Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Dili

Anyone tried to put the BB's floatplanes doing recon over the the invasion hex?

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ORIGINAL: Dili

Anyone tried to put the BB's floatplanes doing recon over the the invasion hex?

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ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

Since the report posted by the OP indicates that the sunken BB's formed part of the invasion TF itself, rather than a bombardment group, is there any reason to suppose that they were moving at all when shot at by the CD guns? I have in mind that when a SCTF attacks an unloading amphibious TF one sees statements in combat reports along the lines of "Japanese/Allied ships attempt to get under way". So when an amphibious invasion TF arrives at its destination, do all its ships immediately drop anchor, including any defending warships it contains? If so, what juicy, stationary targets they would make!

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ORIGINAL: Nomad

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ORIGINAL: Dili

Anyone tried to put the BB's floatplanes doing recon over the the invasion hex?

Isn't that what they are for? BB and CA float planes were for gunnery spotting, not intended for ASW work

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ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1



CD certainly isn't perfect in the game, but there is an element of reality in your result. The defending guns have a range of at least 11 miles, and you are there to "silence" them. To do that you have to "spot" them and "fix" their location. Good luck doing that from over 12 miles away vs. guns camouflagued on a low lying island.

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ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

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Right! But if the attacking ship is to have ANY chance of hitting it's own targets, it can't be out there maneuvering like a sports car doing "doughnuts" in the parking lot. It has to give it's own plotting team some consistancy of course and speed for them to do their jobs.

The truth, re the game, is that there is one CD routine that must work for PH as well as Mili, and those two situations are as unlike each other as assaulting with a Marine Division and an Indian Army artillery unit. (For once we are in agreement. One of the game's most regrettable failings is the failure to differentiate between real Coast Defense Installations and just guns mounted on the coast.)

Sorry a ship will always maneuver to the detriment of a firing solution. Thats what most of the FC in battle ships was about and why they were far superior in WWII then WWI . Being able to maneuver , quickly determine a solution despite roll etc. There are a large number of cases in ship to ship fights where they zig zag , then quickly turn , fire ( and bring most turrets into play) and continue evading rinse and repeat .

I don't suppose you would care to cite some of the "large number of cases in a ship to ship fight" you mention? Bismarck certainly didn't in the Denmark Strait, nor Warspite at Matapan, and neither Oldendorf or his Japanese opponent at Suriago Strait. What you do see in ship to ship actions is some mild course changes of a few degrees to chase salvos.

More radical maneuver is pretty much limited to night engagements and attempts to disengage. Even then, if you look as "Second Guadalcanal", the only radical turns involved were made to avoid torpedoes..., not during the gunfire exchange. Your "spin on a dime and quick draw with a BB" couldn't possibly work until the refinement of millimeter band fire control radars after WW II.

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

The code should be changed that cant you do more than 60 fire or 40 sys without penetrating period this would represent most of the super structure lost.

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ORIGINAL: seydlitz
I would assume that the spotter aircraft carried by the battleships and cruisers would perform this task. They would orbit the gun locations and locate the guns when the fired then walk the shells from the ships onto the target. So I wouldn't expect all the spotting to be done from the pagoda masts 12 miles out.

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ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

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ORIGINAL: seydlitz
I would assume that the spotter aircraft carried by the battleships and cruisers would perform this task. They would orbit the gun locations and locate the guns when the fired then walk the shells from the ships onto the target. So I wouldn't expect all the spotting to be done from the pagoda masts 12 miles out.

You would assume a great deal. The Japanese had been flying over Wake for several days before they tried to land, but didn't know where the guns were. The Americans had been attacking Tarawa for a week before they landed, and didn't know where the guns were. What makes you think the guys in the floatplanes would do any better unless the camo was pulled off and the guns began to fire? There job was to "walk the fire" onto a target once it was revealed. But the guns would only be revealed when they fired.

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Isn't that what they are for? BB and CA float planes were for gunnery spotting, not intended for ASW work

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ORIGINAL: seydlitz

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ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

You would assume a great deal. The Japanese had been flying over Wake for several days before they tried to land, but didn't know where the guns were. The Americans had been attacking Tarawa for a week before they landed, and didn't know where the guns were. What makes you think the guys in the floatplanes would do any better unless the camo was pulled off and the guns began to fire? There job was to "walk the fire" onto a target once it was revealed. But the guns would only be revealed when they fired.

Exactly, but the guns are not moving so when they did open fire the aircraft would be able to walk the fire in on them. The ships could withdraw back out of range of the guns. Then the ships would suppress or knock out the guns from outside their effective range.

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ORIGINAL: Ryvan

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

The code should be changed that cant you do more than 60 fire or 40 sys without penetrating period this would represent most of the super structure lost.

