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Matchup #4: HMS King George V (1939) vs ARA Rivadavia (1914)) HMS King George V  Belt Armor: 14.7 inches Deck Armor: 5.9 inches Main Battery: 10x14 inch guns Speed: 28 kts The penultimate design in a centuries-long history of Royal Navy big-gun warships, the KGV class was, somewhat ironically, undergunned. The RN was seeking a more modern and faster – but still well protected – evolution of the Rodneys, and KGV was the result. While virtually all of her competitors were armed with 15, 16, or even 18 inch guns, the KGVs were given 14 inchers, and bad turrets to boot. Conceptutally the idea was probably sound – twelve quick-firing 14 inch guns that punched well above their weight (especially when it came to armor penetration) was still a formidable armament, especially in a short-range fight in bad weather as was expected for a north seas confrontation. The turrets, though, were very unreliable, only 10 guns were able to fit on the design, and ultimately, there’s no real replacement for girth when it comes to big ship guns. KGV was also relatively slow compared to many of her competitors, but her protection suite is outstanding and the ships proved to be versatile workhorses. HMS Prince of Wales had the most eventful career, first losing a gun battle to Bismarck (thanks largely to turret issues) followed shortly after by a rather embarrassing sinking at the hands of Japanese aircraft. ARA Rivadavia  Belt Armor: 12 inches Deck Armor: 2.5 in Main Battery: 12x12 inch guns Speed: 22.5 kts Argentina’s entrant into the Great South American Battleship Catalogue, she was Yankee-built, a response to the Brazilian order for new dreadnoughts a few years earlier. She reflected American design philosophy, being very large and well-armored ships for the period. Plus, they featured the ridiculous and silly-looking cage mast, which was basically a big steel Chinese finger trap with a basket on top. Ostensibly competitors with the Brazilian and Chilean dreadnoughts, Rivadavia were in reality far larger and much more powerful ships, among the biggest in the world when they were launched. They proved to be ruinously expensive and were generally neglected for the next half century, until finally being scrapped after having never fired a shot in anger. She is (I believe) the second-oldest ship in the tournament, and has the smallest guns outside of the weirdass German ship, plus she has wing turrets. She’s very similar in a lot of ways to the actual HMS Dreadnought, so if you ever wondered how she’d do against a midcentury design… The Battle (note: had to use US as a standin for Argentina)  The only real question here is the 14” guns’ performance against Rivadavia’s surprisingly thick armor. KGV should be able to easily dictate the engagement and fight from any range, but the Riva may prove a fairly tough target for the smaller guns.  KGV turns towards her opponent. I wanted to get the sun glinting off her polished gun barrels.  That basket thing, lol. I like the way her forward turrets look though.  KGV opens fire at a range of 24km.  Her first shot is unnervingly close, and this at near her max range.  KGV brings her rear quad turret into action and starts scoring hits well past 20km. Her long-range gunfire is accurate and effective.  Riva takes a very heavy hit still 20km away, right as she was nearing the max reach of her guns. Four 14” shells hit her simultaneously, seriously damaging her midsection and causing huge casualties.  Riva’s crew gets the fires under control and she gets into a broadside position at around 18km. Her fire is wildly inaccurate, particularly the spread of her shells – some salvoes are missing by several hundred meters both in front of and behind KGV.  KGV is scoring hits, but as the range closes, the thick belt armor of the Riva starts resisting the 14” shells fairly effectively. At the same time, Riva finds the range and splashes water all over KGV’s bridge.  The close call prompts KGV to get away from the older ship; she maintains her broadside, but starts to extend the range.  Riva has taken a beating, but all her systems are still functional and KGV even seems to be retreating. Not too bad for the old ship so far.  Shortly after KGV turns away, Riva takes a huge damage amidships. Her engine is damaged and her middle turret knocked out. Her speed drops significantly.  Seeing the result of that big hit, KGV turns back in to finish the job.  And then, out of NOWHERE, Riva scores not one, but TWO big hits on KGV. The first salvo hits KGV amidships, the second on her bow. The second starts a fire and causes dozens of casualties.  YOU HURT HER LADS, YOU HURT HER! SHE’S NOT INVINCIBLE! LET’S GO LADS!   This is fine.  KGV’s accuracy at all ranges was superb and her guns outmatched Riva’s armor, but the lack of pop from the smaller caliber made it a bit of a death-by-a-thousand-pinpricks kind of situation. The 1986 World Cup is avenged. KGV vs Nelson is going to be one hell of a matchup. (note: the first runthrough of this battle I accidentally had the starting range set to 1000m rather than 40,000. KGV blew up on the first salvo from Riva at that range. I found this very amusing, if not necessarily in the spirit of this competition)
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Jan 1, 2022 18:37
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And with that, we're done with the first quarter of the first round! Updated bracket: No huge surprises or upsets as yet, but we did have 3 ships blow up. Nelson and KGV for the right to (probably) fight Iowa in the quarterfinals will no doubt be a highlight of round 2.
