My 1st Tease [Archive] - GameSquad Forums

Lützow

22 Jun 08, 19:37

In Jutland, different types of gun shoot different types of shell with different effects on the target.

Including the better armor piercing characteristics of geman shells? I hope so, anything else won´t be real realistic, I think.

BTW, some other question about fire directing. Would there be different fire directors for main and second guns? Just like the case your BB or BC engages equal enemy ships and suddenly being under attack from DDs/TBs? To handle this you must be able to engage BBs/BCs whith main guns and DDs/TBs with second guns. We must be able to do so, just see Derfflingers Gunnery Officer´s account on Jutland, engaging BCs with main (30,5 cm) guns and Light Cruisers with second (15 cm) guns. Anything else also won´t be realistic.:hmmm:

Am I right or wrong with this?:shy::shy:

Bullethead

22 Jun 08, 20:04

Including the better armor piercing characteristics of geman shells?

Yup, now you're on the right track. But not all German guns had superior penetration, even in 1916. There's a fair amount of detail involved here if you're curious ;).

BTW, some other question about fire directing.

Much as I'd like to, I can't get into that right now. So let's keep it on gun ammo for the time being, please.

jdkbph

22 Jun 08, 21:53

Yup, now you're on the right track.

Would this cool feature, whatever it is, have any specific impact (pun intended) on the Brit 13.5", for instance?

JD

Firestorm

22 Jun 08, 22:22

As I recall alot of British shells had bad fuses and would trigger prematurely on the intial impact with armor.

KGB

23 Jun 08, 07:02

AFAIK Brit shells didn't explode on impact like 80-90% of all hits.

Rhetor

23 Jun 08, 09:03

I only wonder where the fine line between historical accuracy and gameplay would go, when it comes to shell quality :D

jdkbph

23 Jun 08, 09:44

I only wonder where the fine line between historical accuracy and gameplay would go, when it comes to shell quality :D

Good question. That's an area where DG is somewhat lacking. The historical situation at Tsushima, for instance, was that the Russian crews were is such bad state relative to the Japanese crews that the action was pretty much one sided. The game seems to ignore this for the most part... one can only assume for the purpose of play balancing. Fair enough - and truth be told, I'd prolly rather play it that way - but this kind of thing should be user selectable. In fact, the traditional computer wargame paradigm holds that this should probably be one of many user selectable "difficulty factors". DG has, essentially, none at all.

JD

Bullethead

23 Jun 08, 09:45

Would this cool feature, whatever it is, have any specific impact (pun intended) on the Brit 13.5", for instance?

Which type of 13.5" did you have in mind? There were 3 distinct types in service afloat: the Mk V with both 1250# shells and 1400# shells, and the Mk VI in Erin, which didn't have quite the same stats as the Mk V. There was also an old Mk III in the Penlee Battery at Plymouth. Jutland's got all of that :D.

oz_boater

23 Jun 08, 09:50

The subject is gun ammunition in the Jutland game. What do you all want to know about it?

OK.

Give you have not restricted it to just the shell I have a few.

1) Do you take into account the different vulnerabilities of British and German cordite (at the time of Jutland) to flash? and if so, how? As far as I recall at the end of the war when the British inspected the High Seas fleet they do not consider their gunhouses 'flash tight' - but it was not the German ships that were blowing up at Jutland

2) Do you take into account the effects of armour (or the lack of it) on different types of ammunition? Including but not limit to:

a) the impact on HE (where thin armour would protect against it) vs AP (where thin armour would just activate the fuse, but hull plating by itself may not)

b) the different ballistic characteristics of different sorts of ammunition for the same gun (which together with 'a' above led to the adoption of 'all or nothing armour' as one of the British lessons learned from Jutland as HE was ineffective at battle ranges and thus thin armour became a net menace)

c) the propensity of different types of ammunition to loose their filler or fuse or break up at various impact angles - in particular the problems the British had.

