Secondaries even worth having right now?

[Evil4Zerggin]

3 hours ago, madham82 said:

Couldn't find any real details on the New Jersey engagement, but references seem to indicate her 5" batteries sunk Maikaze. 

The sources I could find in a brief search seem to imply that New Jersey employed only her 5" batteries against the trawler, but are ambiguous about which weapons were employed against Maikaze. Regardless, they do agree that both Iowa and New Jersey engaged the fleeing destroyer Nowaki with their 16" batteries at well beyond 5" range, straddling but not scoring any hits at the extreme range of 35,000+ yards.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Evil4Zerggin

[DeadlyWalrus]

To be fair, the entire engagement was something of an enhanced target practice (the US carriers deliberately halted their attacks on the fleeing Japanese ships so the BBs would have something to do), so I'm not sure New Jersey would have intentionally maneuvered into secondary range if she was dealing with an opponent capable of offering meaningful resistance. 

That having been said, it's really not until fairly late in WW2 that radar advances sufficiently to provide accurate firing solutions for targets beyond effective secondary range so really up until that point adverse conditions could bring engagements close enough for smaller guns to still matter.

[SpardaSon21]

10 hours ago, madham82 said:

Part of that is due to the rapidly shrinking naval forces on the opposing sides by that period of the war as well. I mean look at the Iowa's, who I don't believe ever used their 16"s in a surface engagement. But both their 16" and 5" were heavily used in shore bombardment. 

UA:D is out in a completely ahistorical setting without aircraft, so are these secondary batteries by the late game period by extension.

The US originally planned an increased caliber for the 5" planned for the Montana's to make them more effective in surface engagements. When they were cancelled, they could have pursued using them for other ships, but none actually were until end of the war. Reasonable to assume because they didn't offer an advantage in air defense over the 5" mounts in service, there was no rush to replace them. Now if there had still been large numbers of surface engagements occurring, that situation would have likely changed. 

You mean the 5"/54?  It got introduced with the Midway class of carriers, and was later used by the Japanese for destroyers, and the French modified their 130's to use the same ammo.  Arguably its weaknesses against air attack were only applicable against highly maneuverable but relatively slow-moving propeller planes.  Post-war, jets and even some very early guided anti-shipping weapons are entering the picture, and you need the increased muzzle V, bursting charge, and range of a more powerful gun to counter those.  The maximum vertical engagement height of the 5"/38 was about 12km, and the 5"/54 15.7km.  Even with the heavier shells and cartridges the loaders need to shove into the breech that's still a massive improvement in engagement ranges.  I would gladly go from 22 rounds a minute at max rate to a mere 18 if that gives me several kilometers of engagement range against incoming aircraft.

[madham82]

16 hours ago, SpardaSon21 said:

You mean the 5"/54?  It got introduced with the Midway class of carriers, and was later used by the Japanese for destroyers, and the French modified their 130's to use the same ammo.  Arguably its weaknesses against air attack were only applicable against highly maneuverable but relatively slow-moving propeller planes.  Post-war, jets and even some very early guided anti-shipping weapons are entering the picture, and you need the increased muzzle V, bursting charge, and range of a more powerful gun to counter those.  The maximum vertical engagement height of the 5"/38 was about 12km, and the 5"/54 15.7km.  Even with the heavier shells and cartridges the loaders need to shove into the breech that's still a massive improvement in engagement ranges.  I would gladly go from 22 rounds a minute at max rate to a mere 18 if that gives me several kilometers of engagement range against incoming aircraft.

Yea but the first Midway class didn't arrive until the last month of the war anyway. My point was the 54 cal just wasn't needed at this point in the war. I also seem to remember that the 20mm and 40mm mounts were credited for most aircraft kills during the war. When the first kamikazes started being used, the problem with those mounts is it took multiple hits to completely destroy a plane. That's what led to the rapid fire 76mm mounts designed specifically to overcome this. 

Not disputing the 54 cal had some improvements in AA, just wasn't as applicable to the what the main threat was at that point in the war. In the end Midway didn't keep those guns long after the war, as guns lost favor in AA defense due to the speed of jets and standoff weapons.  

Edited November 6, 2021 by madham82

[madham82]

17 hours ago, DeadlyWalrus said:

To be fair, the entire engagement was something of an enhanced target practice (the US carriers deliberately halted their attacks on the fleeing Japanese ships so the BBs would have something to do), so I'm not sure New Jersey would have intentionally maneuvered into secondary range if she was dealing with an opponent capable of offering meaningful resistance. 

I was thinking about how they just happened to get a chance to sink shipping during this engagement. Glad you shared that. I mean let's be honest here, a Hellcat with .50cals could and did sink destroyers (let that one sink in when it comes to discussion of the in game damage model). 

But hey it does give us proof Iowa's could engage effectively at the limit of visual range

[T_the_ferret]

Only secondaries i saw as worth having was 127mm and over, and even then i prefered having more main guns in secondary positions. The big problem is small guns simply don't have enough accuracy and range, and when they do hit don't do enough damage, so you can't really use them to intercept smaller ships either.

One of the things that also ties into that is many components having + accuracy and - range which basically just means - accuracy, as base accuracy is way too low and thus cannot compensate for range and the accuracy bonus it itself provides

So it just promotes building ships that have high caliber secondaries or medium caliber primaries if you want to be multipurpose, put all the + range components you can think of on it, then snipe enemies, as low caliber primaries also have way too low of an accuracy to be useful.

