SES's Position on Brit Magazine Explosions

[Batou]

I apolagise, ive had a bad day :upset: dead cat and bad day at work :upset:

But i do like a good debate so only a little apolagy

One question then. What was the GF doing better than the HSF, becouse as far as i can see from this game the HSF is better in most and at least as good as the GF in all aspects of early 20th century naval warfare. not ONE aspect does it seem british ships have the edge , apart from having more of them

We still need to wait and see the actual game but, one would expect the British ships to receive more damage (less armor), better speed (most Brit ships were a wee bit faster then the Germans), and a better chance of Brit ships to explode. By 1916 the Brits still hadn't learn the lessons of 1915 and flash protection was still weak.The Brits out number the Germans in ever class of ships.

Having more faster ships is a pretty big advantage, the HFS will have to use hit and run tactics and pick it battles very carefully.

 

[TBR]

One thing the Brits did better was to plan for greater main gun elevation early. Goeben's for instance got only modified to 22° from the original 14,5° (IIRC, I'm citing from memory) in 1918. The lower maximum elevation had an adverse effect on range.

Another thing the Brits were good at was logistics. That's the main reason for the dominance of the RN for nearly two hundred years. The drydock in Antigua was more important for the control of the Carribean during the Napoleonic wars than any number of first rates. And this lead (that includes the domestic facilities) held on.

The "military-industrial-complex" of Great Britain was, despite some mistaken decisions in the mid 1800's, superior to any other in the world between the mid 1700's untill the beginning of WWI when the US finally outstripped them, enabling them to operate the biggest fleet with worldwide deployments and never truly to loose the technological lead.

Any technical advantages of German WWI designs were gradual, not revolutionary, and partly because the Germans had to make fewer compromises in their designs, not having to plan for worldwide deployability.

The one advantage of the Germans, which exabercated the other merely gradual differences between the two design concepts, lay in the deficiency of the British AP shells, which nearly negated any advantage of bigger calibres.

So if you think the RN should rule the roost and have truly superior ships in addition to a superior strategic position and a big numerical advantage you'll have the option to give the RN decent AP shells and German propellant (by turning ACH off). You got that option because SES decided to give it to you despite ther IMO very reasoned original assumptions.

If I wanted to "enhance" the German ships I have no option to make the elevation modifications early or to introduce the later long range shells made for the coastal gun versions of those ship guns after WWI.

 

[Damabiah]

Sorry to hear about the cat Salty

I'm keeping my powder dry on this one as IMO the single most significant factor affecting gunnery at Jutland appears to have been the visiblity. Poor for the Brit BC's in the opening stages and poor for the HSF in the main fleet action.

Campbell shows the squadron overall with the best shooting record was the 3rd BCS who came into the action from the East. I am more interested in seeing how this visibility issue pans out in the game.

However i can see me wincing everytime a salvo comes near my GF battleline after this news.

 

[Double Whisky]

And this was such a nice and civil forum...

To cite Mike Myers: Behave!

I'll search for some books that mention German WWI gunnery control.

Thank You
To say the truth I was counted on it.
Anyway the fire direction issues are really interesting, and probably it's necessary to go through German literature to know enough about it. Sorry, but my German is too poor for this.
Regards
DW

 

[Double Whisky]

One question then. What was the GF doing better than the HSF.

Invested early enough in really big guns.
Sheer weight of British shells knocked a lot of turrets and made the German ships leaking heavily. It's true, that only the night saved HSF, despite the problems with C&C, faulty shells, detonating powder chambers and so on.
GF lost two battlecruisers more than HSF, but generally came back to bases in good condition, while some German ships were no much more than floating debris. GF was just this guy with much heavier and bigger stick in hand in this encounter :bite:
Of 244 heavy German guns in the battle a hundred were of rather doubtful use against modern BB's :smoke:

 

[vertical]

Thanks for spelling out all this stuff for us BH.

vertical

 

[Von der Tann]

As I understood it, the German Navy paid more attention to each individual ship and followed the philosophy that as they could never have as many ships as the mighty Royal Navy, the ships they actually had should have an edge wherever possible. The idea behind the High Seas Fleet was to be a serious threat, at least, to the British Empire while being superior to every other navy. That way, it was hoped, a confrontation could be avoided, as the Britains would think twice before deciding against such an enemy.

Therefore, the German ships tended to get more attention and money than their British counterparts and had a few advantages on their side - it is said that a German capital ship cost about 30% more money than a comparable RN ship. They were generally better constructed and, in some respects, could take a great deal more damage. Underwater protection was particularly well developed, as it was thought the first job of a ship was to swim and the lessons from the Russo-Japanese War in terms of mine warfare had not gone unnoticed. For example, Goeben took more than one mine hit on its campaign in the Black Sea and survived several when making her sortie into the Med, she reached home in time to run aground on shallows and survived. Ships of the König and Bayern class survived mine hits in the Baltic without much fuss, as it seems.

On the other hand, of course, the German battle fleet had only one real theatre of operations, other than the RN, which had to cover the whole world. This is one reason for the superiority of the German battlecruiser concept: they were more a sort of light, fast battleship, as they could allow for more machine power and armour - they were not designed for long cruises, like their counterparts had to be in order to protect a globe-spanning empire. Likewise, the RN was much, much larger and forced to go in for bigger mass if they wanted to keep ahead of the game. But then, this strategy paid off and England continued to rule the waves more or less unchallenged, as long as the enemies stuck to the rules, that is - until the dawn of submarine warfare.