3) Gun life (which was quite short for some of the big guns - and a gun may been able to be 'shot out' in an afternoon)

4) The impact on spotting of mixed calibers firing on the same target (which problem after all was 1 of the two factors that lead to the development of HMS Dreadnought)

5) The differences in rate of fire that flow from using man handled vs mechanically loaded ammo and the impact on this of fatigue and sea state

6) Whether data about ammo performance will be available for post battle analysis (useful to assist with learning what works and what does not - but also for debugging that issues that will inevitably remain if the gunnery systems is a black box)

Thats all I can think of immediately

Regards

Boater

Bullethead

23 Jun 08, 10:00

As I recall alot of British shells had bad fuses and would trigger prematurely on the intial impact with armor.

The Brit APC of 1916 had several problems. Its lyddite filler was shock-sensitive, the metal was brittle, and, as you say, the fuzes weren't good. It therefore had a strong tendency to break up or prematurely explode on even thin armor, although it did still sometimes penetrate and explode inside as intended. This is why Brit capital ships don't have a choice of ammo types in the game. The APC and HE or CPC (which the Brits fired a lot of anyway) usually had pretty much the same effect--an explosion on the surface.

So yeah, we've got that in the game. And this is different from how the German big shells work, and also different from the smaller guns on both sides.

Bullethead

23 Jun 08, 10:37

I only wonder where the fine line between historical accuracy and gameplay would go, when it comes to shell quality :D

Our goal, of course, is to make the game as historically accurate as possible while still being fun to play. Relative shell quality is just one historical factor that we use to achieve this. 1916 has a bunch of other historical factors, all of which taken together tend to balance the game. This is the best of both worlds, because it allows us to include a bunch of noticeable historical detail for the grogs while making the balance tweaking a bit easier and less obvious.

Bullethead

23 Jun 08, 11:19

1) Do you take into account the different vulnerabilities of British and German cordite (at the time of Jutland) to flash?

Yes, we take this into account. Can't tell you how yet, though.

2) Do you take into account the effects of armour (or the lack of it) on different types of ammunition? Including but not limit to:

a) the impact on HE (where thin armour would protect against it) vs AP (where thin armour would just activate the fuse, but hull plating by itself may not)

Yup. There are many guns in Jutland that match their historical prototypes by having only HE ammo without any AP at all. HE is handled differently from AP that often broke up but sometimes penetrated, and of course both are different from AP that penetrated fairly reliably.

b) the different ballistic characteristics of different sorts of ammunition for the same gun (which together with 'a' above led to the adoption of 'all or nothing armour' as one of the British lessons learned from Jutland as HE was ineffective at battle ranges and thus thin armour became a net menace)

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're asking here.

c) the propensity of different types of ammunition to loose their filler or fuse or break up at various impact angles - in particular the problems the British had.

Yup. See above.

3) Gun life (which was quite short for some of the big guns - and a gun may been able to be 'shot out' in an afternoon)

Nope, we don't have that. But I can't think of anybody else who does, either, probably because most players would find it a total pain.

4) The impact on spotting of mixed calibers firing on the same target (which problem after all was 1 of the two factors that lead to the development of HMS Dreadnought)

Fire control's another subject for a later day.

5) The differences in rate of fire that flow from using man handled vs mechanically loaded ammo and the impact on this of fatigue and sea state

Rate of fire is a fairly complicated subject. Suffice to say that Jutland takes the above factors and a few others into account. The net result is that most guns have effective ROFs rather less than max their breech mechanisms were capable of. This is a fairly noticeable change from the RJW game.

6) Whether data about ammo performance will be available for post battle analysis

We're considering various types of post-battle stat reports but haven't come to any decisions yet.

Rhetor

23 Jun 08, 14:37

Since this is only the first tease, how many teases should we expect before the our appetites are finally appeased? :D:D:D

Lützow

23 Jun 08, 18:27

To Rhetor:

Read between the lines:hmmm:... Just like this:

Fire control's another subject for a later day.
Or this:
We're considering various types of post-battle stat reports but haven't come to any decisions yet

We should expect many more, I think:nofear::drink::D:D

But after all It´s a very interesting thread, isn´t it?

HMSWarspite

24 Jun 08, 15:37

As an aside for the 'choose my own shell type' enthusiasts, several ships on both sides did their own thing completely without any regard to any admirals (you..), or what anyone else was doing, so shell control would be very ahistorical

HMSWarspite

24 Jun 08, 17:58

OK.

