www.navalism.org

So, has anyone aside from Carth and myself actually read these? Is so, tell us what you think!

Commenting...
As one of the warmongers that started the land war in Asia, one of the main contributing reasons why I started it was that it was simply the only way to get ahead. If you calculate the gain from investing investing in infrastructure - I remember as taking 50-75 years before you got return equal to the value of the investment. And that was with China. Simply put, there was no incentive at all to invest in infrastructure beyond what was dictated by the constraints of the 50% military budget. Now of course this is not true in real life but in NVerse the only way to realistic expand was to make war and hope to win land. I would, like Valles, advocate that investment return made greater for N4.5.

What I'm confused about here is how the economy of the player states will expand, if it is a given they will clash violently, yet there will be no real expansion over land. I assume that implies that wars at primarily over the coastal areas yet there is no thought given to the expansion of the economy or how the economy rows via player self-investment. What incentive is there to go to war other than border conflicts or for that matter what incentive is there not to go to war and cause the N3 equivalent of a land war rather than invest?

Time bogging simulation doesn't have to be because of land wars. The land system in N3 was greatly simplified for the Chinese war - and so was the naval system. If we have too many ships, what would stop that from escalating to the point of the Chinese Civil War, in which case, made the whole point of designing a ship in springsharp pointless?

I fail to see how 'conflict' and 'clash violently' are synonyms.
Like I have said- several nations had long-running cold wars in N3, which resulted in no shots fired but a lot of good roleplaying. That is what I mean by 'conflict'; nations will constantly be expanding and many times they will have conflicting interests... but how they choose to resolve these conflicts is up to them: diplomacy, small skirmishes, or full-scale war.

As to the the 'time bogging simulation' part- Snip and I have debated a bit the merits of scripting the less important battles, and only actually simming the truly important actions like major fleet battles and port assaults.
I guess this is as good a place as any to make that suggestion public and see how people feel about it.

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 13, 2012, 11:40:24 PM
More on this subject will be coming soon- WATCH THIS SPACE FOR DEVELOPMENTS.

So, to clarify, tile distances are drawn side-to-side? Corner-to-corner steps count as two, because of going through an intermediary square?

Either way, I note that the siting location I'd planned on, specified, and publicized based on the original zone criterion (upper right quarter of the map) falls outside of the new box, so.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c386/valles_uf/CroatoaOriginalSiting.png

The discrepancies between the dictated cultural narrative and Croatoa's, I'm content to ignore. Croatoa's backstory has always called for iconoclasm in regards to settlement priorities, after all. Likewise, if I'm wrong in assuming that the previous version's sketchy rules dictating the number of possible settlements still apply, I'm perfectly happy to alter my number of placements.

In regards to the attempt to shift the originally chosen selection area out from under me...

I am aware of your position that all players should have an equal playing field in that they have equal access to the only permitted form of expansion. I am sure that you are also aware of my position that equal starting resources and balanced return-on-investment are more than adequate guarantees of 'fairness' and that attempting to dictate playstyle and in-character choices in the name of such is not only unnecessary but a game-destroying discourtesy.

Without doubting your sincerity in the view, I am also... unconvinced... of your thesis that your view is in any way general and wholly representative of the remainder of the player body in this respect.

Given my approval of and satisfaction with your work in most of the other aspects of developing the game rules, and our apparent inability to find common ground to compromise on, I'm hoping that everyone else intending to play here will 'weigh in' with their perspective on the matter and either provide a consensus for one or the other view or a third synthesis or alternative.

You didn't post that map; it was sent to Rocky... not me.
You're therefore engaging in something of an untruth to say I 'moved the area out from under you.'
I didn't know where you were going to put your settlement, exactly.
Also, NO ONE will get free and unfettered access to one of the largest continents in the game. It will not happen for you, me, Snip, Jef, Nobody, Logi or anyone else that decides to play.

You're declaration of 'openly planning to indicate the rest of that continent as the 'Croatoan hinterland' AIN'T HAPPENING; NO, NOT NEVER. No one will be allowed to own a continent to themselves. That's the end of the discussion.

I'm sorry it came down to something like this.
I tried to be kind, to hint and to insinuate... but you continued to ignore me and proceed acting like there was nothing standing in the way of you proceeding with your plans unaltered. They are not compatible with the goals of the game as I see them, or that others have largely expressed. One player owning the largest landmass will give him an insane edge.

The 'incentive to invest' will always be bigger than a land-grabbing war.
This was settled and made completely and utterly foolproof by making the armies so expensive to maintain... which winds up to be the ONLY reliable way to do so in a simulation that is completely about building and maintaining weapons of war. Naval power can cause no end of trouble, but if the army needed to invade and conquer is too expensive to maintain for a long period of time, all wars are guaranteed to be short and minor. This is often cited in Diane Duane's Star Trek novels as the only reason that Vulcan existed as a planet by the time that Earth men were fighting with sharp sticks.

The 'Vulcan Model of War' consisted of four phases: 1.) you set a clear, simple objective 2.) you rallied an army that agreed with you 3.) you achieved the objective (or failed to do so) and 4.) the army fell apart because there wasn't enough water to supply everyone for a long action.
I see something similar working on our world here. There are simply too many expenditures involved with massive overland movements and assaults. The hostile flora and fauna mean that you basically burn up ammunition as fast as you can resupply. The lack of developed infrastructure means that travel time is long. In the end, you simply can't afford to expand overland.

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 14, 2012, 12:54:53 AM
You didn't post that map; it was sent to Rocky... not me.
You're therefore engaging in something of an untruth to say I 'moved the area out from under you.'

I didn't know where you were going to put your settlement, exactly.
Also, NO ONE will get free and unfettered access to one of the largest continents in the game. It will not happen for you, me, Snip, Jef, Nobody, Logi or anyone else that decides to play.

You're declaration of 'openly planning to indicate the rest of that continent as the 'Croatoan hinterland' AIN'T HAPPENING; NO, NOT NEVER. No one will be allowed to own a continent to themselves. That's the end of the discussion.

I'm sorry it came down to something like this.
I tried to be kind, to hint and to insinuate... but you continued to ignore me and proceed acting like there was nothing standing in the way of you proceeding with your plans unaltered. They are not compatible with the goals of the game as I see them, or that others have largely expressed. One player owning the largest landmass will give him an insane edge.

Well, let's see. In the previous discussions, I talked about my plans for Croatoa here (http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5763.msg74703.html#msg74703), here (http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5779.msg75079.html#msg75079), and
here (http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5777.msg75138.html#msg75138). My intended placements were discussed here (http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5773.msg74944.html#msg74944) and here (http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5773.msg75001.html#msg75001). Since, at that stage, it was premature to start marking things out on a map that wasn't even finished, I don't see any way I could have been any more clear and explicit than I already was.

I have 'proceeded unaltered' because of the apparently vain hope that you weren't actually saying that the only way anyone is allowed to play is by building in one place, sailing someplace else, and fighting everybody along the way.

I have been working on a land-oriented power within the anticipated starting area but on a different landmass because doing it that way - and setting the precedent where there might be other such states - allows a setting where many people are in the position you describe, without forcing any given player to take part in the scrum.

I am aware of your thesis that these conflicts will be 'cold' wars. Given the differences in our N3 experiences, I don't believe it. Even if I did, while I'm willing to accept the risk that such tensions might arise naturally as part of the game, deliberately setting out to impose them on everybody seems even more likely to go places I'm flat-out not willing to follow. What I'm looking for is a starting point with enough 'ground' to work with that saturating it will let me keep up with those players running helter-skelter all over the world.

Not overwhelm them, as though I wanted to or could with the economic rules focus on industrial capacity as the generator of industrial capacity.

I chose the 'largest' continent because, being considerably smaller than Asia, it looked to my eyeball to represent a reasonable approximation of that fraction of the total landmass, and because it was large enough that the process could never be finished within the play period. If it's the size of the possible territory that you object to, I'm perfectly happy to move anywhere else that's roomy enough to provide the needed 'expansion' space.

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 14, 2012, 12:56:22 AM
The 'incentive to invest' will always be bigger than a land-grabbing war.
This was settled and made completely and utterly foolproof by making the armies so expensive to maintain... which winds up to be the ONLY reliable way to do so in a simulation that is completely about building and maintaining weapons of war. Naval power can cause no end of trouble, but if the army needed to invade and conquer is too expensive to maintain for a long period of time, all wars are guaranteed to be short and minor. This is often cited in Diane Duane's Star Trek novels as the only reason that Vulcan existed as a planet by the time that Earth men were fighting with sharp sticks.

The 'Vulcan Model of War' consisted of four phases: 1.) you set a clear, simple objective 2.) you rallied an army that agreed with you 3.) you achieved the objective (or failed to do so) and 4.) the army fell apart because there wasn't enough water to supply everyone for a long action.
I see something similar working on our world here. There are simply too many expenditures involved with massive overland movements and assaults. The hostile flora and fauna mean that you basically burn up ammunition as fast as you can resupply. The lack of developed infrastructure means that travel time is long. In the end, you simply can't afford to expand overland.

...I thought I would need to build an army because it was required to build things on territory previously occupied by native life. Now that I know that that is not the case, I no longer need any more of an army than is required for strict self defense, and have changed my plans accordingly. That means that the only one of us talking about invading other people as 'expansion' is you.

My entire idea, from the very start of this Barsoom project, has been to find land nobody else wanted and settle it. You're going 'YOU CAN'T DO THAT BECAUSE LAND WAR' when I'm talking about irrigation projects.

Valles,

I'm not letting anyone settle an entire and unbroken continent. That is one of the premises of the game- everyone will have to have a fleet because everyone has overseas colonies. No one gets to build Fortress Europe and try not to have anything else to do with the world.

At this point, the only thing your argument boils down to is "I can't have what I want." I think that is untrue... I have made sure to allow as much to ensure people don't assault you the way that you were in N3. I even allowed YOU to write the terms of a treaty that would PREVENT YOUR HOME TERRITORIES FROM BEING INVADED! Of course, you took that provision out. >:(
http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5789.msg75263.html#msg75263 (http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5789.msg75263.html#msg75263)

If this is not sufficient to satisfy you, then we are at the point where the debate has become less a matter of 'there isn't enough assurance my home territory won't be invaded' than it has become 'I don't get to have exactly what I want when I want it and how I want it'... and that is neither a logical nor a respectable argument. Our experiences in N3 were different... yes. I made the most of mine; I enjoyed a very lopsided cold war with a nation a third again as strong as my own while having to replace one of the most poorly built cruiser fleets in the game. I was hemmed in, unable to fight a straight-up war, and thus resorted to a more indirect tack- securing alliances, using diplomatic pressures and not necessarially enjoying it the whole time.

If you do not want to 1.) fight an all-out war OR 2.) have less-than-lethal conflicts OR 3.) have a cold war... why are you here? Why do you want to have a nation at all if you're only going to rock back on your haunches and have minimal relations of any kind with the outside world? And why do you think that you're going to be allowed to suck up 1/5 of the entire world map to make the kind of superpower that you state gave you so much hell in the previous sim? NO ONE will be allowed to develop a superpower right out of the box. I'm sorry this conflicts with your desired style of play, but I think that all nations should start equal and I have done as much as I can to ensure that you will be as protected as possible... including letting you write that insurance.
If that is not enough, it needs to be decided whether you really want to play or not.

By the way- there is no such as 'land nobody wants.'
Everyone will want to expand, and all land is fair game for that expansion.

Quote from: Logi on April 13, 2012, 10:05:48 AM
Commenting...
As one of the warmongers that started the land war in Asia, one of the main contributing reasons why I started it was that it was simply the only way to get ahead. If you calculate the gain from investing investing in infrastructure - I remember as taking 50-75 years before you got return equal to the value of the investment. And that was with China. Simply put, there was no incentive at all to invest in infrastructure beyond what was dictated by the constraints of the 50% military budget. Now of course this is not true in real life but in NVerse the only way to realistic expand was to make war and hope to win land. I would, like Valles, advocate that investment return made greater for N4.5.

What I'm confused about here is how the economy of the player states will expand, if it is a given they will clash violently, yet there will be no real expansion over land. I assume that implies that wars at primarily over the coastal areas yet there is no thought given to the expansion of the economy or how the economy rows via player self-investment. What incentive is there to go to war other than border conflicts or for that matter what incentive is there not to go to war and cause the N3 equivalent of a land war rather than invest?

Time bogging simulation doesn't have to be because of land wars. The land system in N3 was greatly simplified for the Chinese war - and so was the naval system. If we have too many ships, what would stop that from escalating to the point of the Chinese Civil War, in which case, made the whole point of designing a ship in springsharp pointless?

To change the subject for a moment, I realized this never got answered in economic terms yesterday. Sections 1.2.D and 1.4 talk about producing IPP, aka Infrastructure Production Points. These points are used to created shipyards (note, a change to how IPP is spent on shipyards is coming) and new factories. There is nowhere within the rules about a minimum amount of land required on a per-factory basis. So expansion in a economic sense is not something that strictly requires more land, just investment in IPP. Carth may have some thoughts in regards to this in non-econ terms, so I will let him elaborate more if he wishes to.

As Snip said, growth is no longer explicitly tied to land for these specific reasons. This will make it possible for nations who wish to stay small physically to becone powerfull economically without becoming greatly or overtly expansionist.

Quote from: snip on April 14, 2012, 06:11:33 PMTo change the subject for a moment, I realized this never got answered in economic terms yesterday. Sections 1.2.D and 1.4 talk about producing IPP, aka Infrastructure Production Points. These points are used to created shipyards (note, a change to how IPP is spent on shipyards is coming) and new factories. There is nowhere within the rules about a minimum amount of land required on a per-factory basis. So expansion in a economic sense is not something that strictly requires more land, just investment in IPP. Carth may have some thoughts in regards to this in non-econ terms, so I will let him elaborate more if he wishes to.