That's going a little bit too far. Ships could certainly be, and were sunk by non-penetrating fire. Some ships were sunk or severely damaged by weapons that missed. CA Suzuki was sunk without being hit when a near miss bomb set off an explosion of her own weapons. PoW was basically lost to a single torpedo that didn't penetrate her armor. It was struck by quite a few bombs and torpedoes, but the one that sank her actually struck her portside propeller shaft outside of the hull.

I do agree that there is something wrong with CD fire. I'm just want to point out that freaky things can happen to individual ships in combat. It is perfectly reasonable for any of the ships engaging the Soviet CD guns, including the battleships, to have been sunk by them. The problem is that it's unreasonable for them all to have been sunk or seriously damaged without even making an effort to withdraw.

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2. The CD routine is not working as was historical but it is broken in a predictable and reliable way and thus cam be compensated for. I ran a little in-game test with three TFs, one comprising 2 BBs only, one comprising CAs, CLs and lots of DDs and another comprising BBs plus escorts.

End result. BB only TF had 1 BB trashed and only took out two enemy guns. Escorted BBs set to escorts do not bombard did poorly also and BBs rook too many hits, DD TF took very little damage ( 1 CA on fire, total of under twenty hits vs about eighty hits on the two unescorted TFs ) Nd took out twenty defending enemy guns and trashed the airfield and defending troops.

So, overall, I tried three solutions against a single island on the same day. CL TF went in first then unescorted BBs then escorted BBs. The Cl/DD TF took the least damage and destroyed the most guns. So if sending in shipping set escorts to Bo bard and load up on he fast small ships which can dodge a bit.

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

All these issues are covered by Critical hits ( The Suzuki was probably a faulty detonator POW ) ...In no case historically was BB Machine gunned to death which is what we are seeing eg 100 * a min of 1 damage Or in the above case 80-100 hits doing 90 sys damage.

You could argue a single hit could cause a fire which can spread and i would agree with you ( fire should be small but can spread and be affected by DC) but none of these were single hits and in no case was a ship lost due to non penetrating damage unless a fire or ammo explotion ( mostly followed by a fire) was involved. In this case you can get 100 system damage ,no fire and sink.

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BB Mutsu, Shell hits 118, heavy fires, heavy damage
BB Nagato, Shell hits 133, heavy fires, heavy damage
CA Chokai, Shell hits 78, heavy fires, heavy damage
CA Takao, Shell hits 79, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Shiranui, Shell hits 24, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Hayashio, Shell hits 19, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Kofuku Maru, Shell hits 12, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Turusima Maru, Shell hits 1
xAKL Kurama Maru, Shell hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Nanko Maru, Shell hits 4, on fire
PB Taiko Maru, Shell hits 10, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Saiko Maru, Shell hits 9, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Myoken Maru, Shell hits 11, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Kure Maru #5, Shell hits 7, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Keiko Maru, Shell hits 10, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Kamitsu Maru, Shell hits 6, on fire
PB Edo Maru, Shell hits 6, heavy fires
PB Busho Maru, Shell hits 8, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Yamafuku Maru

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ORIGINAL: Ryvan

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

All these issues are covered by Critical hits ( The Suzuki was probably a faulty detonator POW ) ...In no case historically was BB Machine gunned to death which is what we are seeing eg 100 * a min of 1 damage Or in the above case 80-100 hits doing 90 sys damage.

You could argue a single hit could cause a fire which can spread and i would agree with you ( fire should be small but can spread and be affected by DC) but none of these were single hits and in no case was a ship lost due to non penetrating damage unless a fire or ammo explotion ( mostly followed by a fire) was involved. In this case you can get 100 system damage ,no fire and sink.

PoW did not burn and none of the bombs that hit her penetrated her deck armor. She was sunk purely by her "system damage." The torpedo bent one of the port propeller shafts. The now-unbalanced spinning shaft ripped a hole through her causing her to take on 18,000 tons of water. She could not pump out the water because the spinning shaft also knocked out much of her electrical systems. There was no fire. Her ammo did not explode.

Also, where are you seeing that they are getting 100 system damage and sinking without fire? In the example you gave in the first post, it looked to me like pretty much all of your ships burned.

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BB Mutsu, Shell hits 118, heavy fires, heavy damage
BB Nagato, Shell hits 133, heavy fires, heavy damage
CA Chokai, Shell hits 78, heavy fires, heavy damage
CA Takao, Shell hits 79, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Shiranui, Shell hits 24, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Hayashio, Shell hits 19, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Kofuku Maru, Shell hits 12, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Turusima Maru, Shell hits 1
xAKL Kurama Maru, Shell hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Nanko Maru, Shell hits 4, on fire
PB Taiko Maru, Shell hits 10, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Saiko Maru, Shell hits 9, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Myoken Maru, Shell hits 11, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Kure Maru #5, Shell hits 7, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Keiko Maru, Shell hits 10, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Kamitsu Maru, Shell hits 6, on fire
PB Edo Maru, Shell hits 6, heavy fires
PB Busho Maru, Shell hits 8, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Yamafuku Maru