1) Do you take into account the different vulnerabilities of British and German cordite (at the time of Jutland) to flash? and if so, how? As far as I recall at the end of the war when the British inspected the High Seas fleet they do not consider their gunhouses 'flash tight' - but it was not the German ships that were blowing up at Jutland

I have aways understood this remark to reflect the degree to which the RN learnt the lessons by the end of the war: RN flash protection was vastely better by then (and had to be due to the less stable propellant) than the HSF, which was just about good enough for the more stable Ge propellant
Certainly the end of 1918 does not give a RN datum for 1916!

oz_boater

24 Jun 08, 19:46

Certainly the end of 1918 does not give a RN datum for 1916!

Of course not, but what it does indicate was that how 'flash tight' a turret was is not the primary indicator of how vulnerable a ship was to flash causing an explosion. i.e. the British root cause analysis had picked the wrong root cause. They had solved a 2nd order problem

HMSWarspite

25 Jun 08, 16:44

Of course not, but what it does indicate was that how 'flash tight' a turret was is not the primary indicator of how vulnerable a ship was to flash causing an explosion. i.e. the British root cause analysis had picked the wrong root cause. They had solved a 2nd order problem

Have to disagree with you there. The RN didn't have any opportunity to see whether their fix prevented explosions. They had solved the main problem caused by their combination of propellent, storage and handing (silk bags etc). They did not make their cordite stable. However the HSF also did not have enough battle experience to know whether their turrets were tight enough following Dogger Bank (only an example or two at Jutland). It is perfectly possible that magazine explosions would have favoured the RN in 1918.

Bullethead

25 Jun 08, 17:49

It is perfectly possible that magazine explosions would have favoured the RN in 1918.

I gotta disagree with that. German propellant could be set alight and would make a big fire, but it did not do so nearly as rapidly or with such explosive release of gas pressure as Brit propellant. This gas pressure is what tore the Brit ships apart, where a German ship with the same amount of propellant burning would just have a fire, due to an absence of such high pressure.

When Seydlitz had her big fire at Dogger Bank, propellant in the actual magazines was on fire. Nobody was afraid of that blowing up the ship, but were somewhat worried that the heat might eventually cook off shells stowed above. However, the Germans were able to put the fire out before this happened. And some of this was in the actual magazine, mind you. The fire caused no structural damage beyond ruining the temper of the heated metal.

This Seydlitz fire involved like 10 times the amount of propellant that Lion had eventually erupt in the ruins of Q turret. But that small amount of powder blew the roof off the turret above and stove in the magazine bulkheads below, no doubt ruining their flash integrity. Very likely, flash would have gotten into the magazine and blown Beatty to bits had the magazines not already been fully flooded by then.

This difference in propellant volatility continued into WW2, despite both sides reformulating their propellant by then. Hood blew up just like the Jutland BCs. Barham blew up while rolling over, which also seems to have happened to Queen Mary at Jutland. OTOH, Gneisenau took a bomb in the forward magazine and all that did was make a big fire.

Thus, even though the Brits had superior flash protection, they also had much greater need of it. And it looks like if flash found any gap in the defenses, the ship was still going to blow up, even in WW2. That doesn't seem to have been a German problem in either war.

Fairweather

25 Jun 08, 18:13

oz_boater

25 Jun 08, 19:53

I didn't think Hood blew up the same as the Jutland Battlecruisers? I may have this wrong, but didn't the Jutland BCs explode due to the fire spreading from turret to magazine? And Hood blew up when a shell went through her deck and then into her magazine.

That was the conclusion of the boards of enquiry, but actually don't know for sure though examination of her wreck does nto contradict these conclusions. Here is a link to the best information I know of on the examination of her wreck and the immediate conclusions which can be drawn

http://www.sname.org/committees/design/mfp/website/recent/research/hood_bismarck_1.pdf

though if you look here you will see that agreement is not universal
http://www.hmshood.com/hoodtoday/2001expedition/index.htm

(Specifically with regards an explosion of the forward magazines)

Boater

Bullethead

25 Jun 08, 19:58

I may have this wrong, but didn't the Jutland BCs explode due to the fire spreading from turret to magazine? And Hood blew up when a shell went through her deck and then into her magazine.