Given the lengths Carth has gone to to strawman my position, hearing my underlying concerns addressed in this manner is an unutterable relief. At the moment, by my count, we have about five possible players. Given the dictates about how much space each City should be allowed, are there any guildlines for how many 'Major Ports' we should aim for, or is that determined only by how we distribute the available production points?

VALLES: I have stated that I am done withe the discussion of your empire. I have laid out how the nations will be set up, where they may be set up, and how to reserve their places. SNIP and I are working on the econ aspect and more work will be done on Sunday night when I get off work. He and I have made some miscalculations in the others intent, and it has laed to some of the numbers being too large. The ability to support larger fleets and armies we elected to keep... the ability to begin with continent-spanning empires we havw elwcted to cut.

Since Snip just saved us from the necessity, we are, indeed, done.

I hope to have no Superpower on the map at the begening of the game.
The max economical differences between states: 10%.

Add more free little islands on the map...


Jef

I agree; I've always expected, and agreed with the idea, that player nations should have economic parity at startup and functionally equivalent opportunities for expansion.

As to islands, I also agree that it'd be preferable to have a few more, but I think it might be better to do so by 'severing' any little isthmuses only one or two squares wide - separating the existing landmass rather than adding new ones.

For one thing, it'd probably be simpler for the mapmaker.

I've added the mine rules, torpedo rules and first part of the Misc. Weight rules to the main rules thread.
I also received the Victory at Sea ruleset.
While not as flexible as Grand Fleet (no rules for adding new ships), it seems simpler for combat.
Gonna have to try a couple of battles on Sunday to see which I like best.

Remember, we're hoping to keep all but the most important battles scripted- only the most important ones should need to be fought out!

Victory At Sea looks like it might be the winner- simply because Grand Fleets is no longer receiving support and has no aircraft rules. It seems like it will work well, though it will require a little more work to put custom ships into the system.

Remember- we're planning to sim out only 1.) major fleet battles OR 2.) assaults on Ports.
Anything smaller and less deciding than, say, Jutland or Midway, we ask that you have a plan to script it out.



ADDITIONALLY:
This is a warning, and this is only a waning- though it might just progress beyond that:
A-Q-Y wasn't meant to become a world-wide standard.
It shouldn't become a world-wide standard.
Only a very few ship types exhibited this kind of layout historically- i.e. monitors, coast defense ships and one type of battleship. If it turns out that people are going to try and build massive numbers of medium and light cruisers and try to get every ship in their fleet to be A-Q-Y... well, it will have to be more specifically restricted to heavier ship types. I don't mind it showing up in larger ships- but let's show some discretion here. :(

20APR12
Due to 1910 date for restart and need to prevent destroyers from becoming outsized from the start, destroyer tonnage adjusted to 1,250 tons (normal) for start. I had originally pictured the restart as being a 1920-equivelent and sized the destroyers to that era. This adjustment should better reflect the size of destroyers in the period we will be starting.

1) I think it would be nice if we had names for the continents. Suggestions? (I have none unfortunately)

2) There are no rules for 'civil ships' (that is: ships which have none or a very low military value for their size) yet, are there?
Even if they are not supposed to be cheaper (they weight the same after all), I think it would be nice if they had a lower maintenance (e.g. half).

3) We are still missing rules for guns and armor. I realize there are more immediate questions, but I'm sure you have more limitations in mind than just the maximum caliber. It would also be nice to know how much armor one has to put onto a ship be be able to withstand a certain gun or what the benefits of a longer/shorter barrel or different shells will be.

Quote from: Nobody on April 22, 2012, 09:13:19 AM
1) I think it would be nice if we had names for the continents. Suggestions? (I have none unfortunately)

I am looking for the names... LOL, trying to get something that'll work.
Suggestions are welcome.

Quote from: Nobody on April 22, 2012, 09:13:19 AM
2) There are no rules for 'civil ships' (that is: ships which have none or a very low military value for their size) yet, are there?
Even if they are not supposed to be cheaper (they weight the same after all), I think it would be nice if they had a lower maintenance (e.g. half).

I haven't given too much thought to the 'civilian side' of things. Honestly, I think the 1/4 tonnage & upkeep rule for construction will suffice.

Quote from: Nobody on April 22, 2012, 09:13:19 AM
3) We are still missing rules for guns and armor. I realize there are more immediate questions, but I'm sure you have more limitations in mind than just the maximum caliber. It would also be nice to know how much armor one has to put onto a ship be be able to withstand a certain gun or what the benefits of a longer/shorter barrel or different shells will be.

We will simply say that we use Big Gun.
It is simple, easy and available... it gives all the necessary output.
NAaB is complicated compared to Big Gun and not nearly as user friendly.

I've posted rules for merchants and tenders in the rules section.
These particular rules I welcome comments, questions and suggestions on.
They may be tweaked a bit in the following days... look to this post for a change log.

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 22, 2012, 12:33:15 PM
I've posted rules for merchants and tenders in the rules section.
These particular rules I welcome comments, questions and suggestions on.
They may be tweaked a bit in the following days... look to this post for a change log.

Well... they are quite different from the old ones. They are not what I had in mind either, which is why I explicitly asked for 'civil' not 'merchant' ship rules.

Comments:
They explicitly exclude the type a ship actually used in WW1 and 2. Don't mention auxiliary cruisers, but a merchant cannot even carry a single medium caliber gun on it's stern?

I still think there is some room between these merchants or tenders and full fledged military ships. Like my patrol boat. Sure that one is small and one could afford them even paying full, but they are not really warships, are they? I mean I specifically designed them (I'm referring here to a couple of bigger yet unposted designs) to be small and not carry a competitive armament (just a cannon to be able to shoot in front of someone's bow, a 'auto'-cannon against hostile wildlife and machine-guns for law enforcement).
Now I don't want a loophole for a cheap fleet of warships, but I think it would be nice to have rules for cheaper 'intermediate' ships mostly intended as 'fluff' or role-playing. (potential limits I would expect: moderator or community approval; full price but lower upkeep; low speed (<<20 knots); limit on gun caliber (<110 mm) and number; no AAW; a minimum required composite strength >1; no torpedoes; no mines; no dept charges)

Quote from: Nobody on April 22, 2012, 02:06:17 PM
They explicitly exclude the type a ship actually used in WW1 and 2. Don't mention auxiliary cruisers, but a merchant cannot even carry a single medium caliber gun on it's stern?

I think that the gun request can be accommodated... will one gun of up to 6" OR 2 guns of up to 3" be ok?

And I said 'merchant' to mean 'civil'; your word is better, so I will change it to 'civilian' ships rather than 'merchant.'

Would it be possible to standardize the units used in the rules perhaps? It is confusing to mix units from different systems across the rule sets and even within the same ones. For example, the rules on guns and lifeboats are using inches and feet, but in the torpedo rules things get complex because the torpedoes are using metric for size and range but knots for speed. Since yards are usually used in naval matters (at least with US and Commonwealth sources) wouldn't it be easier to give the range in yards and size the torpedoes in inches and feet? I mean I have no problem with using the metric system (I prefer it over US standard units for many uses) but I would prefer we stick to one system of measurements, whether that is the metric system or the US standard system.

Also, references to tonnage are in long tons, right? I found out the hard way a few weeks ago that sometimes sources do not distinguish between the long ton, short ton, and metric ton. US sources generally mean the short ton, European sources generally mean the metric ton, and sources relating to naval matters generally mean the long ton. Needless to say, when compiling a ship tonnage list where they throw around multiple tons that are all just called tons, it can become a real headache to sort through.

Lastly, and on another note, what is meant by the references to light, medium, and heavy cruisers in the rules? Since tonnage is not mentioned in them and given that the light cruisers are allowed turbines, are we really talking about 3rd, 2nd, and 1st class cruisers, or unprotected (deathtraps in 1910), protected, and protected cruisers? Also, how would civillian/commercial ships like cruise liners/auxiliary cruisers fit into the picture, they would be larger than most cruisers but would of course carry little to no armor.

Most torpedo diameters are expressed in mm even if they are measured in inches. This is true the world over ATM... so it is a small conciet to make to our friends on the metric system. Tons are long tons as expressed in Springsharp- this should be easy to figure out... As it is the standard for designing ships, it sets the staandards for our units of measurs. Finally, there are tonnage limits; read the treaty again.

There are also rules forr liners. Look at period appropriate ships for examples.

What are the limits, and costs, for coast guns?

Quote from: KWorld on April 25, 2012, 11:05:00 AM
What are the limits, and costs, for coast guns?

This has not yet been determined. I don't know whether it would be a better thing to use a 'generic battery' which has a fixed cost, or use Springsharp to sim the guns as batteries.
If you have an opinion on this subject, post what you think might work. I will try to think something up myself, and we'll see what fits best- as long as you don't get any algebra involved, any suggestions will be considered.

I will say that if you are planning coast guns, don't plan for anything bigger than what is allowed for battleships at that time.

I think simming the turret in question in SS should work and would fit well with the way the system is set up. The question is, do we want to add additional costs or take the KISS approch?

Depending on mounting types, you could use SS3 to calculate the gun weight (for guns mounted in concrete mountings) or the turret weight (for turret mounted weapons).  It will be "off", but consistent.  I was thinking of some 11-12" coast mortars, at least for starters: yeah, they're not too long ranged, but they'd do very bad things to any ships that they hit.

I agree... I'm thinking something like the chart system that N3 had at the end, though.

Three types of mountings- Disappearing, Turret and Mortar.
Mortars are very well protected and short-ranged, but only hit deck armor- they are deadly early on.
Disappearing means that it's harder to hit, but they only fire every other turn in sims- slow firing due to the recoil mechanism.
Turrets are well protected and faster firing- but they are easier to see and hit.

Each one costs a fixed amount to build- but unlike ships, you can't just 'refit' them... you have to replace the whole shebang.

I'm not too keen on a table, simply because as the sim goes on I'd expect that there will be more and more divergence in commonality between different countries that a table won't cover well.

Quote from: KWorld on April 25, 2012, 12:42:01 PM
I'm not too keen on a table, simply because as the sim goes on I'd expect that there will be more and more divergence in commonality between different countries that a table won't cover well.

Well... not really.
While a SHIP is a large and diverse collection of equipment, an artillery piece is pretty much the same everywhere. It has a T&E mechanism, a tube, a breech and that's about it. In fact, most nations use the same/similar calibers with grossly similar performances! Towed or self-propelled, artillery is pretty generic.

Springsharping the coastal mounts, well, that means you have to have a system: what represents each type of gun mount, how do you handle the issue of freeboard and composite strength, etc?
It will inject a lot more complexities to the rules- complexity which we have sought to avoid in areas where it's not utterly unavoidable.

In fact, I am most inclined to say that each Port has 'adequate defenses' and leave it at that. If the Port is attacked, it would have 3 batteries of the largest guns available for battleships, and 3 batteries of aprox 6" for smaller vessels closer in.

My point is we may well see coast guns and bore sizes diverging more as the sim continues.  One country might use small guns, others might use old naval guns, another might use new high-velocity guns, while a fifth might use new low-velocity guns.  Those choices will make a difference on the receiving end (high-velocity guns hitting belt armor at the same range low-velocity guns hit deck armor, for instance).


If you used SS to do this, you'd JUST do the mount, nothing else, I'd expect, because you're really only interested in the weight or the cost.  So freeboard, strength, etc, don't come into play. 

It would look something like this:

Test, Test Test laid down 1940

Displacement:
   0 t light; 0 t standard; 0 t normal; 0 t full load

Dimensions: Length (overall / waterline) x beam x draught (normal/deep)
   (0.00 ft / 0.00 ft) x 0.00 ft x (0.00 / NaN ft)
   (0.00 m / 0.00 m) x 0.00 m  x (0.00 / NaN m)

Armament:
      1 - 18.11" / 460 mm 45.0 cal gun - 3,306.93lbs / 1,500.00kg shells, 0 per gun
     Breech loading gun in turret on barbette mount, 1940 Model
     1 x Single mount on centreline, aft deck aft
      Weight of broadside 3,307 lbs / 1,500 kg

Machinery:
   Immobile floating battery

Complement:
   0 - 0

Cost:
   £1.674 million / $6.697 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
   Armament: 561 tons, 0.0 %
      - Guns: 561 tons, 0.0 %
   Machinery: 0 tons, 0.0 %
   Hull, fittings & equipment: NaN tons, 0.0 %
   Fuel, ammunition & stores: 0 tons, 0.0 %
   Miscellaneous weights: 0 tons, 0.0 %

Overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
   Survivability (Non-critical penetrating hits needed to sink ship):
     NaN lbs / NaN Kg = NaN x 6 " / 152 mm shells or NaN torpedoes
   Stability (Unstable if below 1.00): NaN
   Metacentric height NaN ft / NaN m
   Roll period: NaN seconds
   Steadiness   - As gun platform (Average = 50 %): NaN %
         - Recoil effect (Restricted arc if above 1.00): NaN
   Seaboat quality  (Average = 1.00): NaN

Hull form characteristics:
   Hull has a flush deck,
     a normal bow and a cruiser stern
   Block coefficient (normal/deep): 0.550 / NaN
   Length to Beam Ratio: NaN : 1
   'Natural speed' for length: 0.00 kts
   Power going to wave formation at top speed: 0 %
   Trim (Max stability = 0, Max steadiness = 100): 50
   Bow angle (Positive = bow angles forward): 0.00 degrees
   Stern overhang: 0.00 ft / 0.00 m
   Freeboard (% = length of deck as a percentage of waterline length):
            Fore end,    Aft end
      - Forecastle:   20.00 %,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m
      - Forward deck:   30.00 %,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m
      - Aft deck:   35.00 %,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m
      - Quarter deck:   15.00 %,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m,  0.00 ft / 0.00 m
      - Average freeboard:      0.00 ft / 0.00 m

Ship space, strength and comments:
   Space   - Hull below water (magazines/engines, low = better): NaN
      - Above water (accommodation/working, high = better): NaN
   Waterplane Area: 0 Square feet or 0 Square metres
   Displacement factor (Displacement / loading): NaN
   Structure weight / hull surface area: NaN lbs/sq ft or NaN Kg/sq metre
   Hull strength (Relative):
      - Cross-sectional: NaN
      - Longitudinal: NaN
      - Overall: NaN
   Extremely poor machinery, storage, compartmentation space
   Extremely poor accommodation and workspace room

Enter percentage of bunker tonnage devoted to coal fired boilers

Now, looking at this, it's fine for an unarmored mounting, but for some reason the armor weight allocated (if any) doesn't show up under SS3 (it does under SS2.1).  But the armor weight IS given on the Guns tab after you put in the armor, so it's not a big problem, and it would really only apply for armored turret mountings, it probably wouldn't apply for concrete emplacements.

