The nature of guns and technology.

[BobRoss0902]

A current issue with NATO tanks is that they use 105mm guns that have been used since the end of WW2. Due to the nature of caliber and penetration ability it doesn't matter how hard you try, you will inevitably have to up the power of your guns no matter how good the tech is behind them due to the simple fact that there is only so much you can do with a certain caliber. Now what does this have to do with UA;D you ask? Everything, the reason why no navies ever wanted to up their gun caliber and why armies today don't want to up their tank guns are one and the same. Cost, and effectiveness. Your average Abrams tank today is not going to come across peer opponents on a daily basis, further increasing reluctance to improve their guns. Same could be applied to pre-WW1 navies, often times they were simply used to keep colonies in check, and fight with random minor nations. So when it comes to say cruisers which usually are not facing peer adversaries, often times they would end up quite neglected in the guns depart.

So its usually a combination of things that keep countries from wanting to upgrade their guns, and while technology can definitely close the gap, it will never be able to fully get the same effectiveness as just upgrading to a higher caliber.

[DougToss]

NATO tanks use the 120mm guns now and have for a while. Hate to be pedantic about that, just saying that NATO went from 90mm to 105mm to 120mm for the reasons you describe. 

There is definitely a reason 3-5" guns were used for as long as they were by protected cruisers. Some protected cruisers did have a mixed battery with 7-9" guns in single mounts fore and aft, and RTW and RTW 2 have exceptions to the rules to accommodate this. 

As for UA:D, firepower and protection are a mess right now as is displacement so ships not only can be over-armed compared to historical counterparts, but there is no real downside to doing so. Definitely something that needs to be addressed. 

[BobRoss0902]

2 minutes ago, DougToss said:

NATO tanks use the 120mm guns now and have for a while. Hate to be pedantic about that, just saying that NATO went from 90mm to 105mm to 120mm for the reasons you describe. 

There is definitely a reason 3-5" guns were used for as long as they were by protected cruisers. Some protected cruisers did have a mixed battery with 7-9" guns in single mounts fore and aft, and RTW and RTW 2 have exceptions to the rules to accommodate this. 

As for UA:D, firepower and protection are a mess right now as is displacement so ships not only can be over-armed compared to historical counterparts, but there is no real downside to doing so. Definitely something that needs to be addressed. 

With reguards to displacement, I've found that if you don't max out everything you actually get a fairly realistic ship, I'm pretty sure this will just end up being a problem that stays in custom and naval academy due to the costs of maxing out a ship.

[DougToss]

There's no harm to getting it right, and a lot that can come from it being off. There should one set of systems across game modes, and a good displacement model in career would also be good for academy and custom battles. Moreover, it is more work to tell the AI to not max out ships, rather than set a realistic max. 

[Reaper Jack]

2 hours ago, BobRoss0902 said:

With reguards to displacement, I've found that if you don't max out everything you actually get a fairly realistic ship, I'm pretty sure this will just end up being a problem that stays in custom and naval academy due to the costs of maxing out a ship.

Not exactly. 

Ships at the moment are designed with the full load weight, what this doesn't show you is the fuel weight as well as a few others weight stats that are presently hidden under the 'hull' weight. (This is all range is by the way, it's just how large the fuel tanks on board are;  and personally, I would prefer to see this mechanic moved to a place-able fuel tank(s) which then gave us a maximum operating range in km at x speed, this would also allow fuel tanks to be hit in combat unlike currently, and let us fine tune them a bit in terms of fore and aft balance as well as use them as additional armor, as ships did historically.) 

There's also the issue right now that certain components have massive weight compared to historically, such as radar, radar gen II increases your tower weight by a stupid amount for how small a radar unit actually is while other parts of the ship are horrendously underweighted, this is most visible with armor, where currently for example belt armor is often less than a quarter of the weight it should be. That is HUGE. Meanwhile torpedo belts are also very light compared to historically, and they're actually quite heavy components already. 

WW2 Heavy Cruisers such as the Hippers only had 80-100mm belts for a reason despite weighing near 18,000 tons, the Algerie's 120mm belt weighs 1500 tons alone, meanwhile in game we have heavy cruiser hulls with 300+mm of belt armor that weighs 500 tons. At the moment, you don't have to choose between guns and armor, you get both, when historically this was a tremendous struggle to get right. Meanwhile a 9,000 ton light cruiser can have a 100mm belt and 18 180mm guns in game, yet irl similar Light Cruisers of that same weight class and same class of belt armor such as the French La Galissonniere class could have only 9 152mm guns while only pulling a speed of 32-35 knots. And we cannot forget that those particular French Cruisers were praised for being a very efficient design on the displacement available, or in other words, the best case scenario.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Reaper Jack

[DougToss]

There's not a firepower, mobility, protection tradeoff if any ship can make 45kn with a belt that would make the King George V blush and 20" guns and that's where are at now. 

Seriously, has anyone here really had to make design compromises yet? I can't think that I have, other than house rules I impose on myself in the name of historicity.