Edited November 17, 2021 by T_the_ferret

[Noobito]

On 11/17/2021 at 10:15 AM, T_the_ferret said:

Only secondaries i saw as worth having was 127mm and over, and even then i prefered having more main guns in secondary positions. The big problem is small guns simply don't have enough accuracy and range, and when they do hit don't do enough damage, so you can't really use them to intercept smaller ships either.

One of the things that also ties into that is many components having + accuracy and - range which basically just means - accuracy, as base accuracy is way too low and thus cannot compensate for range and the accuracy bonus it itself provides

So it just promotes building ships that have high caliber secondaries or medium caliber primaries if you want to be multipurpose, put all the + range components you can think of on it, then snipe enemies, as low caliber primaries also have way too low of an accuracy to be useful.

Indeed, I find anything 4 inch and below to be a useless secondary weapon and simply a waste of space. But the effectiveness of secondary batteries are so bad I usually have a few if not almost no secondary weapons on any of my ships to save weight and lower chance of ammo detonations.

[T_the_ferret]

Between the range issue, extremely weird accuracy of weapons right now and the fact you're better off using the weight for better reloading for main guns they are pretty useless. You'd think a weapon you can easily handle and lay on target would have very good close range accuracy but they are horrible, around 35% chance to hit at 1km while main guns have 90 if not 100%

[DougToss]

That’s in line with the gunnery tables and historical tests and combat experience!

 

Firing guns at sea is really hard and 33lb shells can’t sink 300t warships easily.

[madham82]

1 hour ago, DougToss said:

That’s in line with the gunnery tables and historical tests and combat experience!

 

Firing guns at sea is really hard and 33lb shells can’t sink 300t warships easily.

Yep truthfully sinking other ships is not why they were mounted. Putting down enough RoF to make getting that close a living hell for anyone one deck, much less being combat effective was the idea. Really comes down to morale, but even then look at Taffy 3 and HMS Glowworm. 

[T_the_ferret]

I just think it shouldn't be this low, i think we're sort of hitting a point where realism and gameplay have to diverge. Putting down enough RoF isn't too useful with how low both accuracy and damage of secondary mounts are right now, to the point it becomes this weird ahistorical strategy of using high-caliber secondaries or low-caliber primaries to destroy even destroyers because anything else would not hit at any useful distance and if it does the damage is much too low to make any difference

[DougToss]

39 minutes ago, T_the_ferret said:

I just think it shouldn't be this low, i think we're sort of hitting a point where realism and gameplay have to diverge.

The answer, of course, is to have screens. 

[madham82]

52 minutes ago, T_the_ferret said:

I just think it shouldn't be this low, i think we're sort of hitting a point where realism and gameplay have to diverge. Putting down enough RoF isn't too useful with how low both accuracy and damage of secondary mounts are right now, to the point it becomes this weird ahistorical strategy of using high-caliber secondaries or low-caliber primaries to destroy even destroyers because anything else would not hit at any useful distance and if it does the damage is much too low to make any difference

 

12 minutes ago, DougToss said:

The answer, of course, is to have screens. 

Balance is certainly needed. Right now main guns have too high accuracy compared to RL, but I can accept it to have more engaging gameplay. The problem is like mentioned above, you get out of balance with historical design/tactics or even other in game elements. 

Effective screening vessels are really the best way atm. 

[T_the_ferret]

Yeah but that goes back to those screening vessels mostly mounting low caliber primaries or high caliber secondaries. Its a solution to the current problem but not a long term one in my opinion

[DeadlyWalrus]

I think the big problem is that relative accuracy difference between large and small guns is something that varied greatly over time and was in many respects one of the key driving forces in the evolution of naval tactics and design. Way back in the pre-dreadnaught era accuracy is universally terrible so effective battle ranges are very close; specifically close enough that a long-barrel 5" or 6" gun can still fire on a fairly flat trajectory with a short time-of-flight. Under these conditions, the large guns don't have any particular advantage in terms of actually hitting a target, but they do have a significant disadvantage in rate-of-fire. Thus you see designs with a large number of small and intermediate guns to smother the enemy in fire and destroy his ability to fight and maneuver and a few heavy guns to finally punch through the main armor once he's been rendered combat ineffective.

Moving on to the dreadnaught era things flip. Now improved fire control lets you hit at ranges where smaller guns need to fire at extremely high angles to reach the target. This dramatically increases the time of flight and makes hitting a maneuvering target even more difficult. Add in the lack of secondary gun directors and the interference the guns cause in observing main battery fire and it's really not worth engaging a peer opponent. Thus you're really more concerned with making things difficult for smaller ships who might be trying to do annoying things like get into position to fire torpedoes or something like that. Secondaries do get a bit of a boost later as they start to acquire their own fire control directors, though the time-of-flight issue still means that their effective range is much less the big guns (or even their own maximum ballistic range), though if a small ship does get close enough (such as Ayanami at the 2nd Naval Battle of Guadalcanal) it will have a very bad day (or night in that particular case).

Edited November 19, 2021 by DeadlyWalrus

[DougToss]

Nice write up @DeadlyWalrus, exactly. The “Hail of Fire” of the Spanish American War was ineffective by the Russo-Japanese, and had been phased out by the Great War, only to see a revival as anti-aircraft protection in the Second World War.