The Battleship to end all Battleships

[DJHonore]

In the Ship Constructor I'm trying to build essentially a Super Nelson with 3 20in 3-Gun Turrets (A, B, and Y, Nelson Style gun layout) with armor thick enough to reasonably deflect a shell from its own guns when receiving a belt hit at 45-90 degrees but there doesn't seem to be a way to do so without ending up with weight issues. Come to think of it, I think I would encounter weight issues trying to do this with just about any reasonable gun caliber. Anyone know why this might be/have any ideas?

[Silamon]

There is a reason only a few ships in the world were ever built with 18 inch guns... To not only want to push that to 20 inches but also to armor against 20 inch guns?

Just so you know, the plans for the German H-44 class armed with 8 20 inch guns was looking to be over 140,000 tons total, and it wouldn't have stood up to its own guns very well.

Is it possible to push the tonnage that high in game? It would truly be a monster of a ship... and probably a colossal waste of resources besides...

[Vuld_Edone]

I'm not even sure how to measure immunity anymore...
Using 1930, a 406mm (mk3) with capped' II, tube powder II and TNT4 has a 10km 1600mm belt and 750mm deck pen'; and a 15km 1300mm belt, 1000mm deck armor.
Krupp V is +130%, so a 400mm main belt would be ~950mm; and a 300mm main deck would be 700mm.

So with just these numbers, immunity doesn't exist. But then I have to account for angle, which I assume seriously affects deck pen' given how many partial I got on fore/aft decks; and there is citadel armor, where I also have no idea how to estimate how good my armor will be.
I've come to basically use armor as an adjustment variable, basically "whatever's left" in the most average way to protect badly against about anything, using weight growth as marks. Haven't got a BB go above 400mm main belt since.

For the proud super-Nelson I assume we're going with 1950 lulz tech, so modern II armor, triple base TNT4 and Mk3 508mm: that's 2200-1500mm at 10km, 1800-2100mm at 15km and 1300-2300mm at 20km.
Assuming nothing can survive under 10km, what kind of armor scheme can survive this? Using citadel V, how do we calculate that?
Then only we can discuss what to sacrifice to get to those armor numbers.

[DJHonore]

Originally posted by Vuld_Edone:

I'm not even sure how to measure immunity anymore...
Using 1930, a 406mm (mk3) with capped' II, tube powder II and TNT4 has a 10km 1600mm belt and 750mm deck pen'; and a 15km 1300mm belt, 1000mm deck armor.
Krupp V is +130%, so a 400mm main belt would be ~950mm; and a 300mm main deck would be 700mm.

So with just these numbers, immunity doesn't exist. But then I have to account for angle, which I assume seriously affects deck pen' given how many partial I got on fore/aft decks; and there is citadel armor, where I also have no idea how to estimate how good my armor will be.
I've come to basically use armor as an adjustment variable, basically "whatever's left" in the most average way to protect badly against about anything, using weight growth as marks. Haven't got a BB go above 400mm main belt since.

For the proud super-Nelson I assume we're going with 1950 lulz tech, so modern II armor, triple base TNT4 and Mk3 508mm: that's 2200-1500mm at 10km, 1800-2100mm at 15km and 1300-2300mm at 20km.
Assuming nothing can survive under 10km, what kind of armor scheme can survive this? Using citadel V, how do we calculate that?
Then only we can discuss what to sacrifice to get to those armor numbers.

What if it was armored against a shot from its own guns from 20-30+km away?

[DJHonore]

Originally posted by baddoggs:

Originally posted by Silamon:

There is a reason only a few ships in the world were ever built with 18 inch guns... To not only want to push that to 20 inches but also to armor against 20 inch guns?

Just so you know, the plans for the German H-44 class armed with 8 20 inch guns was looking to be over 140,000 tons total, and it wouldn't have stood up to its own guns very well.

Is it possible to push the tonnage that high in game? It would truly be a monster of a ship... and probably a colossal waste of resources besides...