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 25, 2012, 01:04:44 PM
In fact, I am most inclined to say that each Port has 'adequate defenses' and leave it at that. If the Port is attacked, it would have 3 batteries of the largest guns available for battleships, and 3 batteries of aprox 6" for smaller vessels closer in.

For free???  And how long does the port have to be in existence before these are emplaced?  And how about as the sim goes on and "largest gun" changes: do the old batteries get replaced, added to, etc?

KWorld- more to come when I get back from work.
'For Free' would not be 'free'; it would be tied to the size of the port and resources spent on it.
Caliber choice- well, in any game, things are approximated and are grouped by 'ranges' rather than specific calibers. I would use that info in the chart... some small changes in calibers (generally less than 1") would fall within each 'step' of the 'range.'

KWorld... you know, the more I look at it, the more I think it's the easiest way to do things.
We would sim the weight of the gun mount and armor, then DOUBLE IT to account for all the necessaries to keep the gun working- magazine structure, pits for the guns, accommodation and administration buildings, etc.

Yeah- I think that simming the gun then doubling SS's weight for GUN, ARMOR and AMMO will work out just fine.

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 25, 2012, 11:29:15 PM
Yeah- I think that simming the gun then doubling SS's weight for GUN, ARMOR and AMMO will work out just fine.

Sounds good to me, for turreted (and similar) guns, but what about other mount types (e.g. disappearing)?
And I think we should add some freeboard (e.g. 1m) to include the weight of barbettes, because bunkers are underground after all. To differentiate between different levels of fortifications, I would use the 'superfireing' and '2 levels up' options.
Summarized example:

level of fortification	freeboard	gun position	cost
light	1 m	deck	x2
normal	1 m	1 up	x3
high	1 m	2 up	x4

Well, I said double for all because most mounts don't use metal armor.

I'm kind of giving a 'discount' for disappearing mounts and mortar pits based on the fact that, though they are 'taller' structurally (extending farther underground), they are generally using earthworks and concrete for their armor. Charging more for someone to simply move dirt around doesn't seem fair IMO. If anything, I would actually make your table run backwards- making the fully turreted guns the most expensive, and making simple mortar pits the least expensive. That seems to more adequately reflect the situation in real life; after all, disappearing carriages and mortar pits were more economical and more plentiful than turreted mounts.

I have some problem with SS about "Save data file"
& some ships studies are lost. I can't reopen them  :'(  :'(  :'(

How did you save your SS ?
*.sship
*.ssr
*.ssr.sship (this one is strange...)

Thanks

Jef

*.sship is the format that saves the actual ship data.

*.ssr saves only the ship report- the stuff we post on the forum.

No idea what that last one was.


Sorry for the lost data; nothing more frustrating than to loose something you've spent hours perfecting!

Thanks Cart  ;)

I have just restudy the 1897-8500t AC Delome class.

Jef

Carthaginian, you misunderstood. That table is supposed to be turrets (and maybe "deck" (and hoist) mounts) only. The difference is supposed to be how strongly and how deep the associated bunkers are build. And yes they would be mostly moved earth and concrete, but we only have one type of build points. And maybe increasing the factor is overkill, increasing the barbette height might have a big enough effect on cost on its own. It was just a very rough thought.

Ah, ok... I get it now.
I think that having more than one 'level' of protection for the turrets would be a bit of an overkill. They would already be the hardest type to kill, requiring a direct penetrating hit to knock out. This would (under most circumstances) require a gun that was at least as powerful as the mount itself to accomplish.
If the mount in question was a 'mortar pit' or a 'disappearing carriage' mount, it would require little more than a hit from any 'heavy' gun (6" or so) to knock out a gun in the battery... and any battleship-sized gun would probably kill the entire battery. The 'turret mount' would require you to pierce the armor... making it very hard to kill.

Having the various mounts increase in cost is a good idea though:
'Mortar Pit': - 2x cost; attacks 'deck armor,' 1/2 effective range, lightly protected.
'Disappearing Carriage': - 2x cost; attacks 'belt armor,' full effective range, lightly protected.
'Turret Mount': 3x cost; attacks 'belt armor', fully protected.

...Reading again the text about the map & positions of the cities/states.
Colonization 101 - april13th

What is the size of the map ?

(km)10 000 x 15 000 - (nm) 6 000 x 9 000

or, what is the size of a square ?

(km)150 x 150 - (nm) 100 x 100

-----------------------------------
Finaly, this info is capital for SS !!!

Jef  ;)

Quote from: Jefgte on April 26, 2012, 05:19:14 PM
...Reading again the text about the map & positions of the cities/states.
Colonization 101 - april13th

What is the size of the map ?

(km)10 000 x 15 000 - (nm) 6 000 x 9 000

or, what is the size of a square ?

(km)150 x 150 - (nm) 100 x 100

-----------------------------------
Finaly, this info is capital for SS !!!

Jef  ;)

Assume (a very dangerous word) that the map as currently displayed is ~12,500 km on the long axis.
This makes it roughly Earth-sized, and the map is 150x120 squares (though it should ideally have been about 150x145 squares).

Use this to make rough distance estimates. ;)

Quote from: Jefgte on April 26, 2012, 09:43:02 AM
I have some problem with SS about "Save data file"
& some ships studies are lost. I can't reopen them  :'(  :'(  :'(

How did you save your SS ?
*.sship
*.ssr
*.ssr.sship (this one is strange...)

Thanks

Jef

You can delete the last part of the file name (that defines its type) and try to recover the data that way. I have had to manually edit file names in order to get .exe files to run before. As far as I know using this method will not damage a file, all you are doing is telling the computer how it should be read. If you give a file the wrong extension it will just not work.

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 26, 2012, 05:29:05 PM
Assume (a very dangerous word) that the map as currently displayed is ~12,500 km on the long axis.
This makes it roughly Earth-sized, and the map is 150x120 squares (though it should ideally have been about 150x145 squares).

Use this to make rough distance estimates. ;)

That would be rather small compared to earth (average diameter ca. 12740 km, circumference >40000 km or 21600 nm). Your proposal also only has a surface area of 125 000 000 km² compared to 510 000 000 km² of our earth.

Quote from: Nobody on April 28, 2012, 01:22:40 AM

Quote from: Carthaginian on April 26, 2012, 05:29:05 PM
Assume (a very dangerous word) that the map as currently displayed is ~12,500 km on the long axis.
This makes it roughly Earth-sized, and the map is 150x120 squares (though it should ideally have been about 150x145 squares).

Use this to make rough distance estimates. ;)

That would be rather small compared to earth (average diameter ca. 12740 km, circumference >40000 km or 21600 nm). Your proposal also only has a surface area of 125 000 000 km² compared to 510 000 000 km² of our earth.

Shit.
Did the math wrong.

Should be 21,600 nm on the long axis then; this makes each of the 150 squares 144 nm on a side.
This makes the short axis 17,280 nm. If it is necessary to balance things out, I'll add some 'pack ice' squares on the top.

Questions on the infrastructure rules:

1 - at start, how many IPP will everyone's Infrastructure Development factories produce?

2 - At 100 IPP to purchase, new factories are going to need 25 years to pay back their investment (22.5 years if they're always run in Fixed mode).  Makes for some pretty expensive infrastructure, this might be a bit high.

3 - I assume the reference in the infrastructure rules to 1920 should be 1910, correct?

4 - Is the reference to "air forces" in the startup section a holdover from the past, or current plan?  Seems out of place for 1910-era.

*blinks* uggg, staying up until 2am is fun. Anyway...

Quote from: KWorld on April 29, 2012, 07:28:28 AM
1 - at start, how many IPP will everyone's Infrastructure Development factories produce?

Infra Development factories work the same way as normal factories, so one point per factory. That would be 4 points per quarter at the start.

Quote from: KWorld on April 29, 2012, 07:28:28 AM
2 - At 100 IPP to purchase, new factories are going to need 25 years to pay back their investment (22.5 years if they're always run in Fixed mode).  Makes for some pretty expensive infrastructure, this might be a bit high.

Its designed to be rather high. While we did not want growth to be tied to land, we both did not want to make it supper easy for one nation to neglect its armed forces for X amount of years and come out with a huge advantage in factories that allowed them to crush the rest of us.

Quote from: KWorld on April 29, 2012, 07:28:28 AM
3 - I assume the reference in the infrastructure rules to 1920 should be 1910, correct?

Yes, the reference in the setup rules should be 1910

Quote from: KWorld on April 29, 2012, 07:28:28 AM
4 - Is the reference to "air forces" in the startup section a holdover from the past, or current plan?  Seems out of place for 1910-era.

We want aircraft to be included in the game and it was easyer to balance everything with them already being in place. So AFAIK, they would be available from the getgo with all the effectiveness of a plane in 1910. Carth may have deffering thoughts on this.

Aircraft are at the 1910 development level- something like the 'Curtiss/Reims Racer' are the standard. There are airships that are barely functional. No one has armed aircraft- ever; it's a foreign concept.

You can't buy air units for use at this time.
You can have stories about aircraft that people are testing.
You can talk about how airships, dirigibles and zeppelins are used in experiments.
You can't use anything that flies in any kind of active role.
If you do, someone might notice that those flying gasbags move slow enough that battleship guns can hit them.

My thoughts in regards to Croatoa's 'air program' had been that smallish airships were used for civil purposes within the city domes, and possibly specialized larger ones as platforms for repairs to same, but were well and rightly understood to be too fragile to take Outside weather patterns on any but the calmest days, and certainly too vulnerable to ground fire for anything resembling a combat role. Hang-gliders and the like would be fairly common for sport purposes, but no powered airplanes at start of play.

Long term, I'm planning to do a lot with airships in noncombat roles, but otherwise concentrate my lust for oddness, aircraft wise, on layout.

I am planning on having a few airships for my nation... eventually moving on to a passenger service using them, but I have no plans to use them in combat. As far as airplanes, I will only say this- I have always bwwn fasinated by the 'aircarft cruiser' and 'fleet seaplane carrier' type of ship. ;)

Maintenance question: is the (doubling during wartime) cost per year or per quarter?

per quarter was what I intended

Hmmmm.  If we pay 10% per 1000 tons, that means that for a fleet that's at full size at game start, we'd be paying 50,000 tons, or 50 PP, per quarter.  Given that we only have 32 factories, so only 32 PP per quarter, I foresee a problem......

Quote from: KWorld on April 30, 2012, 01:39:48 PM
Hmmmm.  If we pay 10% per 1000 tons, that means that for a fleet that's at full size at game start, we'd be paying 50,000 tons, or 50 PP, per quarter.  Given that we only have 32 factories, so only 32 PP per quarter, I foresee a problem......

I don't foresee much of a problem...
So you might have to scrap some older ships to afford 'fully man' your newer ones.
OR you might have to engage in 'limited wars' with fixed objectives and smaller mobilizations. ;)

Aaaaand before I start another fight over rule philosophy, it's recently occurred to me that there's one spinoff result that we could easily see from our existing planetary setup - the difficulty of producing landing strips, and the general proximity of most population centers to the sea, it seems likely that the flying boat era of civil aviation will last longer than it did OTL.

So, if we can only support, in wartime, fleets of about 150,000 tons (due to doubling of maintenance and the costs of maintaining armies), why bother with designing 500,000 tons of ships which you couldn't afford to build in the first place (because of the non-war maintenance requirements of already-in-service ships)?  The fleet's somehow lost almost 40% of it's last 15 years production by the time of game start???

Also, matinece cost has been adjusted to 2.5%, I just have not changed it in the posted rules.

Quote from: snip on April 30, 2012, 03:35:05 PM
Also, matinece cost has been adjusted to 2.5%, I just have not changed it in the posted rules.

Ah, OK, that makes a big difference.  :)

Snip is wrapping up his semester. This is difficult time for him, and he doesn't have all the time in the world to devote to fixing the things that we got wrong with the rules. We are going to fix them, but we will have to let him ensure that his real life isn't affected by the process. ;D

He has adjusted the costs of thing to make ships cheaper to maintain, and we are going over any other disconnects, as time allows... he has too little due to finals, and I have too much owing to too few patients. ::) I assure you that this means I have been playing with the combat rules and should have something concrete for ground rules soon- something which, I hope, will at least be able to shake hands and play nice with the naval rules.

You can go ahead and plan, though, for any war to involve a lot of scrapping prior and during to make your fleet more manageable. The fact that we've let everyone build the biggest fleet that thier budget can support from the outset means that there will be no room for 'WWII era' U.S.N.-like expansion- you will have to give up something to get something.

