Posts:2504 Joined: July 1st, 2014, 12:20 am
Location: New Zealand
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I meant to remind you of something in my last post.
Manning your ship.
Everything you have on your ship requires somebody to 'man' the position.
Your 1926 ship is designed as a complete unit with accommodation for the crew. It is not designed for future upgrades. Every time you add something to your ship you also add the crew it will take to run/man the equipment, and you have to find accommodation for them. That is why so much of upgrading ships is trading in one part for another.
That is why when looking at your ship the first thing I get rid of is the casemates. Doing that frees up quite a bit of weight that can be used elsewhere, but most of all it frees up space for accommodation of all the extra people you want to add with new AA guns, secondary guns, electronics, all the people manning those need somewhere to call home.
I get the feeling that the bow is a bit too short and stubby (and the forwardmost turret apparently moves forward in the 1944 version while the bridge area moves aft). Personally I'd try to lenghten the quarterdeck marginally (say 12 pixels more), and the foredeck significantly more (up to as much as 90 pixels), but without increasing the overall lenght, just shortening the midship section somehow (you'll get a bow and stern shape more similar to that of the IJN Fuso, wich has a similar gun layout, and thus I believe a reasonable hull shape).
The 1926 ship feature a strange empty space between th e forward tripod and n°3 turret (yes I know, you even asked for feedback before going to the 1944 version but I've stumbled here only now, sorry, my bad!). Depending on the powerplant setup you have you might either put a funnel there in 1926 (wihich gets removed in the later eefit as the ship is re-engined) or, if there is no boiler rooms forward, you can reverse the positioning of the turret and having the guns pointing aft and use all the empty space to shorten the midship section in order to lenghten the bow. You also shorten the citadel like that, saving armor wight. Finally, with the casemate removed, why not plating over the entire, now empty, casemate deck back to the aft superstructure. You gain more main deck space for the DP guns and, later on, more light AA space. Other than increasing freeboard too.
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This ship is armed with 16" guns in triple mounts. The ship was supposed to have been designed around 1930, but I accidently screwed up by adding AA guns.
That looks OK in the layout, for what I can judge. Better than the previous class at any rate, being less overloaded.
In that context, I appreciate the boats section, which looks much more functional here.
Might there be that you have pushed the lesson too far the other way? What is the free space between the X turret and the aft bridge for, behind the plane catapults? Did you plan for a hangar for your floatplanes in that position?
OTOH your secondary battery in the mid-section is probably still packed too tight. Looks to me like the turrets can't turn 180° without collisions. Your firing arcs are going to be limited. Maybe cut down to 6 turrets, or reduce the forward AA battery? As far as the AA fit itself, this looks similar to the 1944 upgrade of your William class. Guess you can develop a baseline 30s configuration back from there?
I've adjusted the position of the secondaries. Also the space between the catapult and the aft gun turrets is empty. I didn't really know what to put there, so I guess it's just extra space for seaplanes or something.