Invincible, Defence, and Black Prince blew up from witnessed turret hits. Indefatigable's forward magazine blew from witnessed non-turret hits, but these could have done the barbette below the upper deck OR made it to the magazine directly. Nobody will ever know--the wreck's been scrapped completely--and nobody saw what caused her aft magazine to go off prior to that. Queen Mary's forward magazines apparently went off from a non-turret hit, which could have been on a lower barbette, or into either the main or 2ndary magazines directly. Again, nobody knows. Her Q magazine also exploded, aparently also from a hit somewhere down below and not on the turret (the survivors from the turret don't recall a penetration), and her X magazine went as the stern was rolling over, probably from a spark setting off one of the exposed black powder igniters on a charge. Note that Barham did the same thing when sunk in WW2.

As to Hood, there's still some doubt where the shell landed. To get to the magazine directly, it would have had to have gone through some tiny area with very little armor, which seems unlikely. Still, she blew up so maybe it really did happen. But either way, she blew up from a magazine explosion, and that explosion was a result of Brit propellant being extremely dangerous stuff, even in WW2. When it got burning, it all went off at once and ripped ships to pieces. German propellant just didn't behave that way.

EDIT: Think of it this way.... You can take a lump of C4 plastic explosive, light it on fire, and use it to cook your meal with, like it was a can of Sterno. OTOH, if you take a pile of black powder and touch a match to it, it all goes POOF! at once. German propellant was like C4, and Brit propellant was like black powder. In both wars.

PepsiCan

26 Jun 08, 05:33

SO, what else regarding shells have you got to spill? And does this point also include torpedoes?

Bullethead

26 Jun 08, 11:54

SO, what else regarding shells have you got to spill? And does this point also include torpedoes?

OK, shells.... Most folks are familiar with the relative merits and deficiencies of the major-caliber APC on both sides, but nobody pays much attention to the smaller guns. What I find most interesting is that no gun on either side of 6"/15cm or smaller had any AP ammo at all. So we took that into account in Jutland.

This makes for some noticeable changes compared to the RJW game. CLs aren't very likely to sink each other with gunfire alone, no matter how much topsides damage they do. BB 2ndary fire has basically no effect at all on another BB, even if they stumble upon each other in the dark at close range.

We were also able to put in some little details on this stuff. For instance, Canada's 6" BL Mk XVII, being a non-standard gun built for Chile, had non-standard ammo. It appears to have been unique amongst Brit 6" guns of 1916 in having SAP instead of HE ammo. Thus, its shells can get through thin armor sometimes.

Nothing on torps yet. Sorry :)

oz_boater

26 Jun 08, 12:48

OK, shells.... Most folks are familiar with the relative merits and deficiencies of the major-caliber APC on both sides, but nobody pays much attention to the smaller guns. What I find most interesting is that no gun on either side of 6"/15cm or smaller had any AP ammo at all. So we took that into account in Jutland.

This makes for some noticeable changes compared to the RJW game. CLs aren't very likely to sink each other with gunfire alone, no matter how much topsides damage they do. BB 2ndary fire has basically no effect at all on another BB, even if they stumble upon each other in the dark at close range.

We were also able to put in some little details on this stuff. For instance, Canada's 6" BL Mk XVII, being a non-standard gun built for Chile, had non-standard ammo. It appears to have been unique amongst Brit 6" guns of 1916 in having SAP instead of HE ammo. Thus, its shells can get through thin armor sometimes.

Well that's - mm - interesting.

I though that the British laid out the armour of their ships of the time as they did because thet were concerned about the the effect of HE shells on unarmoured hulls (big HE shells arriving every so often and small ones doing 'smothering fire') and the Germans took a different approach - concentrating their armour more.

The German appraach proving superior because of the long range that Jutland (and presumably further battles of this was type) were fought at?

Given that, the assumption implied in your comments above is that for both navies all important sections of armoured ships (or at least dreadnoughts) were armoured and thus immune to (at least) 6" HE rounds. Is that actually the case? Grabbing Parks quickly I notice that 'Dreadnought' herself and all British Dreadnoughts up to 1909 had no upper side armour for example.