Ya, getting close to the end and with a few papers plus finals on my plate, this is going to go back burner. Once all that is done (about mid May) I will catch up everything as quick as I can.

How much lift, in tons, is needed to move army units from one island to another?  And from where are we expecting to get that lift?  Can we charter liners/freighters/etc?  Do we have to build and maintain troopships?  Landing craft/ships?

For instance: Player X wants to capture a colony of Player Y's.  He can blockade it with his navy, he can maybe force it to pay tribute with his navy, but the only way to capture it and incorporate into his own empire is to force it to surrender to him which is going to require ground troops.  Since it's on another island, marching troops to it doesn't work, shipping will be needed.  Since we only have 1 size of troop unit (the corps), that will require a fair amount of lift, both passenger (for the troops) and freight (for their supplies and heavy equipment).  And then there's getting the troops off the ships and to the shore: if the colony's undefended, this isn't too hard (a couple cruisers pull into the harbor and fire on anyone firing on the boats making the initial landings), but if there are defenses, this doesn't work out well.

I believe that the figures I saw quoted were on the order of 4 tons/man for long-range transport and 4 men/ton for landing craft.

That's a start.  How many men to the corps?  That will give us the number of tons needed for long-range transport.

Quote from: KWorld on May 01, 2012, 07:08:05 AM
That's a start.  How many men to the corps?  That will give us the number of tons needed for long-range transport.

While not accurate with modern U.S. military nomenclature, this is the system to be used.
125 men = 1 Company
4 Companies = 1 Battalion
4 Battalions = 1 Brigade
4 Brigades = 1 Division
2 Divisions = 1 Corps

This gives us a 'nice, round number' of 16,000 men per Corps.*
A Corps-sized amphibious unit would, therefore, require 64,000 tons of cargo space to accomplish... meaning 12 moderately sized passenger vessels or 2 'super-liners' could easily transport a Corps during an in-combat maneuver.

NOTE: The  R.M.S. Queen Mary routinely carried approximately 15,000 men on her return trips to the U.S. (including one of her last, in 1946, which carried my Grandfather). If the men are not proceeding directly to combat- in other words, if they are going to a friendly port to garrison or if they are returning from a captured port to a friendly one- overcrowding will be allowed for storyline purposes only (because it has long been standard practice to cram troops in like sardines).

* This is roughly halfway between the smaller Union Army 'Corps' of (avg) 12,500 men and the larger Confederate Army 'Corps' of (avg) 20,000 men... the two units that I am most familiar with

Small divisions, and small corps.  Corps normally have various units attached directly at Corps level, such as artillery, recon, armor, etc.  But if we, for simplicity's sake, don't worry about that, we certainly don't need to.

So, 64,000 tons for an infantry corps, what about the other types of corps that are more equipment heavy?

Quote from: KWorld on May 01, 2012, 11:20:46 AM
Small divisions, and small corps.  Corps normally have various units attached directly at Corps level, such as artillery, recon, armor, etc.  But if we, for simplicity's sake, don't worry about that, we certainly don't need to.

So, 64,000 tons for an infantry corps, what about the other types of corps that are more equipment heavy?

I'm going to have to re-work the transport rules a bit as they are, as you point out- done only for infantry. We are going to shift- and the rules will be updated to represent this- to a new system for allotting weights for embarked units.

That system will be based on 1 Company = 500 tons (the same weight, 4 tons/1 man).

In the cases for Artillery and Armor 'corps'- again for simplicity sake I am going to say that any difference in manpower is made up by equipment weight. For instance, a tank company will require the same 'weight' for transporting, but it will only have 12 men in each of its 3 working platoons (it will still have 25 in the HQ platoon). This means that the tank company will have only 61 men... but those 61 men will require the same 500 tons that a 125 man infantry unit will require. Though this doesn't entirely represent the weight of the tanks, it does indicate that the unit is 'more expensive' per man to transport.

The other problem for non-infantry units is that they're not amenable to transport by liner: a leg infantry division, minus it's artillery, can fairly easily walk onto and off of a liner, and it's ammunition can go below-decks.  Tank divisions, on the other hand, NEED freighters or even more specialized vessels to carry the tanks: you're not going to put out even a reinforced gangplank and load tanks onto a liner.  Motorized or mechanized infantry units have similar problems: lots of vehicles that don't fit on liners, and lots more people than an armored company (most armored divisions contain a fair amount of infantry, but not in armored companies).

Quote from: KWorld on May 01, 2012, 12:27:29 PM
The other problem for non-infantry units is that they're not amenable to transport by liner: a leg infantry division, minus it's artillery, can fairly easily walk onto and off of a liner, and it's ammunition can go below-decks.  Tank divisions, on the other hand, NEED freighters or even more specialized vessels to carry the tanks: you're not going to put out even a reinforced gangplank and load tanks onto a liner.  Motorized or mechanized infantry units have similar problems: lots of vehicles that don't fit on liners, and lots more people than an armored company (most armored divisions contain a fair amount of infantry, but not in armored companies).

Yes, it will mean that specialist ships will have to be constructed for transport of these ships.
This is why we have auxiliary ship rules- for constructing ships to carry those kinds of units.

Having assisted in the movement of a modern, vehicle-mobile military unit form CONUS to operational theater and back... I have a small amount of knowledge as to what goes into this- though we did send our men by plane. ;) Our trucks and support equipment, though, had to go by ship.
Our trucks  went by a standard RO-RO, with generators and other sundry wheeled stuff towed behind.
Our other gear (heavy weapons, tents, poles, desks, copying machine, etc) went via container ship.

Constructing 'assault transports' shouldn't occur for some time in the future, IMO... at least until someone fights someone else in a large-scale action using armor and/or large artillery support and the need is recognized. At startup, we should realize that our nations- like nations in WWI- don't recognize the need for these kinds of vessels yet... and even thereafter there should be a few bumbling attempts to make one before LST's start sailing around on a regular basis.

Well...... right now, the rules don't require this.  If we have armored or mechanized corps at start (and the rules currently allow for it), the rules currently say 500 tons/company and you're golden.  So, in theory, I take 6 of those liners I designed and load up an armored corps and I'm off to invade my neighbor.  Now, my neighbor might scream blue murder that I can't load them, but I can point to the rules and the mods comments and say I can.

KWorld- if common sense says it can't be done, then you can't do it.
That shouldn't have to be in the rules.
Thank you, and I will ensure that the 'Gentleman's Rules' have something to say about this soon.

Heh, common sense is all too uncommon, and what 1 person thinks is common sense may not seem so to someone else.  :)

We have had this problem before.  Just because you can load a Mechanized Corps.  Say 15 Tons per APC/ Light Tankette and 30 Tons per Medium Tank in any port you own.  Now unloading them over the beach is always the part that sucks.. litterally people drown get sucked under.

To properly unload a mechanized force and more importantly to keep it supplied with fuel and munitions you need an intact enemy port.   Which if he is smart he built proper defenses to keep you from simply sailing into the port dropping anchor grounding one of your Ro-Ro ships against his pier and start unloading.

Or I guess you could build floating harbors tow then to the enemies nearbye Island and sink them in a conveniently undefended bay.  Should take about 24 to 48 hours to get them running and start unloading.

An interesting question just occurred to me: IF the environment is as hostile as proposed, how are the seas?  In particular, if the seas and the air over the seas (even if only in the coastal regions) are hostile to ships and their crews, does this mean that civilian ships will be armed, at least heavily enough to deal with various predatory life forms?  Do liners carry an anti-bird bat battery (try saying that 5 times fast)?

QuoteAn interesting question just occurred to me: IF the environment is as hostile as proposed, how are the seas?  In particular, if the seas and the air over the seas (even if only in the coastal regions) are hostile to ships and their crews, does this mean that civilian ships will be armed, at least heavily enough to deal with various predatory life forms?  Do liners carry an anti-bird bat battery (try saying that 5 times fast)?

After 2000 years on the new planet, all human communauties had eliminate the land & flying predators - Carnosaures, Birds-Bats...
But, the other parts of the planet, islands or continents  are not clean.
In the oceans, thera are big predators similar to plesiosaures & Kronosaures.

Machines guns & small QF guns are absolutly neccessary !!!

I wroted this text with the first Nova Francia Plan

"All the ships armaments are in closed installation to protect crew from large native creatures.
They are also equiped with double mount of 13.2 mm Hotchkiss machine gun for the same job.
These M2x13.2mm Hotchkiss  can fire vs flying or sea predators.
When the warships are outside the bases, these mounts are in alert condition."

----------
Today, small ships like DDs, TBs or PBs have 4x13.2
Biger ships had 4M2x13.2
All guns deck mount are covered to protect gunners vs flying or sea predators.
When the ships are at sea, promenade on the deck is strickly forbiden!!!

Jef  ;)

Once you get 'out to sea'- beyond the range of typical land birds- would be 'relatively safe' for a ship armed with anything in the .50 caliber range and over. The beasties that they encounter out there would be similar to pterosaurs in size and structure- large and fierce, but delicate in comparison to other animals. Their proportionally large gliding wings would be very vulnerable to damage.

Merchant ships would not (under normal circumstances) need something as large as a 57mm gun... though some nations (like Nova Francia) would be entirely justified to feel that way! Likewise, I don't think that every gun mount needs to be covered or that the main decks need to be clear of personnel at all times... but that will be an internal matter for the local jurisdictions. ;)

My navy feels that giving the crewmen on duty 'sufficient protection' (read 'helmets and mail shirts') offers them protection from 'swarm birds'; off duty personnel would be allowed topside in 'areas under protection of the watch.' Ships of the S.M.O.S.J. will also feature a unique 'belt fed shotgun' for dealing with the small swarming birds.

On land, giant flightless birds like those of the Phorusrhacidae (http://phorusrhacidae) family would necessitate the carrying of at least one heavy machine gun per squad. Larger lizards are common land animals, similar to monitor lizards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_lizard) and dragon lizards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agamid). Mammals never really seem to have 'caught on' on this planet.

When should torpedo bulkheads start coming into use?  Historically, they were pretty late, because designers thought that the coal bunkers would serve the purpose.  However, IF we know what worked and what didn't historically, then they should be available from the start.

Good question, but what is 'pretty late'? In German ships some sort of torpedo protection might have been present since the Deutschland-class (1904) and is definitive for all dreadnought-type ships.

Depends.  VERY few pre-dreadnoughts had any USEFUL torpedo protection, and not all dreadnoughts had any (the Courbets did not, for instance, and the Bretagnes had an 8mm bulkhead) either.  But given how long-ranged the torps are at game start, and what may be known about how poorly coal bunkers serve as torpedo defences....

OK- I just noticed this, so I'm sorry for being a bit late responding.

Torpedoes are very new... VERY new.
No one has really seen them in action. Sure, we've all fired off a few at some old armored frigates or maybe even one or two of our pre-dreads that had to be scrapped... but no one has ever really gotten hit by something in combat on a ship that is fully manned and where all hands are standing ready to respond to damage control orders. We don't really know how effective that damage control will be either.

So- can you have torpedo bulkheads? Maybe a few classes, but fleetwide wouldn't make sense just yet.
Devoting a few hundred tons of Miscellaneous Weight for 'greater subdivision' or 'cellular construction' might make better sense.

I've almost finished the complete backstory for the world- so many questions will be answered. One or two more quiet nights at work will just about do it.

That'll probably help shut me up.   ;D

Quote from: KWorld on May 07, 2012, 06:58:49 AM
Depends.  VERY few pre-dreadnoughts had any USEFUL torpedo protection, and not all dreadnoughts had any (the Courbets did not, for instance, and the Bretagnes had an 8mm bulkhead) either.  But given how long-ranged the torps are at game start, and what may be known about how poorly coal bunkers serve as torpedo defences....

well I can say for sure that SS "Additional Damage Containing Bulkheads" option is out for the start as those are for systems like the USN Standards and beyond. Way advanced for what we are looking at time frame wise.

Quote from: snip on May 07, 2012, 08:57:51 PM
well I can say for sure that SS "Additional Damage Containing Bulkheads" option is out for the start as those are for systems like the USN Standards and beyond. Way advanced for what we are looking at time frame wise.

There is another problem. While using the "strengthened bulkhead" which I like (because it seems to be the way SS3 sims a germen style protection system) I realized that option should be out as well, because it's 'free of cost' - all weight allocated to it seems to be simply removed from the 'Hull, fittings & equipment' value!

Quote from: Nobody on May 07, 2012, 11:59:31 PM

Quote from: snip on May 07, 2012, 08:57:51 PM
well I can say for sure that SS "Additional Damage Containing Bulkheads" option is out for the start as those are for systems like the USN Standards and beyond. Way advanced for what we are looking at time frame wise.

There is another problem. While using the "strengthened bulkhead" which I like (because it seems to be the way SS3 sims a germen style protection system) I realized that option should be out as well, because it's 'free of cost' - all weight allocated to it seems to be simply removed from the 'Hull, fittings & equipment' value!

Nobody,
Show me how this works with a bit more detail. Is it similar to how the weight for torpedoes simply isn't included? If this is so, we can simply enter the weight manually in the Miscellaneous Weights under 'Hull Below Waterline.' This also extends the amount of armored belt needed to cover the ship's 'vital areas,' so it would fix BOTH the problem of the weight not being calculated and the problem of the resulting extending of the area needing protected.

Quote from: Carthaginian on May 08, 2012, 12:10:39 AM

Quote from: Nobody on May 07, 2012, 11:59:31 PM

Quote from: snip on May 07, 2012, 08:57:51 PM
well I can say for sure that SS "Additional Damage Containing Bulkheads" option is out for the start as those are for systems like the USN Standards and beyond. Way advanced for what we are looking at time frame wise.

