>>>Alpha-3 General Feedback [HotFix v66]<<<

[TAKTCOM]

31 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

Not really?  The damage South Dakota took didn't put it in risk of sinking or anything so the ship wasn't in danger of being lost.  But both of them explicitly say the ship took enough damage to render it largely unable to fight until damage control could be done correctly.

Yes, that’s true. Dakota was not about to sink, but the Japanese would have eaten her alive if not for Washington.

[RAMJB]

2 hours ago, TAKTCOM said:

Navy boys about SOUTH DAKOTA: Damage to SOUTH DAKOTA did not imperil the ship.

Rear Admiral Willis Lee aboard SOUTH DAKOTA about SOUTH DAKOTA: deaf, dumb, blind and impotent... 

Opinions are divided!

 

Must be said that SD got "deaf, blind and impotent" due to the whole ship's electrics going haywire. Which was happening BEFORE the ship had been even hit. There were some serious problems with the design of the electrics of the ship as designed and, virtually ,everything that could go wrong with it at once, did in battle.

So much so that most of the electrical problems SD suffered from, and which left them "blind and deaf" weren't because of japanese action, but because of problematic design of the electrics, worsened by the action of a (probably shell-shocked) operator who trying to solve the issues, only made them much worse.

I'm quoting next the whole chapter (chapter C) analizing the electric problems of South Dakota from Navy's War Damage Report 57, which is the document produced after the official investigation of the battle of Guadalcanal (and released in 1947). You'll note that almost all the problems South Dakota suffered from can be traced back to her faulty design. Inclusing those derived from short-circuits that happened from enemy gunfire. Had SD had no such faults, she'd never blacked out in battle as she did.

Summing up: it wasn't the japanese guns. It was the own ship, which had a faulty electrical system.

Once her problems became apparent the USN revisited the electric systems of their battleships (most prominently changing the automatic bus tranfer switch to a manual one) - they never displayed any kind of unreliability with their electrics ever again. 

TL:DR before I put the quote (is a very long one): Japanese gunfire had really very little to do with South Dakota's ailings on the battle of Guadalcanal - she had problems with her own faulty design. In fact she managed to knock part of her own electrics just by the shock of firing her own guns (one of the aft main switchboard was knocked out when C turret began firing)...BEFORE she was even hit.

So much for "small guns doing a number on her". Which - they really did not.

Had she had proper reliable electrics, she'd never been rendered "deaf, dumb, blind nor impotent", and Lee would've never had much to complain about that warship. And at any rate whatever problems she had, again, had little to nothing to do with damage from japanese gunfire.


 

C. Electrical Damage and Casualties

41. Extensive damage was done to electrical circuits in the superstructure. The loss of many fire control, interior communication, radio and radar facilities seriously impaired the fighting power of the ship particularly in night actions. The SOUTH DAKOTA Electrical Work List enumerated thirty-five different kinds of circuits needing repairs including such items as renewing all flexible wiring to main battery director No. 1 and to secondary battery director No. 1. From the information available, in most cases electrical damage cannot be associated with specific hits.

42. The loss of all search radar was a serious handicap to SOUTH DAKOTA. In this regard the Commanding Officer in reference (a) stated:

"The trust and faith in the search radar equipment is amazing. After this ship lost both SG and SC equipment, the psychological effect on the officers and crew was most depressing. The absence of this gear gave all hands a feeling of being blindfolded."

43. During the action, power on fire control and interior communication circuits throughout the ship was lost for approximately three minutes as a result of short-circuits due to the destruction by gunfire of cable and equipment on I.C. and F.C. circuits in the superstructure. The short-circuits produced an overload such that the circuit breaker on the normal feeder to the I.C. switchboard tripped on main generator and distribution switchboard No. 1. The I.C. switchboard was equipped with automatic bus transfer to shift the power supply to the emergency Diesel generator switchboard No. 1 in case of interruption of normal power from the main board. As the capacity of the Diesel generator was considerably smaller than the connected load on the I.C. switchboard, the F.C. and I.C. bus was energized through a 1000 ampere circuit breaker which was designed to automatically open before the automatic bus transfer operated. Thus, only the load on the I.C. restricted bus, which was well within the capacity of the emergency generator, would remain on the board. The circuit breaker opened properly. But after the automatic bus transfer operated, the fuzes protecting the emergency supply "blew." Apparently several of the circuits connected to the I.C. restricted bus were still short-circuited. Defective circuits were isolated and power restored on all serviceable I.C. and F.C. circuits in approximately three minutes.

44. Ordinarily, matters which are not the result of damage by enemy action are not included in damage reports. In this case, however, the fact that electrical failure initiated by the shock of gunfire was a handicap to SOUTH DAKOTA while in action warrants some comment. As a result of this failure, numerous control shifts had to be made and it was reported that all power on the after part of the ship was lost for about a minute. This occurred before receiving the first hit.

45. At the time of the failure, normal power was being supplied to the after 5-inch director from generator and distribution switchboard No. 4 through a bus transfer panel, power distribution panel, and an automatic bus transfer switch (PLATE II). The automatic bus transfer switch received its alternate supply from generator and distribution switchboard No. 2 through a bus transfer panel and a power distribution panel. The AQB circuit breakers in the distribution panels, which were in unattended locations, were "locked in" in accordance with outstanding instructions.

