Armor Layouts and Replicas

[Spitfire109]

So lets start off with a current aspect of the game that I think the Devs are going to address but im not sure. This games armor system is a bit...limited, and quite easy to exploit. As it stands armor layouts in the game are not accurate in the least. Belt lines cover the entire ship and extended belts and extended decks are far too easy to make impenetrable. Makes battleships and Heavy cruisers rather insurmountable to ships with smaller guns, and super structures dont really seem to get hurt as easily as they maybe should. As we all know the actual armor layouts of warships is quite the complex layout. I hope the game will evolve to a point where we can have a more detailed representation of this. It would be nice to sorta customize things like where the belt armor goes or even to be able to place things like a torpedo bulge on the hull. It would also make going bow in less viable as you cant just easily make a bow armored up to 200 or more millimeters. I dont expect it too be exactly true to life, but some more detail would be nice.
Furthermore the current citadel and armor composition are pretty boring and too... gamey. The fact Krupp IV would make something like 250mm of armor be treated like about 500mm to 600mm of armor seems sorta strange to me. I suppose this will be balanced out in the campaign with financial costs but it still makes me think that the game will be won buy whoever can afford the thickest belt. Im not an expert and perhaps one of you who has a bit more knowledge on something like that could explain it better, but I have a feeling that the Krupp armor shouldn't just be X% better than something. Lighter for sure, but a simple % seems too simple. I would also like to see a more visual representation of what the different types of citadel protections do and look like. From what we see Turtleback and All or Nothing seem exactly the same, except that one does this and one does that. It would be nice for people who dont know what those are from doing research or are new to naval history to be able to see what those are doing for the ship, not just stats on a screen. 

Onto the more entertaining stuff. Trying to build replicas.

Uhh... this is supposed to be New Mexico. We are missing two 5inch sponsons, and I think its a bit too short on length... but most of it is there!  She also is 2000 tons too heavy but putting it at 32000 tons shortens the boat too much. And im still not exactly sure what armor makeup and aiming system to use for her. Its not easy to find that sorta information.

Hmm... im not sure that I got her really. Hopefully in time the games dockyard will let us actually make these ships in full.
Post some attempted replicas you guys have attempted.

[Cptbarney]

We will have to wait awhile before we get a lot of hulls really and an improved designer plus better and more realistic armour layout, since the dev team is focusing on the campaign atm.

Unless they address these issues alongside the campaign (if they do great, if not they best do soon afterwards).

[Skeksis]

38 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

We will have to wait awhile before we get a lot of hulls really

Considering all the hulls of TBs-BBs-1890-1930+, all sizeable, all stats balanceable, all components attachable, times by all the campaign nations available...

"waiting" seems incomprehensible! 😵

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

Considering all the hulls of TBs-BBs-1890-1930+, all sizeable, all stats balanceable, all components attachable, times by all the campaign nations available...

"waiting" seems incomprehensible! 😵

If they are doing USA and japan they should make more Hulls for them next patch if they are going to feature in the campaign first, same for britain and germany if they are the first two nations.

Then they can go from there really.

[Skeksis]

9 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

If they are doing USA and japan they should make more Hulls for them next patch if they are going to feature in the campaign first, same for britain and germany if they are the first two nations.

Yeah, whichever nations Dev’s pick we should see an exponential increase in hulls with every update, if not then I would say they’re way behind the 8-ball for any sort of start to finish campaign. Modeling with their limited resources would be their achilles heel, time-wise.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Skeksis

[ReefKip]

Fully agree with everything in the OP. Building ship replicas is impossible because of the predetermined locations for equipment like front-back towers and barbettes. The reason why devs choose to do to it this way goes beyond me.

 

Good point on different armor layouts as well. A nice idea to differentiate between armor layouts like turtle back and all or nothing would be that all or nothing safes weight,seeing that the concept was motivated by the displacement limit  of naval treaty 1922 this is accurate. and is cheaper but only allows you to put alot of armor on belt,conning tower and turret. While forcing you to barely put on armor on things like extended belt and extended deck. This would be historically accurate.  Turtle back would be great for overall  survivability but extremely heavy and expensive.  The layout also forces your ship to be considerably bigger. Which drives up the cost even more. This is also historicly accurate. AON would be the economical choice ,while turtle is the most expensive,heaviest but gives the maximum protection overall in return. 

[Worry_Rock]

On 10/21/2020 at 5:17 PM, Spitfire109 said:

 

Uhh... this is supposed to be New Mexico. We are missing two 5inch sponsons, and I think its a bit too short on length... but most of it is there!  She also is 2000 tons too heavy but putting it at 32000 tons shortens the boat too much. And im still not exactly sure what armor makeup and aiming system to use for her. Its not easy to find that sorta information.