There is another problem. While using the "strengthened bulkhead" which I like (because it seems to be the way SS3 sims a germen style protection system) I realized that option should be out as well, because it's 'free of cost' - all weight allocated to it seems to be simply removed from the 'Hull, fittings & equipment' value!

Nobody,
Show me how this works with a bit more detail. Is it similar to how the weight for torpedoes simply isn't included? If this is so, we can simply enter the weight manually in the Miscellaneous Weights under 'Hull Below Waterline.' This also extends the amount of armored belt needed to cover the ship's 'vital areas,' so it would fix BOTH the problem of the weight not being calculated and the problem of the resulting extending of the area needing protected.

Er no. You see this best if you add a ridiculously thick torpedo bulkhead, e.g.:
- Torpedo Bulkhead - Strengthened structural bulkheads:
      19,7" / 500 mm   330,54 ft / 100,75 m   32,81 ft / 10,00 m
Then the result in the weight distribution looks like this:
Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
   Armour:
      - Torpedo bulkhead: 7.899 tons, 39,5%
   Hull, fittings & equipment: -3.183 tons, -15,9%
So whatever weight is added as a Strengthened bulkhead is at the same time removed from the hull weight. The composite strength of the ship however remains unchanged (at 1.00). If you use 'additional bulkheads' instead, the composite drops.

I don't see your problem with the necessary belt length though, that seem to work just fine IMHO. What doesn't work though is that is the amount of damage (number of torpedos to sink the ship) is usually - but not always - unaffected by the torpedo protection system.

Quote from: Nobody on May 08, 2012, 02:17:38 AM
Er no. You see this best if you add a ridiculously thick torpedo bulkhead, e.g.:
- Torpedo Bulkhead - Strengthened structural bulkheads:
      19,7" / 500 mm   330,54 ft / 100,75 m   32,81 ft / 10,00 m
Then the result in the weight distribution looks like this:
Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
   Armour:
      - Torpedo bulkhead: 7.899 tons, 39,5%
   Hull, fittings & equipment: -3.183 tons, -15,9%
So whatever weight is added as a Strengthened bulkhead is at the same time removed from the hull weight. The composite strength of the ship however remains unchanged (at 1.00). If you use 'additional bulkheads' instead, the composite drops.

I don't see your problem with the necessary belt length though, that seem to work just fine IMHO. What doesn't work though is that is the amount of damage (number of torpedos to sink the ship) is usually - but not always - unaffected by the torpedo protection system.

OK, I see now. It simply 'moves the weight around' from another category to make it work. So, what we would have to do is add the weight removed from the 'Hull, fittings and equipment' category back to the ship.
The 'problem' with the belt length is adding additional bulkheads really stretches the needed armor belt. I didn't know if this option would do so, but I know adding large amounts of Miscellaneous Weight will also stretch the necessary belt length.
If the 'Torpedoes to Sink' number isn't improved, we might simply have to use the Additional Bulkheads option only for mechanical reasons, and explain in the ship description whether it's actually Strengthened or Additional bulkheads.

Using Strengthened Bulkheads doesn't effect the length of the armor belt, because you don't have to adjust the beam between bulkheads (which, if you set it too small, forces the engines and ammunition to take up more length in the ship).

I'd say until this feature gets looked at in the future, we don't use Strengthened Bulkheads.  I'd also be OK with not using torpedo bulkheads until game start, but that's me.

Quote from: Carthaginian on May 08, 2012, 10:34:57 AM
The 'problem' with the belt length is adding additional bulkheads really stretches the needed armor belt. I didn't know if this option would do so, but I know adding large amounts of Miscellaneous Weight will also stretch the necessary belt length.

I should and it does. By how much depends entirely on the 'beam between bulkhead' value. If you input half the ships width there the required belt length will double. Which is exactly what it should because you now only have half the space.

QuoteIf the 'Torpedoes to Sink' number isn't improved, we might simply have to use the Additional Bulkheads option only for mechanical reasons, and explain in the ship description whether it's actually Strengthened or Additional bulkheads.

Well it sometimes does, but I have also seen it drop by adding a torpedo protection. Anyway in case of the 50 cm bulkhead it doubled, but than again if you actually had a 50 cm bulkhead it would probably impossible to sink it from the sides in the first place.

Quote from: KWorld on May 08, 2012, 10:47:55 AM
I'd say until this feature gets looked at in the future, we don't use Strengthened Bulkheads.  I'd also be OK with not using torpedo bulkheads until game start, but that's me.

I think that I'm going to fall into that camp as well. We might have to delay TBs a bit, until we get the related problems worked out a bit. I've never really seen a TB cause a drop in torpedo survivability- unless it was something very serious like the ship not being able to mount all the machinery within the hull after the TB was added.

Also, I'm thinking about playing with torpedo range... EITHER by adding a limit on torpedo diameter/length for start ships, OR by adding a range modifier related to year. So far everyone is doing quite well for staying in historic limits, so no big need for a ruling.

I wouldn't complain about reducing the capabilities of torpedoes a bit, right now they're REALLY good for the period.


Also, given the restrictions on ship engines, it certainly looks like only Infantry units should be available at game start, and probably for some time afterwards.

Though I fail to see the connection between ship engines and armies... ;)
Infantry and Artillery will be the only units available until a time I 'roll up.' I will select a good die with a fairly good percentile and give it a toss. Tanks will be available in (Start Year + Die Roll); I'll then assign numbers to all nations except me and Snip, and roll an appropriately numbered die. The winner of the roll will receive a PM that he is able to build tanks the next budget period, and everyone else will be able to follow after that.


The torpedoes will probably be penalized by 'range brackets' and 'size brackets.'
You won't be able longer or bigger torps for a little while.

Artillery isn't currently listed as an option.


The relationship is simple: if your primary fuel is coal (and it is), barring steam-powered "land battleships" a la Jules Verne, armies are going to be infantry or cavalry, and with the technology already postulated, cavalry is,  at best, a  recon force.  Rail lines are extremely likely and will be very important, but large fleets of steam-tanks?  I'm not seeing it.

Quote from: KWorld on May 09, 2012, 12:06:28 PM
Artillery isn't currently listed as an option.

Could have sworn it was.
Link me to what you see. I'll look tonight.
It will be as follows in the final draft:

LAND UNITS
Infantry
Armor
Artillery

AIR UNITS
Scout
Fighter
Bomber

Quote from: KWorld on May 09, 2012, 12:06:28 PM
The relationship is simple: if your primary fuel is coal (and it is), barring steam-powered "land battleships" a la Jules Verne, armies are going to be infantry or cavalry, and with the technology already postulated, cavalry is,  at best, a  recon force.  Rail lines are extremely likely and will be very important, but large fleets of steam-tanks?  I'm not seeing it.

Uhm... no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracked_vehicle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank
Internal combustion crawler tractors with guns mounted on them (a.k.a. 'tanks') existed by 1915.

So, while tanks won't be available immediately upon start-up, the argument of 'steampunk landships'... well, I won't go there.

I understand that there will be various 'holdover' units like horse cavalry and skirmishers. HOWEVER, they are rapidly outmoded by more modern battlefield units. Not desiring to try to bend the system to suit things that won't be there very long in the first place, I have made an 'executive decision' to say that they generally won't matter.

So, I modeled the system to deal with what is coming up rather than what is being left behind.

as the rules stand now (in my posted PDF) sub in Arty for Mechanized units. That should be about right for the cost.

Alright, I've handed over the keys, caught up on the rules, etc. Where am I playing? :)

start coming up with designs. Carth has the map so take a peek a let him know. nation ideas are sort of free form, have fun.

Quote from: Guinness on May 12, 2012, 07:05:32 PM
Alright, I've handed over the keys, caught up on the rules, etc. Where am I playing? :)

Continent #1 and #2 on the map are open for settlement at the moment.
The rules for placing ports are included in the thread (which I am going to clean up as the week progresses).
So far, this is roughly where everyone is:
1.) Southeast Peninsula on Con't #1 - Nobody
2.) Mountainous region in West of Con't #1 - Carthaginian
3.) Southeastern area of Con't #2 (where two lakes are) - Snip
4.) Southwestern section of Con't #2, south of inland sea, west of single lake - KWorld

I'll post a map with exact positions of ports when everyone sends me their placements.
My 4th anniversary is this coming week, and as I have taken a lot of time off to spend with my wife, I'll have plenty of time to work on the map... :)

Your nation can follow any real pattern you want as long as you remember two things:
1.) the interiors of the continents are kind of 'here be dragons' territory- takes a lot of support to go inland, so you only really do it for resource gathering operations.
2.) the game is set up for expansion by sea, all but the biggest battles are collaborative storyline affairs, and the tech tree will change only as fast or slow as the players vote to let it to.

A question on cruisers: when will it be appropriate to start "turretizing" light cruisers?  Historically, light cruisers were armed with open mount single guns up through the end of WWI, with the USN Omaha's being one of the first designs fitted with enclosed turrets (though they carried most of their guns in casemates).  There's no real technical reason it couldn't have been done earlier, though: ACs carried their main batteries in turrets, and some vessels carried guns not much larger than a CLs in secondary turrets (for example, the 164.7mm guns on the MN Suffren's).

Early French turrets were guns mounting on a rotating platform with 54mm armor around, not really a turret similar to a Dreadnought with face armor plate, barbette, armored roof...

Dupuy de Lome first with single guns in turret in 1890.
& 2 guns on Leon Gambetta class in 1901

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_cruisers

Jef

Omaha didn't have REAL turrets, either, but the effect is basically similar: the crew is protected by armor from nearby hits.  Leon Gambetta was really an armored cruiser, not a light cruiser, which are what I'm talking about. 

Without talking to carth, my opinion is this: Pre-start, no turreted main batteries below ~155mm. After the games start, I think waiting until about 1920 would be nice, but my opinion on this is fluid (aka make your case as to allowing them earlier if you want)

Have a look there on the C022 plan, Chanzy 140mm turret installed on pivot - "Canet turret"

http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/planbato/Plans/planbato.php?id=100

----------
Ok I agree, no turret on light cruisers.
We could just use Deck Mounts closed for all guns installation vs Flying Predators - Perso, I use 0"4 armor.

Jef

This is, IMO, another case where we're running into the "hindsight" issue: IF the nations of the world know the lessons of Tsushima and Jutland and so on, there's no reason they wouldn't head towards turreted CLs as soon as they could.  Technically, there's no real bar there, it's really an issue of weight and making the design decision to go that way.  There could be rate of fire issues, if the hoists aren't up to the task of bringing up ammunition as fast as the crew can fire it, but that happened with the open mounts as well (see the comments on NavWeaps for the British 6"/50 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XI and XI*).

When Men came on this new planet, 2000y ago they have some scientific documents...
Now, with the resourses exploited, their territories clean from predators & the population, they could use these documents to built a Fleet.
They carry 1895-1909 warships plans.
So, Warships plans of this period are exemple for us.
We have just plans but no Tsushima & Jutland references.
That's why rules are somewhere "late" in the technologies & building conception.

Jef

http://www.warshipsww2.eu/lode.php?language=E&period=&idtrida=1677 (http://www.warshipsww2.eu/lode.php?language=E&period=&idtrida=1677)

And another argument in Jef's favor... sort of.
The Fylgia is a very small armored cruiser, and mounts her 6" guns in turrets. They are true turrets; they are revolving gunhouses located atop armored barbettes.
Laydown date: 1902
Problem: She's the only one of her kind.
Solution: We simply ignore the fluke and look at the big picture.

The schematic that Jef posted was basically a fully enclosed deck mount & hoist type mount. This is similar to the 8" twins on the U.S.S. Olympia, U.S.S. Brooklyn and U.S.S. New York as well, which were basically guns mounted on a pivoting turntable with a small shell hoist leading to the magazine.

For the moment, the latter setup will be considered legal for light cruisers prior to startup while the former will not. One of the first cruisers intended to be built with 'true turrets' (that I can think of) was the Emden of 1921... though restriction on German shipbuilding forced her to be armed with single mounts. So by around 3920, we can start looking at allowing these kinds of things.

Changing my mind form my former posts:

Seeing some designs makes me lean towards limiting these kinds of ships till much later.

Something about every ship in the world turning into an A-Q-Y layout ship with twin turrets disgusts me on a very fundamental level. While I prefer to allow everyone the maximum flexibility to design what they want, I refuse to have every ship in every fleet look exactly alike... and to have every ship from the smallest cruiser to the biggest battleship have the same identical A-Q-Y layout.

This isn't anything against you, but it is saying that A-Q-Y is starting to become a problem for creative shipbuilding.

IMO, the convergence on AQY designs is a consequence of A) allowing the AQY layout, and B) stating that ships with a heavy secondary battery will be penalized because of ranging issues.  What's a designer to do?  B says "don't do this, or you'll pay a price".  A says "You can get more main guns on this layout and avoid the penalty exacted by B as well."  So..... AQY becomes very popular, as it should be.

If you build a battleship with a AY layout and lots of small secondaries, those secondaries are of little value against capital ships, which is what battleships are designed to fight.  These battleships can be smaller for a given speed & range than AQY battleships, which is nice, but if multiple battleships are firing at the same targets they'll have similar ranging issues as they would if they have large secondaries, so the benefit is limited.

Quote from: KWorld on May 16, 2012, 12:24:35 PM
These battleships can be smaller for a given speed & range than AQY battleships, which is nice, but if multiple battleships are firing at the same targets they'll have similar ranging issues as they would if they have large secondaries, so the benefit is limited.

This will not be an issue in the game system.
ALSO, we can say that our colonists are aware of the use of dye markers in spotting, and that some of the problems are solved... if this will encourage some greater differentiation. ;)

Quote from: Carthaginian on May 16, 2012, 12:28:42 PM

Quote from: KWorld on May 16, 2012, 12:24:35 PM
These battleships can be smaller for a given speed & range than AQY battleships, which is nice, but if multiple battleships are firing at the same targets they'll have similar ranging issues as they would if they have large secondaries, so the benefit is limited.