You could build this but... You won't be going very far OR very fast..
:lunar2019smilingpig:

Assuming speed is no issue, how would one go about it?

[DJHonore]

Originally posted by baddoggs:

Originally posted by DJHonore:

Assuming speed is no issue, how would one go about it?

Well, playing as the British, you don't have to worry too much about range
if playing campaign, you have bases all over the globe. Personally,
i avoid guns over 17 inch, there is no real gain given the ships the AI
churns out. During campaign i use mainly 12 inch to start ,14's for
most and finish with 16 inch. These do the job well enough and
have a reasonable re load rate or..ROF. Bigger guns are very VERY slow to load
and you can sometimes get overwhelmed by faster lighter guns like 16 inch.
You are also always going to be out classed by speed. I would recommend
"rushing" radar tech to gain an edge on range if you can then, kite
like crazy.

Can it be uparmored to the point where it can bounce its own shells at the specified distance with 16in guns?

[the Baron]

Originally posted by baddoggs:

Originally posted by Silamon:

There is a reason only a few ships in the world were ever built with 18 inch guns... To not only want to push that to 20 inches but also to armor against 20 inch guns?

Just so you know, the plans for the German H-44 class armed with 8 20 inch guns was looking to be over 140,000 tons total, and it wouldn't have stood up to its own guns very well.

Is it possible to push the tonnage that high in game? It would truly be a monster of a ship... and probably a colossal waste of resources besides...

You could build this but... You won't be going very far OR very fast..
:lunar2019smilingpig:

In fact is the opposite. The bigger the hull the bigger the potential to achieve higher speeds and also to have more room for fuel.

[Soylent_Greene]

I have never seen the 20" guns being worth the effort

You are putting your eggs into a really heavy basket, one turret of triples weighs as much as a small CL in each case...

I have had better success with the above mentioned 4x quad 16" turrets, vastly higher ROF, as many 5.9" triples that will fit on the broadside and as fast as possible.
Speed is better than super heavy armor, make it tougher to hit than praying the rounds bounce.

Besides that, there is always the cost issue, as 16" guns are far cheaper than 20"

Not an issue is you're playing custom battles, but very much so in a campaign

then there's the final issue, if you are playing a campaign, you will encounter a plethora of DD, CL and CA's versus enemy BB. So you need the ROF on main battery and the 5.9" guns keep all the lesser ships at bay

[Vuld_Edone]

So, I've made a short test: random battle, 1940, 1BB (Japan) vs 1BB (Germany).

Both super-battleships mirrored each other as much as possible: 125kt vs 130kt. Both with oil 3, induced, gas turbines, aux 5, shaft 5, hydraulic, mid-range, standard quarters.
(The Japanese goes at 26kn, the German ship at 28kn. Doesn't matter since they start 20km apart so it's 100% accuracy for both.)
Modern 2, barbettes 4 (German has barb. 5), anti-torp 2, triple, reinf. 2, anti-flood 3, citadel 5. Standard ammo ratio, capped and capped 2, standard-standard, triple base and TNT 4, electrical 1, auto 2. Stereoscopic 5, Gen 2 radar.

Both ships have only 4x2 508mm turrets, no secondaries.
Armor scheme is, for both, 200-450-200mm belt, 150-300-150mm deck, 400mm conning and 150mm superstructure.
Citadel scheme is 200-140-100mm belt, 180-140-100mm deck.
Turret scheme is 500mm side, 300mm top, 300mm barbette (290mm for the German).

Initially I did that test to see if my super-BB could survive its own guns.
But upon running the battle 3-4 times, systematically, the Japanese BB would get pen'd and flooded for >800dmg per salvo, including on main deck; and the German BB would get basically just partial pens'. Both would get over-pens on their fore/aft decks but there too, the Japanese ship would get about three times the damage from that.

Japanese ship is super battleship (97-125kt, +89.5 resistance), German ship is super battleship 2 (104-130kt +105 resistance).
From the numbers I highlight, it should be clear what I think is happening, and why the armor scheme is actually an afterthought. Resistance dramatically changes the result(?).
Everything else equal, for super-BBs, Germany > Russia > Italy > everyone else.