46. The shock produced by Turret III firing astern caused the contactor for the alternate power supply in the automatic bus transfer switch to close, thereby paralleling generator and distribution switchboards No. 4 and No. 2. As the two power sources were not in phase the resulting synchronizing current surge welded the contacts on the automatic bus transfer switch closed and the normal feeder cable to the after 5-inch director (FE834) ruptured and short-circuited between phases on the No. 4 generator and distribution switchboard side of the rupture. Because no mention was made of trouble on the alternate power supply to the director, it is inferred that the rupture of the normal feeder cleared the short-circuit on the alternate supply which then continued to supply the director. As the AQB circuit breaker in the power distribution panel was "locked in" the fault on generator and distribution switchboard No. 4 was cleared by the tripping of generator No. 7 ACB circuit breaker. It was not reported whether the feeder ACB circuit breaker tripped also but it was implied that it did.

47. The operator then energized generator and distribution switchboard No. 4 from generator and distribution switchboard No. 3 by closing the bus tie (FE0404) circuit breaker. The circuit breaker for the normal feeder (FE0716) to the bus transfer panel was closed manually, causing the circuit breaker to generator No. 6 to trip. At this time, the circuit breakers on both normal feeder (FE0716) and alternate feeder (FE0420) to the bus transfer panel were opened. Power was restored to generator and distribution switchboards Nos. 3 and 4 by closing the circuit breakers to generators Nos. 5 and 6. The alternate feeder (FE0420) circuit breaker to the bus transfer panel was closed at generator and distribution switchboard No. 3, tripping out circuit breakers for generators Nos. 5 and 6 and the alternate feeder (FE0420). Circuit breakers for generators Nos. 5, 6 and 7 were immediately closed again, while circuit breakers on normal feeder (FE0716) and alternate feeder (FE0420) remained open. From the time of closure of the automatic bus transfer switch until closure of the circuit breakers for generators Nos. 5, 6 and 7 it was reported that about one minute elapsed. Repair parties then located the fault, isolated it and restored power to 5-inch mounts Nos. 6 and 8.

48. The source of these electrical failures was the unreliable operation of the automatic bus transfer switch. All of these switches have been replaced by a manual type transfer switch.

49. The power interruption on the after main switchboards was made more extensive by the failure of the feeder and the main generator circuit breakers to operate selectively under short-circuit conditions. As a result, instead of the feeder breaker operating alone to isolate the short-circuit, the generator breaker also tripped out at the same time. For proper operation, the generator circuit breakers should not open under fault conditions except when the fault is on the switchboard bus or between the generator and the switchboard. This means that the generator circuit breaker should have sufficient time delay at currents equal to the maximum short-circuit current of the generator to permit the feeder breakers only to trip. At the same time, the generator breakers must provide a reasonable amount of switchboard bus fault protection. After considerable study and development and subsequent to this casualty, improved circuit breaker performance was obtained by replacing the time delay dashpot trip devices on the main generator circuit breakers with a type PQ relay. The type PQ relays installed on the SOUTH DAKOTA were the first that became available. Nearly comparable improvement in selective breaker operation has been obtained on similar ships by the installation of special time delay dashpots on the generator breakers.

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by RAMJB

[RAMJB]

17 hours ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

Small guns could (and should) annihilate the bow and stern of AON ships (predictably they have 'nothing' there), and the superstructure.

Doesn't matter how big your ship is, if its entire upper decks are ablaze and missing.

I'm sorry but categorical statements which are not only false but backed by no proof - quite the opposite, there's plenty of evidence of ships being still able to fight after being riddled with small caliber holes - don't help at all in debates like this.

No, small guns couldn't (so, shouldn't) "annihilate the bow and stern on AoN ships. For one the actual damaging capability against the structure of big ships of guns that small was really limited. For other, most AoN designs did have armor in the extremities. Some more, some less, but even the ones with the least, while not having much armor in those areas, they had enough to deal with splinters from near misses. And that plating was more than enough to stop 2 or 3 inch guns too

Not to mention that the AoN concept came hand to hand with the citadel raft concept. You could puncture the extremities of AoN ships until the point everything out of the citadel was flooded, yet those ships were designed so they'd still would have more than enough reserve buoyancy within their citadel to stay afloat without problem even in such a scenario.


Also to set "the entire upper decks" of a battleship "ablaze", you're going to need a helluva lot of small guns. Not just the handful of a couple destroyers. As to "upper decks missing", I have to insist that those 5, 4, 3 and 2 inch guns weren't shooting nukes nor black matter. They shot pretty normal HE of the time, which was nowhere near enough to "vaporize" the upper sections of a massive warship as a battleship. Damage, yes. But not "anihilate" anything.

Edited January 2, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

On 1/1/2020 at 4:34 AM, RAMJB said:

- Snip - 

Was mostly trying to point out that before the hotfix wasn't right either, and I know I went somewhere out of bounds with where some of my points started going, I get lost in discussing the history often. 

