Fore Weight Offset

[Amazingdeath]

I just picked the game back up and started a new campaign. I'm working on designing my initial fleet but no matter what I do there is always a significant fore weight offset, Is this just a bug or is it something I actually need to worry about so my ship is actually useful?

[BoredViking]

Some hull are difficult to balance, specially in early eyars. Try to move secondary guns and armor...

[danielmfeliciano]

you may just need to use smaller case-mates overall

[bikes02]

If you can't or don't want to move the placement of anything then I always negate any offset as best as I can using armor

[Jabberwock]

The ship's picture near the top of the right menu can help guide you.

The red section is the engine compartment. Its placement can be adjusted by moving the funnel(s).

The brownish section is the citadel. Its placement can be adjusted by moving the fore-most and aft-most main turrets. In cases where there is only one main gun, the other end can be the fore-most or aft-most control tower, funnel, or torpedo launcher, depending on ship type and design.

Those two sections determine the center of mass and most of the weight distribution.

Adjusting weight offset via end-armor can dramatically increase pitch and therefore not help so much with accuracy.

[Zuul]

The 1890 German BB 1 is absolutely atrocious for this, if that's the nation you're playing.

If you want to balance that ship, under no circumstances should you place the funnel/funnels in the cutout in the forecastle that's actually made for them.

The game does allow you to place a funnel between the forecastle and aftercastle under the walkway (where it has no business being), and this is pretty much the only way to ever balance that hull.

[Numenor]

The whole problem most of the time is the front tower. The front tower is usually like 5x heavier than the rear tower in most ships and where your funnels are determines where your engines / the main belt / center of your ship is. Which makes every ship very front and mid heavy and almost impossible to balance out the aft weight other than cramming a bunch of secondaries in the rear, or making your rear gun a large caliber or placing 2 rear main guns and only 1 front main gun.

[Jabberwock]

Originally posted by Numenor:

The whole problem most of the time is the front tower. The front tower is usually like 5x heavier than the rear tower in most ships and where your funnels are determines where your engines / the main belt / center of your ship is. Which makes every ship very front and mid heavy and almost impossible to balance out the aft weight other than cramming a bunch of secondaries in the rear, or making your rear gun a large caliber or placing 2 rear main guns and only 1 front main gun.

On some hulls you can fit the funnels behind the rear tower.

[Numenor]

Originally posted by Jabberwock:

On some hulls you can fit the funnels behind the rear tower.

Yeah but that is more of the exception than the norm.

I play mostly as Britain and its already a nightmare to balance out fore weight in 1890 - 1910 ships. Then when you get the first British Dreadnought class ship, that hull is just god awful which I usually just skip all together because my Battleship II hulls are superior and cheaper than what I can make with the Dreadnought class.

I can't even imagine trying to design German ships considering that the entire front of the ship is where all the superstructure is, and where all the casemate hardpoints are. I tried designing a couple of German BB in custom battle and they were all awful.

[Cragger]

Early hulls are incredibly difficult to balance because the machinery weight and placement isn't calculated realistically. Coal bunkers, boiler feed water tanks, lube oil tanks, and their placement are missing. All the support machinery such as water condensers and their sea chests, distillation equipment, shafts weight etc. is missing. The whole reason the forecastle on ships could be built up more was because the amount of mass aft in the hull.

On top of that ships are trimmed through ballast tanks and 'standard load' is trimmed with lead deep in the keel. Hopefully more refinement will come in time in that we now actually see were the engines get placed and soon there will be shaft count selection.

[DoGy AUT]

I can balance all ships to 0-0,2% Fore/Rear weight offset. Just balance it with Belt/Deck armor. As for TP you can balance it also with guns, engine and torp placement.

Don't forget you can fine adjust placement with shift key.

[jfblake90]

Vast majority of boats are not perfectly balanced. Japanese BBs were known to be top heavy. Many UK BBs fared poorly in rough seas. The Bismarck Class was known for being balanced to the point that some people referred to it as being too stable.

Pre Fire control guns have no accuracy anyways. The goal should probably be more about how much firepower you can fire than how accurate. The AI is very poor at holding a decent formation which makes it a PITA to create an effective Battle line with concentrated high volume fire.

[Sword_of_Light]

Originally posted by jfblake90:

Vast majority of boats are not perfectly balanced.

I don't know if this is 100% true - scuttlebutt would be the correct term - but when the US Coast Guard designed its own cutter (rather that outsource or use Navy ships) they originally planned the Famous-class medium endurance cutters to be 370' long, keeping it in line with the older 378' Hamilton-class. But for reasons known only to the brass, decided to chop out the middle 100'. As a result the 2-70's, as they're colloquially know, ride funny in heavy seas.

[Lipi]

Originally posted by Amazingdeath:

I just picked the game back up and started a new campaign. I'm working on designing my initial fleet but no matter what I do there is always a significant fore weight offset, Is this just a bug or is it something I actually need to worry about so my ship is actually useful?

Generally I balance it out with funnels and some heavy secondaries to the rear. Also Aft belt and aft deck armor being greater than fore balances this out as well. Which is to my preference because the aft is somehow very prone to taking penetrating hits below the waterline, even at odd angles.

[Sword_of_Light]

Originally posted by Lipi:

Which is to my preference because the aft is somehow very prone to taking penetrating hits below the waterline, even at odd angles.

I think this might be that some hulls have a rounded stern rather than a wedge, which is the common shape for the bow. So shells still have a higher chance of ricochet than a broadside hit, but still less than the sharply angled bow.

Such as Cuniberti's "ideal" battleship

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Cuniberti_ideal_battleship-EN.svg/1920px-Cuniberti_ideal_battleship-EN.svg.png

Or the USS Iowa:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/34/6a/6d/346a6d6d2887c73acc00acc0d09c96a3.jpg

[bikes02]

Originally posted by DoGy AUT:

Don't forget you can fine adjust placement with shift key.

Is it not the Ctrl key?