This will not be an issue in the game system.
ALSO, we can say that our colonists are aware of the use of dye markers in spotting, and that some of the problems are solved... if this will encourage some greater differentiation. ;)

If you want more varied designs, I'd really recommend dropping the idea of penalizing heavy secondaries: yes, there could be confusion, but the designers and officers of the day clearly didn't think it was unmanageable (else vessels like IJN Tsukuba, HMS Lord Nelson, MN Danton, and USS Connecticutt would never have been built). 

Also, I'd be careful with the idea of not penalizing multiple firers on a single target, this will encourage a fleet to fire on 1 ship at a time.

Quote from: KWorld on May 16, 2012, 12:40:06 PM

Quote from: Carthaginian on May 16, 2012, 12:28:42 PM

Quote from: KWorld on May 16, 2012, 12:24:35 PM
These battleships can be smaller for a given speed & range than AQY battleships, which is nice, but if multiple battleships are firing at the same targets they'll have similar ranging issues as they would if they have large secondaries, so the benefit is limited.

This will not be an issue in the game system.
ALSO, we can say that our colonists are aware of the use of dye markers in spotting, and that some of the problems are solved... if this will encourage some greater differentiation. ;)

If you want more varied designs, I'd really recommend dropping the idea of penalizing heavy secondaries: yes, there could be confusion, but the designers and officers of the day clearly didn't think it was unmanageable (else vessels like IJN Tsukuba, HMS Lord Nelson, MN Danton, and USS Connecticutt would never have been built). 

Also, I'd be careful with the idea of not penalizing multiple firers on a single target, this will encourage a fleet to fire on 1 ship at a time.

The penalties will not be so severe as you think...

The problem is that any time someone here hears 'penalties' they run screaming like little girls just bit by a spider. Everyone wants to build the perfect ship with the perfect guns and the perfect speed.
No one wants to build designs that look good in theory but might risk a few problems in practice.

Basically designing a fleet based totally on A-Q-Y is the ultimate in hindsight. You have to be willing to build a ship with some problems even though you know that the problems are there... even if those problems might cause you some problems in combat. The British knew there would be some difficulty in telling large secondaries from 12" guns- anyone with artillery experience would know that- but they assessed the risks as being acceptable with regards to the rewards.

I am choosing this route for my fleet.

AXY (X superfiring)turrets disposition was use on Battleship Henry IV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Henri_IV

ABY is a possible disposition too
orAY

Superfiring nount on another like USS Kearsage too, if you have the BB5 plan in your scientific documents...

Jef

Those examples aren't really AXY or ABXY, though, since the superfiring guns aren't the same size as the main battery.  Henri IV had a 138.6mm superfiring over a 274mm, and Kearsarge had 8" guns superfiring over 13".

Quote from: KWorld on May 17, 2012, 09:49:26 AM
Those examples aren't really AXY or ABXY, though, since the superfiring guns aren't the same size as the main battery.  Henri IV had a 138.6mm superfiring over a 274mm, and Kearsarge had 8" guns superfiring over 13".

These would, though, be allowed at startup. ;)

PS I didn't actually modify your post- I accidentally clicked the wrong button.

I think the main problem is that the treaty allows BBs up to 20k but only 12" guns, hence any big BB armed with only 4x12" guns will be undergunned. Perhaps relaxing the limit on gun size and/or limiting AQY to 11"?  Or allowing any turret arrangement provided 1) only 6 guns can fire broadside or ahead/astern and 2) no super-firing guns. So if someone wants 6 single turrets they can do so or something equally crazy. Heck, Satsuma is probably legal and would eat any AQY ship for lunch.

Quote from: Desertfox on May 17, 2012, 09:35:35 PM
I think the main problem is that the treaty allows BBs up to 20k but only 12" guns, hence any big BB armed with only 4x12" guns will be undergunned. Perhaps relaxing the limit on gun size?

*whispers* psst... you can put more than 4 heavy guns on a ship.... just dont use turrets....

Got an idea, why not write the treaty with the limits instead of number and size of guns be based on broadside weight? So battleships will be limited not to 6x12" in AQY but to a ~5,200 lb broadside. So maybe you go with 18" guns but unfortunately you can only fit one, or go crazy and build a 20x10" broadside battleships.

No Desertfox.
NO.

You will have to be creative within the treaty.
We've had this discussing already- the rules will not be altered.
If you don't like the setup, then... honestly, you don't have to participate.
Snip and I have done our best to come up with a system that will allow great freedom, incite creativity and keep the rules as simple as possible. We are up for small changes that fix the problems that can be found. We ARE NOT open to changing fundamental parts of the rules.

If you want to build something crazy like Outrageous, Uproarious, and Spurious... get people to amend the treaty with you to allow it. That is the only way anything will happen- the treaty is amended by the players.

I'm already planning on experimenting with primary armament being broadside weapons. 

IJN Satsuma would be legal as far as the design rules go, yes.  On an individual basis, she SHOULD beat an AQY ship, but that will depend a bit on how badly that heavy secondary battery penalizes her fire (and whether the AQY ship can get an important hit or two while the 10" guns are not yet in range).  In a fleet action, a lot will depend on how many AQYs you can get for 1 Satsuma: she's a big vessel, all of 20,000 tons, and most of the AQYs we've seen so far here have been 15,000 or less.  Can 3 Satsuma's beat 4 AQYs?  The AQYs have twice as many 12" guns, while the Satsuma's have a forest of 10" guns that the AQYs don't have a direct counter to.

Not asking for a change in the rules. Just pointing out that AQY layouts are almost unavoidable as the rules are written out. One of my N-verse 2.0 ships the NSS United States packed 6x12" guns in an AQY, 20 knots, and battleship level armor in only 12,000 tons. With the treaty limit at 20,000 tons, well there's only so much speed you can put in (20kts), so much armor (no need to armor for over 12"), and well that just leaves a ton of tonnage left over for weapons, which can't be over 12". So unless there's some rule change we will see pretty much only AQY ships as its the only way to stuff as much armament as possible into a BB.

Quote from: Desertfox on May 19, 2012, 08:41:13 PM
Not asking for a change in the rules. Just pointing out that AQY layouts are almost unavoidable as the rules are written out. One of my N-verse 2.0 ships the NSS United States packed 6x12" guns in an AQY, 20 knots, and battleship level armor in only 12,000 tons. With the treaty limit at 20,000 tons, well there's only so much speed you can put in (20kts), so much armor (no need to armor for over 12"), and well that just leaves a ton of tonnage left over for weapons, which can't be over 12". So unless there's some rule change we will see pretty much only AQY ships as its the only way to stuff as much armament as possible into a BB.

No, you wont. Look at ships of the period.
Many pre-dreadnoughts rolled up to the 17,000 ton (standard) mark, so a 20,000 ton NORMAL ship wouldn't be out of the question. You are looking at LIGHT tonnage, which we are no longer going to use. In this version of the sim, you will pay for everything aboard the ship- bullets, fuel, etc- and not just the bare hull.

That is probably where you are seeing such big tonnage discrepancies.

A final warning about A-Q-Y designs:
1.) Our civilizations have not reached the point where they are able to replicate long-base rangefinders.
Your fewer big guns will suffer historic accuracy problems at long range. These will be equal to the kinds of problems that ships trying to sight multiple calibers will have at long range, and will mean that at shorter ranges, you are throwing fewer shells.
2.) Most of our admirals are still in a 'short-range state of mind,' having gotten out of the black powder age not long ago. They are not going to realize the advantages of extreme-range combat; a few might have heard the call to 'Away All Boarders' in their lifetime. They will think that the best thing a man can do is to lay his ship alongside the enemy and fire.
3.) The penalties on semi-dread style ships seem to have scared some people off- they will be different but no greater than the range penalties you face trying to fire at long range without good rangefinders. If this has been what has kept you from these kinds of designs, then you need not fear- you will not be penalized any heavier than the A-Q-Y layouts, and I maintain that my ships are going to be of this type... hopefully that will prove that it is viable.


Now, prior incarnations of the N-verse didn't allow A-Q-Y layouts from the start.
I wanted to give it a try.
I'm starting to think it was a mistake.

I have to agree with Desertfox about the ship size though. 20 kt for battleships is almost what historically the second generation of Dreadnoughts (often called 'super-dreadnought') had. And I think my designs kind of proof that. 'Ships of the Line' with AY-only layout were usually just over 10 to 12 kt normal.


I did want to have tech levels...

By starting near 1920, I was hoping to eliminate tech levels; battleship design didn't advance significantly between the introduction of Dreadnought and the use of aircraft in naval warfare.
All the basic modern battleship architecture was in use by then- except for dual purpose secondaries... and the need for those would be limited by the introduction of effective, fast, all-metal aircraft. That not being likely to happen for a while, it seemed that 'tech levels' would not be necessary. They still won't in ships after we start.

Background ships will be less important as time goes on- so I didn't think that trying to delineate to prevent every single ship in existence at start from the instance we started building them. I figured that people would just build ships that were diverse and interesting. Apparently, I underestimated the desire of people to design pseudo-dreadnoughts because they perceive that 'all big gun' is superior in all situations.

Also, your ships are fine when you look at STANDARD displacement, Nobody.
I can roll back the tonnage limit on battleships to roughly 18,000 tons if people think that it's necessary, but your 17,000 ton standard displacement on even your biggest ships are on track historically.

Guys- the wait on a tech tree was one of the things that killed the last attempt at a restart.
WesWorld has done very well without one.

It is too hard to make everyone happy with a tech tree, so I decided to do away with them.
I then set the start date at a point where tech development was beginning to reach something approaching the 'modern' view of ships.

I'm not open to including a tech tree... it was one of the things that Snip and I decided to deliberately leave out.

WesWorld, from what I've seen, also periodically erupts into arguments over whether or not something is "reasonable" or not given their assumptions (which have changed over time).  That's not counting the arguments over whether someone was breaking the treaty back when they had one, etc, I'm talking strictly about their periodic tech arguments.


Long-base range finders were not necessary for long-range shooting.  See the Battle of the Yellow Sea for an example: both sides were shooting and hitting at ranges far beyond the range of their rangefinders (the Japanese rangefinders had a maximum range of 6000 meters or less, the Russians only 4000 meters, but firing and hitting began at over 8 miles.

I don't suppose anyone has an annotated map at this point? I suppose I could make one....

Carth is working on one. I have one final exam and a short paper to go until I am back in the mix of things

I'm looking forward to seeing one, seeing what the neighborhood looks like.....

Quote from: KWorld on May 21, 2012, 06:14:42 AM
WesWorld, from what I've seen, also periodically erupts into arguments over whether or not something is "reasonable" or not given their assumptions (which have changed over time).  That's not counting the arguments over whether someone was breaking the treaty back when they had one, etc, I'm talking strictly about their periodic tech arguments.


Long-base range finders were not necessary for long-range shooting.  See the Battle of the Yellow Sea for an example: both sides were shooting and hitting at ranges far beyond the range of their rangefinders (the Japanese rangefinders had a maximum range of 6000 meters or less, the Russians only 4000 meters, but firing and hitting began at over 8 miles.

I fired a long-range rifle caliber weapon, KWorld.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning)
My longest shot was at the fringe of the 2000 yard maximum effective range for an area target... and I was firing on a point target- if you go to Google Earth and zoom in on Lake Tharthar and find the old Presidential Palace, that is where it was- if it is still there now, I do not know. A lot of 'remodeling' has gone on in Iraq since I was there in '03-'04.

The point being- I know very well that it CAN be done.
I also know very well it is not MEANT to be done, nor is it a very effective thing to depend upon. You can't shoot ACCURATELY or RELIABLY without optics that are made fore the job- though training can sometimes compensate to a degree.

In terms of simming the battles, there are  bonuses to long-range fire if you have the kinds of fire control that will exist on ships AFTER startup (dreadnoughts). And ship built before will not get these bonuses... they will be firing at higher penalties at longer ranges. I can't post exactly what because the material is copyrighted... but the dice are D6, so even a -1 penalty can be telling.

I know maintenance for ships was changed from 10% per quarter to 2.5%.  Is the same true for ground units, or are they still at 10% per quarter?  I'm getting ready for Turn 1, so I'm trying to get my spreadsheets up and ready to go.  :)
Personally, I'd suggest leaving their maintenance at 10%, but that's just me.

Speaking of spreadsheets, if somebody who's good at Excel made an example file and was willing to share it I'd be extremely grateful. 

Quote from: KWorld on May 22, 2012, 08:13:09 AM
I know maintenance for ships was changed from 10% per quarter to 2.5%.  Is the same true for ground units, or are they still at 10% per quarter?  I'm getting ready for Turn 1, so I'm trying to get my spreadsheets up and ready to go.  :)
Personally, I'd suggest leaving their maintenance at 10%, but that's just me.

One paper left and everything will be updated. Just need a bit of decompression time.

Quote from: Darman on May 22, 2012, 05:04:02 PM
Speaking of spreadsheets, if somebody who's good at Excel made an example file and was willing to share it I'd be extremely grateful. 

See above

One downside that I'm noticing to SS3.3 is that when you include substantial amounts of "cargo" tonnage, the various tonnages aren't adjusted for that.  Admittedly, the program doesn't really have a way to designate cargo vs fittings, but still.....

For example, my Lighter Carrier has a maximum tonnage of 6351 and carries a total of 4080 tons of cargo and smaller vessels, but the normal tonnage is 6193 tons and the light is 5871.

