Shipbucket

Hey I'm new
I've read the rules and guidelines, and I've done a little lurking.
I feel really silly making this post, I seem to do this almost every time I join a new forum and I hate it every time.
Through my lurking I've learned that I'm way out of my league here, over half the things you guys discuss when giving suggestions on designs I've never heard of, or just barely know about. I've always been fascinated by ship design, but I've never had the chance to learn it. Instead over the last year or so I've been focusing on small arms design. The extent of my ship knowledge pretty much comes from Naval Ops Commander, and very small amounts of my own research.
I've looked at the parts threads, but they're all labeled with things I don't understand, so I was wondering if there was a list of all of the part 'genres' so to say that a ship would need? I've learned already that guns aren't just worked from the bridge like I thought, there are directors which after hitting google I've learned is one of the many little details on the superstructure I've usually taken for granted and considered nothing more than aesthetic detailing. How do I know what "details" I need for what situations? How do you actually tell the difference between time periods? It all looks the same to me.

Which brings up another question, if building say an AU ship, must it still use RW parts? Am I allowed to create my own directors and such, with my own choice of arrangement and shape? After learning what parts I need of course.

And I've read that hosting images offsite is a good thing, but advertising other sites is not. I host all my work on my Flickr page, and Flickr has a rule that all images embedded offsite must include a link beneath linking back to the original page. Is that considered advertising? (Example below)


NBE Hossfield Class Submersible Ship by ~~@ Lord Malachi @~~ The Awesome Coon of Awesome, on Flickr

Of course the example image wasn't created in SB style, but rather with Pimp My Gun, but it was the nicest looking naval piece I had in my photostream, I thought I'd at least keep the image as relevant as I could. And larger thumbnails are possible as well, I just didn't feel a large one was needed for this.

So, other than the Flickr question, I guess I'm asking that while you have a "Guidelines for noobs to SB", is there a "Guidelines for noobs to ship design" somewhere?

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

Well alright then, can't respond to the PM relating to this post, so I'll just do it here.
Thanks Rodondo, that should help in the general sense, especially the pre-WWII era. But I was more looking at how I saw in some threads people could tell the difference between specific radars and what eras they belong in. I'm afraid I'll end up designing a WWI ship covered in WWII+ details due to not knowing any better.

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

Welcome aboard.

The Flickr things is ok, as it's a mandated part of their policy. I myself use google sites, and once It gets up and running again, a private server, but I'm the exception.

As for how to learn things, well, Lots and lots and lots of reading, and asking questions. 5 years ago I was where you were now, and I still have a lot to learn. Any books by Norman Friedman that you can get from the library are worth a read. His work on battleship design from 1905 to 1945 (Google Books link) is a good jumping off point. It gets you the basics from which you can learn the rest.

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𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

Ok cool

And thanks for the book link, I don't live near a library but I can always see if any of my friends can get to one. At the moment I'm trying to pick apart one of Jabba's french destroyers, see if I can spot the different parts and what they do, doing some personal modification to get the hang of working with pixels instead of my normal PMG format.
After I have the hang of pixels I'll try a RL ship from scratch, the trick will be finding one I want to do that isn't massive lol.
I've already learned a bit from lurking in the new member forum, reading the suggestions and such in there, but I'll be forever astonished at how much you guys know!

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

I went over a drawing of Oregon City and labelled some of the larger components to hopefully help you understand what's going on with these ships.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

When it comes to learning what's what and even more importantly, what does what, there's really only one way and that's to read and study blueprints. The Historic Naval Ships Association has an excellent collection of so-called "Booklets of General Plans"
I'll recommend the book Naval Gun by Ian V. Hogg and John Batchelor for a general introduction to late 19th and early to mid 20th century warship design. So long as you don't mind buying used books you can get it for next to nothing on Amazon
If modern warships are more to your liking then you should take a look at Modern Warship : Design and Development by Norman Friedman. It too is available used from Amazon
It's a little aged (Just about everything about AEGIS was classified at the time) and rather one-sided, but the author is completely aware of it and makes sure to point it out to the reader.

When it comes to designing ships yourself, here's a couple of questions you should answer before you place your first pixel.

1: Choose a timeframe. When was the built? This will have a deciding impact on your ship. A ship from 1900 where a whole lot different from 1910.
2: What mission is it going to perform? Independent operations, flagship, fleet screening, scouting, trade protection, ASW, AAW, etc, etc. The timeframe will decide if certain missions are available or not. (Asking for an AAW ship of any type in 1920 would get laughed at. So would asking for an ASuW optimised capital ship today)
3: What restrictions does the design face? How much does it cost? Does it have to fit within a specific drydock? How big a crew can the navy support? This will also decide how many units will be built.
4: Based on 1-3 you should be able to decide what type of ship it's going to be. Is it going to be a cruiser, aircraft carrier, submarine etc.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

Thanks Colosseum! That image combined with Ace's notes on that huge King George, and the notes on my Gallia Class pretty much covers all the placement details I can think of.

And book purchasing will have to wait till summer, I have virtually no hours at work until then and don't qualify for unemployment yet. But once my hours pick up I'll definitely pick up a few

For now, all of those questions will be answered by the strategy game. Current timeframe is 1914-1919, with my country having air technology 5 years ahead of its time. Mission will depend on what I need, I need a raider (Cruiser I'd assume), port defender (Destroyer?), a flagship (Battlecruiser or Battleship). Raiders could double as trade protections can't they? And possibly scouts as well considering they'd have speed?
Restrictions are what I have for cash in game, which fluctuates as I spend it of course, but my income would probably be my guideline. To keep the forum based game simple it's the only resource, so population would be purely for realism. I could just use the RW population of the countries I control? And I do have to balance my naval/army/airforce budgets all from the same income, but again due to simplicity there is no upkeep on units.

But I do try to take these things into consideration, I adopted oil burners a little before their time due to a commonwealth nation discovering large oil reserves and agreeing to sell only to me.

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

Ah, well if you're aiming for 1914-1919, then the Oregon City example above may not be the best bet -- sorry! Oregon City represents the near-zenith of American gun cruisers (being superseded only by the awesome Des Moines class), and quite a few things changed vis-a-vis ship design in the period between 1919 and 1946.

For reference, you might take a look at some of the early USN battleships designed during World War I. USS Texas BB-35 comes to mind. Though the existing museum ship is in its 1945 configuration, there are a myriad of photos available online of Texas as launched right before the Great War.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Oh it'll all come in handy as the era progresses 5 years every week. But thanks again.

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.