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Jan 1, 2022 18:49
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An interesting note here is that KGV was very similar to North Carolina in a lot of design choices, including the quad 14" turret choice. But the US invoked the escalator clause in the SLNT after Italy and Japan refused to sign, and upgunned their design to 16" triple turrets a few months before construction started. The KGV design was just a few months ahead in terms of design and start of construction though, so the British elected to stick with the 14" quad turret instead of doing so as well.
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Jan 1, 2022 19:00
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Does the game have cross-deck fire from wing turrets? Those guns on the Riva aren't doing it, but look like they could...
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Jan 2, 2022 02:35
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Just caught up on this, can't wait to see the next round of battleship rumbles. I'm pulling for the Italian battleships!
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Jan 2, 2022 03:52
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Ceebees posted:Does the game have cross-deck fire from wing turrets? Those guns on the Riva aren't doing it, but look like they could... The aft wing turret kind of looks like it could fire over the starboard quarter, but the funnels would get in the way of the forward turret traversing to port, which is how Rivadavia was fighting.
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Jan 2, 2022 08:27
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How do you account for gunnery skill and different eras of rangefinding and fire control? I assume there's some kind of stat calculation, but how much does luck play into it?
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Jan 2, 2022 09:16
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I have no clue whether this game models it, but countries discovered that cross deck firing was usually a terrible idea due to what gun blast overpressure does when set off actually on top of the ship rather than over the side. You could in many cases, and it did happen, but the secondary effects it weren't necessarily worth it. Here's an example from the Battle of the Falkland Islands: quote:"Now the starboard side was engaged and the crew of Q turret were able to repay their brothers in P turret for their experiences of muzzle blast with their own cross deck firing. "I had ‘Q' turret firing across the deck,' wrote Smyth-Osborne in ‘P' turret. ‘They practically put my turret out of action, their blast deafening and dazing my gunlayers, spotters and trainers. In fact making all those in the gun house partly damned stupid. In the excitement the Marines in ‘Q' were firing on some dangerous bearings." And yes, as Pharnakes mentioned, even if they wanted to despite those negatives the extremely limited cross deck firing angles just might not have been right.
