9 inch Secondaries

[Finwenolofinwe]

Hey all,

I'm having a lot of fun trying to recreate historic ship designs, but a thing which bugs me to a probably unreasonable degree is that 9 inch guns are listet as primary weapons for BBs. As far as I know there was no ship with 9 inch primaries built during the relevant era anyone would call a battleship (please correct me if wrong) and building any proper Semi-Dreadnought is almost impossible due to this, even though there already is a hull based on the Lord Nelsons ingame. With exception of Spain, China and interestingly enough Germany every power in the game built at least one shipclass with turreted secondaries between 8 and (in case of Japan's Satsumas) 10 inch caliber, with between 9 and 9.5 inch being the most common.

[RAMJB]

2 hours ago, Finwenolofinwe said:

Hey all,

I'm having a lot of fun trying to recreate historic ship designs, but a thing which bugs me to a probably unreasonable degree is that 9 inch guns are listet as primary weapons for BBs. As far as I know there was no ship with 9 inch primaries built during the relevant era anyone would call a battleship (please correct me if wrong) and building any proper Semi-Dreadnought is almost impossible due to this, even though there already is a hull based on the Lord Nelsons ingame. With exception of Spain, China and interestingly enough Germany every power in the game built at least one shipclass with turreted secondaries between 8 and (in case of Japan's Satsumas) 10 inch caliber, with between 9 and 9.5 inch being the most common.

On the opposite. guns of 9'' and higher were trending towards being  added as complement to the main guns before the introduction of the "all big gun" battleship with HMS Dreadnought cut that trend off forever. They were intended to be part of the primary battery. They were not "secondaries" - certainly not as we understand them nowdadays.

You name the Lord Nelson class. 12'' AND 9.2'' primary battery. What was then called "mixed battery". Lord Nelson's secondary battery was the 24x3'' battery. Not the 9.2'' guns. Those were part of the ship's main battery ;). 

Edited December 20, 2019 by RAMJB

[shaitan]

Quantity is limited, but you can use the side mounted main battery weapons to enable larger sub batteries than the officially designated secondary calibers. Used this to mount some turreted 6"  'secondaries' to my oversized Mikasa.

[RAMJB]

You can replicate a Lord Nelson too, to a point. For whatever unfathomable reason I can only place two twin 9in turrets on each of the sides. The single mounts I can't put in because the game tells me I can't put more :P. So you can't get a 10x9'' layout to emulate Lord Nelson's 9.2'' battery - but you can come close enough with an 8x9'' layout (not a big loss, frankly, Lord Nelson's single 9.2'' mounts had atrocious firing arcs anyway).

Edited December 20, 2019 by RAMJB

[akd]

Number of side main turrets is a campaign tech unlock, so you would need to play with the year to get it working.

[RAMJB]

I set the design year as 1905, and the Lord Nelsons construction began that year...