Hi all I was wondering if there was any thought of using a ships broadside weight instead of ship displacement to determine units. I think it wouls be a more accurate way to determine how many guns a ship should have as it is a ture indication of a ships firepower. The other thing I was thinking is that pumps are defensive units and the size of your pump could be determined by the belt armor of the ship. Also the pump would not count towards a ships total units. I am wonder what everyone thinks of this idea, please post your thoughts here.
Broadside weight... you mean the total weight of metal that a ship can throw in any particular direction, right? Would this include main guns only, or secondary cannons, or torpedoes as well? Also, would there be any sort of compensation for differing qualities of cannons, like Britain's 15" guns vs Italy's 15" guns? How exactly would you determine the units? Would a superior number of smaller-caliber guns, throwing the same weight of metal as a lesser number of larger-caliber guns, get equal units, or would the bigger guns get more? For armor, would only the thickness be considered, or would the type, quality, and coverage of the armor be considered, as well? How would underwater protection affect damage control, and what about a ship's historical damage control capabilities? For any change this dramatic, a lot of thought must be put into it. how historically accurate do you want to get? How much more complex is the system? What ships will be affected, and how? There will be a lot of questions, and you'll have to be ready to respond to them all. Bringing a little more history into the game sounds great, but are you up to the challenge of making it happen?
Broadside weight at least as I have read is determined using a ships main batteries only. The calculation would be the number of cannons multiplied by the shells weight multiplied by the ships rate of fire per min. As for armor I would just say armor thickness at the armor belt only for ease.For example the Iowa class used a 2700lbs shell, multiply that by 9 for the number of cannons, then by her rate of fire which was 2 rounds per min per cannon. you would get a broadside weight of 48,600lbs. Yamato would have 3219lbs shell mutiplied by 9 cannons mutiplied by 2rounds per min gives the Yamato a broadside weight of 57,942lbs. Those are just two examples.
That would seem to imply a substantial qualitative advantage of Yamato over Iowa. Would anybody consider that a Yamato is a 20% "better" ship than an Iowa, as the ratio of broadside weights would suggest? How many more "units" should a Yamato be "worth" than an Iowa? The bigger issue is: Does anybody really want to throw their club's ship allocation/balancing system into complete disarray? What's the benefit? JM
The reasoning was an more accurate way to determine a ships offensive units as I can give several examples of ships that are not built very often because they are under armed for there size. 1. Renoun/Repulse 2. Kongo Class. The other reason is to have more historical accuacy something that may bring in more history buffs.As far as Iowa vs Yamato, Yammy was built to take on other battleships where Iowa would be hard pressed to slugg it out due to her being so under armored for her size. Yamato is more than 20% larger than Iowa in displacement, she is much heavier ship. This was an idea, I threw it out there to gauge peoples thoughts, it would be up to the clubs themselves to decide if they wanted a system like this over their existing system. The benefit John a more accurate system than the ones most clubs use today and to see more variety in the ships built in this hobby. I was not attacking any clubs rules set it was just an idea.
The Renoun & Repulse sucked in real life. They were call Refit & Repair. They're no good in our hobby either. Kongo's were pretty good in real life. They are pretty good in our hobby. Most consider them the best fast class 4 ship. A real Iowa would have crushed a real Yammato. Foe the tech details see: http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm While it would be interesting to rewrite the unit allotment with your idea, there is no need for it. At best there might be a hand full of ships that go from "good" to "bad" and from "bad" to "good". The best way to make a ship popular is to make a fiberglass hull and bring it to NATS. Then crush people with it. After you crush someone everyone wants that ship. Battle more talk less.
That's a bit unfair to Renown and Repulse. My money would be on either of them 1v1 with a Kongo IRL. back on topic, there's a lot more that would need to be addressed if you started making changes like suggested. Such as IJN shell reliabilty and gunnery accuracy. Iowa would hardly be "hard pressed" because Yamato couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and IJN shells weren't overly reliable. Iowa is going to straddle if not hit on her first salvo (see Nowaki) and it's only going to get worse for Yamato. Also, there's a lot more research that would have to be done on shell weight, rate of fire etc. Then you're going to have weird stuff, like 5 unit Des Moines (hello 10 rpm/gun 332 pound superheavy 8" shells!) Why? The current unit breakdown provides a semblance of relative balance between ship types. You'd probably end up breaking more then you fix.
