Tech required for creating BB?

[Rafard23]

What is the required tech and when can i expect it to pop up?

[Silamon]

You need main caliber wing turrets for the first dreadnoughts.

[way2co0l_2003]

Originally posted by Rafard23:

What is the required tech and when can i expect it to pop up?

The techs that enable it are all based around 1904. There's a perfect storm of techs across nearly all fields that are expected by that year. Between steam turbines giving considerable weight savings to engines, quality control giving weight savings to armor, testing tank for hull form reducing HP requirements for engines, improved turret designs giving weight savings for turrets, and main batter wing turrets becoming possible, all set with the date of 1904.

You can technically build a BB without having all of these, but each of them adds considerably to the ship you're going to be able to make.

[ulzgoroth]

The defining feature is having more than 3 main turrets. So any tech that makes that possible. I think that falls under ship design?

Fire control tech is important for making them relevant, but not for getting access to the class. (Dreadnoughts have bigger, fewer guns and more range, so they desperately need to be able to hit with the main battery in the way many predreadnoughts rarely did.)

You also don't technically require decent-quality guns of 11+ inch caliber, but if you don't have them you probably don't want to build one.

Originally posted by Silamon:

You need main caliber wing turrets for the first dreadnoughts.

You definitely don't. Maybe that's the theoretically earliest tech that makes dreadnoughts possible? But I normally build my first dreadnought with three centerline turrets.

[way2co0l_2003]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Silamon:

You need main caliber wing turrets for the first dreadnoughts.

You definitely don't. Maybe that's the theoretically earliest tech that makes dreadnoughts possible? But I normally build my first dreadnought with three centerline turrets.

I'm pretty sure he just means that's the first tech in the sequence to unlock them, and any tech that follows would work too.

[Ziggy Sprague]

In Rule the Waves 2, from a purely game rules point of view, you needed the Ship Design level 2 to build Battlecruisers and Ship Design Level 3 to build Dreadnoughts. I believe this is still the case.

[SirChaos77]

Back in the first Rule the Waves, IIRC, any battleship with at least three main caliber turrets was a dreadnought. So you´d need either the Three Centerline Turrets or Main Caliber Wing Turrets technology. The historical HMS Dreadnought had both, of course.

I recently designed a dreadnought with two centerline and two wing turrets, so the third centerline turret is not strictly required. Though that *might* be the result of another nation commissioning the first dreadnaught; perhaps that softens the technlogy requirements a bit.

[Ogustus]

The requirement for dreadnoughts is probably the same as it was for 2: Either more than 2 turrets, or more than 20 knots if it has >12" of armor, or 22 knots if armor is <12"