For the armor pen values, that's why I put *kinetic equivalent*, I know those guns could not pen that much armor as armor was built at the time. And besides, even 240mm of pen at 10km is impressive for eight inchers built in the 30's. Wasn't debating Bismarck's loss to small guns either, was saying they were a contributing factor, with many minor systems suffering damage from the cruiser guns, including pumps, secondaries etc. If we really want to get technical, she was a combat loss the instant Lutjens was an idiot and didn't maintain radio silence, or when her rudder was jammed, pick your poison, but those two things did more for her loss than any combat she took part in. Her actual loss is irrelevant the moment she became an operational loss due to those two things. Add to this, that the Germans scuttled her, presumably to prevent boarding and capture of codes/other secrets or the ship itself (she was still sinking regardless I believe, but a boarding party may have been able to order enough repairs at gunpoint to capture her, this is speculation on my part, but I would say it's sensible to assume the German Officers on board thought about such a case.)

 

I do agree that the in game values are presently inflated for penetration and such, but the in game armor values are also horrifically inflated with Krupp IV providing vastly more protection than any ship had historically, this is also I assume down to the armor model not being finished, as you yourself have mentioned in posts before. Fixing one requires fixing of the other as well. 

And please forgive my errors, my memory of most of these things isn't perfect, and I don't tend to remember when or where I read about most of it as the majority of my knowledge comes from physical museums and pieces, though I am working on collecting as many naval history books as I can, or as my money allows anyway. Sadly they are not that common in the US as they tend to only focus on American history and victories here. As for the shell in the PoW, I was referring to the shell found while she was in Rosyth for repairs after the battles, looking it up again it appears modern consensus is that it was a 381mm shell from Bismarck in the aft boiler rooms yes. When I read about it, it was a 203mm shell, and I remembered the impact area wrong it seems. Good to know that more correct info has brought matters up to date. 

[RAMJB]

Before the hotfix the problem was HE not doing much against armored ships because of how the armor system is designed. AP was perfectly fine.

Hence, the problem wasn't with the guns. The problem is with a simplified armor model that, at some point, will have to be revised to be a lot more detailed, as currently areas that should be vulnerable to medium caliber HE (4 to 6 inch) aren't so much so.

So what wasn't working before is still not working. And on top of that we have small guns acting like coilguns. Not saying that what was before was perfect - but it was a better state overall, as less things were broken.



as for the historical comments:
240mm at 10km for a 203mm AP shell is not that impressive. American 8''/55 Mk 14s could penetrate 10'' of armor from the same distance, and the Mk12, 13 and 15 were more or less their ballistic equals. It may seem like quite the achievers if you compare them with very early pre-WWI 12'' penetrations (which were 10-11'' or so at similar ranges), but it's just the progression of technology on AP caps that happened since WW1 what makes the difference. At any rate the german 8'' wasn't any special in it's vertical penetration performance, and was decidedly inferior to american 8'' guns in horizontal deck penetrations in long range plunging fire (mostly because the latter were using superheavy projectiles fired at slower MVs).


I wasn't debating Bismarck's loss to small guns either. In your previous post you seemingly pointed out that it was the medium and small calibers that did most of the heavylifting at the time of rendering the ship a soft kill (silenced). It was not the case. What silenced Bismarck was battleship artillery. Then the cruisers came and joined the party with their smaller guns without fear of retribution - small guns, which, even then in the overall scope of things didn't really do that much compared with the scale of destruction the 356mm and 406mm shells from KGV and Rodney did on the ship.

Essentially you could've deleted the cruisers from that engagement, taken them away from the british side, and the battle would've ended exactly as it did. That's no spectacular performance from cruiser caliber guns to use as an instance of how useful they were, yet you used it as an instance of exactly that.

As for her scuttling, it's one of those things that tend to misguide people. Bismarck was already embarking thousands of tons of water before that last engagement even began. And by the time the scuttling order was issued, she was already sinking - it was only a matter of time. What sank that ship was british naval gunnery (and a lucky aerial torpedo hit) - the scuttling was little more than a sidenote in the overall scope of things. Even if it was a significant act of bravery from the part of the crew, which it was, it really was a mere anechdote.


As for your errors, no need to ask anyone for forgiveness ;). That's what forum answers and quotes are for - to adress things that may be wrong and set the record straight about them ;). Still is good practice to do a fast fact-check on internet while writting off memory because otherwise you end up writting things that just aren't true. I know it myself, I tend to write posts off memory all the time and have to force myself to double-check what I'm saying just in case I'm remembering it wrong. 

Edited January 3, 2020 by RAMJB

[Reaper Jack]

15 hours ago, RAMJB said:

240mm at 10km for a 203mm AP shell is not that impressive. American 8''/55 Mk 14s could penetrate 10'' of armor from the same distance, and the Mk12, 13 and 15 were more or less their ballistic equals. It may seem like quite the achievers if you compare them with very early pre-WWI 12'' penetrations (which were 10-11'' or so at similar ranges), but it's just the progression of technology on AP caps that happened since WW1 what makes the difference. At any rate the german 8'' wasn't any special in it's vertical penetration performance, and was decidedly inferior to american 8'' guns in horizontal deck penetrations in long range plunging fire (mostly because the latter were using superheavy projectiles fired at slower MVs).
 