Unfortunately - while a have Robert's "British Cruisers of WWII" I don't have anywhere near as good information on WWI ships. I would be rather surprised though if - given how desperate they were for weight - the CLs of this era which actually HAD side armour (Chathams and later) actually had a long enough belt to preserve their watertight integrity if 'riddled'

Not saying your wrong here - just curious as to the assumptions that are driving you here. (And yes I did notice you said 'sink' for CLs and 'no effect' for BBs).

Care to expand on the armouring assumptions that drive the above comments on HE?

regards

Boater

Batou

26 Jun 08, 13:47

We see the first use of star shells?

Batou

26 Jun 08, 13:55

Let see, so the British still have crummy ammo let over from 1916, that has a nasty habit of breaking up on impact. :laugh:

Doodlebug

26 Jun 08, 14:58

How are inferior german fire control systems represented compared to the RN?

Bullethead

26 Jun 08, 16:53

I though that the British laid out the armour of their ships of the time as they did because thet were concerned about the the effect of HE shells on unarmoured hulls (big HE shells arriving every so often and small ones doing 'smothering fire') and the Germans took a different approach - concentrating their armour more.

At this point in time, everybody outside the US had light belts going to the ends or close to them, precisely to prevent big HE from doing what it did to some Russians at Tsushima. The overall armoring schemes of Brit and German capital ships were very similar, in fact. The Germans just tended to have thicker armor over a larger area amidships, which they paid for by having smaller guns.

Given that, the assumption implied in your comments above is that for both navies all important sections of armoured ships (or at least dreadnoughts) were armoured and thus immune to (at least) 6" HE rounds. Is that actually the case? Grabbing Parks quickly I notice that 'Dreadnought' herself and all British Dreadnoughts up to 1909 had no upper side armour for example.

Yeah, all the important stuff was protected very well. All the big guns, the ammo, the skipper, (usually) the control systems, and the propulsive machinery, as well as (usually) enough buoyancy to keep the ship afloat, were behind the thickest armor on the ship. The unarmored areas weren't essential to the survival or functioning of the ship. So a 6" HE shell might go through the unarmored side above the belt and blow up 2 or 3 officers' cabins or some such, and do "severe damage to light structures", as Campbell would say, but this would have zero effect on the ability of the ship to float, move, or fight.

A lot of older naval sims and miniatures rules gave ships "hit points". In these games, every hit by any type of weapon reduced this total by some amount, and usually weapons would be knocked out when the "hit points" were reduced to certain levels, whether you'd actually hit them or not. In such games, it was possible, if you kept at it long enough, to disarm and eventually even sink a battleship with 5" DD guns. This despite the fact that a 5" HE shell has absolutely no chance of destroying a BB's buoyancy, because it has absolutely no chance of getting through the belt armor. :nuts: TF1942 and GNB were like this.

Our games aren't like that. Our ships sink only when you let in water by first overcoming whatever's protecting the buoyancy. And our weapons are only knocked out (except for those "damaged by fire") when they're hit. Thus, just as in real life, there are a fair number of "meaningless" hits in our battles that do only cosmetic damage, because there was nothing important in the place struck.

I would be rather surprised though if - given how desperate they were for weight - the CLs of this era which actually HAD side armour (Chathams and later) actually had a long enough belt to preserve their watertight integrity if 'riddled'

WW1 CLs were armored on a completely different theory than BBs. To be fast and light, they couldn't have much armor, and they were expecting to be hit by 3-6" HE most of the time anyway. So, they put about a 3" belt amidships to protect the machinery extended it to the ends at about 1.5" to protect the ends from splinters and small HE shells. Their main buoyancy protection at the ends was the old PC-style protective deck, because they expected most hits to be above the waterline. At the ends, this deck was usually about 2" thick, but was only 1" or less amidships in line with the thick part of the belt.

Interestingly, the armor of most WW1 CLs was either HT steel or Harvey nickel, even for those built during the war. These materials seem to have been adequate against the expected HE hits, and I expect they were cheaper and could be made faster, too.