Quote from: KWorld on May 25, 2012, 11:12:28 AM
One downside that I'm noticing to SS3.3 is that when you include substantial amounts of "cargo" tonnage, the various tonnages aren't adjusted for that.  Admittedly, the program doesn't really have a way to designate cargo vs fittings, but still.....

For example, my Lighter Carrier has a maximum tonnage of 6351 and carries a total of 4080 tons of cargo and smaller vessels, but the normal tonnage is 6193 tons and the light is 5871.

It's including the weights of cargo as part of the ship.
Not the most intuitive thing on the planet, I understand, but the Miscellaneous Weights section isn't supposed to be for cargo, actually. That is why the 'discount' on the construction of the ships comes into play.

OK, finals are over and my brain is sufficiently unscrambled to polish off the rules and other things. That being the case, anything that needs clarification or alteration (within reason) before I make these final? We are also closing in on the start date, June 16th, when we want to get things going, so please let me know your country name and such so I can add it to the master list. Also, if those of you that have them could start posting fleet plans just so we can see how that is coming along. Would help to make sure that no math FUBARs have been committed by anyone, even the egghead studying math. *points at self*

Well, there's still these two questions hanging open.

Quote from: snip on May 22, 2012, 05:17:17 PM

Quote from: KWorld on May 22, 2012, 08:13:09 AM
I know maintenance for ships was changed from 10% per quarter to 2.5%.  Is the same true for ground units, or are they still at 10% per quarter?  I'm getting ready for Turn 1, so I'm trying to get my spreadsheets up and ready to go.  :)
Personally, I'd suggest leaving their maintenance at 10%, but that's just me.

One paper left and everything will be updated. Just need a bit of decompression time.

Quote from: Darman on May 22, 2012, 05:04:02 PM
Speaking of spreadsheets, if somebody who's good at Excel made an example file and was willing to share it I'd be extremely grateful. 

See above

Also, the concept has the various nations needing to expand to acquire more resources, how is that handled?

Another maintenance question: how are ships that are in reserve handled?  Since maintenance costs double during wartime and the rules don't seem to have any similar increase in output for the factories, we're probably going to need rules of some sort to handle ships that are not available for active use but can be made active after some time and some amount of cash....

Im working on updating the rules document now, and should have a revised on posted after work today, or maybe even during lunch if things continue to be slow (yay IT work). I will have to go back over the spreadsheet then to make sure that all the numbers match up and such. As to reserves, I did not wish to include another category due to the complexity which stems from lots of categories. I can work out something for increased production during wartime if that is a feature that the community would like.

- Infrastructure Development Factories. Are these separate from the startup 32 Military Factories or are these part of the startup 32 Military Factories?

- Infrastructure Development Factories are based on the formula F^(3/7)). I don't think that that formula is going to give you a round number. Round up or down?

- The Infrastructure Development Factories are fixed to produce IPPs and cannot change to military production. Perhaps an idea that the increased wartime production will come from those factories if wartime production "is a feature that the community would like"?

- Looking at the types of ships, what if a <20000 ton ship does not fall into any of the categories? For example a +20 knot, 2x3" gun armed 450 ton minesweeper or a +20 knot, 2x 5" armed 2000 ton minelayer? In those two cases, the speed prevents them from being put into the only category they might fit into (gunboat). Is a player allowed to put the 450 ton example into the DD category and the 2000 ton example into the CL category or are such ships falling outside the categories prohibited?

Quote from: Walter on May 29, 2012, 01:23:47 PM
- Looking at the types of ships, what if a <20000 ton ship does not fall into any of the categories? For example a +20 knot, 2x3" gun armed 450 ton minesweeper or a +20 knot, 2x 5" armed 2000 ton minelayer? In those two cases, the speed prevents them from being put into the only category they might fit into (gunboat). Is a player allowed to put the 450 ton example into the DD category and the 2000 ton example into the CL category or are such ships falling outside the categories prohibited?

Ships are classified in the most restrictive manner- so you are right, both would be moved into the 'next highest' category.

QuoteInfrastructure Development Factories. Are these separate from the startup 32 Military Factories or are these part of the startup 32 Military Factories?

Separate, as the number is determined by Military factories. There will be four IDPs at start up

QuoteInfrastructure Development Factories are based on the formula F^(3/7)). I don't think that that formula is going to give you a round number. Round up or down?

Down to the closest whole number.

Quote
The Infrastructure Development Factories are fixed to produce IPPs and cannot change to military production. Perhaps an idea that the increased wartime production will come from those factories if wartime production "is a feature that the community would like"?

Im strangely fond of the idea...let me work with it.

Quick update: I think I have everything fixed, clarified and tweaked as much as it needs to be, but I haven't had a chance to talk with Carth about them. Our work schedules don't quite mesh until later in the week. Will get the econ stuff out as soon as we have had a chance to go over it together.

Map?  Anyone seen a current map?

Some players still have yet to get there selections into Carth. That is the holdup at this point AFAIK.

But how de we make a selection without a map?

the blank map is posted here (http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5817.0.html), use that but ask carth first what areas are already picked.

OK- from EVERYONE (except Nobody, Snip and KWorld):

I need you to cut and paste the locations of your Ports onto a clip from the map.
I need it in a picture- words aren't good enough anymore, unfortunately.
We are getting a bit crowded now and I want to make sure that we don't need to open up more area.

Send your picks to me either via E-mail or by posting a photobucket link.
If you have already sent me a link or file, your place is reserved.
Jef, I have your general vicinity reserved, but really need an illustration so I know where to place you exactly.

Is there an updated map with the taken areas on it?

Quote from: Desertfox on May 30, 2012, 11:07:03 PM
Is there an updated map with the taken areas on it?

Not ATM... some people reserved only with areas described in words.
That's why I asked for everyone except those who had sent pic claims to send one.
I'm having a busy week and wanted to get it done by Sunday, but I actually have to work an extra day on Sunday. I'll try and do it Saturday. Discribe the area in general terms and I will try and have the places already claimed up in some identifiable fashion tonight or tomorrow.

I was thinking perhaps there could be a further clarification on the matter of aircraft carrying ships. The rules ban flattops, and battleships, cruisers, and destroyers are not allowed to carry aircraft. However, under the rules a ship of some type is allowed to carry up to eight aircraft. This seems to allow a ship of some kind to be allowed to carry seaplanes, balloons, and dirigibles, but no ships are allowed to carry aircraft except for coastal defense ships and gunboats (only then because they are not explicitly prohibited). Are seagoing ships are allowed to carry aircraft given these restrictions, or just the coastal ships?

Also, are we allowed to do Kearsarge style stacked turrets providing the ships meet all the other restrictions?

Note: I merged your post from the Meeting room to here. Trying to keep all the questions in one place.

Carth will have to answer the aircraft question, as the treaty is his baby.

Yes, stacked turrets of different calibers are allowed ala Kearsarge, however this may not apply to main guns.

On the subject of aircraft, does the limitation on aircraft include unpowered towed ones such as observation balloons, kites, gliders, and gyrogliders?

AFAIK, those are to be treated as storyline only and can have no role in conflict. Also a note on AC, Fighter and Bomber units will not be allowed at the game start. Only Recon planes will be available, and they will preform as well as a 1910 aircraft could expect to.

will answer at home after work. No powered aircraft on starting ships. Balloons possible but risky.

QuoteBalloons possible but risky.

Of course risky!!!

Our countries are clean from big birds bats predators, but, other islands & continents are not.

Not to mention normal real world weather considerations!

I figured that flying machines would not really be suited for naval uses if they also are 1910 technology. They would also be rather dangerous to use in areas not cleared of wildlife, especially seeing as the premier reconnaissance aircraft of 1910 greatly resembled a large bird:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/RumplerTaubeInFlight.jpg)

Also, I noticed a potential typo in the rules. I am considering a 125 mm gun (4.92 inches) but the rules say that a 5 inch gun is equal to a 120 mm. Real life 5 inch guns are classified as having a caliber of 127 mm when expressed in metric.

At game-start, the Columbiad Republic isn't (officially) doing anything with heavier-than-air craft, they exist but the government sees them as too limited to be of interest at this time.  Powered lighter-than-air craft, on the other hand, are getting official interest, a smallish rigid airship is under construction for testing purposes.

Carthaginian, I think you inadvertently edited your response into the bottom of my post instead of quoting.

Quote(b)   a vessel with no more than two guns of 5"/120mm, and which mounts an equal or greater number of secondary guns greater than 3"/76mm.

You are bang on with one of the reasons that why we don't have any aircraft on ships.

The metric measurement is a mistake.
When Metric and Imperial are in disagreement, then my conversion is in error and IMPERIAL units are right.

Where are the rules for starting fleets and the start date itself? I've looked in the rules thread and all over the site but have not been able to find this. Some people have 1920s ships up but I was thinking we were starting in 1910.

Treaty states 1910.
Original discussion was 1920, but 1910 is the start date.

Starting fleet - 500,000 tons.

Quote from: Carthaginian on June 03, 2012, 01:06:51 AM
Treaty states 1910.
Original discussion was 1920, but 1910 is the start date.

Starting fleet - 500,000 tons.

What about tonnage for specific ship types and dates of construction?

Quote from: Delta Force on June 03, 2012, 01:14:15 AM

Quote from: Carthaginian on June 03, 2012, 01:06:51 AM
Treaty states 1910.
Original discussion was 1920, but 1910 is the start date.

Starting fleet - 500,000 tons.

What about tonnage for specific ship types and dates of construction?

Your nation has a production figure.
Don't go over.
Please note that 100% of everything isn't posted yet. We are still working a bit.
Draw up your fleet on the assumption of Snips indicated production capacity and a 500,000 ton limit.

Quote from: Carthaginian on June 03, 2012, 01:21:40 AM

Quote from: Delta Force on June 03, 2012, 01:14:15 AM

Quote from: Carthaginian on June 03, 2012, 01:06:51 AM
Treaty states 1910.
Original discussion was 1920, but 1910 is the start date.

Starting fleet - 500,000 tons.

What about tonnage for specific ship types and dates of construction?

Your nation has a production figure.
Don't go over.
Please note that 100% of everything isn't posted yet. We are still working a bit.
Draw up your fleet on the assumption of Snips indicated production capacity and a 500,000 ton limit.

I've found where the 500,000 ton limit is talked about, but where can we find the production capacity information? Manually looking and search function hasn't shown anything.

It can be found here: http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5791.msg75280.html#msg75280
Download the pdf file. On page 5, it says that we all have 32 Military Factories at the start. Each MF can produce 1 Production Point which equals 1,000 tons shipping materials for building ships, so if you use all factories for shipping materials, you would end up with 32,000 tons. Of course, you can't actually use all that for building ships since you would also need some PPs to produce land and air units if you want to expand them and use PPs to pay for the maintenance of all units.

Quote from: Walter on June 03, 2012, 04:07:18 AM
It can be found here: http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5791.msg75280.html#msg75280
Download the pdf file. On page 5, it says that we all have 32 Military Factories at the start. Each MF can produce 1 Production Point which equals 1,000 tons shipping materials for building ships, so if you use all factories for shipping materials, you would end up with 32,000 tons. Of course, you can't actually use all that for building ships since you would also need some PPs to produce land and air units if you want to expand them and use PPs to pay for the maintenance of all units.

Thanks for helping out with that. I have been on that page and scrolled past that post dozens of times. It's been hiding in plain sight quite well.

Yes. Very suspicious that it was hidden that way.  ;D

*emeges from cloud of dust*
moving apartments this weekend *cough* will get the revised document posted one I have a chance to go over it with Carth

"500 000t from 1910 to 1920..."

Why not 50 000t per year to have regular SS progression ?


Jef

1910-1920? From what I understand from the rules, Turn 0 is 15 years, not 10 years (originally from 1905 to 1920, not 1910-1920). I guess that Jef wants a bigger fleet. :)

the years at 1895 to 1910, so fifteen years. The 1920 dates are an artifact of an earlier draft.

I'm glad its 1895 because that is when my first ships are being designed from

Couple questions,

I read somewhere about a 20 knot limit on battleships and other ships, is there a speed limit or did I just misread something?

If I'm reading the treaty correctly, you can have treaty busters in service provided they were at least 75% complete as of the start of the treaty. So say pre-dreads with 13" guns would be allowed but no new ones could be built. Is this correct?

Quote from: Desertfox on June 05, 2012, 06:47:17 PM
Couple questions,

I read somewhere about a 20 knot limit on battleships and other ships, is there a speed limit or did I just misread something?

If I'm reading the treaty correctly, you can have treaty busters in service provided they were at least 75% complete as of the start of the treaty. So say pre-dreads with 13" guns would be allowed but no new ones could be built. Is this correct?

Treaty busters might be 'allowed within the treaty' but I believe that I have stated- at least individually to several people- that there will be no treaty busting AT ALL.

QuoteThirdly- there will be no 'treaty-busting'; this is a sure ticket out of the game.
The treaty entitled AN AGREEMENT UPON LIMITATIONS FOR NAVAL VESSELS is the Rules as Written for this game. Nations may debate, threaten, or even produce misinformation about treaty-busting vessels; Players will abide by the restrictions of the treaty. If a player thinks the treaty is too restrictive, then there are mechanisms to make it less restrictive... get some other nations to support your idea and jump on it.

Treaty Busting = Banhammer.

If that has not been made clear prior to now, then it is now.
No ships that aren't permitted by the treaty are allowed- the loophole was simply to make the treaty sound more like the WNT. If it has to be closed, I will eliminate it.

NO TREATY BUSTING.


As for the BB speed limit, I don't recall making one.

Fair enough, I was thinking in terms of Hood. A disclaimer stating that pre-treaty ships should fall within the treaty limits would be nice.