Correct me if I am wrong, but prior to WW2, wasn't it the Mk 9 which was in service? I know the New Orleans and older cruisers had their Mk 9's replaced during the war, but I am not sure what the Baltimores or the Wichita were constructed with. My point about the good performance was that the German gun was good for a weapon designed in the first half of the 30's, compared to the latter half or early 40's as the American guns were.

Not that it was any use to the Kriegsmarine anyway, with the gross incompetence of many of the Naval Staff and worst of all, the complete lack of foresight for building escorts that could actually ESCORT the raiding ships. Short Range Destroyers and inferior Light Cruisers being the two major issues throughout the war, at least while the Kriegsmarine was still trying to use it's capital ships. I often wonder how much more effective the Panzerschiffe may have been with a long range diesel powered large destroyer or very light cruiser equipped with an AA and ASW Suite would have been. Same story for all the German Capital Ships really. Though for the doctrine the Bismarcks were a waste of resources, nothing larger than Scharnhorsts were needed, and even they were a big stretch in that regard; a stronger focus on escorted cruiser/panzerschiff raiders with more numerous U-Boats would have been far more terrifying. Ah but the benefits of hindsight. Still, you would have thought someone would have at least attempted to tell Hitler that huge Battleships did not fit the doctrine for fuel reasons or practical use, or maybe that did, but Hitler was Hitler and said he wanted the big guns. 

[RAMJB]

3 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

Correct me if I am wrong, but prior to WW2, wasn't it the Mk 9 which was in service?

There were many 8'' marks in US Service. The baseline was the Mk9 , yes, but what came later up to be the llater Mk13 or Mk.14s, they were essentially the same gun. THe difference mostly coming from having either a partially chrome-plated or a fully chrome-plated bore.

At any rate the Mk9 was the basic 8'' many other US 8'' marks were designed to look like. And the Mk9 shells could pen the same 10'' of armor it's Mk14 sibling could...only this one could do it from 1000 yards less (10in penetration@9000yards). Which is not as good....but it's still comparable to the german 20.3cm gun.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_8-55_mk9.php

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by RAMJB

[ThatZenoGuy]

On 1/3/2020 at 1:28 AM, akd said:

The Chinese ironclad Dingyuan was holed 464 times at the Battle of the Yalu River, mostly by 2-6" QF guns, yet was still considered capable of fighting. Likewise her sister ship Zhenyuan took 220 hits and was similarly still capable of fighting.  Not an all or nothing armor scheme, but much of her superstructure was unarmored.

At the same time, the Japanese large protected cruiser Matsushima suffered some 100 casualties and was knocked out off action by a single 12-inch shell.

Because 'aim manually and click the fire trigger' is the same as WW1-2 fire control directors that, once exploded (and usually in unarmored areas) significantly decrease accuracy?

[ThatZenoGuy]

On 1/3/2020 at 4:46 AM, RAMJB said:

I'm sorry but categorical statements which are not only false but backed by no proof - quite the opposite, there's plenty of evidence of ships being still able to fight after being riddled with small caliber holes - don't help at all in debates like this.

No, small guns couldn't (so, shouldn't) "annihilate the bow and stern on AoN ships. For one the actual damaging capability against the structure of big ships of guns that small was really limited. For other, most AoN designs did have armor in the extremities. Some more, some less, but even the ones with the least, while not having much armor in those areas, they had enough to deal with splinters from near misses. And that plating was more than enough to stop 2 or 3 inch guns too

Not to mention that the AoN concept came hand to hand with the citadel raft concept. You could puncture the extremities of AoN ships until the point everything out of the citadel was flooded, yet those ships were designed so they'd still would have more than enough reserve buoyancy within their citadel to stay afloat without problem even in such a scenario.


Also to set "the entire upper decks" of a battleship "ablaze", you're going to need a helluva lot of small guns. Not just the handful of a couple destroyers. As to "upper decks missing", I have to insist that those 5, 4, 3 and 2 inch guns weren't shooting nukes nor black matter. They shot pretty normal HE of the time, which was nowhere near enough to "vaporize" the upper sections of a massive warship as a battleship. Damage, yes. But not "anihilate" anything.

A ship with a holed and exploded bow is significantly slower and unable to manuver. 

A ship with a holed and exploded stern cannot move or steer at all.

A ship with exploded superstructure, rangefinders, etc, cannot aim. You've effectively destroyed the ship.

Stop being such a contrarian who just opposes random posts because you think you're a smart Alec.

[RAMJB]

1 minute ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

Because 'aim manually and click the fire trigger' is the same as WW1-2 fire control directors that, once exploded (and usually in unarmored areas) significantly decrease accuracy?

The game already models directors and control tops that if destroyed hurt accuracy a lot.

So you don't need to model small guns as turbolasers to "emulate" that. They're already in the game. The point the message you're quoting made is that, opposite to what several people have posted here, small guns were unable to "anihilate" big warships. Damage, yes. Impair their combat efficiency, yes. Outright massacre them, NO.
 