Bullethead

26 Jun 08, 16:56

We see the first use of star shells?

Maybe. We're definitely considering this but no promises yet.

Speaking of which..... Anybody got any reliable data on WW1 starshell characteristics? It's damn hard to find and it wouldn't hurt to have more.

oz_boater

26 Jun 08, 18:51

Yeah, all the important stuff was protected very well. All the big guns, the ammo, the skipper, (usually) the control systems, and the propulsive machinery, as well as (usually) enough buoyancy to keep the ship afloat, were behind the thickest armor on the ship. The unarmored areas weren't essential to the survival or functioning of the ship. So a 6" HE shell might go through the unarmored side above the belt and blow up 2 or 3 officers' cabins or some such, and do "severe damage to light structures", as Campbell would say, but this would have zero effect on the ability of the ship to float, move, or fight.

A lot of older naval sims and miniatures rules gave ships "hit points". In these games, every hit by any type of weapon reduced this total by some amount, and usually weapons would be knocked out when the "hit points" were reduced to certain levels, whether you'd actually hit them or not. In such games, it was possible, if you kept at it long enough, to disarm and eventually even sink a battleship with 5" DD guns. This despite the fact that a 5" HE shell has absolutely no chance of destroying a BB's buoyancy, because it has absolutely no chance of getting through the belt armor. :nuts: TF1942 and GNB were like this.

Our games aren't like that. Our ships sink only when you let in water by first overcoming whatever's protecting the buoyancy. And our weapons are only knocked out (except for those "damaged by fire") when they're hit. Thus, just as in real life, there are a fair number of "meaningless" hits in our battles that do only cosmetic damage, because there was nothing important in the place struck.

So now we drift off into maybe a no-go area, but effectiveness of shells is via their interaction with armour and I am now curious how well you are modelling armour? Is it abstracted (this ship has 12" armour) or more precise. I would presume each function (propulsion, each gun, etc) is given an armour rating vs different angles of attack (key one deck vs side) how do you deal with a 'concept' like bouyancy which is actually a function many areas - some of which will be armoured extensively, some of which will not? I particularly am thinking of the loss of the Lutzow here. I will have to find my Cambell and refresh my memory. I have not read it isnce it first came out.

Then there is the angle the shell makes with the armour (both horizontal and vertical) and the effect this has on both effective armour thickness (thus the 'improved' effectiveness of sloped armour) and on the stability of the shell (thus the failure of some US 16" shells against the - I think - Jean Bart)

Regards

Boater

Bullethead

26 Jun 08, 19:50

So now we drift off into maybe a no-go area, but effectiveness of shells is via their interaction with armour and I am now curious how well you are modelling armour? Is it abstracted (this ship has 12" armour) or more precise. I would presume each function (propulsion, each gun, etc) is given an armour rating vs different angles of attack (key one deck vs side)

....

Then there is the angle the shell makes with the armour (both horizontal and vertical)...

No secrets here. Jutland uses pretty much the same sort of armor system as the RJW. The RJW's system is explained on page 141 of the manual :D.

Armor: Armor protects many vital ship systems. In order to damage a system, any armor protecting it must be penetrated. Some weapons are protected by armor. Conning towers are frequently heavily protected. Belt armor protects a ship’s internal systems from hits impacting the center half of a ship below 1/3 the ship’s height. Hull armor protects a ship from hits above the belt to 2/3 the ship’s height, as well as hits to 1/3 the ship’s height extending most of the way from bow to stern. Deck armor protects a ship’s internal systems from shells impacting in a downward direction. In some cases, the deck armor is angled down toward the water line at the edges so that it forms a second, sloped layer of protection behind the main belt area. Where this is the case, the angled thickness of the slope is added to the ship’s belt armor protection.

Basically, the "hull" value corresponds to the upper belt and the thin parts of the waterline protection at the ends of the ship. In addition to this, each individual weapon has its own separate armor value. Also note that these values are modified by the TYPE of armor involved, such as Krupp, Harvey, etc.

As to systems, the machinery, for example, is behind the belt and under the deck. You have to get through one or the other to do any significant propulsion damage.