Chris, If you are going to be battling in IRCWCC, MWC, or Treaty, which use the Unit system, methinks you are going to have an upholl battle to get them to change to the system you propose. If you are going to be battling in Big Gun, of course, units are not used (in clubs I am familiar with). Units are not really necessary. In Big Gun, armament, armor, etc. is determined by what the original ship had (per Conway's), though WWCC has some maximum armament limitations. Also, in those clubs which limit pumping capacity, pumping capacity (governed by the displacement of the prototype ship). Speed is governed by speed of the prototype ship. To me (granted, I am a Big Gunner, and bay be a tad biased in this direction), it is far simpler to just look up the specs of the ship rather than to worry about units. It also removes much of the "politics" and such things as "unit creep." The converse argument is that, with a unit system, you do not have to look up the ship in Conways to know how you can arm her. If you are starting something altogether new, then you can, of course, do whatever you wish. However, be aware that you may foreclose being able to battle with any other formats. Hoep this helps. Cheers, Wreno
It was just an idea that a few of us we throwing around up here in Canada. I posted it just to get some opinions not to start anything bad. As for battleing with other clubs only one of our members has battled with another club in the last 5 years so that would not be much of an issue. We already use the IRCWCC rules set with 2 changes the first is that the Bismarck class is a 7 unit ship and the other is the Iowa class is 23 sec.
Tug it works as they were the fastest BB's ever built we thought it was right to make the model the same, It does not over power them as most battlers here on the east coast battle with class 6 or smaller and can easily out manuever an Iowa and with less ships on the water we see almost no boxing in of ships. You have to pick your shots alot more.
Doesn't the 24 second cruisers suffer? An Iowa can be made to turn very well ... as well as a cruiser. Given an extra second of speed with its turning ability ... ouch!
It has not been a problem as of yet. Also our Iowa captains really do not waist there time with cruisers unless they become a real threat.
I have to admit there is some interesting ideas here but at the same time you would be doing a uphill battle. You would really have to do some figureing and get it out on paper and make it simple so that a new person could follow it easy.I do agree that in a fight that the Iowa would come out on top of a Yamato unless it does some thing really stupid. As long as she used the radar and stayed at long range she could out do a Yamato. Buddy
I disagree Crzy, the current fast gun systems base the dermining of units on weight not on a accual ships firepower. This system works but is far from perfect, while it is simpler than what I proposed that does mean that it is better. The other main problem with the current fast gun systems is that it basically tells you how you can arm your ships, this to me is a serious handy cap.
I kinda got to agree with Chris on this one, for unit calculation at least. BUT, there needs to be a very simple method of figuring things out, i.e. like Chris said # of barrels x shell weigh x rate of fire of the main battery only. The reason is simple, 8 x 15 inch guns do more damage than 9 x 11 inch guns, (yup QE vs Scharnhorst), 6 x 11 inch do more damage than 8 or 9 x 8 inch 9 Graf Spee vs most other CAs. A slightly larger difference in speed for various classes wouldn't be too bad either, it would get other classes built than the 'normal' ones that are usually found at the pond. Any way, I don't suggest that everything changes now, but it is something to think about. Just my $0.02 worth. J
There's a lot more work that needs to be done then simply looking at broadside weight. You have to look at rate of fire as well. You'd have to factor in shell reliability. You'd have to factor in fire control. And that's just on the offensive side. We can't forget that units are also used to determine a ship's defense (number of pumps). So then you have to factor in armor thickness, and quality because not all armor is created equal. You have to factor in subdivision, and underwater protection. What all of these things have in common is weight. more firepower and more armor = more displacement. The absolute beauty of the present system is it's simplicity combined with how close it actually equates the relative fighting power between ships.
