How to build realistic-looking ships by referencing real designs

This guide will aim to show you how to build a ship with realistic looking shapes and forms based on real world designs. The guide's focus is on ships seen during the early 20th century (1900s to 1940s), but the general rules and principle here are applicable to any ship design including more modern missile-armed ships.

In part 1, the guide covers general design principles and guidelines for ship hullform, shape and styles.
In part 2, I will demonstrate how you can replicate a real-world design in game accurately, using the Imperial German ship SMS Konig as an example.

Hullform and shape by type.

Aside from size, length to beam ratio is the easiest way to distinguish battleships from smaller ship types like cruisers and destroyers. It also shows what historical era your ship design is from. More modern ship tend to be proportionally longer than an older equivalents. Because more modern designs are usually faster and therefore sleeker: e.g. 30 knot battleships and 33 knot cruisers in the 1930s compared to 20 knot battleships and 25 knot cruisers in the 1900s.

The L-B ratio of battlecruisers and aircraft carriers tend to be 10-20% greater than battleships. Example: the 1900s battlecruiser Von Der Tann has a L-B of 6.4 compared to 5.5 for a battleship of the same era. The WW2 battlecruiser B-65 has a L-B of 9 compared to 7.5 for a WW2 battleship. This reflects the fact that battlecruisers and carrier are faster than battleships, but not as fast as cruisers.



Not included in this image are destroyers. Generally speaking, destroyers are shaped like cruisers, but often with an even boxier rear and steeper curves at the bow, resulting in a more flat-sided midsection

Superstructure and upperworks

You can get a bit creative with building all the stuff on the top of the ship hull, however there are a few things to keep in mind when doing so.

1. The superstructure is supposed to contain the bridge, command center, platforms for AA guns, and housing for some of the crew. Therefore it needs to be sufficiently big to contain these things. 1900s and WW1 era ships tend to have smaller superstructures, usually a small cylindrical conning tower, a few fenced off platforms and a few masts. Ships designed in 1930s and later feature bigger, boxier superstructures because of the need to contain many more rangefinders, radar, AA guns etc.

2. Have multiple rangefinders spread out across the superstructure. Even a small destroyer should have at least two rangefinders. Battleships often have two types of rangefinders. 2-3 big ones for the main guns and 4-8 small ones for the secondary or AA guns. Make sure to space them out across the superstructure so that they can't be all destroyed by a single hit.

3. It is easier to build the superstructure from the bottom up. For stability and structural reasons, a ship's superstructure becomes smaller and lighter as you go higher. Typical ship designs start with an elevated block/deck section, followed by a tower-like or box-like bridge, followed lastly by masts and observation spots up top.

4. Superstructures need to be shaped in a way that minimize interference with turret rotation. In parts closer to the main turrets, design them to be wedge shaped so that the turrets can have the best posible arc of fire.


The superstructure of South Dakota is outlined in red here. Notice how the front and rear ends are wedge shaped, this provides space for the turrets to rotate more to the sides.

5. Historically, older warship designs typically have many funnels/chimneys while more modern designs have fewer, but bigger chimneys. For example, the Queen Elizabeth class BB were built with two chimneys in the 1910s, but were redesigned with a single huge chimney by 1930.
The 1910s Chester-class cruisers had 4 chimneys, while the 1940s Cleveland class had 2. Do not place anything right behind the funnels, as they would be covered in smoke and soot IRL.

Building a hull using references - SMS Konig

We start out the replica building process by finding a blueprint of a IRL warship online. This image of the SMS Konig is ideal, it shows both the top-down and side view of the ship, with clear, easily visible lines denoting the overall shape of the hull. It is also a relatively easy design to replicate, being a WW1-era dreadnought, it has a simple elliptical hull and relatively simple superstructures.

Using MS Paint, photoshop or whatever software you have, calculate the scale of the image. For example in this image, Konig's hull is 2945 pixels in length, and the ship IRL had a length of 175.4 meters. 2945 divided by 175.4 means that this image here shows a scale of 1 m = 16.78 pixels, remember this number.


