Studying and knowing the actual armor thicknesses of historical battleships is key.

[Anna_Drew_Blue]

Designing ships to meet or exceed historical specifications offers a great advantage in this game, I don't fault people for the crazy designs they come up with, it's their way of having fun, its their game , more power to them. But if you want to play to win, and you have a true passion for history, which is extremely helpful to winning....

One might assume that the default values for armor in a design are "somewhere in the ballpark." They aren't. Not even close. The devs leave that for you to know, so its important to know. This game rewards those with an understanding of capital ship history.

Barbette thickness in particular is way under spec. In most historical battleships, the barbettes were thicker than the main belts. For example, Yamato had a belt that was 16.14 inches on .63 inches inclined at 20 degrees. The barbettes had thickness that tapered from 17.32 inches on centerline forward to 21.65 inches on the sides, to 14. 96 on centerline aft, for the forward turrets. On average, they were significantly thicker than the main belt. Barbette thickness is key to never having a turret blow up from a flash fire. I have never lost a turret in this way. I have had turrets destroyed but never a flash fire.

Main belt default thickness is a little on the heavy side, though not quite as far off as default barbette thickness is on the thin side. Usually main belts can be slimmed down an inch or so from default. If a design is showing you a 17 inch belt by default on anything less than a super battleship, keep in mind that's an inch thicker than Yamato's belt was.

Similarly, U. S. S. Washington BB56 had a main belt that was 12 inches backed by 6 inches on 30 lb STS , sloped at 15 degrees. It's barbettes tapered from 16 inches on the sides to 14.7 inches fore and aft. However, its critical to note that the class was not designed to withstand 16 inch gunfire. Washington and North Carolina were originally to be armed with three 14 inch quadruple turrets, but the escalator clause of the Washington treaty kicked in when Japan declined to ratify. And so three triple 16 inch 45 caliber turrets were used instead, but design had already been fixed and construction was already being prepped. All that could be done to remedy the issue was to install armored patches over the sides of the magazines. So the armor thicknesses of the Washington should be used as a guideline for a 14 inch gunned ship.

It's of value also to understand that though the KGV class was armed with 14 inch guns it's armor was designed to withstand 16 inch gunfire, and unlike the Washington and particularly North Carolina, whose speeds were limited by severe vibrations to 25 knots so as not to shake the rangefinders to pieces, KGV class were true 28 knot ships. However the ballistic qualities of the British 14 inch gun was severely lacking. The French 13 inch was more powerful. the main reason why the Scharnhorst was able to soak up 13 hits from the Duke of York was not so much due to Scharnhorst's protection , but the fact that DoY's guns were garbage.

The 16 inch guns on Rodney weren't super awesome but they weren't bad either. They did the lions share of smashing Bismarck's topsides and turrets to bits, more so than KGV.

[chiyen]

1) AI enemy don't build their ships following the historical design.

2) You are playing in some kinds of hindsight, when following what you know in "historically, this happened".

3) For low armor ships, in historical reality, real people will die. In UAD, this is just a game, no body actually dies.

4) And you got the "Save and Load" supernatural ability when playing this game.

[Anna_Drew_Blue]

I don't save and load. I don't re-fight battles. No cheating and I play on hard difficulty. Not that I think you are accusing me of anything.

Ships were designed historically according to an esoteric science and the limited scope of tests they were able to carry out on guns versus various thicknesses of armor plate at various distances. This was the only real data they had, supplemented by mathematical calculations and empirical tables, and the somewhat limited lessons of the relatively short range combat at Jutland. Beyond Jutland, there was little real world experience to go on.

Since most ships were never put to trial in the type of combat that they were actually designed for, most of that science is still an unknown value yet to be proven. The Yamato never got into a battle with another battleship and neither did the Iowa, so historically NOTHING actually happened to prove either ship well built or not to serve their intended purpose. And I think you underestimate the degree to which the physics of ballistics and kinetic energy have been modeled into the game. It's like a simulation with regard to that. So the empirical data and calculations which have yet to be proven wrong still stand.