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Jan 2, 2022 09:17
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Just caught up on this, can't wait to see the next round of battleship rumbles. I'm pulling for the Italian battleships! Littorio is going to mulch Renown barring a minor miracle, but Cavour and Andrea Doria are both in matchups that are just plain unfair for old pre-WWI builds. Looking forward to Littorio vs Bismarck in Round 2 though. Favouring Littorio there, but it's gonna be a serious fight for who gets to meet Yamato next round. Magni fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Jan 2, 2022 |
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Jan 2, 2022 12:27
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Ceebees posted:Does the game have cross-deck fire from wing turrets? Those guns on the Riva aren't doing it, but look like they could... It does; Riva was able to do it theoretically but the "window" if you will was only maybe 10 or 15 degrees, and she never found that sweet spot. I don't think it models all the issues with firing guns across your own deck. Cobalt-60 posted:How do you account for gunnery skill and different eras of rangefinding and fire control? I assume there's some kind of stat calculation, but how much does luck play into it? It has a bunch of different varieties of rangefinders and guns. Radar is more simplified (only two basic levels) but it models the effects well enough. As you might expect, newer/bigger/better stuff gets more lethal, though there are some outliers (eg, KGV's 14" guns have crazy armor penetration for their caliber). "Luck" as such -- or rather, probability -- is kind of at the heart of all this stuff. I dunno if navies from this era use the same terminology as land artillery, but at least for modern land-based artillery and missiles you derive the probability of a hit from two different measurements: precision and accuracy. Accuracy is how close your estimates are to reality (eg, how close your range estimate is to the enemy ship) while precision is how close your rounds fall to where you're aiming, regardless of the quality of the data behind the aiming (eg, how dispersed your salvos are). Newer/better ships get much more accurate fire control information and fire much tighter groups, especially at very long range. You can think of each salvo as kind of a shotgun blast: the rounds are all landing in what is typically an ellipse, and if the enemy ship is in that ellipse (called "straddling"), your chances of a hit are optimized. This is, in turn, influenced by the size of the ellipse: the older ships firing at long range are firing massive ellipses, so even when they do straddle the opponent, the odds of a hit remain fairly low. The Riva/KGV fight was a good demonstration of this. That being said, I think every ship in the competition has the theoretical ability to kill every other ship, but the probability of doing so in some of these matchups is very very low.
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Jan 2, 2022 16:54
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bewbies posted:That being said, I think every ship in the competition has the theoretical ability to kill every other ship, but the probability of doing so in some of these matchups is very very low. I will laugh and never stop if the South Dakota takes a one in a billion magazine explosion shot from the Gangut zetamind2000 fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 2, 2022 |
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Jan 2, 2022 17:01
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I'm holding out for the ultimate upset. Come on, Minas Geraes!
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Jan 2, 2022 17:33
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bewbies posted:That being said, I think every ship in the competition has the theoretical ability to kill every other ship, but the probability of doing so in some of these matchups is very very low. I have to think this is the main reason why there weren't actually that many battleship on battleship engagements in history - you may have the biggest, baddest, and shiniest battleships in the world but there's no guarantee that a single lucky shot won't turn your huge investment into a major environmental hazard while making you look like a laughingstock. If you're fairly evenly matched this means a tendency towards cautious employment of your battleships, and if you're NOT evenly matched whoever's on the inferior side has little incentive to rush into a battleship duel.
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Jan 2, 2022 17:36
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Tomn posted:I have to think this is the main reason why there weren't actually that many battleship on battleship engagements in history - you may have the biggest, baddest, and shiniest battleships in the world but there's no guarantee that a single lucky shot won't turn your huge investment into a major environmental hazard while making you look like a laughingstock. If you're fairly evenly matched this means a tendency towards cautious employment of your battleships, and if you're NOT evenly matched whoever's on the inferior side has little incentive to rush into a battleship duel. This is definitely a factor. Another is the value of a "fleet in being". For example, the Tirpitz was a WW2 German battleship that spent most of the war hiding from bombers in a fjord. However, the Royal Navy knew that the Tirpitz was in the area, so they had to keep a reasonable force of ships handy in case it tried anything. In other words, the Tirpitz's potential for destruction had a direct effect on RN force deployments, even if that potential was not actually used.
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Jan 2, 2022 17:58
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Loxbourne posted:I'm holding out for the ultimate upset. Come on, Minas Geraes! I'm... not entirely sure if her guns can breach Yamato's citadel even if you put them at literally point blank range - at least in real life. Clearly a test is required here in U:AD!