[RAMJB]

10 minutes ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

A ship with a holed and exploded bow is significantly slower and unable to manuver. 

A ship with a holed and exploded stern cannot move or steer at all.

A ship with exploded superstructure, rangefinders, etc, cannot aim. You've effectively destroyed the ship.

Stop being such a contrarian who just opposes random posts because you think you're a smart Alec.

None of them "holed end exploded bow or stern" would cause the ship to sink. Proof enough of it is that enough ships came back to port with bows or sterns ripped by torpedoes but very much affloat (and in conditions of firing their guns if needed). 

Yet in game those guns outright sink ships they had no business in sinking. You can argue all you want about it, that's not correct, and that should not be that way.

BTW, no destroyer or cruiser ever "holed and exploded" any big warship bow, nor stern, if it wasn't through the direct impact of a torpedo. Their gunnery simply didn't have enough power to do anything close to those levels of structural damage. Again - their gunfire could damage bigger ships, yes. But "anihilate", no, they could not at all.

A  ship with "exploded rangefinders" switch to secondary director. If secondary director is destroyed they switch to local rangefinding (most turrets had in-built rangefinders on their own). THey would go on fighting at reduced efficiency but they COULD aim. So no, you would't have "effectively destroyed the ship". To destroy a ship you have to sink the ship, or reduce it to total silence. Small guns could not do either against big armored warships.

As for your rather poor attempt at a personal attack I'm just going to ignore it. You choose to go there, you'll be the only one doing so, buddy.

Edited January 4, 2020 by RAMJB

[RAMJB]

To further proof the kind of thing I'm trying to say here, I'm attaching a picture with all the damage USS South Dakota took during the battle of Guadalcanal.

Its a total of more than 18 hits from 5'' to 8'' guns on the superstructure of the ship alone (more if we count hull hits). It knocked radar offline and caused some holes, and splinter and superficial damage at most.

Yet other than KOing the radar and inducing electrical problems (Which as I have shown before, were caused by the ship defective electrics, not because of the hits themselves) all those hits achieved nothing. Structurally that superstructure was just fine. Needed some patching up to tape all the holes and splinter damage, of course. There were men injured, hurt, and killed by that gunfire. Some light AA mounts were KO'd. Obviously it'd caused some trouble for the crew moving along those places.


But the ship was perfectly fine otherwise from all those hits. Combat-wise the only reason South Dakota was crippled was because she crippled herself by having a faulty electrical system. The over-reliance of the gunnery crews on radar also played a part - but their optical fire control systems were operational so the ship was still fully combat capable anyway. 

The picture here shows a ship that was subjected to a hailstorm of light and medium caliber gunfire from pretty short ranges...yet the picture shows a far, far, far, cry from the "exploded superstructures" some people are talking about around here. But it seems that now, for whatever reason, some people think that 5'' and 8'' gunfire could nuke off the superstructure of a 35000t ship. Just because they think they should, based on absolutely nothing solid.

The TL:DR of this, again would be that small and medium guns could deal superficial damage big ships that could somewhat impair their fighting ability. But no, they could not "explode" or "Annihilate" them...nor any of their parts, with gunfire alone.


 

Edited January 4, 2020 by RAMJB

[arkhangelsk]

On 12/30/2019 at 11:50 PM, Bontainer said:

Also interesting were the hit probabilities at very close (<2500 m) range: Main guns 1%, 6" 8%, 2" 15%.

The penetration have gotten a lot of love, to the neglect about the hit rates.

Here are some from the Sino-Japanese War (equivalent to the earliest era)'s Battle of the Yalu:
Japanese 12-inch: 13 fired at ranges of under 3000m, 2 hits (15.3%)
Japanese QF: Olender estimates from 3300 for 170-210 hits (5-6%) to Osprey's ~8700 fired for about about 330 hits (3.7%)
Chinese 12-inch: 197-217 fired starting from long range, 9 hits (about 4%)
Chinese 10-inch: 10 fired, 2 hits (20%)
Chinese QF: estimated 1200 fired, 69 hits (7%)

As an aside, I'm not sure where the multiple hundreds of hits on 定遠 and 鎮遠 came from . Lai's Chinese Battleship vs Japanese cruiser (Osprey) figures 定遠 ate 159 hits, while Piotr Olender's Sino-Japanese Naval War figures it ate about 90-100. As for 鎮遠, Lai repeats the 220 times figure in his maintext, but his table estimates about 80 hits which is about the same as Olender's 80-100.

(I'm sick and tired of multiple romanization systems. We are in 2019. I'll just enter glyphs and you can throw them in the search engine.)

The preliminary conclusion is that even the act of mounting huge guns on tiny ships with horrendously slow rates of fire cannot neutralize their inherent advantages in terms of hit rate per round, even at close range.

Here are some from the Russo-Japanese War (from Olender), though the range is slightly longer:

Quote

Undoubtedly one of the factors that determined the success of Togo's squadron was the accuracy of the Japanese guns. They achieved about 4 percent hits, but for the number of 305-254mm shells fired it was 14%, for 203mm shells 9.5% and for 152mm shells about 2.7%. Despite the fact that the general range was 20-30 cable lengths (3.6 to 5.2km).