Sadly the American Dreadnought hull we have now is tailored to the early 12" American dreadnoughts like the Florida's and South Carolina's, but I would really like to see hulls to allow for more historical looking ships and especially the New Mexico's.

Of the standard-types the New Mexico's are definitely the best, and I'll fight tooth and nail to defend that point

But back to the replicas, while the new 'super' battleship hulls are cool and all what I think we need next update or even possibly this one is some love for the early dreadnoughts and pre-dreadnoughts in general, as most have one standard hull based of one ship that, like with your New Mexico, can't be tailored to other ships.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  - paid for by the New Mexico Gang 

Edited November 10, 2020 by Worry_Rock

[Microscop]

On 10/25/2020 at 3:13 AM, ReefKip said:

Fully agree with everything in the OP. Building ship replicas is impossible because of the predetermined locations for equipment like front-back towers and barbettes. The reason why devs choose to do to it this way goes beyond me.

 

Good point on different armor layouts as well. A nice idea to differentiate between armor layouts like turtle back and all or nothing would be that all or nothing safes weight,seeing that the concept was motivated by the displacement limit  of naval treaty 1922 this is accurate. and is cheaper but only allows you to put alot of armor on belt,conning tower and turret. While forcing you to barely put on armor on things like extended belt and extended deck. This would be historically accurate.  Turtle back would be great for overall  survivability but extremely heavy and expensive.  The layout also forces your ship to be considerably bigger. Which drives up the cost even more. This is also historicly accurate. AON would be the economical choice ,while turtle is the most expensive,heaviest but gives the maximum protection overall in return. 

This is just wrong

First of all Turtleback can be combined with all for nothing

All for nothing is oposite of distributed armor scheme not oposite to turtleback

The Bismarck style turtleback doesn't offer better protection as the protected volume of the ship is smaller than in typical all for nothing armor scheme and with the main armored deck beeing much lower larger part of the ship is less protected in a result.  Also the citadel doesn't have enough bouyancy to keep the ship afloat and overall belt penetrations result in more dangerous flooding. Turtleback is also worse against plunging fire. 

All for nothing and inclined belt is the best for ww2 era ships, it would have been better for Bismarck also at ranges it fought.

Edited November 10, 2020 by Microscop

[Shiki]

5 hours ago, Microscop said:

This is just wrong

First of all Turtleback can be combined with all for nothing

All for nothing is opposite of distributed armor scheme not opposite to turtleback

The Bismarck style turtleback doesn't offer better protection as the protected volume of the ship is smaller than in typical all for nothing armor scheme and with the main armored deck being much lower larger part of the ship is less protected in a result.  Also the citadel doesn't have enough buoyancy to keep the ship afloat and overall belt penetrations result in more dangerous flooding. Turtleback is also worse against plunging fire. 

All for nothing and inclined belt is the best for ww2 era ships, it would have been better for Bismarck also at ranges it fought.

This isn't exactly true. At the ranges they encountered - the ranges they expected to fight at - no normal belt can be expected to keep out shells. Using German penetration curves, you're looking at a 460 mm cemented belt to break up a 38 cm shell at 15,000 metres, with a target inclination of 20 degrees (385 mm at 30 degrees). The turtleback (böschung in the Kaiserliche Marine- I am uncertain if this designation carried over into the Reichsmarine and Kriegsmarine) of German battleships like Bayern isn't in any way comparable to - or even remotely used for the same purpose as - the turtleback on Bismarck. The former's turtleback is 30 mm strong, and at best will stop splinters from the belt or shell pieces. Anything else is wishful thinking. But Bismarck's turtleback is 110-120 mm thick: well within the realm of putting up meaningful resistance against an incoming shell, especially one that's been slowed down by first having to pierce the 320-mm-thick vertical belt. Aside from a decapping scheme like that adopted for Littorio, it's the only feasible method of ensuring that a shell doesn't enter the citadel at the short ranges they expected to fight at.

This isn't saying anything against your remarks about the protected volume (true), lower armoured deck (also true), and buoyancy (triply true). I'm simply explaining the German reasoning for why they went with that method. All or nothing is a much more viable method of protecting the armoured volume if your engagement range is expected to be longer (like, say, the Pacific). But in the confines and perpetually poor visibility of the North Sea, you have to accept that more often than not you'll be fighting an enemy at much shorter distances.

