Let's talk about machinery space

[Schmitty21]

Machinery space is an incredibly important aspect of warship design. Particularly in the time period with which this game deals, machinery space requirements had vast changes and repercussions to warship design. Vertical expansion steam engines took up a lot of space and needed protection above the waterline for example, and the switch to turbines eliminated this and allowed more compact machinery set ups. Many of the original turret layouts of early dreadnoughts were determined by the the machinery space needs. Machinery spaces also represented a large amount of the ship's weight, and their placement determined how that weight was distributed.

Unfortunately UA: Dreadnoughts simplifies the machine spaces a little too much. And sometimes it makes creating realistic looking ships very difficult. And to be honest, I don't think it would be too difficult to make it a little more realistic. Let me show you what I mean.

Here we have a light cruiser laid out somewhat like a late WWI German light cruiser would have been. Despite this looking historically accurate, we have a large amount of forward offset. This is actually fairly mild to what I've seen on other designs like DD's for example.

If we reduce the funnels to just one we can begin to see what the issue is. The "machine spaces" that the game creates center on the funnels. When you place multiple funnels it will center over the average. While I appreciate that the game is modeling machine spaces and makes them a damageable component, this isn't at all accurate to reality.

I've colored in this diagram of the rebuilt Lübeck to show you what I mean. The red portion is the boiler spaces, and kind of what the game currently models. Realistically though, when you place a funnel, it should only place a boiler under a small space under that funnel. (more functionality could be added to later tech funnels like types that the Japanese use to trunk multiple boiler spaces together). However, the important part is the blue portion, this is the engine space. As you can see it takes up much more space (and weight) behind the boilers. So if we want to accurately model both ship weight balance and damage control, I think the game needs to be a bit smarter about how it models those machinery spaces. 

Like this for a crude example:

The foremost funnel should be close to the front most portion of the machinery space and there should always be space for the engines that extends beyond the aft most funnel. This could limit how far back players can place funnels. Different engine technologies could have different shapes, diesels for example could have a very compact machine space under the funnel.

I think these simple changes could add a lot of depth to the design of warships in UA:D. 

 

I won't get into the design and gameplay effects that modeling vertical expansion vs turbine spaces could add but its also something I hope the developers consider. Right now I don' think there's much reason in the game to build dreadnoughts with wing turrets which is a bit of a shame.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Schmitty21

[anonusername]

Is it feasible to have the machinery forward of the funnels?

[Schmitty21]

French cruisers sometimes mounted their engines in the middle. It would be great to manually choose where the engines were and then the funnels just controlled where the boilers go.

[SpardaSon21]

11 hours ago, Schmitty21 said:

French cruisers sometimes mounted their engines in the middle. It would be great to manually choose where the engines were and then the funnels just controlled where the boilers go.

Your design also didn't take into account the unit system where boilers and engines would alternate.

[Schmitty21]

7 minutes ago, SpardaSon21 said:

Your design also didn't take into account the unit system where boilers and engines would alternate.

My "design" is simply trying to improve what the game does a pitiful job of doing currently. The fact that all the ships are way too front heavy is a fact. Most warships of this period used engines aft of boilers, so that would be a good starting point. More complicated setups could be explored down the road but as it is, anything would be better than what we currently have.

[Suribachi]

Really hoping they do something with this.  USA Dreadnaught III hull, among some others, is nearly impossible to build balanced while still being usable.  My latest design had something like a 23% fore weight bias and that is with 3 14" double turrets basically hanging of the aft of the ship.

Edited June 19, 2023 by Suribachi
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