People, how about trying to use honest, reasonable numbers for the secondaries and accepting whatever damage they inflict, instead of just insisting that they must be effective no matter what?

Edited January 5, 2020 by arkhangelsk
Delete one extraneous "mounting"

[akd]

5 hours ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

Because 'aim manually and click the fire trigger' is the same as WW1-2 fire control directors that, once exploded (and usually in unarmored areas) significantly decrease accuracy?

Well, it would be as capable as fighting as the Zhenyuan, which is to say less capable but not dead.  Taking out director did not disable the battery.  Even after you got through all the redundancies (and there were a lot), you’d eventually be left with turrets under local control, just like Zhenyuan.

[akd]

1 hour ago, arkhangelsk said:

 

As an aside, I'm not sure where the multiple hundreds of hits on 定遠 and 鎮遠 came from . Lai's Chinese Battleship vs Japanese cruiser (Osprey) figures 定遠 ate 159 hits, while Piotr Olender's Sino-Japanese Naval War figures it ate about 90-100. As for 鎮遠, Lai repeats the 220 times figure in his maintext, but his table estimates about 80 hits which is about the same as Olender's 80-100.

Yes, there are multiple numbers floating around, but it remains in the end a large number of non-fatal hits.

[ThatZenoGuy]

14 hours ago, RAMJB said:

None of them "holed end exploded bow or stern" would cause the ship to sink. Proof enough of it is that enough ships came back to port with bows or sterns ripped by torpedoes but very much affloat (and in conditions of firing their guns if needed). 

I didn't say 'sink'.*REMOVED*

14 hours ago, RAMJB said:

Yet in game those guns outright sink ships they had no business in sinking. You can argue all you want about it, that's not correct, and that should not be that way.

That's because the game allows damage for non-penetrating hits, when that makes little sense. Its also a balance mechanic to make smaller guns totally not-useless.

14 hours ago, RAMJB said:

BTW, no destroyer or cruiser ever "holed and exploded" any big warship bow, nor stern, if it wasn't through the direct impact of a torpedo. Their gunnery simply didn't have enough power to do anything close to those levels of structural damage. Again - their gunfire could damage bigger ships, yes. But "anihilate", no, they could not at all.

Any naval gun can penetrate/explode the <40mm of AON battleship plating. It merely takes additional shots to utterly wreck it. Something like a 6 inch gun slinger could easily make enough flooding and damage to saturate the bow/stern of a ship.

It takes a hello kittying long time ingame to do it, so it seems in order.

14 hours ago, RAMJB said:

A  ship with "exploded rangefinders" switch to secondary director. If secondary director is destroyed they switch to local rangefinding (most turrets had in-built rangefinders on their own). THey would go on fighting at reduced efficiency but they COULD aim. So no, you would't have "effectively destroyed the ship". To destroy a ship you have to sink the ship, or reduce it to total silence. Small guns could not do either against big armored warships.

>What is Bismark
Take out the main directors and you've practically won already, take out the secondaries too, and its all but guaranteed.

[khang36]

Speaking of fire control system did ships have such things for their non-main guns pre ww1 or were they just local control

[Nick Thomadis]

@ThatZenoGuy
No bad words please. Keep the conversation civil. I edited your text.

Happy New Year to All!

[RAMJB]

48 minutes ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

I didn't say 'sink'.

In one hand, You've used words as "anihilate", "holed and exploded", and similar superlatives in this thread. Which just make no sense given the actual damaging potential of the guns you're talking. And which are conductive to, and implicitly entail, the concept of destroying the enemy ship.

Something those guns couldn't really do against massive capital ships designed to stand damage from guns far larger than those we're talking about. 

On the other hand, you didn't say "sink", but the problem reported here and that has originated this discussion, is that those guns DO sink ships that size. Something they shouldn't really be able to do, certainly not to the scale they're able to do it in game.

 

48 minutes ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

That's because the game allows damage for non-penetrating hits, when that makes little sense. Its also a balance mechanic to make smaller guns totally not-useless.

No. Non penetrating AP hits do not do any damage. They just bounce off. 

That small gun AP does damage it shouldn't against ships they shouldn't is because the game gives small guns too much penetration.

And it's not a "balance" mechanic. Because such a thing does not exist for a game like this. The only balance in this game will be it's realistic game mechanics (at least if I've got that right from the webpage announcement about it, and the published official descriptions, which exactly state that much when it describes how the game will have realistic damage models, realistic gunnery models, and realistic tactics).

If small guns in real life weren't able to do something, in the finished game here, they won't either. That's the "balance" a game intended to be a realistic simulation has to offer.

 

48 minutes ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

Any naval gun can penetrate/explode the <40mm of AON battleship plating. It merely takes additional shots to utterly wreck it. Something like a 6 inch gun slinger could easily make enough flooding and damage to saturate the bow/stern of a ship.

It takes a hello kittying long time ingame to do it, so it seems in order.

