going to fight. But it also means that you can mess up big time if your design concept sucks (eg unarmoured BCs capable of 38 knots).

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Yep, that's the gist of it. The turtleback scheme was flawed for long range engagements, yet much better for medium and short range ones. Conversely the AON design had serious flaws for short ranges but was without question the one to go for if you were going for long range protection.

Yes, that's the beauty of games like this and RTW. You choose your designs, you have to tailor them to your liking but also to your particular fleet's needs. It's not the same fighting in the confines of hte baltic as on the openness of the Pacific ocean, and wise design choices are required for your fleet to be the best it can ;)

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9 hours ago, RedParadize said:

Is that confirmed? Where did you got that from?

I didn't hense the 'im guessing' part of my post, although i assume thats when we will see major changes for armour layouts as they will probs want to get that done before they release the campaign.

Although im going of what i would do, they might have a completely different plan. Plus im not sure how many alphas there will be in general. And they might release stuff at different intervals.

Although if i was them i would probs use alpha 4 as a starting point for the amrour overhaul to see how people react and to gather feedback both positive and negative and then proceed from the primary and secondary info that would of been collated from a certain period time.

As this allows them to make the nessecary adjustments or edits to ensure peeps are happy and to keep the workload down or to improve it for future developments.

oh well.

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4 hours ago, RAMJB said:


Those times will be fun. Remember that "all or nothing" was an armor layout specifically designed to fight battles at long ranges (beyond 20km) where main battery hits have a good probability of happen, but where smaller guns (cruiser sized or less) have a very low or nonexistant chance to hit.

Also AoN didn't preclude designs from adding plating armor beyond the citadel. Or more. Some nominal "all or nothing" historical designs actually had large chunks of armor on spots nominally not to be armored according to the concept. Yet the average player will expect that once that armor model is in place they can go with 0 armor on the extremities of the ships (and elsewhere not on the citadel). And do so. And there'll be consequences for that for players who use that layout without understanding it's purpose and realities and put their battleship 10km away from the nearest opposition, only to have their ship's large unprotected areas ruined by relatively light guns, and their battleship ability to fight subsequently compromised by the ensuing structural damage.

So I do expect a lot of yells of terror and forum posts about the "useless" armor model when that happens. People will completely ignore armor on the extremities (based on the wrong idea that those areas should receive 0 armor), and ignore the long range nature of the layout. And the subsequent ammount of end-ship fires and floodings that will stem from that, from hits of guns of all calibers, will cause many an instance of people saying that armor is not worth it and that it needs a buff ;).

Turtleback is a waste of weight when we are talking about ww2 era combat. Tell me when did the germans managed to force a fight at close range? Never.

If the weight wasted on turtleback and the distributed armor scheme was used on the belt  Bismarck could have easily over 400mm-500mm belt, make the belt inclined at 15-20 degrees and you get extremly well protected ship even at medium ranges. All or nothing means that you can either sepnd more weight on armament etc. but you may also spend it on increasing the belt thickness. So overall turtleback gives adventage at close range only which by ww2 era is an idiotic design choice.

Reality is even in bad weather or dark of night repeated hits were scored at 15km range with relative ease.

Edited by Microscop
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3 hours ago, Microscop said:

Turtleback is a waste of weight when we are talking about ww2 era combat.


Maybe. Maybe not. Remember that Bismarck was designed when not even the designers knew what that ship was going to be used for. Germany had commitments in the Baltic and knew for sure they'd be travelling through the North Sea a lot. Those are pretty confined waters and weather rarely is perfect. Chances are any engagement in those space-restricted seas would happen at much closer ranges than, say, an hipotetical engagement in the Pacific. At closer ranges smaller calibers come into play with a lot more strenght - going for an incremental armor layout makes sense there.

I do agree that turtleback wasn't the go to option in most cases. That (combined with the displacement restrictions of the Washington Treaty) is why most nations went for AoN layouts. But as always there's not a "magic formula" that's "best". There are best solutions to given scenarios. AoN was the best solution for the most likely scenario for most navies. For others, however, it didn't look that good. See, imagine, you're CiC soviet fleet and you're designing your baltic and Black Sea Fleets. Both very confined waters where engagement ranges are expected to be quite shorter than in open oceans. What's your most likely best choice for a battlewagon to operate with those fleets, AoN or incremental? ;).

 

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20 minutes ago, Blothorn said:

Comparing AoN and turtleback is a bit misleading--you can conceivably have an AoN turtleback ship (although I don't know of any), and can definitely have a non-AoN non-turtleback ship.