Also those super-BBs are terrible. ~1km turn radius, no secondaries and a 3x3 turret layout would be more efficient.
You can probably get the BB of your dreams out of the German hull.

[DJHonore]

So a Super Nelson with 16"/50s with a focus on speed would outdo the same ship with a focus on armor?

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by DJHonore:

In the Ship Constructor I'm trying to build essentially a Super Nelson with 3 20in 3-Gun Turrets (A, B, and Y, Nelson Style gun layout) with armor thick enough to reasonably deflect a shell from its own guns when receiving a belt hit at 45-90 degrees but there doesn't seem to be a way to do so without ending up with weight issues. Come to think of it, I think I would encounter weight issues trying to do this with just about any reasonable gun caliber. Anyone know why this might be/have any ideas?

Well... like Silamon said, there is the german H class and as far as I know it was the only "reasonable" design with more than 6 20 inch guns (8 in the H's case) but that ship was a pipe dream that relied on the british navy being to slow to ever get into range so they could fire back and all allied airplanes ceased to exist. It was a glass cannon. Your design is a brawler which would need something around the lines of 350-450-350mm thick sides with a flat 250 or 300mm deck across the whole ship plus a turtle back? and with a 450mm thick conning tower to survive its own guns. So while yes you might be able to build it theoretically, in practice it would take an insanely long if not too long to make in a campaign and it would out stretch the build limit for anything but the largest and most streamlined super battle ship hull in custom matches. Also I am almost ceritan that your aft would be out of the water and your fore deck would be a few meters below the water line kinda like this: (ship=\) -----\------

But hey, at least planes don't exist so you might actually get some use out of it unlike the H.

Originally posted by DJHonore:

So a Super Nelson with 16"/50s with a focus on speed would outdo the same ship with a focus on armor?

Yes, or 17's if you need more HE potential, though I would also focus on trying to balance out the design so that whether its fast or slow, light or heavily armored, it can actually turn and the nose isn't lying below the water line from all the fore weight.

[FizzyElf]

Okay, I built it. It works and it sucks at the same time. It is perfectly balanced, has good pitch (21.4 and 14.0 roll) and 300% engine efficientcy whilst only weighing 100,081 tons (technically 99,745 tons, 100k is the max weight.) and it cost $773,7111,400 with a noob crew, 1,201,289,000 with a chad crew. do you want it or would you prefer to pursue a more balanced and realistic design?

[Silamon]

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

Originally posted by DJHonore:

In the Ship Constructor I'm trying to build essentially a Super Nelson with 3 20in 3-Gun Turrets (A, B, and Y, Nelson Style gun layout) with armor thick enough to reasonably deflect a shell from its own guns when receiving a belt hit at 45-90 degrees but there doesn't seem to be a way to do so without ending up with weight issues. Come to think of it, I think I would encounter weight issues trying to do this with just about any reasonable gun caliber. Anyone know why this might be/have any ideas?

Well... like Silamon said, there is the german H class and as far as I know it was the only "reasonable" design with more than 6 20 inch guns (8 in the H's case) but that ship was a pipe dream that relied on the british navy being to slow to ever get into range so they could fire back and all allied airplanes ceased to exist. It was a glass cannon. Your design is a brawler which would need something around the lines of 350-450-350mm thick sides with a flat 250 or 300mm deck across the whole ship plus a turtle back? and with a 450mm thick conning tower to survive its own guns. So while yes you might be able to build it theoretically, in practice it would take an insanely long if not too long to make in a campaign and it would out stretch the build limit for anything but the largest and most streamlined super battle ship hull in custom matches. Also I am almost ceritan that your aft would be out of the water and your fore deck would be a few meters below the water line kinda like this: (ship=\) -----\------

But hey, at least planes don't exist so you might actually get some use out of it unlike the H.