I've also included the relevant penetration table for convenience. Ranges are in hectometres (1 hm = 100 m). The left Y-axis is the range, the right Y-axis is impact velocity, the X-axis is target angle, the dark lines are for shell breakup post-penetration and the faded lines are for an intact penetration in Fit-to-Burst condition.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Shiki

[Microscop]

19 hours ago, Shiki said:

This isn't exactly true. At the ranges they encountered - the ranges they expected to fight at - no normal belt can be expected to keep out shells. Using German penetration curves, you're looking at a 460 mm cemented belt to break up a 38 cm shell at 15,000 metres, with a target inclination of 20 degrees (385 mm at 30 degrees). The turtleback (böschung in the Kaiserliche Marine- I am uncertain if this designation carried over into the Reichsmarine and Kriegsmarine) of German battleships like Bayern isn't in any way comparable to - or even remotely used for the same purpose as - the turtleback on Bismarck. The former's turtleback is 30 mm strong, and at best will stop splinters from the belt or shell pieces. Anything else is wishful thinking. But Bismarck's turtleback is 110-120 mm thick: well within the realm of putting up meaningful resistance against an incoming shell, especially one that's been slowed down by first having to pierce the 320-mm-thick vertical belt. Aside from a decapping scheme like that adopted for Littorio, it's the only feasible method of ensuring that a shell doesn't enter the citadel at the short ranges they expected to fight at.

This isn't saying anything against your remarks about the protected volume (true), lower armoured deck (also true), and buoyancy (triply true). I'm simply explaining the German reasoning for why they went with that method. All or nothing is a much more viable method of protecting the armoured volume if your engagement range is expected to be longer (like, say, the Pacific). But in the confines and perpetually poor visibility of the North Sea, you have to accept that more often than not you'll be fighting an enemy at much shorter distances.

I've also included the relevant penetration table for convenience. Ranges are in hectometres (1 hm = 100 m). The left Y-axis is the range, the right Y-axis is impact velocity, the X-axis is target angle, the dark lines are for shell breakup post-penetration and the faded lines are for an intact penetration in Fit-to-Burst condition.

Shell fall angle at 15km is 10 degree or more, 20 degrees for inclined belt and add to that even slight angle of the ships even as little as 10 degrees.

The total angle is over 30 at the lest and in practical terms rarely less than 40 degrees. If you ditch the distributed armor scheme and turtleback you should be able to affoard 15 inch belt which won't have issues stopping 15 inch shells with the impact angles i mentioned and probably have enough tonnage left to uparmor the turrets.

 

Bismarck at Denmark strait and when it was sunk was fired at from well above 20km in both cases. Sinking of Glorious happened at over 20km too so long range fights were qutie common. Also worth remembering that radar was making gunnery in bad visibility conditions more and more feasible as the war progressed.

[Shiki]

47 minutes ago, Microscop said:

Shell fall angle at 15km is 10 degree or more, 20 degrees for inclined belt and add to that even slight angle of the ships even as little as 10 degrees.

The total angle is over 30 at the lest and in practical terms rarely less than 40 degrees. If you ditch the distributed armor scheme and turtleback you should be able to afford 15 inch belt which won't have issues stopping 15 inch shells with the impact angles i mentioned and probably have enough tonnage left to uparmor the turrets.

Bismarck at Denmark strait and when it was sunk was fired at from well above 20km in both cases. Sinking of Glorious happened at over 20km too so long range fights were quite common. Also worth remembering that radar was making gunnery in bad visibility conditions more and more feasible as the war progressed.

I believe the penetration table already accounts for angle of fall. They didn't want to move away from the distributed armour scheme because they were concerned with medium-calibre shell holes as well as containing the damage of large calibre shells (see Lützow at the Skagerrak battle). I won't deny that you might have the displacement left over to up-armour the turrets, but it would probably be reinvested back into hull protection (such as in KGV, which also left her turrets and barbettes woefully underprotected). However, I can't necessarily agree with being able to reinvest that weight solely back into vertical protection; you might get a 330-350 mm belt (I profess doubts that it would be inclined at 20 degrees, as they're not Japanese), with a deck of the appropriate thickness. One also has to note that Krupp came out with studies around that time that showed that one had diminishing returns on cemented plates past 320 mm thickness, with 360 mm being the maximum before you started to lose quality.

As for your examples, I feel like I have to point out that although Denmark Strait started at 22,000 m, both sides closed the range until combat distance was around 13-14,000 metres. Renown vs. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the action off Norway was roughly the same distance; Bismarck's final battle can't really be counted, due to the circumstances (had she been in full control of speed and steering, for example, the British might have not been content to hold open the range), and the Battle of the North Cape has extenuating circumstances as well. I'm going to neglect your example concerning Glorious as it's not an engagement between major surface elements. It is worth remembering that radar was making gunnery more and more capable in all conditions, but you also have to bear in mind the short practical range of both British and German sets when it came to directing anti-surface fire, at least at the time, as well as the lack of real understanding surrounding the problems until later in the war when they had a chance to assess their experiences with the technology.

None of this, of course, excludes the fact that the Germans had the wrong idea about the potential engagement ranges of modern battleships. The heavy turtleback was merely their solution to their envisioned short-range combat.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Shiki

[IronKaputt]

19 hours ago, Shiki said:

One also has to note that Krupp came out with studies around that time that showed that one had diminishing returns on cemented plates past 320 mm thickness, with 360 mm being the maximum before you started to lose quality.