You theoretically could. But it would be a damned bad idea to do so ;). Both layouts just don't mix together.

AoN is specifically tailored for long range encounters only. The much lower (if any beyond splinter protection) ammount of armor placed beyond  the citadel makes the ship a lot more vulnerable to lighter shells of smaller caliber in those areas. They won't sink the ship, but they'll degrade their fighting ability and can even soft/mission kill the warship. Something you obviously do not want to happen. The key here is that at long enough ranges, heavy shells retained a reasonable chance to hit, while lower caliber ones (the ones that could reach that far, which weren't many) did not. If your doctrine says that you're to engage at long range, and long range only, it's senseless to protect non-vital areas with armor against smaller calibers (that are going to very rarely be even a thing at those ranges) when you can use all that armor weight to reinforce the parts of the ship that, if hit by heavier shells, can sink it. Hence going for AoN is specifically framing your warship for long range engagements. It's also making it more vulnerable on close range engagements, because very large areas that with an incremental system as the turtleback scheme would be protected from small caliber gunfire that *is* going to be a factor at close range, are left wide open and unprotected with an AoN design.

A turtleback layout however is innately designed for short range combat. The only reason to place an inclined deck section behind the main armored belt, is to defeat shells fired from not much beyond medium range, when they come with almost no inclination. But if you're AoN, you're not expected to fight at those ranges, right?. It's a layout that stems from a commitment to long range engagements. What do you need the extra complexity of a turtleback layout for then, when it's only advantage plays a role at exactly the closer ranges you're not expecting to fight at?.

Not to mention, turtleback arrangements are vulnerable to long range plunging fire. The inclined sections of the belt are pretty much inviting the shells (which will be coming with a notable inclination) to go through with more ease that if they were hitting a straight, plain, deck. It makes no sense to focus your ship on long range engagements to then give it an armor layout that makes it inevitably more vulnerable at, precisely, those ranges.


So yeah, you could, in theory "mix" both styles. It would make absolutely no sense to do it though ;).

Edited by RAMJB
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Well, whether it made sense or not, it was done.

The Americans built several all-or-nothings with turtlebacks, including the Nevadas (the original all-or-nothing design), the Pennsylvanias, and to my knowledge the New Mexicos (edit: they did.). The turtleback was intended to act as a watertight deck, and to absorb any splinters from penetration of the belt armor.

Curiously this seems to be in contrast with the Arkansas and New York dreadnoughts, which had flat decks.

I believe that the rudder gear and shaft tunnels on the US Standard types also had "turtleback" curved protective decks, though I am unsure of this.

 

One can make a strong case that most of Germany's surface fleet was a waste of money. If more of Plan Z was implemented, maybe it would have been fine; in the event, this did not happen. More Diesel-driven long-range cruisers would have been good. The battleships didn't make much sense as raiders, and really they were too few to act as a powerful deterrent like the High Seas Fleet did. The Hippers were questionable without a big battlefleet to work with, and the K-class, Leipzig, and Nuernberg were all bad designs limited to the coasts.

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29 minutes ago, disc said:

Well, whether it made sense or not, it was done.


It's...not as easy as that. Though I guess it's a side effect of talking about a thing as complex as this while simplificating it as much as possible to keep it as brief as possible (As it is I'm already been critized about my "walls of text" in this forum...). But yeah there's more into that.

See when I'm talking about turtleback vs AoN I'm talking about when the AoN concept became widespread. Roughly, the early 20s, after WWII. Before that it had been limited to the americans for almost 12 years before the british post-war designs (G and N series of proposals) incorporated it. And the first non-american AoN ship was HMS Nelson.

By that stage (middle of 1920s), the quick advances in plotting equipment, fire control analog computers, rangefinding equipment and data collection devices (rangefinders, for instance) had made effective engagements at well beyond 20km more than possible, they were actually highly likely.

The classes you mention were the first iterations of the all or nothing concept. And they all date from a pre-WW1 era where engagements at 15km were thought to be "extreme range". In fact so extreme nobody expected ranges like those to be held during combats at all, fleets were thought would come far more closer in a naval battle. That's why very shallow elevations were thought to be just fine for guns. You see main batteries with elevations of 15 degrees or so, which seriously restricted their range (proven by the fact that when those same guns received modifications to increase their elevation, their range jumped significantly), because...well because nobody expected that extra range to be of any use.