 

No, "any naval gun" could not do that. 40mm of plating would be enough to keep out guns of 2'', 3'' and 4'' of caliber at any range beyond 5000m (with the exception of the american 4''/50 Mk9, which could BARELY go through a couple of inches of armor at 5000m).

Also, you're going to have to define what you mean by "Exploding". Because exploding, in common vernacular, means "blowing up". And you'd be hard pressed to blow up the whole bow or rear of a battleship using 5'' guns. And by hard pressed I mean you'd spend your whole destroyer magazine on a battleship's bow, and you'd end up with an enemy with a lot of holes, and still a pretty much structurally intact bow.

As for "saturate", thats yet another term that comes from nowhere...other than certain arcade naval game we all have heard about, and which has no real meaning in any serious naval talk. So you're going to have to define, or translate, that word, for everyone to understand exactly what you mean with it. Because if what you mean with it is, again, causing structural collapse of either bows or sterns of 35000+ ton warships with 5'' guns or smaller, no, that was not possible either.


 

48 minutes ago, ThatZenoGuy said:

>What is Bismark
Take out the main directors and you've practically won already, take out the secondaries too, and its all but guaranteed.

Bismarck's FCS was knocked out - yes. That in general impairs the accuracy of an enemy, yes. To "practically win already" you're going to need a lot more than that though.

Because that Bismarck's FCS was knocked out didn't silence her (by battleship fire, incidentally, I'd like you to show a single instance of a battleship's directors being knocked out by small caliber gunfire, because it never happened. And no, directors do not mean "rangefinders" nor "radar". Directors is the place where all the rangekeeper plotting equipment is installed, and from where fire control solutions are originated).

What silenced Bismarck wasn't that the FCS was knocked out - was that her four turrets were blown apart. And subsequently, the secondaries. All that damage was done by battleship caliber gunfire. Once she was a sitting silent wreck is when the cruisers joined the party.

Again, good luck doing that kind of job with 5'' guns or smaller. 

Edited January 5, 2020 by RAMJB

[Maty83]

Request for free placing for bridges and barbetter. It is extremely difficult to get use of some hulls, as well as making some unconventional designs. just try making an Amagi-style BC with the JP modern battlecruiser hull....

[Maty83]

On 1/5/2020 at 1:47 AM, RAMJB said:

 

Because that Bismarck's FCS was knocked out didn't silence her (by battleship fire, incidentally, I'd like you to show a single instance of a battleship's directors being knocked out by small caliber gunfire, because it never happened. And no, directors do not mean "rangefinders" nor "radar". Directors is the place where all the rangekeeper plotting equipment is installed, and from where fire control solutions are originated).

Norfolk getting Scharnhorst's radar. One instance. It impairs the accuracy heavily and blinds ships in adverse weather

[RAMJB]

15 hours ago, Maty83 said:

Norfolk getting Scharnhorst's radar. One instance. It impairs the accuracy heavily and blinds ships in adverse weather

Once again: and let's see if the readers get it: Radar is *******NOT****** a FCS. Radar is ******NOT****** a director. Knocking out radar is NOT knocking out a director (The same knocking out a rangefinder is not knocking out a director).

Radar is a means of detection and in some sets, rangefinding (more or less accurate, depending on the model, wavelenght, power output, etc). WWII radar was, best case scenario (allied centimetric wavelenght sets) the electronic all-weather equivalent of an optical rangefinder.

That is NOT a fire control system. A fire control system, or Director, was a station with plenty of equipment for plotting fire. Plotting fire means: you input range, course, speed, bearing of the target (alongside many other things as own ship speed and course, temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, etc), and the plotters give you a fire solution. 

If you knock the main rangefinders off a ship she'll have some trouble estimating distance as accurately as if intact, but that's why battleship had backup rangefinders on the aft superstructure, some also had rangefinders for AAA and secondary batteries that could double for primary battery use in case the mains were knocked out... and if every one of those was KO too, then there were the rangefinders on the turrets themselves.

But no, rangefinder does NOT equal FCS. Knocking out the rangefinders of a ship does NOT equaly knocking out the FCS. To knock out the FCS you had to hit the director itself - which still was out of the main armored citadel so could be done, but they weren't as exposed as the rangefinders (or the radar aerials).


As for Scharnhorst. First of all, her FCS wasn't knocked out (hence, your answer is not an instance of what I was talking about in the quote you posted), her radar was. Just like South Dakota's radar was KO in Guadalcanal, yet her FCS was intact and ready to go.

To follow, Scharnhorst's radar not the same as the allied sets of the period. German naval sets down to the very last days of the war (when a few centimetric ones entered service, but of course in no major surface units as all had been either sunk or were unseaworthy by that stage) operated on decimetric wavelenghts, and operated on oscilloscope screens, not PPI (as many allied centimetric sets did since 1943).

Now: other of the good things of having an optical rangefinding is that you not only estimate the range to the enemy, it's high magnification is very useful to spot the fall of shot. By seeing where your shots fall you know if your solution is off and by how much (which is data that also goes to the rangekeeper plotting machines in the directors to refine the shot). In naval gunnery: if you couldn't see your fall of shot, you couldn't correct your solution, so you would be firing blanks. Literally hail mary shots.