Source, please?

[Shiki]

2 hours ago, IronKaputt said:

Source, please?

'Questions have been raised as to the wisdom of providing a vertical side belt less than the traditional standard—thickness equal to the bore of the main battery. Gunnery tests of the new composition KC n/A 320-mm armour plate showed that its thickness and resistance capabilities equaled an optimum thickness of 360 mm, but as thickness was increased, little was gained (the point of diminishing return). Krupp considered the thickness of 320 mm to be optimum and 400 mm neared the limit of effective production.'

—Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II, Garzke & Duilin (section on the Bismarck class)

 

[disc]

I think it should be noted that other nations either did not find such a drop-off in their armors, or perhaps more simply did not think it much of an issue.

The Americans used up to 439mm of Class A (face-hardened cemented) armor in the barbettes of the Iowas and South Dakotas, and up to 406mm for the barbettes of the North Carolinas. The barbettes of the Montanas would have reached 541mm of Class A, with the conning tower 457mm and the belt 406mm.

For Japan, the Yamatos had a 410mm Vickers Hardened (VH, a cemented face-hardened armor) belt, 500mm VH main conning tower, 560mm VH barbettes (max), and 660mm VH turret face plates. The A-150 design supposedly would have yet heavier armor, but details are not available.

[SonicB]

Ideally I would love to have a situation where I can take the figures from my Jane's and Brassey's reprint books and plug them directly into the designer, but I doubt we'll ever get that level of complexity.

What I would like to see is a more flexible way of determining the size and position of the main belt with the placement of funnels (above machinery spaces) and turrets (above magazines.) As I understand it the armour is simply divided into fixed sections of hull at the moment.
 

[Shiki]

3 hours ago, disc said:

I think it should be noted that other nations either did not find such a drop-off in their armors, or perhaps more simply did not think it much of an issue.

The Americans used up to 439mm of Class A (face-hardened cemented) armor in the barbettes of the Iowas and South Dakotas, and up to 406mm for the barbettes of the North Carolinas. The barbettes of the Montanas would have reached 541mm of Class A, with the conning tower 457mm and the belt 406mm.

For Japan, the Yamatos had a 410mm Vickers Hardened (VH, a cemented face-hardened armor) belt, 500mm VH main conning tower, 560mm VH barbettes (max), and 660mm VH turret face plates. The A-150 design supposedly would have yet heavier armor, but details are not available.

It's my belief that the average quality of the armour plates may help to explain the difference. The Americans and British simply had higher-quality armour than the Germans were capable of manufacturing (though not the Italians, as Terni Variable-Face-Thickness Cemented was the best shipboard armour to ever go to sea). The reasons for this difference are numerous but we can point out two main factors: the relatively long hiatus in the production of cemented naval armour post-World War I, and Krupp's testing procedures, which appear to have used uncapped AP projectiles.

As for the Japanese, they did discover defects in face-hardened plates over 400 mm thickness: the cooling rate for the interior of these plates was different from the outer layers, and so the brittle steel crystal bainite (shirome) formed in lieu of the desired martensite. They developed a quenching and tempering process to deal with the problem but by that time, no new battleships were being built, as Shinano was being converted to an aircraft carrier. They also developed new armour plates around the same time - if you look on Navweaps, I believe Nathan Okun has an article on the subject.

As for A-150, the known requirements for the resistance of its own projectiles from 20,000 to 30,000 metres have led me to calculate a required belt of 460 mm and a 250 mm deck. At least one 51-cm turret was apparently under construction, so if I ever find data on that, I will be very happy.

[Hangar18]

I made a historical recreation of the Alaska, as true to form as can be in game. 

Inaccuracies that i am unable to rectify:

• crew count is 500 too high
• HP is too high if listed is SHP
• layout for secondary batteries while equal, is incorrect
• shell performance will not reflect life, i cannot remember the conversion of gun data to krupp, and so i wont be tailoring that to historical values. choosing instead to get shell weight and propellant as historical as possible. I regret this a little, but can't help it. Otherwise id tailor the shells to behave as they did in life so the whole ship can perform as it should.
• displacement is slightly off from full load. in the screen caps, I forgot anti flood, so you could technically use that to get a bit closer.
• Carries an incorrect battle cruiser label instead of a proper CB due to the CB hull being limiting on placement.

Otherwise I didn't have to make many concessions, most values are very close.

Things that match very closely that may be unexpected

• The armor weight is nearly exact
• Turning circle is nearly exact
• The cost is about 5m off
• Shell weight is 30kg off
• Armor value is correct after % adjustments, though the deck armor is simplified using the outboard values.
• size is just about right, a few meters here or there wouldnt hurt.

https://imgur.com/a/GUF0IVa

 

Edited November 15, 2020 by Hangar18