Then Jutland happened, where the main battlelines always held what at the time was considered "extreme range" throughout the whole engagement.  That turned many a head and made many designers reconsider what they were doing with their designs. For one everyone began designing turrets with much higher elevations, and much higher range, while, when possible, increasing the elevation of the turrets on already existing ships. That fact alone meant that in the immediate years after Jutland expected engagement ranges almost doubled. In a single stroke. And that obviously came into play for AoN designs...AFTER that fact, not before. Which is critical to explain why those AoN ships you mention had turtlebacks:

The Nevada class was designed in 1910-11. Laid down in 1912.
Pennsylvania class was designed in 1911-12. Laid down in 1913.
New Mexico class was designed in 1914. Laid down in 1915 

All those had turtlebacks. All were designed and laid down before Jutland.

The first AoN class laid down AFTER Jutland was the Tennessee class (followed by the Colorados). They had box armor, straight armored deck all the way that met the top of the main armored belt and wasn't inclined down to meet the lower end of the belt: The turtleback was gone.

Since then no AoN design used a turtleback design. Every battleship class that had one, was an incremental design. Including the Nagato class, which wasn't really an AoN design even while incorporating some ideas from the concept.


It was not a coincidence. See, at 15''km an enemy shell is not "plunging" that much yet. The incoming shells won't be "arcing" much. They won't come with any significant drop enough to skip over the main belt and hit squarely on the inclined internal belt. But at ranges of 25km there's a very good chance of just that happening. Once that was evident, and the idea of what "long range" really meant in a battleship engagement was re-examined, the turtleback went out of the window, never to return again in an AoN design ;).



So TLDR: yes, you're right, those designs you name used turtlebacks...because at the time of their design "Long range" was thought to be something that by 1940 standards would be considered as "mid-short" range ;).
 

Edited by RAMJB
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5 minutes ago, RAMJB said:


It's...not as easy as that. Though I guess it's a side effect of talking about a thing as complex as this while simplificating it as much as possible to keep it as brief as possible (As it is I'm already been critized about my "walls of text" in this forum...). But yeah there's more into that.

See when I'm talking about turtleback vs AoN I'm talking about when the AoN concept became widespread. Roughly, the early 20s, after WWII. By that stage advances in plotting equipment, fire control analog computers, rangefinding equipment and data collection devices (rangefinders, for instance) had made effective engagements at well beyond 20km more than possible, they were actually highly likely.

The classes you mention were the first iterations of the all or nothing concept. And they date from a pre-WW1 era where engagements at 15km were thought to be "extreme range". In fact so extreme nobody expected ranges like those to be held during combats at all, fleets were thought would come far more closer in a naval battle. That's why very shallow elevations were thought to be just fine for guns. You see main batteries with elevations of 15 degrees or so, which seriously restricted their range (proven by the fact that when those same guns received modifications to increase their elevation, their range jumped significantly), because...well because nobody expected that extra range to be of any use.

Then Jutland happened, where the main battlelines always held what at the time was considered "extreme range" throughout the whole engagement.  That turned many a head and made many designers reconsider what they were doing with their designs. For one everyone began designing turrets with much higher elevations, and much higher range, while, when possible, increasing the elevation of the turrets on already existing ships. That fact alone meant that in the immediate years after Jutland expected engagement ranges almost twiced. In a single stroke. And that obviously came into play for AoN designs...AFTER that fact, not before.

The Nevada class was designed in 1910-11. Laid down in 1912.
Pennsylvania class was designed in 1911-12. Laid down in 1913.
New Mexico class was designed in 1914. Laid down in 1915 

All those had turtlebacks. All were designed and laid down before Jutland.

The first AoN class laid down AFTER Jutland was the Tennessee class (followed by the Colorados). They had box armor, straight armored deck. The turtleback was gone.

Since then no AoN design used a turtleback design. Every battleship class that had one, was an incremental design. Including the Nagato class, which wasn't really an AoN design even while incorporating some ideas from the concept.


It was not a coincidence. See, at 15''km an enemy shell is not "plunging" that much yet. The incoming shells won't be "arcing" much. They won't come with any significant drop enough to skip over the main belt and hit squarely on the inclined internal belt. But at ranges of 25km there's a very good chance of just that happening. Once that was evident, and the idea of what "long range" really meant in a battleship engagement was re-examined, the turtleback went out of the window, never to return again in an AoN design ;).



So TLDR: yes, you're right, those designs you name used turtlebacks...because at the time of their design "Long range" was thought to be something that by 1940 standards would be considered as "mid-short" range ;).
 