Radar sets were very different between each other (they still are). A given set would have certain capabilities depending on it's characteristics. In this case what we're looking for is resolution. Or how accurate a picture the radar "paints" in it's return signal. With low resolution you can pick a signal but only have very rough estimation of ranges, with a rather large margin of error. For some applications this does not matter (Early warning radars, for instance, you only want to know if something's out there and roughly where). With high resolution you can literally paint a map with your radar (in fact some radar sets do just that...and they're called, quite unimaginativelly, ground mapping radars).

Now the question would be, then why not go for high resolution radars, all the time?. Answer - resolution depends on signal power output (the more power, the better return you get), but also on signal wavelenght. Signal wavelenght is inverse to the wave frequency. Hence if you want a really small wavelenght, you need a very high frequency.

And high frequencies have serious range limitations. First, because high frequency electromagnetic signals tend to be absorbed by the transmitting medium very quickly - the wave itself doesn't reach very far before being dissipated. And second, in the timeframe we're talking about, because a radar set would be tuned to emit-listen. Emit a signal, wait for the return, emit the next one. If the signal returns after the next one has been emitted, the information will be bogus and nonsensical (you'd be getting phantom returns at very close range). So in high frequency radars of WWII, range was quite limited - the higher the frequency, the less real range your set could have. Nowadays with phased array radars that's not a problem, btw, but it was very real back in the 1940s.

So why not go for high resolution radars, all the time?. Well, because if you did, then you'd have no set with range beyond a very short radius. So you'd tailor your set for your need. EW radars with long wavelenghts and very long range, but poor resolution. And point-targetting high definition radars with short wavelenghts, but high resolution.
So in general for detection purposes you'd usually have 2 sets. One with long wavelenght (low frequency, long range) for early warning, another one with short wavelenght, for precise information. A good instance of it it's the Freya-Wüzburg combo used by the germans for their Reich Defense detection belts.

The problem is...the german short wavelenght equipment was well behind allied sets. Simply stated, it emitted at not enough of a high frequency nor short enough wavelenght. to emit on very small wavelenghts in the 1940s you needed something the germans thought was an engineering impossibility...until they found out it was not when looking at captured allied centimetric sets. I'll save the explanation and space - it was the magnetron, the invention of which gave the allies access to centimetric wavelenght radar when the germans were restricted to decimetric, and which was KEY in enabling the allies to do something the germans never could: Truly real, effective, radar-guided naval blind firing.

Centimetric wavelenghts (combined with PPI projections) allowed the operator to get distinct, recognizable, individual, returns out of both the contact AND the shot splashes. The radar operator could both "range find", and "spot the shot". There was no need for a guy actually watching the shells falling - the radar return was clear enough to provide for that.

Decimetric wavelenghts did not. Their resolution was too coarse to differentiate the target from the splashes. You still needed a guy on the optical equipment of the ship spotting the shot. If there was none, or if the weather conditions were adverse, or if was night time...you're outta luck, you can't spot the shot even if you have your radar set in working order.

Technically that still allows for "blind fire" with a radar like that. But it'd not be real blind fire, but shooting hail marys. It'd be as much as firing blanks as it'd be firing optically without bothering about spotting the shot. That's not "blind firing", that's just "shoot for the sake of shooting".


This mammoth text is a very long explanation to tell you that Schanrhorst's radar being disabled didn't change much. Probably the one thing that did was to enable DoY to come close enough to open fire (with her own blind fire radar set) without Scharnhorst noticing. But once the gunfire engagement began the germans couldn't return fire accurately...with or without radar. As it was they were aiming at gun flashes. With radar they'd be aiming at pips on an oscilloscope. In neither case the german operators could spot the fall of shot - so while being slightly less hopeless, having radar would've changed nothing in the final engagement: Scharnhorst would still have not been able to hit the broad side of a barn, even if inside one.

Edited January 7, 2020 by RAMJB

[WelshZeCorgi]

Suggestion, I think it would further add to UAD's interesting visual appeal if there were animations to the destruction of components such as collapsing funnels, toppling towers, ships being blown in half after a mortal explosion or capsizing and rolling over. Turrets being blown open and their barrels depressing from loss of hydraulic pressure, right now it just looks like it got dirty.

[WelshZeCorgi]

Will searchlights, flares, star shells, signal lights and night battles be in the game? It would help vary the experience. 

 

Also, would you consider a sort of "reliability" mechanic? Where components and ammo like (but not limited to) turrets, radio radar, hydrophones, engine, rangefinders, etc. can fail due to (but not limited to) poor quality, slave labor or rushed research or construction? Dud 12" shell from bismarck, jammed Y turret from the Prince of Wales during the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

[Maty83]

Ram, sorry for me not following the entire conversation. The radar getting knocked out and North Cape was a crucial part of the battle though, because afterwards Scharnhorst couldn't see the trap laid out for her. That's what I was following as the logic.

Another part I have to mention about the current patch is how some shell impacts can have remarkably strecched textures after impacts. A minor thing, but the impacts are applied as planar seemingly, which causes this.