Historical US Protected Cruiser Armament

[Kirewark]

I bought UAD over the weekend after watching some youtube videos. It's been a blast. 

I have been trying my hand at making historical ships - Recently the late 1890's to early 1910's US Protected Cruisers. 

One issue I've seen is historically many of these had 6in casemate guns. For example the USS St. Louis and the USS Maine (of Spanish-American War fame) both had 6in casemate guns in their armament. 

However, in UAD these hulls are limited to 5in casemate guns.

EDIT: Here are some stats for one of the protected cruisers - The USS St. Louis. If any of you have played World of Warships you will know what a mini battleship the St. Louis is. I mentioned the lack of 6in casemate guns but I have also noticed some other oddities in ship construction in Ultimate Admirals: Dreadnoughts. It's my belief that armaments weigh too much in the game. In some cases you can't even get close to matching the total displacement and armaments of these historical cruisers. Although skipping Barbette armor level and reducing max speed to 20kn or less really helps save weight. 

USS. St. Louis: 

Commissioned: 1906

Total Displacement: 10,839 long tons

Max Speed: 22kn

Engines: Triple expansion reciprocating engines

Funnels: 4 standard funnels

Armament:

14-6in guns, 1x6in fore and aft, the other 12 in casemates - In UAD you can place 6in main guns fore and aft, but have to settle for 5in in casemates

18!-3in guns. You will never pull this off in UAD with the current hulls! At best you can find a couple spots to stick 4 or so 2in or 3in secondaries

 12-1in rapid fire guns. Ditto here, there are no 1in rapid fire guns currently and even if there were, you won't be able to tack that many onto the hulls in this game

Armor:

4in Belt Armor

2-3 Deck armor amidships - Probably tapered off to 1in or less for Deck Extended

4in Shields, I assume this correlates to Turret and Secondaries armor in UAD

5in Conning Tower armor

Edited June 16, 2020 by Kirewark
Expansion

[Kirewark]

My most recent attempt at the USS St. Louis:

Hull: Armored Cruiser IV

Displacement:  2,000t Max, 10,555t as built

Armament:

2x6in Turrets fore and aft

14x5in Casemate guns amidships

4x3in Casemate guns in the fore and aft casemate locations

5x3in Secondary guns around the front tower, basically the only place I could put them without messing too much with existing firing arcs.

Although far short in historical armament, I think this build gets the flavor right and comes in at around the historical displacement.

[DougToss]

I'd like to see casemate guns of up to 10 or 11 inches. I don't know how possible that will be until casemates are procedural, but I'm with you. 

Edited June 17, 2020 by DougToss

[Radetzky35]

would be great to have fore-aft guns without shield, as usual by that time in many cases

[coalminer]

Would be great to see casemates handled similarly to gun turrets where you are given the option of "360 degrees" fire as long as it is unobstructed or simpler "180 degree" coverage for mounting along parallel mid bodies of the vessels.

So maybe something like the casemate equivalent of "centreline" vs "wing/side" mounted main guns, simpler slot cutout casemates in the hull could simply weigh less and those intended as chaser guns(aft/fwd with larger arcs or fire) would weigh more especially with heavier secondary armouring as a larger area has to be armoured with a corresponding increase in mounting weight to account for the armour. This would allow for much easier placement of casemates without overlapping problems in the hull and much cleaner hull looks if casemates are not desired at all.

Casemates should also be given more freedom on the superstructure so that recreations of Omaha class cruisers (stacked casemates) and predreadnoughts can be more easily accomplished.

Edited June 18, 2020 by coalminer

[Marshall99]

On 6/17/2020 at 11:37 AM, Radetzky35 said:

would be great to have fore-aft guns without shield, as usual by that time in many cases

Oh yes! I think they could implement a system for that. When you design your main guns without any protection (0 mm) they come without shield, but if you give them some more protection (0 mm < ) then the shield become visible.