In general, shells vs. armor is handled with the same level of detail you find in good tank sims. Each and every shell's flight is tracked individually and if it hits the target, the armor at that spot on the ship is compared to the shell's penetration value, things within the blast radius might be damaged, etc. The shell might even be a dud.

Shells can pass through ships without exploding, or explode on the way out. One time I had Askold engaging Matsushima or one of her sisters, and Askold got hit by the big gun forward. The shell made a small hole on the entry side and exploded as it left the ship, making a bigger hole there and a splash adjacent to the disengaged side. IIRC, I posted up screenshots of that in a thread called "Damage Model Sweetness", if you care to look.

EDIT: Found the thread: http://www.gamesquad.com/forums/showpost.php?p=559288&postcount=1

Note that this was well before I worked for SES.

how do you deal with a 'concept' like bouyancy

This is also explained on page 141 of the RJW manual :D.

oz_boater

27 Jun 08, 09:33

Shells can pass through ships without exploding, or explode on the way out. One time I had Askold engaging Matsushima or one of her sisters, and Askold got hit by the big gun forward. The shell made a small hole on the entry side and exploded as it left the ship, making a bigger hole there and a splash adjacent to the disengaged side. IIRC, I posted up screenshots of that in a thread called "Damage Model Sweetness", if you care to look.

EDIT: Found the thread: http://www.gamesquad.com/forums/showpost.php?p=559288&postcount=1

Note that this was well before I worked for SES.

Thanks, though I can't find the screen shot.

oz_boater

27 Jun 08, 10:18

OK, shells.... Most folks are familiar with the relative merits and deficiencies of the major-caliber APC on both sides, but nobody pays much attention to the smaller guns. What I find most interesting is that no gun on either side of 6"/15cm or smaller had any AP ammo at all. So we took that into account in Jutland.

This makes for some noticeable changes compared to the RJW game. CLs aren't very likely to sink each other with gunfire alone, no matter how much topsides damage they do. BB 2ndary fire has basically no effect at all on another BB, even if they stumble upon each other in the dark at close range.

We were also able to put in some little details on this stuff. For instance, Canada's 6" BL Mk XVII, being a non-standard gun built for Chile, had non-standard ammo. It appears to have been unique amongst Brit 6" guns of 1916 in having SAP instead of HE ammo. Thus, its shells can get through thin armor sometimes.

Nothing on torps yet. Sorry :)

Sat down and skimmed the summary of "Jutland: An analysis of the fighting" this morning on the bus. (The whole book is a big too big to analyse in an hour or so). I did find the comment on p356 "There is no record of the total number of medium caliber hits on British Capital Ships, except that there were three on Tiger, and as far as is known, only one such hit, which disabled a 15" gun in the Warspite is of any importance".

Given what you have mentioned above, is there any mechanism in this simulation that will allow a medium caliber hit to disable a main gun on a Queen? (This hit was a 5.9in which hit the gun barrel and created a bulge which required the gun to be removed for repair (see p178))

on p357
"and in British ships nose fused HE and common shell were carried for 6in and 4in guns". I am not familiar with what "common shell" is in the context of the small guns here. Are you assuming its effectively the same as HE? Because on p359 it shows Marlborough as having fired 55 6in HE and 5 6in CPC. The CPC being presumably what was called on p357 "common". And CPC is "Capped Pointed Common" as far as I am aware is essentially a different name for SAP. Could always be a typo or mean something different in this caliber. What is your information?

It then on p358 goes on to mention the German 5.9in was equiped with a mix of nose and base fused HE and mentions that base fused HE was for "more resistant targets"

on p361 it mentions that for armoured cruisers "AP, common and nose fused HE were carried for 9.2in, 7.5in and 6in but AP was omitted in British Light Cruisers." and while the 6in was mainly a CL gun, "Black Prince" had 10 of them.

on p361 it also mentions that Frankfurt reported firing 96 rounds of 5.9in AP but suggests they may have meant base fused HE which in turn suggest that one could be mistaken for the other in a practical sense.

Now this book is not the bible, and is a secondary source, but it does leave me interested in seeing if you would like to expand a bit on your comments about what ammo was carried for the 6" and below. So what are the ammunitions that are modelled ?

