Turret size should depend on # of guns, loading mechanism

[neph]

It makes it very difficult to make historical builds when a manually-loaded single 6" turret is the same as an auto-loading triple 6".

 

Would be very nice if turrets got larger with more complex loading mechanism and smaller (both narrower & somewhat shorter in length) with fewer guns. Just look at the 14" quad/duals of the KGVs:

 

Or the QF 6-inch Mark N5 gun, an autofiring 6" dual turret which was larger than older 8" turrets.

This problem is particularly obvious when trying to recreate Scharnhorst, whose secondary battery was split between two very differently-sized 5.9" turrets:

In-game right now, it's impossible to place most of those guns, especially the singles, due to their abnormally large size (the singles are the size of triples).

[Speglord]

Yeah, I noticed this was becoming an issue starting around a year ago. I also think at some point around that time, the sizes of several turrets were adjusted to weird proportions (Japanese heavy cruiser turrets are the one example that comes immediately to mind). 

I don't see the devs altering or working on this anytime soon, though I think it'd be a good idea to put this in the suggestions thread, if it hasn't been already. Possibly splitting up the turrets/guns into different components could help too, though I'm not sure if that would require significant alterations to the game code.

[Candle_86]

I'd think for normal or enhanced loading for single guns we should be able to use a simple gun with a basic splinter shield on it like we can prior to Mk III Secondaries, with turrents being required for say greater than 7in, Dual,Triple,Semi Auto, and Auto Loaders

As for the bigger guns I agree, MKV guns with only 2 barrels just looks wrong. 

Edited February 24, 2022 by Candle_86

[Speglord]

I think the "optimal" customization would be breaking guns up into barrels, breeches, and turrets. Like I said, that may require a LOT of work on the devs' part to implement, but it would increase variety and I think would also deal with the issue we're discussing. Of course I'm clueless as to the specifics though

[Candle_86]

24 minutes ago, Speglord said:

I think the "optimal" customization would be breaking guns up into barrels, breeches, and turrets. Like I said, that may require a LOT of work on the devs' part to implement, but it would increase variety and I think would also deal with the issue we're discussing. Of course I'm clueless as to the specifics though

agreed, and you could tie turret design to hulls, say Dreadnaught 1 for the Brittish always uses the MKIII turrets as they fit it, while a Battleship 1 hull would be limited to looking like a MK1 gun, and I'd also say that would limit oddities like triple's on a predread. 

[SpardaSon21]

A relatively easy fix for our current state would be to just appropriately scale the existing turrets down in size when used with a reduced barrel count.  Later they could and should add turrets unique to barrel count.

Edited February 24, 2022 by SpardaSon21

[Littorio]

1 hour ago, SpardaSon21 said:

A relatively easy fix for our current state would be to just appropriately scale the existing turrets down in size when used with a reduced barrel count.  Later they could and should add turrets unique to barrel count.

Agreed, scale for now based on barrel count, and later make actually different designs.

[Iuvenalis]

Because turrets are made to rotate, it's the length of the weapon (and the space needed behind it to operate it) that is most important when talking about the "size" of a turret as it relates to being able to mount them in a given space on deck. Imagine a turret who's gun needed 2 units of space rear of the center of rotation of the turret. The gun is only 1 unit wide. For the turret to rotate around, you need to draw a circle with a 2 unit radius from the center to be clear for the back of the turret. If you made this weapon into a twin turret, the guns don't get any longer, (depending on their shape it may slightly increase the amount of free space required, but lets ignore that for the moment) so now our twin guns are 2 units wide. It still occupies roughly the same space as the single mount because of the area needed in the rear of the single gun to swing around. See the very, very, crude drawing below. Even though the top turret is roughly 2x1 and the bottom turret is 2x2, the extra space on the sides of the top turret don't actually save deck space because it still needs a 2 unit circle to rotate. (Turret exteriors are red, blue demarks units, orange is path of the back of the turret as it rotates around.)

EDIT: The one time the thing turret might have an advantage is if it's mounted on a relatively small barbette where it would allow the rear of the rear of the turret to protrude over the sides of the hull. It will still require the longitudinal real estate but this advantage comes into play occasionally in ship design. One example is the US Pensacola class. The A turret is only a twin because it was mounted so far forward that the hull wasn't wide enough (restricted by the treaty tonnage limit of 10k tons) to accommodate a triple barbette with the necessary loading systems for 3 guns and the passages around it.

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by Iuvenalis
Additional information

[neph]

On 3/2/2022 at 3:31 PM, Iuvenalis said:

Because turrets are made to rotate, it's the length of the weapon (and the space needed behind it to operate it) that is most important when talking about the "size" of a turret as it relates to being able to mount them in a given space on deck. Imagine a turret who's gun needed 2 units of space rear of the center of rotation of the turret. The gun is only 1 unit wide. For the turret to rotate around, you need to draw a circle with a 2 unit radius from the center to be clear for the back of the turret. If you made this weapon into a twin turret, the guns don't get any longer, (depending on their shape it may slightly increase the amount of free space required, but lets ignore that for the moment) so now our twin guns are 2 units wide. It still occupies roughly the same space as the single mount because of the area needed in the rear of the single gun to swing around. See the very, very, crude drawing below. Even though the top turret is roughly 2x1 and the bottom turret is 2x2, the extra space on the sides of the top turret don't actually save deck space because it still needs a 2 unit circle to rotate. (Turret exteriors are red, blue demarks units, orange is path of the back of the turret as it rotates around.)

EDIT: The one time the thing turret might have an advantage is if it's mounted on a relatively small barbette where it would allow the rear of the rear of the turret to protrude over the sides of the hull. It will still require the longitudinal real estate but this advantage comes into play occasionally in ship design. One example is the US Pensacola class. The A turret is only a twin because it was mounted so far forward that the hull wasn't wide enough (restricted by the treaty tonnage limit of 10k tons) to accommodate a triple barbette with the necessary loading systems for 3 guns and the passages around it.

 

You make great points about the space required to fit them on a deck, but what's far more important is the space required to fit their barbette+magazine. To steal your diagram, that's the solid & dashed green lines, respectively.

That's a huge difference!! (& it's exactly why Pensacola, as you show above, uses that unconventional 3-turret superfiring over the 2-turret arrangement)

Also, note that the length of the turret body often decreases as the number of guns down (again, see Scharnhorst), and definitely as the complexity of the loading mechanism is reduced. Both these things free up deck space & let you fit turrets in smaller places.

Edited March 4, 2022 by neph