Actual dTon of a Space Viking Nemesis?

[kilemall]

It depends on the weapons, the defences, and everything. If hitting wasn't a problem and a few massive hits would finish even a battleship, 20th century battleships might've ended up looking more like HMS Benbow, with a single massive gun fore and aft (or just one huge gun forward on a smaller ship).

Problem is HG posits just the two Imperium type short and long range, although even Imperium has the nominal suicide range. Whereas I am maneuvering so main engagement ranges can be at 500000km plus ranges which is where CT gives you a -5 to hit. I’m honoring that through another mechanic (weapon value drops per 100000km) so both damage and probability drops.

Far enough out there and bay weapons cease to be able to hit at all and spinals drop (more so then single value, it’s a little complex for this side conversation). Armor is more of a pen/no pen thing rather than sliding value. So at that extreme range, only spinals and missile shots are dueling.

 

[whartung]

Think of battleships, wouldn’t it be odd to have a rule that you can only have one 16 inch gun per ship? Wouldn’t it make sense then to have smaller ships?

16" guns on BBs are more bay weapons.

They're not structural. The spinal is structural. You build the gun, and hang the rest of the ship off of it.

BBs were certainly designed with the large guns in mind, to be a stable platform, to deliver ammunition to them, etc. They weren't just bolted on like an AA battery.

The Schwerer Gustav (which is not a ship) is probably the closet thing we've ever had to a spinal mount, not including ancient vessels designed to ram.

 

[Condottiere]

When I suggested His Majesty's Ship Unicorn, with a single primary gun in a monoturret, I suspect there was a lot of behind the scenes smirking.

Taking the Japanese experience, structural integrity is integral to both performance, and seaworthiness of such a vessel.

An example being His Majesty's Ship Furious, supposedly two eighteen inchers in monoturrets, where reportedly, the paint flaked off the the hulls, when they were fired.

There's a sort of ratio between tonnage and the primary armament, that permits recoil to be somewhat, safely, absorbed.

 

[kilemall]

16" guns on BBs are more bay weapons.

They're not structural. The spinal is structural. You build the gun, and hang the rest of the ship off of it.

BBs were certainly designed with the large guns in mind, to be a stable platform, to deliver ammunition to them, etc. They weren't just bolted on like an AA battery.

The Schwerer Gustav (which is not a ship) is probably the closet thing we've ever had to a spinal mount, not including ancient vessels designed to ram.

Again, structural to 30000 ton ships, not 100000 ton plus.

 

[Badenov]

As far as bays go, it seems fair that since you could mount 100T of bay per 1000T of ship, as much as 10% of the ship's mass can be mounted to fire like a bay from whatever sort of weapon. So, for a 100,000T Battleship, you can mount up to 10,000T that way.

 

[PVernon]

Ship with spinal mount USS Vesuvius 1888.

USS Vesuvius (1888) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[BlackBat242]

It depends on the weapons, the defences, and everything. If hitting wasn't a problem and a few massive hits would finish even a battleship, 20th century battleships might've ended up looking more like HMS Benbow, with a single massive gun fore and aft (or just one huge gun forward on a smaller ship).

HMS Victoria (1887):

• 2 × BL 16.25-inch (413 mm) guns
• 1 × BL 10-inch (254 mm) gun
• 12 × BL 6-inch (152 mm) guns
• 12 × 6-pounder (57 mm) guns
• 6 × 14 in (360 mm) torpedo tubes

 

[Condottiere]

Armament
1 × 320 mm (12.6 in) Canet gun
11-12 × QF 4.7-inch (120 mm) guns
5-6 × QF 6-pounder (57 mm) Hotchkiss guns
2-5 × QF 3-pounder (47 mm) Hotchkiss guns
4 × 356 mm (14.0 in) torpedo tubes

 

[whartung]

Curious what the tech limitation was on making those ships larger.