Next, divide the hull into a series of rectangles and make note of their size in pixels. (When you draw rectangles in MS Paint, its size in pixels will be shown on the bottom left corner) Make sure the rectangles do not overlap each other and extends fully to the outer edge of the hull for maximum accuracy. After this, convert the measurement in pixels to measurement in meters using the 16.78 figure. It's a little tedious, but now you have the numbers needed to replicate a ship extremely accurately.


This is what the hull should look like with the correct length and width of each rectangle. Next, adjust the forward or backward width of each so that they match the width of the adjacent rectangle.


What it looks like after the widths are adjusted and the hull-form smoothed out. This can now become the foundation for adding other layers, such as a thin layer above to represent the wooden deck, and a larger rounded layer below representing the portion of the hull that's below water.


By using the same pixel measurement technique, I estimate the above water section of the hull to be 3.8m in height. This diagram doesn't show the underwater part of the ship, but Wikipedia says its 9m deep. However, as of 2022, NavalArt's calculation of buoyancy/weight is wrong and the in-game displacement value tend to be 50-90% higher than what they should be in real life. As a result, the game claims that our Konig here displaces 32,000 tons even though it should be around 26,000 tons for a ship of this size. I've also reduced draft (the depth of its underwater section) from 9m to 6.4m so that the ship sits at the right height above water.

This is what the hull looks like after the 3.8m upper section in grey and the 6.4m underwater section in red. I've also added a tiny 0.3 m mid-section painted in black to represent the waterline.

Building the superstructure using references- SMS Konig

Now we move on to the superstructures, the part of the ship that's above the 'main' deck covering the entire length and width of the ship. On many WW1-era and earlier warships, including Konig here, there is often a smaller, raised deck. Here, I've highlighted a chuck of this raised section in green, and estimate it to be about 2.4m in height. Next we apply the pixel-measuring technique again to replicate the shape of the raised deck, note all the triangular 'grooves' for the casemate secondary guns to rotate in.


Upper deck completed.


Now add your main and secondary turrets. Remember that you can use the pixel/meter scale to calculate where the turrets should be placed. For the Konig, the center of its 1st turret is 41m behind the very front of the ship. You can create a 41m long block and use it as a measuring stick to figure out which position is exactly 41m behind the ship bow.

At this point, you've added all the major components of the ship, so go on a test drive to see if the ships's balance and weight looks correct. If the hull looks like it floats too high or too low in the water, now is the time to adjust armor values and correct this. However keep in mind that as of early 2021, armor and weight value calculations are entirely incorrect, with armor weight calculation based on block volume rather than by surface area. Don't expect to put on realistic armor thicknesses


Now with the bridge, masts, small boats and decorative items added. Because these items are relatively light and small, this stage of building won't change the ship's performance and balance much. The completed in-game Konig is compared to a model I found online.

[Poom36yu]

is this work on repair ship too?

[rainskaos]

How did you give the bow a inverted shape?

[超级上海最強伝說と絕兇の猛虎!焦土丁一郎]

A very good guidance which can still apply for most situation even today

[sloth4igirl]

i doubt it, those games use blocks and do not have tools to allow advanced hull-forms

[~WiFiEmoPurrletarianNekoGirl~]

Will this guide work for other games, like Stormworks or Space Engineers?
Honestly seems like a really good guide, wish other games had things like this.

[SovietCheeze]

@ForeverTech decking could actually be exploited under the current armor penetration system, you can set a very high armor value for the deck itself and a low value for the thicker block underneath. Because armor weight is calculated based on the blocks volume and not actual armor thickness you're saving weight by doing so

[ForeverTech]

Quick (unofficial) note, don't add decking if you plan to use it in serious battle as the way penetration works right now. for example, if you have thick armor under the deck, but shells hit the deck, it will only register the shell hitting the deck armor, resulting in possible penetration and/or more damage to the ship.

[Enroth75]

Amazing guide! Lot's of time yo put into this.

[Democracy Enjoyer (#FixTF2)]

what a neat guide, very helpful.
First attempt faield though since i used Feet instead of meters, but hey
thats on me :)

[Substep]

yeah the under hull of the ship guide wasnt in this sadly if possible please include it