Navy of Deseret

[Desertfox]

Making an exact copy of an OTL ship 15 years early is not exactly creative...

[Carthaginian]

Making an exact copy of an OTL ship 15 years early is not exactly creative...

But designing one that is a copy of a period appropriate ship is EXACTLY what they want us to do apparently... and pretty much exactly what he has done.

Are you actually reading any of his design logic and posts about existing ships with similar designs, Desertfox- or are you blindly screaming "Brandenburg fifteen years early" over and over and over again hoping that no one else notices that ships like his have been designed before Brandenburg.

[Desertfox]

I never asked him to copy a period appropriate ship. My qualms with this design is that it is too powerful, too fast, it is nearly a proto-dreadnought 30 years early. You can be very creative without having to design the equivalent of Yamato. If anything his ship is closer to that American/British 'standard' cookie cutter ship than many of the ships of the time period.

I did propose for the original design to use three single 11" turrets with 4 more 11" guns on casements, while cutting speed and using muzzleloaders. If anything would make an even more unique ship while maintaining the whole backstory/line thing.

Otherwise I'll be building Royal Sovereigns 5 years early and then you have a nasty snowball effect. I've seen it in WW in aircraft developments.   

[TexanCowboy]

Foxy has a point. The whole escalation thing has been something I've been scared of since day one, across the board...as I'm sure many of you know/figured out.

[Desertfox]

Combining the best features of ships that came before your design is EXACTLY WHAT NAVAL DESIGNERS DO, P3D.

Very true, BUT do his Naval Designers know what those features are?  ;) Otherwise in OTL we would have seen everyone building perfect ships...

[P3D]

Combining best features of historical ships (or historical projects) is just uncreative hindsightitis.

Combining the best features of ships that came before your design is EXACTLY WHAT NAVAL DESIGNERS DO, P3D.

Trying to lock-step everyone into building the same generic type of ships is what is uncreative.

Other people go all the way to simulate historically plausible ships, then there are people that want to justify themselves being able to build a dreadnought all-big-gun battleship in 1884. Using 130 years of hindsight and cherry-picking features from different countries and decades is anything but creativity.

If people only want to design semi-dreadnought battleships, we can have another round of voting to push starting date later.

[Carthaginian]

I never asked him to copy a period appropriate ship. My qualms with this design is that it is too powerful, too fast, it is nearly a proto-dreadnought 30 years early. You can be very creative without having to design the equivalent of Yamato. If anything his ship is closer to that American/British 'standard' cookie cutter ship than many of the ships of the time period.

I did propose for the original design to use three single 11" turrets with 4 more 11" guns on casements, while cutting speed and using muzzleloaders. If anything would make an even more unique ship while maintaining the whole backstory/line thing.

Otherwise I'll be building Royal Sovereigns 5 years early and then you have a nasty snowball effect. I've seen it in WW in aircraft developments.    

Desertfox,

Breechloading guns were in use in the 1870s.
Sorry that history disagrees with you; muzzle loading cannons were still somewhat more efficient at this time, but they were slower... so his nation wants faster firing guns over more powerful ones, it fits.

Why should one man be forced to 'tone down his creativeness?'
So your ships appear to be more creative? So others can copy historical ships exactly?
So we can be 'perfectly historic?'
We can just grab a Conway's and pull historic ships if we 'tone down the creativeness.' That'll fix the whole problem right there- just make your navy out of perfectly historic ships without coming up with your own design philosophy. Yessir, that'll be an awesome game!

And escalation is going to be an issue- and if we design original ships, then escalation problems will be different than OTL and occur at a different rate over different features than OTL. It's just the nature of original designs- they cause original problems!

Combining best features of historical ships (or historical projects) is just uncreative hindsightitis.

Combining the best features of ships that came before your design is EXACTLY WHAT NAVAL DESIGNERS DO, P3D.

Trying to lock-step everyone into building the same generic type of ships is what is uncreative.

Other people go all the way to simulate historically plausible ships, then there are people that want to justify themselves being able to build a dreadnought all-big-gun battleship in 1884. Using 130 years of hindsight and cherry-picking features from different countries and decades is anything but creativity.

If people only want to design semi-dreadnought battleships, we can have another round of voting to push starting date later.

This isn't a predreadnought design. It's a barbette ship with three turrets- there were several multi-turret monitors in history, many as far back as the 1860's.

While I don't care about designing this kind of ship, I do think people should have the right to build something totally original in a totally fictitious  environment.

If YOU want perfectly historic-style ships, then assign us a historic nation and say 'follow their design philosophy.' But if you give us carte blanche with fictitious nations, then expect people to come up with their own ideas.