Obviously, we managed to do it in time, but looking at these, I'm thinking "If they could have put two of those turrets on one of those, they would have", but, clearly, they didn't.

So there must have been some engineering reason to not do. Could have been economic/doctrine, but I'm guessing is likely some engineering/material issue they had. (Or, maybe it wasn't, but the materials necessary were simply too expensive.)

 

[Dragoner]

Yes, there were engineering issues with making them larger.

 

[Rupert]

Curious what the tech limitation was on making those ships larger.

Obviously, we managed to do it in time, but looking at these, I'm thinking "If they could have put two of those turrets on one of those, they would have", but, clearly, they didn't.

So there must have been some engineering reason to not do. Could have been economic/doctrine, but I'm guessing is likely some engineering/material issue they had. (Or, maybe it wasn't, but the materials necessary were simply too expensive.)

Budget was a big one, and infrastructure another - bigger ships need bigger yards to build them, bigger docks to take them, deeper anchorages, and so on (which is also partly about budget). They also need larger foundaries to make engine and frame parts, and so on.

 

[Condottiere]

Time and space, and some smartass reinventing Jeune Ecole.

Between the time when the oceans drank the Franco Spanish fleet and the rise of the sons of Aryans, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Victoria, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Britannia upon a troubled brow. It is I, her chronicler, who alone can tell thee of her saga.

 

[BlackBat242]

Armament
1 × 320 mm (12.6 in) Canet gun
11-12 × QF 4.7-inch (120 mm) guns
5-6 × QF 6-pounder (57 mm) Hotchkiss guns
2-5 × QF 3-pounder (47 mm) Hotchkiss guns
4 × 356 mm (14.0 in) torpedo tubes

The Imperial Japanese Navy Protected Cruiser Matsushima (1886).

Her two near-sisters Itsukushima (1888) and Hashidate (1888) reversed the position of the main gun, placing it forward.

The first 2 were built in ... France, of course. And they were part of the original Jeune Ecole craze, not a "reinvention".

The third was built in Japan at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal to a slightly modified version of the French plans.

Hashidate 1916:



Matsushima 1905:

 

[Condottiere]

Basically, the French had a go with asymmetrical warfare against a more powerful opponent.

They weren't the first, and they won't be the last.

It usually turns out to be a temporary solution, if at all.

 

[mike wightman]

The Jeune Ecole strategem wasn't a complete waste - we got submarines, torpedo boat destroyers... and those torpedo boat destroyers were pretty effective sub hunters too.

 

[Condottiere]

I didn't say it was a waste, just that countermeasures can be developed.

And, as someone once pointed out, the bigger power can afford to adopt the new weapon systems, in addition to maintaining their current line of battle.

I'd say that the Royal Navy was fairly innovative, and had parallel developments.

 

[whartung]

There must be another version of that Hashidate cruiser, the plastic models I find On The Web don't look anything like that.

Yes, apparently there was the turn of the century cruiser, and then, later, a gunboat around WWII.

I saw one page where they said apparently the cruiser was just a horrible design, but I agree, its just a cool looking ship with that gun and bow and the weapons sticking out the sides.

 

[Rupert]

Naval technology was changing so incredibly fast in the period from about 1860 (Warrior) to 1910 or so that nobody was sure what did or didn't work - and that was changing year by year as well. So you get these really odd or crazy-looking ships, because people were trying out new ideas all the time. Also, what we consider to be 'normal' is derived from those ideas that survived and became the norm.

If ships like Hashidate and Victoria had turned out to be the optimal form and became the norm, we'd be talking about how weird ships with even fore and aft gun layout were. At best we'd be saying how they looked nicer and it was a pity how things turned out. More likely people would laugh at them and how they lacked the 'authority' of a massive forward gun.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm not sure how seriously this was taken, but one idea was that the back and front gun configurations on two separate cruisers were actually meant to be one battery, in that two sailed in formation and shot at the same target.