Regards

Boater

Bullethead

27 Jun 08, 12:31

Sat down and skimmed the summary of "Jutland: An analysis of the fighting" this morning on the bus.

Very good book ;). It's not the end-all and be-all, but it's very good.

Given what you have mentioned above, is there any mechanism in this simulation that will allow a medium caliber hit to disable a main gun on a Queen?

There's a lot of randomness built into the process to model especially good or bad results, so once in a blue moon you might see a 6" hit disable a BB turret. However, the odds of such a thing happening are extremely small, so from the POV of making decisions during a battle, it's best to assume it's pointless to shoot 6" at a battleship.

"and in British ships nose fused HE and common shell were carried for 6in and 4in guns". I am not familiar with what "common shell" is in the context of the small guns here. Are you assuming its effectively the same as HE?

Brit CPC might penetrate a hair more than their HE, but it also was filled with black powder, which is a low explosive. Thus, their effects would seem to be pretty much indistinguishable.

It then on p358 goes on to mention the German 5.9in was equiped with a mix of nose and base fused HE and mentions that base fused HE was for "more resistant targets"

The idea here was that they'd use nose-fuzed vs. oil-burning DDs and base-fuzed against coal-burners, in hopes of getting through the bunkers before the shell exploded. Campbell goes on to say that in practice, however, the Germans fired both types in alternate salvos at the same targets. Thus, one general system with a spread of results that covers both types works here.

on p361 it mentions that for armoured cruisers "AP, common and nose fused HE were carried for 9.2in, 7.5in and 6in but AP was omitted in British Light Cruisers." and while the 6in was mainly a CL gun, "Black Prince" had 10 of them.

Other sources indicate there was no AP for any Brit 6" gun.

PepsiCan

27 Jun 08, 12:42

I know we're not there yet, however I would like to ask my question before I forget.

The RN had a mixture of oil burning and coal burning BBs when the war started. Will there be a difference in the amount of smoke coming from the stacks for these two types?

Bullethead

27 Jun 08, 13:13

The RN had a mixture of oil burning and coal burning BBs when the war started. Will there be a difference in the amount of smoke coming from the stacks for these two types?

Take a good look at the screenshot Jim just put up :). But to keep this thread on topic, keep discussion of the graphics stuff over there, please.

HMSWarspite

27 Jun 08, 18:53

I gotta disagree with that. German propellant could be set alight and would make a big fire, but it did not do so nearly as rapidly or with such explosive release of gas pressure as Brit propellant. This gas pressure is what tore the Brit ships apart, where a German ship with the same amount of propellant burning would just have a fire, due to an absence of such high pressure.

When Seydlitz had her big fire at Dogger Bank, propellant in the actual magazines was on fire. Nobody was afraid of that blowing up the ship, but were somewhat worried that the heat might eventually cook off shells stowed above. However, the Germans were able to put the fire out before this happened. And some of this was in the actual magazine, mind you. The fire caused no structural damage beyond ruining the temper of the heated metal.

This Seydlitz fire involved like 10 times the amount of propellant that Lion had eventually erupt in the ruins of Q turret. But that small amount of powder blew the roof off the turret above and stove in the magazine bulkheads below, no doubt ruining their flash integrity. Very likely, flash would have gotten into the magazine and blown Beatty to bits had the magazines not already been fully flooded by then.

This difference in propellant volatility continued into WW2, despite both sides reformulating their propellant by then. Hood blew up just like the Jutland BCs. Barham blew up while rolling over, which also seems to have happened to Queen Mary at Jutland. OTOH, Gneisenau took a bomb in the forward magazine and all that did was make a big fire.

Thus, even though the Brits had superior flash protection, they also had much greater need of it. And it looks like if flash found any gap in the defenses, the ship was still going to blow up, even in WW2. That doesn't seem to have been a German problem in either war.

Sorry, I didn't explain fully. I meant magazine explosions due to turret hits. If RN flash protection had got to the point where trunks were flash tight, none should occur (all the later ones cited were not turret hits). German bruning cordite was lucky not to set of a magazine on a couple of occasions. It matters not a jot that Ge cordite burns slowly if you ignite a magazine full. They just never did...(quite)