[Desertfox]

Fourteen foot freeboard, fourteen knot speed, twenty five foot draught, breech loading 11 inchers... yup its a breastwork monitor...

[Carthaginian]

*previous post edited for mistake*

Fine, if it makes you feel better, DF, it's a barbette ship.
Happy now?
Call it whatever you want, there were several ships exhibiting similar characteristics in the same time period. His trades some armor for speed as most ships at that time had ridiculous armor belts. He takes a reduction in armor for more speed, and a reduction in gun caliber for more guns.

Sounds a lot like New Swiss ships... don't it?

[P3D]

If YOU want perfectly historic-style ships, then assign us a historic nation and say 'follow their design philosophy.' But if you give us carte blanche with fictitious nations, then expect people to come up with their own ideas.

Unfortunately some of these designs scream of "I see no reason not to revert to the two-turret designs of those imbeciles called naval architects in the 1890s".

Anyways, it won't be the mods job to convince players that a given design is implausible, it will be the other way around.

[Carthaginian]

If YOU want perfectly historic-style ships, then assign us a historic nation and say 'follow their design philosophy.' But if you give us carte blanche with fictitious nations, then expect people to come up with their own ideas.

Unfortunately some of these designs scream of "I see no reason not to revert to the two-turret designs of those imbeciles called naval architects in the 1890s".

Anyways, it won't be the mods job to convince players that a given design is implausible, it will be the other way around.

Basically, then, we shall be running on the "Wesayso" business model, huh?
Even though half a dozen nations decided to make ships like this, no one can stick with it because one or more mods doesn't think it's appropriate. I wonder what kinds of ships that the mods themselves will be designing? Will they be something that has absolutely no period counterpart? I'll be sure to watch those spaces.

Some rules would be nice at this point- so we have an inkling as to what we can and can't do.
I know that there is some sort of ruleset already in existence- I think it's time that we all get to look at it.

[Korpen]

Ok, settle down...

The most important thing to remember when talking about designs being "too early" is why were ships of a period built the way they were?

For the example the "early Brandenburg" in question here is basically a cruiser, with armour not up for line action and very weak main guns by the standard of the period.
Given the battle ranges and the fact that ramming is a viable tactic it is problematic that the middle gun position would be masked under critical phases. In 1875 it is also a risk that BL guns will have lower Mv then ML all other things equal.

Most of the time I do not think it is a major problem if someone wants a dreadnought-style BB in 1884, as such a ship would not really be a very good warship in that period as technical details makes her sub-optimal.
For example the internal CnC to a turret is limited to voice pipes that often had problems with the ingress to the rotating structure. The rotation of the turrets themselves was often clunky and not suited to fine adjustments (unlike the smaller hand-trained and elevated guns).
One can carry on quite a bit; but the point is that designer usually hade a pretty decent idea about what was effective to do given their technological limitations. The key word is efficient, not if something was possible or impossible. Allot of "hindsight designs" are victims of this as the technological details that made them efficient is not present allot earlier so they end up crappy ships in the period they are built.

I do think one should put allot less focus on "what" historic designers did, and allot more on "why" they did things, form follows function after all.

[TexanCowboy]

Guys, let's just calm down here...no reason to fight here when it's highly unlikely that this ship will be built mainly cause we haven't see what our starting tonnage is.

EDIT: I'm going to link ya'll to a post stating EXACTLY why dreadnought ships were the wrong choice until torpedoes came around that could actually do something. Without those, it would have been a great option to sit all day and pound your enemy with QFs; after the torpedoes came around, it became incredibly dangerous to so, so ships moved farther away, where the larger guns had more proportional energy cause of a heavier shell.

http://www.navalism.org/index.php?topic=4691.0

[Tanthalas]

Ill answer questions as I go, but so you all know my ideal end destination in 1912ish is a logical Gin Palace (if anyship with that many guns can be called logical).

The draught is fairly historical (I think im like 6" shalower than the russian ship), the freeboard is just done because of my insane desire to do things in nice neat even decks, would it make people happier if it was 7'?  I considerd that but decided it was to low even for coastal pacific operations, (I actualy liked 11' but it obviously isnt even decks).  My real question on Manticore was the length as she came out substantialy longer than her OTL russian equivilant, I have thought multiple times about shortening her and always come up with the same answer of historicly ships grew they did not get smaller.  and uhm the 1870 has ML main guns guys (atleast its suposed to)

[Walter]

the freeboard is just done because of my insane desire to do things in nice neat even decks, would it make people happier if it was 7'?  I considerd that but decided it was to low even for coastal pacific operations, (I actualy liked 11' but it obviously isnt even decks).

Well... if you really want to stick to 7' per deck, then we're looking at a total of less than 5.85 decks on your latest design. And that is not including the thickness of the bottom of the ship. :D