Very interesting.  What about inclined belts that angled inwards towards the bottom?  Those should increase in effectiveness at range while also slightly improving effectiveness at close range due to the angling.  Do you happen to know how effective this actually was?  As I know this type of armor angling was used I just don't know how effective it actually was.  As it's only 'downside' was the reduction in armored volume but I think that's mostly fine as the area outside of the belt was mostly covered by the torpedo protection system anyways?

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4 hours ago, RAMJB said:


Maybe. Maybe not. Remember that Bismarck was designed when not even the designers knew what that ship was going to be used for. Germany had commitments in the Baltic and knew for sure they'd be travelling through the North Sea a lot. Those are pretty confined waters and weather rarely is perfect. Chances are any engagement in those space-restricted seas would happen at much closer ranges than, say, an hipotetical engagement in the Pacific. At closer ranges smaller calibers come into play with a lot more strenght - going for an incremental armor layout makes sense there.

I do agree that turtleback wasn't the go to option in most cases. That (combined with the displacement restrictions of the Washington Treaty) is why most nations went for AoN layouts. But as always there's not a "magic formula" that's "best". There are best solutions to given scenarios. AoN was the best solution for the most likely scenario for most navies. For others, however, it didn't look that good. See, imagine, you're CiC soviet fleet and you're designing your baltic and Black Sea Fleets. Both very confined waters where engagement ranges are expected to be quite shorter than in open oceans. What's your most likely best choice for a battlewagon to operate with those fleets, AoN or incremental? ;).

 

Putting battleships on the baltic during ww2 era is a bit ridiculous considering that they would probably in range of land based aviation and the waters would be hunting grounds for subs.

Black see has calm waters and good visibility, the size of the sea doesn't automaticly make engagement ranges shorter.... You just don't need as much speed and endurance.

Turtleback would be beneficial below 10km which is a joke when we are talking about ww2 even in the north sea.  You can pretend all you want that turtleback during ww2 makes sense but in both theory and reality it didn't make sense at all. And with AON you can have much thicker belt giving you good protection even at relatively short range for the era. Also while turtleback protects the citadel the thinner belt still lets the shells penetrate and explode inside the ship which is not good lol.

 

 

 

Edited by Microscop
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Yes, inclined belts were a thing, yes they were very much used, and yes, they were very effective at increasing the effective thickness of belt vs incoming fire. and the longer the range involved, the bigger the effective thickness gain (as the projectile gains inclination that has to be added to the inclination of the plate itself).

Downside was mainly arranging things out to provide for a good enough antitorpedo system under the belt. With a straight vertical one, no complications. But with an inclined belt you're reducing the beam and internal space the lower you go. And probably the biggest and most important feature for a Torpedo Defense System was to have enough depth, enough space from the external hull to the internal antitorpedo bulkhead. If your hull is forced to taper down from a given beam at the waterline, that means that under the waterline the available space will be less for a TDS to have that much depth.

Doesn't meant it couldn't be done. One option was to put the belt inside the hull, behind an external plating (the model of USS Iowa or the South Dakotas). The hull wouldn't taper down under the waterline, and a proper TDS without loss of depth could be put in place. But that added a lot of complexity and cost to mainteinance and repairs (in order to repair the belt you had to cut open the hull to access the belt itself). Stability issues also can be a concern if the taper angle is too steep.

The other option was having a ship with so much beam that the loss of depth wouldn't be such a big deal. Then adding an underwater bulge to actually increase the TDS depth while taking care of any loss of stability concerns. That was mostly the case of USS Montana design (External inclined belt) where the designers were given finally a free hand to ignore the beam restrictions of the Panama Canal, so providing for a deep enough TDS was no longer such a problem even if the hull tapered a bit down from the waterline:

 

016715.jpg

Edited by RAMJB
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14 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

Very interesting.  What about inclined belts that angled inwards towards the bottom?  Those should increase in effectiveness at range while also slightly improving effectiveness at close range due to the angling.  Do you happen to know how effective this actually was?  As I know this type of armor angling was used I just don't know how effective it actually was.  As it's only 'downside' was the reduction in armored volume but I think that's mostly fine as the area outside of the belt was mostly covered by the torpedo protection system anyways?

Very effective above around 15km where combined shell fall angle and belt inclination angle is over 30 degrees. To be honest Richelieu which had 330mm belt inclined at 15 degrees had about 10 km immunity zone adventage over 320 vertical belt of the bismarck which had no immunity at all and could be penetarted at even extreme ranges.

Edited by Microscop
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15 minutes ago, Microscop said:

Putting battleships on the baltic during ww2 era is a bit ridiculous considering that they would probably in range of land based aviation and the waters would be hunting grounds for subs.