It seems kinda debatable whether ships like that would have happened even if carriers had not taken over the scene. Certainly only a few nations in the world would be able to afford them, so basically only the US and maaaaaybe Britain would have completed a few larger battleships. We are talking ships larger than the US' current super nuclear super carriers. Germany in particular would have had to build entirely new docks to fit ships that size and even if they did there would only be a few docks capable of taking them in at all, let alone dry docking them.

Then there comes the limitations of the guns themselves. Heavy, big, expensive, and you can only get so accurate with unguided munitions. At a certain point I think it would definitely be better to invest into better smaller guns than 20 inchers simply because of the reload time on them.

I don't think ships that size would have become a thing, at least with the tech from the 50s. Maybe if carriers had not happened there would have been new innovations to make monster bbs work though.

[FizzyElf]

Originally posted by Silamon:

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

Well... like Silamon said, there is the german H class and as far as I know it was the only "reasonable" design with more than 6 20 inch guns (8 in the H's case) but that ship was a pipe dream that relied on the british navy being to slow to ever get into range so they could fire back and all allied airplanes ceased to exist. It was a glass cannon. Your design is a brawler which would need something around the lines of 350-450-350mm thick sides with a flat 250 or 300mm deck across the whole ship plus a turtle back? and with a 450mm thick conning tower to survive its own guns. So while yes you might be able to build it theoretically, in practice it would take an insanely long if not too long to make in a campaign and it would out stretch the build limit for anything but the largest and most streamlined super battle ship hull in custom matches. Also I am almost ceritan that your aft would be out of the water and your fore deck would be a few meters below the water line kinda like this: (ship=\) -----\------

But hey, at least planes don't exist so you might actually get some use out of it unlike the H.

It seems kinda debatable whether ships like that would have happened even if carriers had not taken over the scene. Certainly only a few nations in the world would be able to afford them, so basically only the US and maaaaaybe Britain would have completed a few larger battleships. We are talking ships larger than the US' current super nuclear super carriers. Germany in particular would have had to build entirely new docks to fit ships that size and even if they did there would only be a few docks capable of taking them in at all, let alone dry docking them.

Then there comes the limitations of the guns themselves. Heavy, big, expensive, and you can only get so accurate with unguided munitions. At a certain point I think it would definitely be better to invest into better smaller guns than 20 inchers simply because of the reload time on them.

I don't think ships that size would have become a thing, at least with the tech from the 50s. Maybe if carriers had not happened there would have been new innovations to make monster bbs work though.

I personally don't think anyone would have spent the time and money to build one even as a vanity project it would be insane. Yamato and Musashi competitors, sure, especially if aircraft carriers don't exist (even if land based aircraft and hydroplanes do, but with carriers around they are just a massive billion dollar torpedo punching bag). The closest ship to this level of insanity for a vanity project was that russian super battle ship that Stalin would have had to make the US build for him, after he paid for britain/US to build him the guns and parts and paid for the US to expand their ship yards: https://youtu.be/eAjud8wGaNY

Hell the largest ships I've used in game (besides the nelson I just built) are either 50-65k ton yamato style dreadnaughts or the beowolf which is a yamato sized H class (18 inch guns) and even here in a game where torpedo planes are nothing but scary bed time stories for BB's the super dreadnaughts are a waste of time and resources. Though it is fun to watch the beowolf fight AI cruisers who can't even kill it with their torps or scratch the belt armor with their main cannons, stupid and a gross miss use of naval resources but fun never the less.

[DJHonore]

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

Okay, I built it. It works and it sucks at the same time. It is perfectly balanced, has good pitch (21.4 and 14.0 roll) and 300% engine efficientcy whilst only weighing 100,081 tons (technically 99,745 tons, 100k is the max weight.) and it cost $773,7111,400 with a noob crew, 1,201,289,000 with a chad crew. do you want it or would you prefer to pursue a more balanced and realistic design?