 

[Bullethead]

I apolagise, ive had a bad day :upset: dead cat and bad day at work :upset:

Mike Meyers, is that you? Long time no see .

Anyway, sorry for you bad luck. I am currently drinking to the shade of your cat. :toast: I myself went through thousands of incarnations as a feline of some sort, but then committed some unforgivable sin and have been stuck as a monkeyboy ever since. I feel your pain.

One question then. What was the GF doing better than the HSF

For capital ships:

• Gun size (as in shell weight). All those 13.5" and 15" BBs and BCs.
• Gun range. Only a couple of German ships could shoot much beyond 18km
• Higher overall fleet speed. Every Brit dreadnought could do 21 knots, but about 1/2 the Germans' could do 20 tops. Thus, even though the other 1/2 of the German BBs could exceed 21 knots, they couldn't use it without leaving the rest behind.
• Numbers. Nuff said.

For CLs

• Numbers. The Brits have way more CLs, which IMHO are the most useful ships in the game.
• Better armor. Brit CLs have considerably thicker armor than their opposite numbers, and no PCs left on the front line. The Germans have homogenous CL armament and their newer CLs have directors, but this doesn't compensate for the sheer numbers and better protection of the Brit CLs in scout battles.

For DDs

• Numbers. The Brits have WAY more fleet DDs than the Germans.
• Guns. ALL Brit fleet DDs have 4" guns, but most German DDs have 3".
• Torps. While the German DDs have more tubes, the Brit DDs' torps have longer range and higher speed.

On the German side, for capital ships you have slightly better chances of hitting, somewhat better armor although this is really only noticeable when Brit AP is fragile, and less chance of blowing up.

 

[seasalt]

edit to say i have just removed my rant and wish to replase it with, just thank SES for taking the time to make jutland

it will never be perfect for everyone, thats life .......

but a few questions answerd have put my mind slightly at ease , and have realised that, heh its only a game.
and to be honest i recon that used corectly QE's and R's are going to be the HSF nemisis .....:laugh::laugh:


The cat was called minstrell , was the girl freinds, all it ever did wa walk all over the modeling table taking photo etch in its fur to a new resting place , there are some 8 barrel pompom's in the carpet somewere. Went from kidney failure and i will not forget the lost look it had in its eyes in the last days:upset:

 

[Bullethead]

edit to say i have just removed my rant ... it will never be perfect for everyone, thats life

Rant all you want. A great many people are heavily emotionally and reputationally invested in supporting one argument or another about some aspect of the fighting at Jutland. Ranting about something related to Jultand is a global cottage industry. We at SES know this, so we realize that no matter what we do in this game, a great many people will rant about how wrong we are, in their opinions.

But that's the thing. None of us where there, so all any of us have is opinions gleaned from whatever research we've conducted. And if you've done much research on Jutland and its context, or have been in forums discussing it, you know that about the only thing you can be certain of is that reasonable minds can differ widely on their interpretations of the same data on the same events.

So, we looked long and hard, discussed and debated, and came to our conclusions, which we put into the game. We think, at the very least, that they're easily within the realm of reasonable possibility given the available data. At best, we think we've got something pretty close to correct on these issues. We know that our opinions will not make everybody happy. But we made the game so it's our opinions that went into it.

It's safe to say that we've studied the vast majority of all sources there are, so it's not likely that a ranter can come up with some new evidence we haven't examined. However, because none of us were there, everything is lawyering, as in making cogent, convincing arguments from the known set of data. If such an argument is good enough, we might be swayed by it. But things that are just rants, without a concrete evidentiary basis, are not likely to impress us .

I reckon that used corectly QE's and R's are going to be the HSF nemisis .....:laugh::laugh:

Absolutely. German players will come to detest 15" guns.

The cat was called minstrell , was the girl freinds, all it ever did wa walk all over the modeling table taking photo etch in its fur to a new resting place , there are some 8 barrel pompom's in the carpet somewere. Went from kidney failure and i will not forget the lost look it had in its eyes in the last days:upset:

You're not a real wargamer unless your girlfriend's cat destroys your work. I shall drink again to his shade. :toast:

 

[thewood]

Bullethead, what do you think of the book, Castles of Steel. I just finished it and learned more about the technical and philosophical differences between the configuration and construction of both the HSF and the GF.

 

[Batou]

Castles of Steel was good, you may also want to check out "Dreadnought" from the same author.

 

[Tophat]

Castles of Steel was good, you may also want to check out "Dreadnought" from the same author.

Excellent Books! I am reading them now. I do so hope in multi-player I don't have a mag explosion to start off the day. Just in bragging rights alone it'd be hard to live down.:bite:

 

[Bullethead]

I do so hope in multi-player I don't have a mag explosion to start off the day.

You can turn off the extra likelihood of Brits blowing up. Ships on both sides will then still occasionally blow up, as you see in the RJW. The main reason why we made this an option was for MP.

 

[TBR]

Went from kidney failure and i will not forget the lost look it had in its eyes in the last days:upset:

That's the way my dog died when I was but three months in the Navy.:OHNO:

 

[Invincible]

Definitive SES discussion on the rationale for the vulnerability of British ships to magazine explosions.