After all, the empirical data from the 1930's was all the developers had to go on when they designed the game, because historically NOTHING actually happened to prove it wrong or otherwise. No one actually knows to this day which ship would prevail in certain match ups. People can only argue and speculate. To think the developers weren't even interested in making all the many armor values in this game mean anything and its all just meaningless garbage, game mechanics to be ignored and defied. strikes me as being a bit nihilistic and dismissive of all their efforts.

And for you to say I am playing in hindsight, well that implies that the A.I. is using some kind of advanced evolved tactic, which is contrary to all people say about the A.I. in this game. So it's kind of a circular argument. For the "hindsight" to no longer function effectively would require the A.I. to do a lot better than it does now.

People complain bitterly about the A.I. , but I strongly suspect that it may have something to do with some not actually having enough computer to run this game. And here is why I think so. People have talked for a while now about turns and campaign generation taking way too long, and I experienced that too and it was aggravating.

Until I got a new computer with a whole lot more power and speed, now my turns go lightning fast. The devs have been trying to fix this for people by streamlining the ship design process the A.I uses, but I think they are actually trying to compensate for people not having enough computing power in their machine to play this game.

2 weeks ago I got my new Alienware Aurora R16 with 32 gigs of VRAM and an intel i9 processor. The difference is like night and day. Since then, a turn has never taken more than about 15-20 seconds to process for the A.I. The A.I. is sending ships against me that actually make sense and are not completely whacked. They are using much more effective maneuvers and tactics in combat and my escort ships are as well. They aren't crashing into each other nearly as much. The A.I.'s gunnery has become frighteningly accurate at longer ranges, their ships are mounting better guns and making better speed, forcing me in turn to push my engines hard and struggle to stay at max range. They have more armor now and I am not blowing their turrets up left and right the way I used to. Toward the end of battles, I am starting to run low on shells because it takes a lot more hits to sink them now. They are actually starting to give me a run for my money and making me sweat a little since I got a new comp. A.I. needs computing power to function, it isn't just some spirit in the air or anything. Certainly you don't think the Steam client or the cloud is going to power the A.I. all by itself.

About crewmen. Dude, its an in game resource. You don't have an infinite amount. I can't afford to toss crewmen to the wind. If you actually cranked out some ships at a steady pace, you would understand that. I am currently building eight 75000 ton battleships at a time in addition to cruisers and destroyers to screen them. I'm currently building over 50 ships. The next batch I crank out after this one I will have the shipbuilding capacity to increase to ten 75,000 ton battleships at a time, the next time after that will be 15, etc. Exponential growth. My crew pool isn't growing any faster and the slider is already at max, so I have to manage it carefully and sometimes I have to decommission some old ships prematurely in order to keep up with the new construction. I need to build as massive a fleet as possible because I need the tonnage and the naval bombardment power to strong arm the larger mainland territories once I I hit the 1940's. I will need millions upon millions of tons. I need every crewman I can get, I cannot afford to throw any away. You also realize that if you lose too many crewmen, your ship will surrender, effectively sinking it, right?

Lastly armor does things besides keeping crewmen from dying. It keeps your ship from getting blown to kingdom come. Are you going to tell me the ship doesn't matter either?

Was your reply to me even a serious one?

[vanDyck]

The real problem is that with the given armor limits and guns penetratrion, it is not possible after ca. 1910-1920 to create an immunity zone for your ships like they had historically. The typical modern BB belt of around 350mm+ wont stop a 11" CA gun at 15-20km in this game, not talking about real BB guns reaching penetration level that even exceed max main belt + max internal layers of armor at 20km+ with 16"+ guns...

[Anna_Drew_Blue]

There's a slider in the settings for including armor thickness in the ballistic calculation data. Try adjusting it. Overall, the armor on my ships perform well with the slider adjusted correctly. I don't ever lose turrets to flash fires. Have never lost a single one. I think that says something. There's also the fact that I used to experience a lot of the things people complain about in this game, until 2 weeks ago when I got a much more powerful computer. Turns used to take several minutes for the A.I. now turns only take about 15-20 seconds for the A.I. to process. The A.I is now designing ships that make sense. The A.I. and the calculations in this game are only as accurate as processing speed will allow them to be. My game used to momentarily freeze the moment a salvo was fired, because it was struggling to process the data. The work load for running the A.I. falls on your computer, the steam client isn't going to do it for you.