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Jan 2, 2022 18:39
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This game also has a feature where you can destroy a much better ship through HE alone. You can build a ship with some 20 11" guns, and if you spam enough HE out, youll slowly reduce a better ship to a flaming wreck, eventually sinking it despite not being able to pen the armor belt.
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Jan 2, 2022 19:46
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Tomn posted:I have to think this is the main reason why there weren't actually that many battleship on battleship engagements in history - you may have the biggest, baddest, and shiniest battleships in the world but there's no guarantee that a single lucky shot won't turn your huge investment into a major environmental hazard while making you look like a laughingstock. If you're fairly evenly matched this means a tendency towards cautious employment of your battleships, and if you're NOT evenly matched whoever's on the inferior side has little incentive to rush into a battleship duel. TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is definitely a factor. Another is the value of a "fleet in being". For example, the Tirpitz was a WW2 German battleship that spent most of the war hiding from bombers in a fjord. However, the Royal Navy knew that the Tirpitz was in the area, so they had to keep a reasonable force of ships handy in case it tried anything. In other words, the Tirpitz's potential for destruction had a direct effect on RN force deployments, even if that potential was not actually used. Both these pretty much hit the nail on the head of Mahanian doctrine that was super prevalent around the start of the 20th century in regards to naval warfare in regards to the use and employment of capital ships. For the former, the idea was to concentrate your forces so that you had the most potent striking power available to you so that if you saw a change to engage your opponent on favorable grounds, you could do so and win in such a decisive manner you could dictate the use of the sea in that region either temporarily for quick local control or permanently if you destroyed a large amount of your enemy's force. For the later, if you could not engage your enemy in a favorable situation, the threat of your concentrated force would require them to deploy so much of their own force as a possible counter as to tie down so many resources that it opens the door for you to take more actions somewhere else Mahan actually worked on a hypothetical USA vs UK war plan which called for the bulk of the east coast fleet to concentrate in New York so the Brits would have to forces on blockading that, which would free up the rest of the eastern seaboard to allow the flow of resources and the use of smaller torpedo boats to pick off pickets and other ships patrolling the rest of the area.
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Jan 2, 2022 20:01
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Does the game model armor quality in addition to armor thickness?
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Jan 2, 2022 20:01
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Natty Ninefingers posted:Does the game model armor quality in addition to armor thickness? Yeah, there's a whole slew of armour compositions you can choose from, starting at simple homogeneous iron plate and going up to advanced Krupp composite armour.
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Jan 2, 2022 20:33
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Perestroika posted:Yeah, there's a whole slew of armour compositions you can choose from, starting at simple homogeneous iron plate and going up to advanced Krupp composite armour. What's the limiting factor on armour in the game's design system? Is there ever a reason to use iron plate rather than just going for The Best all the time?
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Jan 2, 2022 21:55
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Loxbourne posted:What's the limiting factor on armour in the game's design system? Is there ever a reason to use iron plate rather than just going for The Best all the time? Money, basically. Aside from tonnage, everything you put on a ship also has a monetary value assigned to it. Better types of armour are more effective and potentially lighter, but also much more expensive (as much as 450% of base iron plate). In this LP money is no object since it's recreating historical designs in custom battles, but in campaign play you're on a budget and need to be able to actually afford those designs you created. Plus you also need to actually research the more advanced varieties before you can use them.
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Jan 2, 2022 22:12
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Loxbourne posted:Whereas I have an irrational love for Nelsons because of how wonderfully front-loaded they look! The N3 designs and their descendents are all so delightfully bizarre, like strange fossils. An entire branch of warship design evolution that never came to pass but left these magnificent beasties roaming around.  would like a word with you!!!!!!