For going forward purposes, are there any expected changes to the ship design rules for 1910?  Ie, turbines migrating to other ship types where they're currently not allowed, triple turrets, all-big gun designs, a greater percentage of oil firing, etc?  Or will 1910 be under the same rules as 1909?

All big-gun and turbines for sure. Trip's most likely given historical precedent from at least two classes from the era. Oil-firing has some strings attached IIRC, but Carth has that in the works so he will have to answer that.

Back after an absolutely fucking worthless week at work.
Will be hard at work today after dinner with my wife.
Trips will be a treaty item, as will a great many other things.
Oil-Firing will be a 'special' technology... once per year, I'll roll a D10. If the roll > game year, then oil-firing will become available. There will be a mass e-mail sent out that will let everyone know that oil-firing is available. Ships in service or under production will be able to be altered according to forthcoming refit/rebuild rules; new ships will be able to be designed without penalty.

Not sure I understand what you mean by "Trips will be a treaty item, as will a great many other things."  If by this you mean that we'll vote on whether these things will become available on some basis, I'll put down a marker that I'm in favor of allowing triple and quad gun mounts (the latter a la the Normandie-class design, the former from Dante Alighieri).

Quote from: KWorld on June 11, 2012, 01:38:47 PM
Not sure I understand what you mean by "Trips will be a treaty item, as will a great many other things."  If by this you mean that we'll vote on whether these things will become available on some basis, I'll put down a marker that I'm in favor of allowing triple and quad gun mounts (the latter a la the Normandie-class design, the former from Dante Alighieri).

We are assuming that the treaty had no changes at the 3910 conference.
This means that a repeat conference will be held in two game years time- 3912.
That being the case, what you will need to do is 1.) make a convincing case, 2.) rally support of other players and 3.) get the allowance for these items voted in in the 1912 'Treaty Conference.' You have the qualifications for them being allowed: period appropriate example for both triples (Gangut-class, 1910) and quads (Normandie-class, 1912). All you would need is a majority vote... just like we did on the Torpedoes poll. That is how I intended treaty amendments to be done, a real-life style debate of merits followed by a vote of the 'representatives of our nations.' Any period-appropriate design feature can be voted upon.

Ok, few updates on the rules. The following additions and changes have been made for sure.

• Military Airships were added into the aircraft section. They will cost 7PP each, wich is a little more then a group of recon aircraft. Upkeep follows the same rules as other aircraft. An unlimited number of airships can be in service when the game starts.
• The amount of starting PP has been halved. The new total is 960PP available for turn 0.
• Ports have been changed. Previously ports all drew there stats from only one PP investment. Now each category (Supported tonnage, maximum size of ships that can be constructed/modified and number of ships being constructed/modified) requires its own PP investment.
• A rule has been added on the only situation in with IDF's may be used for non-infrastructure purpaces. "1.4.B) If a nation is unable to meet its upkeep requirements in a time of war without using 75% or more of its total Military factory number ,rounded up to the nearest whole factory, that nation may use IDFs for covering this gap in maintenance. The PP gained from this may not be used for any other purpose."

[li]Some minor changes in wording regarding non-Naval military units completion time. Some ambiguity has been cleared up.
[/li][/list]

Things that still need to be added are as folows. Note this list is not exaughstive.

• Some form of making colonies outside of the mainland matter.
• Tweeks to numbers and wording as needed for clarity and functionality

Anything I have missed here?

Two things you've missed out that were discussed earlier in this thread:

1 - No air units may be purchased at game start

2 - Types of land units at game start are limited to infantry and artillery.

So, assuming that things will eventually get moving, what restrictions ARE changing for 1910?

1 - Will all big-gun ("Dreadnought"-type) ships be allowed?

2 - Will turbines be allowed in medium cruisers?

3 - Will turbines be allowed in armored cruisers?

4 - Will turbines be allowed in battleships?

5 - Will superfiring main batteries be allowed?


It's been stated that non-twin turrets will not be allowed for 1910, and that oil-firing will become available at a random point in the future.  How about increasing the percentage of oil-firing from 90% coal to, say, 80%?

1-4 are for sure allowable. 5 does have historical precedent from the era, so I see no reason for its exclusion. I need to touch base with Carth on that however. Your proposal regarding mixed-firing works for me, but I will need to confirm with Carth before I say yay or nay on the matter.

So, I have a idea regarding the construction of large liners and other ships that would fall under that area of the rules. Since we are paying only 1/4 cost for those hulls, why not have the yards that can accomidate them during construction and the like be subject to a similare rule. Im thinking that saying something to the effect of "ships build to civilian standards can be constructed at any yard that could build a warship of X% of the total tonnage of the civilian ship in question." would be workable. I know some of you have big liners planed and would like to give you a way to build them. Does this sound like a good solution?

The problem I see with that is that is, as far as construction goes, the size of the shipyard and it;s slips and docks are the main hindrance to building larger vessels.  If a shipyard can build a 250m liner, it can build a 250m warship.  There are other, separate limitations (like gun size that can be manufactured, armor thickness, etc),, but .those aren't limits on how large the ship can be.


Oh, speaking of gun size limits, given that the date of design of the British 13.5"/45 is 1909 and the date of design of the US 14"/45 is 1910, can be we start building ships with guns larger than 12" in 1910?  :)

technically yes, but the treaty prevents it.

I could wish the term for the player agreement on what is and isn't legal wasn't "treaty".  That's an IC term for an agreement between countries, which isn't what the ship equipment and size limitation rules are.  Treaties are something that your country agrees to, the rules apply without any agreement on your country's part.

The "treaty" is actually a treaty that your country has agreed to according to the storyline.  The point of it being a treaty is that we can amend it when 3/4 or 3/5 or whatever the number is have agreed to the amendment.  So the only rule is you must obey the treaty.  The treaty can be amended, the rule cant.  At least that has been my take on how its supposed to work. 

An IC treaty, though, can be skirted or broken, but the "treaty" being talked about is the tech restrictions.and rules we're operating under. in an OOC fashion.

Quote from: Darman on June 28, 2012, 05:37:43 PM
The "treaty" is actually a treaty that your country has agreed to according to the storyline.  The point of it being a treaty is that we can amend it when 3/4 or 3/5 or whatever the number is have agreed to the amendment.  So the only rule is you must obey the treaty.  The treaty can be amended, the rule cant.  At least that has been my take on how its supposed to work.

Correct.

In the rules it says that a torpedo boat is defined as "(a)   A vessel of less than 500 tons carrying a primary armament of torpedoes" Since it is easier to work with numbers divisible by 10, and since all the other definitions are for ships greater than a specified tonnage, can the torpedo boat definition be changed to exclude vessels that are over 500 tons?

That will be taken under advisement.

What is the difference between the side and center rotating torpedo tubes? Does it just refer to where the tubes are located on deck? Can they fire fore and aft or only deliver torpedo broadsides? Are the reloadable torpedo tubes the only ones that are capable of being reloaded (carriage and rotating tubes only holding one)?

Also what is the difference between broadside and casemate mounts, and what kind of mount is used by guns that are in barbettes (without turrets) but have some face armor?

Quote from: Delta Force on July 21, 2012, 06:46:22 PM
What is the difference between the side and center rotating torpedo tubes? Does it just refer to where the tubes are located on deck? Can they fire fore and aft or only deliver torpedo broadsides? Are the reloadable torpedo tubes the only ones that are capable of being reloaded (carriage and rotating tubes only holding one)?

A side-mounted torpedo tube is one that's mounted to side of the centerline, like the above-water torpedo tubes on most WWI cruisers or the tubes on the US four-piper destroyers.  Side mounts cannot fire directly fore and aft, though they might have a somewhat wider arc of fire on their side of the ship than a center-line mounted tube would.  Generally they cannot fire on the opposite beam, think of them as torpedo wing turrets not mounted en echelon.

QuoteAlso what is the difference between broadside and casemate mounts, and what kind of mount is used by guns that are in barbettes (without turrets) but have some face armor?

A broadside mount is a mounting firing through a fixed gun port, with the gun poking out of the side of the ship and having traverse limited by the shape of the gun port, while a casemate, aboard ship, puts the gun in a mounting that is set in a large cut away section of the hull or superstructure with the mounts protection surrounding the mounting.  Casemates can have quite large fields of fire (120 degrees or more), while broadside mounts will have much less (30 degrees or so).  The open barbette mounts were used mostly for very large, slow firing guns, if SS doesn't let you install a gun shield on those about the only thing you could use would be a mount & hoist mounting.

Thanks for the help. One more question I have is about what kind of designation should be used for autocannons. Are they considered to be auto fire guns (not being manually fed like QF and being too large to be an MG)? Also, do weights change when you reclassify what kind of gun something is? I've been putting everything down as a breechloader but my 90 mm guns are QF and my 37 mm guns are autocannons.

Quote from: Delta Force on July 24, 2012, 07:15:39 PM
Thanks for the help. One more question I have is about what kind of designation should be used for autocannons. Are they considered to be auto fire guns (not being manually fed like QF and being too large to be an MG)? Also, do weights change when you reclassify what kind of gun something is? I've been putting everything down as a breechloader but my 90 mm guns are QF and my 37 mm guns are autocannons.

Well, when you say "autocannon", what are they like?  If they're like the Maxim 1 pounder, then you'd code them as an autocannon, I'd think (I don't think SS will let you code them as a machine gun).  Weights can change when you change the coding: breach loading to quick firing shouldn't make any difference, but autocannon might be heavier than breach loading.

Quote from: KWorld on July 24, 2012, 07:31:10 PM

Quote from: Delta Force on July 24, 2012, 07:15:39 PM
Thanks for the help. One more question I have is about what kind of designation should be used for autocannons. Are they considered to be auto fire guns (not being manually fed like QF and being too large to be an MG)? Also, do weights change when you reclassify what kind of gun something is? I've been putting everything down as a breechloader but my 90 mm guns are QF and my 37 mm guns are autocannons.

Well, when you say "autocannon", what are they like?  If they're like the Maxim 1 pounder, then you'd code them as an autocannon, I'd think (I don't think SS will let you code them as a machine gun).  Weights can change when you change the coding: breach loading to quick firing shouldn't make any difference, but autocannon might be heavier than breach loading.

They are 27 mm (0.25 kg) and 37 mm (0.50 kg) and similar to the 1 pound guns.

Edit: I've modified one of my designs using 37 mm guns and 90 mm guns and it appears that the type of gun something is makes no difference on the weights. One issue though is that auto fire cannons are not allowed even in 1900 because Springsharp says it is too early for them, even though the 1 pounder design entered service in 1895. Should I just list it as QF and put in a note that it is an autocannon type weapon?

Quote from: Delta Force on July 24, 2012, 07:44:16 PM
They are 27 mm (0.25 kg) and 37 mm (0.50 kg) and similar to the 1 pound guns.

Edit: I've modified one of my designs using 37 mm guns and 90 mm guns and it appears that the type of gun something is makes no difference on the weights. One issue though is that auto fire cannons are not allowed even in 1900 because Springsharp says it is too early for them, even though the 1 pounder design entered service in 1895. Should I just list it as QF and put in a note that it is an autocannon type weapon?

That's probably the way to do it, since SS3b3 won't let you do it correctly.  Ideally, it would let you code it as a machinegun, because it was just a Maxim machinegun on steroids, but SS3b3 won't let you do that.

Do we have to have a constant rate of ship production over the course of our startup navies, or can we have slightly more tonnage for the last few years? Right now I have a constant rate of 35700 tons over the years of my building program, could I take around 3,000 tons from an earlier year and put it towards a later year to construct a scout cruiser?

I don't really know.  I think i tried that and someone said that the amount I was starting with was too much.  I may also have started with some weird number like 60,000 or something....

From what's been said, it doesn't have to be constant, but don't expect to build nothing for 10 years and then go crazy the last five.  My plan has an upward curve to it (I did my planning in 5 year blocks, not year by year), based on 2 ideas: 1, the Columbiad Republic Navy had a building "spurt" from 1884-1894 and then had a low period, with things building back up again as time passed; and 2, the CRN, as ideas and dreams for overseas colonization percolate and crystallize into intentions and plans, gets more and more funding.

One thing we might want to consider is having an earlier cut-over for oil firing for small, fast ships.  Historically, the RN had 2 classes of oil-fired destroyers (the Tribals or F-class and HMS Swift) that were laid down in 1905 & 1907.  The RN reverted to coal firing for the 1908-09 class (the Beagle or G-class), but went totally oil-fired after that, which is earlier than the QEs.  The German G169 class large torpedo boats switched from coal-firing to 35-40% oil firing in 1907, and the G101 and B97 class destroyers were totally oil-firing when they were laid down in 1914.  The Russian Novik, laid down in 1910, was 100% oil fired, carrying 418 tons of oil.  The US Paulding's, laid down starting in 1908, were also 100% oil fired.  The Italian navy switched to oil with the Soldati type 2nd group, which was laid down in 1905.  The French switched with the second ship of the Chasseur class, Janissaire, which was laid down in 1908.

What I find interesting about this is that the various navies went to oil firing for their destroyers or torpedo boats substantially before they did so for capital ships: the first RN DDs with oil firing predate HMS Queen Elizabeth by 7 years, the first US DD with oil firing predates USS Nevada by 4 years, the Russian Novik predates the Borodino-class BCs by 2 years (though none of the Borodinos were ever finished), etc.  It makes sense to do so, for several reasons: 1st, the destroyers are small and need the higher-density fuel for their fast running and to fit into tighter spaces more than larger vessels; 2nd, the amount of fuel required by a destroyer is less than a battleship, when oil supplies are less readily available; 3rd, destroyers can be built quickly and prove the way for the larger ships.

Suggestion:
1905 - Allow coal percentages as low as 60% for small, fast vessels.
1908 - Allow oil-firing for small, fast vessels.