Funny, given that the only true successes of the german surface navy (Beyond commerce raiding by the Scharnhorsts) happened ,of any places, on the Baltic. Mostly as land support units for coastal bombardment, but even then. And it's not as if the soviets didn't have any planes or submarines.

But, hey, if you're a german admiral and your choice is not even giving a second thought to accomodate your capital ship design to the sea where 75% of your coastline is located, all the power to you. I'm guessing you won't be playing Russia as much either ;).

Edited by RAMJB
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It is true that the turtleback makes much, much less sense at longer range. I think part of the issue is that the German WWII battleship turtleback system was specifically intended to deflect AP shells. The American all-or-nothing turtlebacks were mostly there for splinters.

The Tennessees were designed prior to Jutland, too. The flat deck was not specifically intended to counter plunging fire (though it may have had that effect), but rather seems to have been a consequence of their improved torpedo protection. Certainly, the turtleback mostly disappeared on American ships after that. I seem to recall there were some designs in the 20s and 30s, obviously unbuilt, that had turtlebacks. And the South Dakotas were going to have some weird semi-turtleback...thing...before that idea was dropped.

The French Dunkerques and Richelieus also had turtlebacks. Like the American Standards, these were (probably) intended to absorb splinters and were not particularly thick (50mm), nor were they sharply angled. Also we see semi-turtlebacks on the Mogami and Tone heavy cruisers. Whether those can be considered all-or-nothing, I suppose I am unsure. Definitely closer to the "ideal" long-range form than the distributed system on German ships.

 

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26 minutes ago, RAMJB said:

Yes, inclined belts were a thing, yes they were very much used, and yes, they were very effective at increasing the effective thickness of belt vs incoming fire. and the longer the range involved, the bigger the effective thickness gain (as the projectile gains inclination that has to be added to the inclination of the plate itself).

Downside was mainly arranging things out to provide for a good enough antitorpedo system under the belt. With a straight vertical one, no complications. But with an inclined belt you're reducing the beam and internal space the lower you go. And probably the biggest and most important feature for a Torpedo Defense System was to have enough depth, enough space from the external hull to the internal antitorpedo bulkhead. If your hull is forced to taper down from a given beam at the waterline, that means that under the waterline the available space will be less for a TDS to have that much depth.

Doesn't meant it couldn't be done. One option was to put the belt inside the hull, behind an external plating (the model of USS Iowa or the South Dakotas). The hull wouldn't taper down under the waterline, and a proper TDS without loss of depth could be put in place. But that added a lot of complexity and cost to mainteinance and repairs (in order to repair the belt you had to cut open the hull to access the belt itself). Stability issues also can be a concern if the taper angle is too steep.

The other option was having a ship with so much beam that the loss of depth wouldn't be such a big deal. Then adding an underwater bulge to actually increase the TDS depth while taking care of any loss of stability concerns. That was mostly the case of USS Montana design (External inclined belt) where the designers were given finally a free hand to ignore the beam restrictions of the Panama Canal, so providing for a deep enough TDS was no longer such a problem even if the hull tapered a bit down from the waterline:

 

016715.jpg

Awesome!  Thanks!  Do any of our current armor lay out options include an inclined belt?  And if not how would it be added in?  A sixth type of citadel or a modifier checkbox type of thing?

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16 minutes ago, disc said:

 

The French Dunkerques and Richelieus also had turtlebacks.

 


as you very well point out, those were mostly to catch splinters, their actual effect for extra side protection being quite limited at that. Personally, to qualify as turtleback the thickness of the deck armor involved must be significant enough to really make a difference (and not a marginal side-effect) in deflecting projectiles that defeated the vertical protection. Those plates don't have anywhere near the thickness (nor they're angled steeply enough) to provide for that.

I can see how you would label that as a "turtleback", however. I mean, this kind of classification is where a global standard must be set to see what qualifies as something or not. Lacking such a standard (and there's none at all), we all go by our own personal perceptions and standards. That means your perception and qualification of those as "turtlebacks" isn't incorrect, nor my qualification of those as "not turtlebacks" is incorrect either. Both are correct under our own understanding of the concept, so there,s that ;). 

Edited by RAMJB
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11 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

Awesome!  Thanks!  Do any of our current armor lay out options include an inclined belt?  And if not how would it be added in?  A sixth type of citadel or a modifier checkbox type of thing?

In game? not that I know of. But the current armor model of the game is super-simplified and abstracted at this point so no surprises there. As for how to add it in, it totally depends on how the armor model looks like once it's definitive. We don't know that so...who knows :).

Edited by RAMJB
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