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Jan 2, 2022 23:14
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Saint Celestine posted:This game also has a feature where you can destroy a much better ship through HE alone. tbf this basically happened to Hiei
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Jan 2, 2022 23:24
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:tbf this basically happened to Hiei Hiei absolutely did get penned through her armor belt though? The upperworks got messed up, sure, which caused confusion during the battle, but what really crippled her was 8" shells punching through and wrecking her steering - plus opening that area up to flooding such that even manual control had to be abandoned the next day. Speaking of which, Kongo's absolutely going to die horribly here - the IJN were being extremely optimistic when they claimed the modernization made them fast battleships instead of battlecruisers. 8" main belt in a fight against other battleships in perfectly calm weather is just  .
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Jan 3, 2022 00:12
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It'd be interesting for a follow up tournament that attempted to do like tank trials; putting the engagements into different conditions; like bad weather/poor visability/dusk etc to try to give a chance to ships that might've been developed for different circumstances.
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Jan 3, 2022 00:23
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That'd just be a huge bonus for radar boats. I don't think the game has anything like chaff mortars for countermeasures either.
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Jan 3, 2022 02:03
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Lord Koth posted:I'm... not entirely sure if her guns can breach Yamato's citadel even if you put them at literally point blank range - at least in real life. Clearly a test is required here in U:AD! So, fun thing about warship guns at close ranges where direct fire can be used, armor penetration goes up. By a lot. I think sailors at the time called it "overpressure shots" but essentially even a cruiser's guns can penetrate battleship armor if taken at close enough range.
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Jan 3, 2022 02:55
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SIGSEGV posted:That'd just be a huge bonus for radar boats. I don't think the game has anything like chaff mortars for countermeasures either. Yeah, if you're going to make a special scenario, then make it a special scenario. Like, "the storm disabled Iowa's radar entirely somehow. And wow, there's Kongo on the horizon!" But for now, the bracket is interesting enough, then we can get into the special matchups.
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Jan 3, 2022 05:44
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edit: VVV Maybe you're right. Deleting the whole since it was getting too far into the technical weeds anyways even outside that.
Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 06:56
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Dude there's no reason to be so accusative. I'm pretty sure he was just putting knowledge out there in the thread for people that were not aware, like me. Also just wanna chime in and say I'm really enjoying reading this. Know next to nothing about the ships other than a handful of the famous names that have come up in the milhist thread over the years but it's still engaging to watch them face up.
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Jan 3, 2022 07:17
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Same. All I ever knew was the basic things on battleships and this is interesting as hell. I honestly thought it was going to be a group game of battleship not what we got. Hell I need to see if I can find the old 90s battleship game. Was an actual fleet game that you would play trying to take out your enemies shops using carriers and battleships
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Jan 3, 2022 07:23
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Lord Koth posted:Hiei absolutely did get penned through her armor belt though? The upperworks got messed up, sure, which caused confusion during the battle, but what really crippled her was 8" shells punching through and wrecking her steering - plus opening that area up to flooding such that even manual control had to be abandoned the next day. Speaking of which, Kongo's absolutely going to die horribly here - the IJN were being extremely optimistic when they claimed the modernization made them fast battleships instead of battlecruisers. 8" main belt in a fight against other battleships in perfectly calm weather is just she was rendered ineffective by small shells and fires and damage to the superstructure and even assuming she escapes without the steering/propulsion damage caused by San Francisco she would have been in the yard for a very long time
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Jan 3, 2022 14:42