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

1. When does a Torpedo ever not penetrate the armour ? At best some ships had some 50-75 mm bulges to reduce the damage. My comment was on non penetratinf hits. The game engine prob views a hit on the props as a penetrating or critical hit.
2. In the POW case how is this not a critical hit.? With her own prop doing most of the damage. She also sustained 4 Torp hits and a bomb . She was not sunk by system damage at all but by flooding sure she had a lot of sys damage ( no pumps , steering etc) but it was the flooding that sunk her.
3. Even if all these ships burned that is also an issue. Not every ship burned when hit by gunfire... The surviving BB had 90 sys , 90 fire , no flooding the rest sunk immediately so we dont know.

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When does a Torpedo ever not penetrate the armour ? At best some ships had some 50-75 mm bulges to reduce the damage.

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ORIGINAL: Dili

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When does a Torpedo ever not penetrate the armour ? At best some ships had some 50-75 mm bulges to reduce the damage.

That is not true torpedos, don't hit only at midship. In general after main guns there is no space for protection systems and many specially older ships don't have a
full, to the bottom, torpedo protection either.
Maybe you should look at armor schemes and i am talking only at BB's for other lesser classes is even worse if you start to compute their real vulnerability. At Taranto 2 of 3 the hits in Littorio were outside armor and torpedo defenses. Cavour was sunk by a magnetic torpedo fuze that for once it worked under the hull means it didn't even hit the ship. Nelson was hit by an aerial torpedo near torpedo tubes, nothing there. There are certainly many other examples.

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ORIGINAL: seydlitz

Sovetska Gavan....graveyard of ships.

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ORIGINAL: Ryvan

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

1. When does a Torpedo ever not penetrate the armour ? At best some ships had some 50-75 mm bulges to reduce the damage. My comment was on non penetratinf hits. The game engine prob views a hit on the props as a penetrating or critical hit.
2. In the POW case how is this not a critical hit.? With her own prop doing most of the damage. She also sustained 4 Torp hits and a bomb . She was not sunk by system damage at all but by flooding sure she had a lot of sys damage ( no pumps , steering etc) but it was the flooding that sunk her.
3. Even if all these ships burned that is also an issue. Not every ship burned when hit by gunfire... The surviving BB had 90 sys , 90 fire , no flooding the rest sunk immediately so we dont know.

1.) That's what I'm saying though. The game won't assign critical hits to weapons that shouldn't otherwise penetrate the armor. If a 6in naval AP round struck the PoW on her belt, it wouldn't be able to do catastrophic damage in the game. In real life, it could if it hit something like a turning propeller shaft, or weapons stored on deck outside of the armor plating, etc... Another thing the game can't take into account is cumulative damage to armor plate by successive non-penetrating strikes.

2.) Of course she was sunk by flooding. You were saying that non-penetrating hits cannot cause sinking except by fire or internal explosion. PoW was indeed critically hit. She was critically hit by a weapon that did not penetrate her armor. AFAIK, this game does not allow non-penetrating hits to do critical damage. (Non-penetrating is being used as an in-game term here. In real life, torpedoes were not designed to penetrate ship armor on large combatants. They did their damage by concussive force pushing against the hull, not through it like a gun round. The game assigns penetrative value to a torpedo as a munge for the damage system. Not because it's what torpedoes actually did.)

3.) Which is again what I said above. A battleship being struck by over 100 6" gun rounds should be able to be sunk by them regardless of whether it starts a fire or not. This isn't unrealistic. If we incorporated your changes we would need to add critical hits for non-penetrating rounds. I absolutely agree with you that small caliber rounds are probably causing more fires than they should. I also agree that with you about the machine-gunning effect of small caliber hits causing too much cumulative system damage. What I disagree with is your solution. Putting a hard cap on the maximum system damage a ship can take from non-penetrating rounds isn't a good solution. And you're right, we don't know what sunk them or even what caused the majority of the system damage. It may have been the fire, or it may have been the "machine gunning" of the large number of small rounds. Sinking by fire is entirely appropriate, but the large number of ships with "heavy fires" is not. It's quite possible that the game engine only assigned 20 system damage from all of the small hits, and the rest was done by fire.

My points:

1.) Any of the battleships you lost could have been sunk by the number of hits they sustained even if none of the hits actually penetrated the armor.

2.) While 1. is true, it should be a rare occurence and should not have happened to all of your BB / CA ships.

3.) When such cumulative damage was being realized, the ships should have withdrawn. That this didn't happen is the single biggest problem with the results of your engagement.

4.) I agree that the results of your combat are out-of-whack, but I disagree with your proposed solution because I feel it would make BBs and CAs unrealistically immune to sinking from non-penetrating hits unless we also allow for non-penetrating hits to cause critical hits.