Those of you that weren't running the dev test version, the turret traverse thing is really nice. Makes small nimble turrets a thing that's worth thinking about.
As in bigger isn't automatically better.
I have always heard they were horrendously bad and I have no real interest either. I find ACCs and missiles, lots and lots and lots of missiles more interesting and aesthetically pleasing.
So no.
I've always liked torpedoes, but I find it such a hassle to lay down new hulls for different designs. I tried making a small torpedo-reliant destroyer but it kept capsizing when the rotating torpedo mounts turned either way.
There's probably about 200 hours in this thing, and it's finally finished*! I still need to find a nice name for this ship though. I based her on the HMS Warspite (Elisabeth-Class in general) but went freestyle to make it competitive and interesting in the game, also because now I have an excuse for making an ugly design. The Royal Ascalonian Navy proudly presents the HMS (insertname):
She is a Fast Battleship with a main armament of twelve 460mm (yes, the Ascalonian Navy uses the metric system, **** Britannia) guns in three armoured turrets. Her secondary armament consists of another twelve dual purpose 150mm guns in six turrets along the sides. Her anti-aircraft defence is further bolstered by six CIWS systems firing 48mm shells at threats at close range.
Despite being armoured with (translating in-game meters to mm, because realism) a 200mm thick main belt and a 300 to 400mm thick citadel protecting the engine, magazines and turret internals, she manages a respectable 29 knots, 30 on a good day. In addition there is 100mm of deck armour above the most important ship components. Her vitals can resist her own salvoes quite nively, safe for the rears of the main turrets. After losing previous battleships in the field due to catastrophic magazine explosions after lucky penetrations, the Board of Naval Construction has enacted strict new rules to ensure that a magazine explosion of a single turret will be unable to spread to nearby turrets.
Her main weakness is against fast missile-carrying aircraft and submarines, where her defensive armament is insufficient. Fast aircraft can reliably evade her gunfire while submarines are simply nigh-impossible to catch. She has a torpedo belt to protect against the worst of that, but her only missile defences are a passive heat sink system in the single smokestack and an active system firing flares when enemy missiles are detected in the vicinity of the ship. Sadly this still makes the ship vulnerable to laser-guided missiles and radar-guided missiles, against which her only defence is a good escort or extreme range.
AKA, help me find a name for the ship and its class.
* The first version is finished. We'll talk after I put it through combat trials for the actual finished version :p
Nice, even if it is in serious need of a paint job.
So railguns are alright now, since they don't need a lot of extra parts and you can use an electric engine and a small fuel engine dedicated for recharging to just boost the accuracy of your guns, without committing to a 200k recoil monstrosity.
Finished a new ship, this time a monitor type ship designed for shore bombardment.
HMS Cerberus:
Her main armament is an improved version of that in the HMS Endurance battleship, the one that will be placed in the HMS Perseverance BB under construction. She has no flak but a large amount of light AA guns that will kill most planes that enter effective range really quickly. Her speed, seaworthiness and manouvrability are horrible, but her armour is surprisingly resilient.
They don't have firing constraints but they only open up at 900m range, and usually nothing gets withing 900m range that's not an air target. This thing relies on range (like most of my ships actually) for most protection. Adding some mightn't be a bad idea though.
From the Depths, building a DD from scratch based off of existing player designs and historical ships.
Currently planned to have four dual purpose 120mm turrets firing APHE shells without any sort of fuse (fused shells are better against planes because le flak effect but suck against surface targets as kinetic damage from impact becomes a rarity, and a penetration fuse against planes might make my shells whollop straigh through a vulnerable wing before exploding and doing minimal damage). Given that the main guns are inadequate for anything more than superficial damage on armoured targets, I might add a fuse anyways.
I plan on giving it an oversized AA barrage as well as a large amount of fast and deadly torpedoes.
Played a few hours and I can see the potential. I'm just waiting for a custom campaign with ww2/1 era ships instead of the ****ing airborne chickens and star treck **** you get in the vanilla one.
Well, Dangerous Waters is finally here. Ships look great but take a lot of CPU juice.
Speaking of which, there seems to be an LOD system of sorts in the works. Nick has been hinting at massive performance gains so maybe even I can go past 30k blocks soon.
I finally managed to create a frigate (on the left) that doesn't look like complete ass. The one I was so proud of in January (on the right) is by comparison ugly, ineffective, vulnerable and more expensive. It never wins a single fight when I pit the two against each other. The only real problem with the new design is that it drinks fuel like nobody's business, most likely not getting through a single battle without running out. That said, the RTGs and battery bank keep it moving and firing even if there's not enough power for shields, and it can repair pretty fast.