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Matchup #5: USS South Dakota (1942) vs Gangut/Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya(1914) USS South Dakota  Belt Armor: 12.2 inches Deck Armor: 6 inches Main Battery: 9x16 inch guns Speed: 27.5 kts South Dakotas are some stumpy-rear end battleships. It is like someone took a full sized battleship and put it in a trash compactor. They’re also very much overshadowed by their big sisters (the Iowas), but on a pound-for-pound basis, they’re some of the most capable big-gun ships ever floated. They’re about 95% of an Iowa’s capability stuffed in a hull almost 200 feet shorter…again, due to treaty limitations. SoDaks feature excellent and efficient protection, a whole lot of firepower, and excellent fire control. They do, however, give up almost 6 knots of speed to the Iowas, putting them in the lower half of ships from that era in terms of speed. This was due in part to the SoDak’s very compressed hull, because longer ships are faster for reasons I do not understand. In any case, SoDak can slug it out with any other ship in the tournament on a more or less even basis, and her relative lack of speed should encourage her to be more aggressive than her bigger sisters. Win-win for the casual fan! Gangut/Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya  Belt Armor: 8.9 inches Deck Armor: 2 inches Main Battery: 12x12 inch guns Speed: 24 kts Gangut (renamed Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya by the commies) were Russia’s first dreadnoughts. Russia didn’t ever really have a pressing need for a massive surface fleet, but being as all the other European empires were building battleships, they eventually decided that yes, we too need huge steel sea beasts, even though we’re really a land power. This was influenced in no small part by repeated Russian rear end-beatings at the hands of the emergent Japanese Navy during the Russo-Japanese war. Gangut’s design is pretty fascinating – I’d argue she’s more like a battlecruiser than a battleship. She’s was one of if not the fastest capital ship in the world when she was launched, but her armor – especially her belt – was comparatively light. This tradeoff is probably fine, but they also designed her with minimal forward firepower: she was built to deliver most of her shots as a broadside. Only one of her four turrets could shoot straight ahead. This seems like a weird choice, to design your ship for a broadside, but then not give her a lot of belt armor. Anyway, she’s very fast for her age, competently armed, and will be fighting with her 1930s modernization (though I can’t replicate this in how she looks). That means her fire control will be a generation better than most of the old dreadnoughts, though her guns are still pretty tiny. The Battle  Gangut’s alarmingly thin deck armor is going to be a juicy target for SoDak at range, and her thin belt armor will be a juicy target up close. It is kind of funny how close they are in speed – SoDak will probably have to take some fire – but it isn’t likely those 12” guns can do her much harm. This is probably a good bet for “longest kill” in the competition.  Ol’ Stump, getting the range.  There are no ugly battleships, but this guy is pushing it.  Ol’ Stump opens fire from nearly 30km. Her long range fire is effective, but Gangut maneuvers to throw it off.  I believe this is the longest range shot so far in the competition, at nearly 29km. Gangut takes heavy punishment to her bow, but survives.  Battlecruiser? I mean, she sort of is. Either way, Gangut is taking a beating at long range. She’s been straddled now for quite some time.  Her bow is a mess, and shells continue to splash all around her. This is a really nice view of her layout, though.  BOOM. You can see the three shell trails that all rip through Gangut’s deck at over 25km.  Not only did she survive that impact, but her bow turret is still working! This illustrates one of the shortcomings of Gangut…only her bow guns are in action here.  Ol’ Stump puts another round into Gangut’s midsection, and things go downhill quickly. Note the turret high in the air at the very top…  The magazine detonation doesn’t destroy her outright, but creates fires all over that quickly overwhelm poor Gangut.  About as one-sided as it gets. SoDak’s long range fire was lethal and effective. Gangut was dead just inside of 20km.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:06
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The turret lands somewhere in Leningrad.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:12
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South Dakota looked at the gangut and went "No"
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Jan 3, 2022 21:14
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The only thing sadder than that is that there's still a ship with a lower seed in the tournament and she's going up against Yamato. 
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Jan 3, 2022 21:20
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hah drat
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Jan 3, 2022 21:31
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Those turrets sailing through the air remind me of the fastest manmade object: a manhole cover.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:34
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Poor Tsar Nicholas...
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Jan 3, 2022 21:44
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Man, we've had a bunch of "WW1 design meets WW2 design and gets curbstomped" matches so far. Next one up ought to be more interesting I think? I'm not super up on their specs but I understand that despite being an older design Hood was viewed pretty favorably going into WW2 and might be more of an even match for an interwar design.
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Jan 3, 2022 21:46
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