I would love this design for testing purposes

[spoon66]

Originally posted by Silamon:

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

Well... like Silamon said, there is the german H class and as far as I know it was the only "reasonable" design with more than 6 20 inch guns (8 in the H's case) but that ship was a pipe dream that relied on the british navy being to slow to ever get into range so they could fire back and all allied airplanes ceased to exist. It was a glass cannon. Your design is a brawler which would need something around the lines of 350-450-350mm thick sides with a flat 250 or 300mm deck across the whole ship plus a turtle back? and with a 450mm thick conning tower to survive its own guns. So while yes you might be able to build it theoretically, in practice it would take an insanely long if not too long to make in a campaign and it would out stretch the build limit for anything but the largest and most streamlined super battle ship hull in custom matches. Also I am almost ceritan that your aft would be out of the water and your fore deck would be a few meters below the water line kinda like this: (ship=\) -----\------

But hey, at least planes don't exist so you might actually get some use out of it unlike the H.

It seems kinda debatable whether ships like that would have happened even if carriers had not taken over the scene. Certainly only a few nations in the world would be able to afford them, so basically only the US and maaaaaybe Britain would have completed a few larger battleships. We are talking ships larger than the US' current super nuclear super carriers. Germany in particular would have had to build entirely new docks to fit ships that size and even if they did there would only be a few docks capable of taking them in at all, let alone dry docking them.

Then there comes the limitations of the guns themselves. Heavy, big, expensive, and you can only get so accurate with unguided munitions. At a certain point I think it would definitely be better to invest into better smaller guns than 20 inchers simply because of the reload time on them.

I don't think ships that size would have become a thing, at least with the tech from the 50s. Maybe if carriers had not happened there would have been new innovations to make monster bbs work though.

In reply to the H Class Super Battleships talk.
Germany did build the dry docks for the H-Class ships Two were completed to the best of my understand I think only one is still operational.
Dock 17 at Blohm und Voss Hamburg is the one I personally know about.
After the War Hamburg fell under the control of the British and they set about trying to distroy large parts of the Docks to render any future Military Ship building and general build a thing of the past.
To this end they blew up two of the worlds largest habor crains . Attempted to blow up the massive U-Boat factory and pens (they failed after several attempts instead just leaving it damaged it was finally covered over only in the early part of 2000 after another attempt to remove what was left to make way for the Airbus factory expansion prove to costly so the built over what remained)
Anyhow the dry docks were also on the list of items the British Military wanted to get rid of.
First they flooded the dock then removed the giant lock doors and distroyed them.
But at that point the local Population who had started to protrest at what they saw as just a blatant attempt to knee cap by any mean to set the Germany post war recovery back.
After already loosing the War and having 60% of the City in ruins never mind the River Elbe full of ship wreaks.
They had enough & it was already the start of the 50's .
Anyhow the Drydock was not distroyed at some point the dock doors were rebuilt and she was returned to being operational and is still in use to this day.
Ships like the Queen Mary 2 fit in there with room to spare.and I have seem Container Ships in that dock and many other types. So for something designed for a negertive usage of Warships she is now used for none military shipping.
But just looking at the mass of that dock gives you an idea of just how massive such a ship may have been.
Though I really wonder if Such a Ship would have been able to sail along the River Elbe.mainly due to the depth of the river. Even with the current deepening of the River that only took place in the last few years just to allow the Container port to be used by the current super generation of Containers ship and then only at high river times , and only with not fully loaded ship.
Would a H class Battleship been able to safely navigate this River out into the North Sea. But has someone originally from the UK who moved to Hamburg in 2009 its was intresting learning of Dock 17 and also of these Follies of Hitlers like the H-Class or the 200 meter Tower and Grand hall he had planned for Hamburg .
Or his massive arch he planned for Berlin that would have sunk into to the ground regardless of how it was constructed.
None nations could of built such ships without going bust in the proccess.
Just from playing this game you soon realise that from laying the ship down to completion that it can be already out of date before it enters service such is the pace of devlopment been driven.
If you look at how much it costs the USA to maintain its Naval fleet it is insain.
But that is enough now.