Personally I find national sheets easier to use and find stuff than megalists. If I want a particular British gun or an American missile I don't neccessarily want to trawl through 800 guns just to find what I want. I doubt if we've even half of the possible marks of guns, differing shields and mounts etc. Smaller states of course wouldn't justify a national sheet but certainly the Superpowers do just for the size they can be alone.
The other benefit of national sheets, and what I loved in partciular about Erik_T's excellent US sheet was that the directors can be shown too. Nothing winds me up worse than some joker who puts random radars all over the place. That's a bigger problem than hull penetration given the increasing types of FC radars since the 50s.
I think the idea of deck penetration is useful but really without 100% exact data its pretty meaningless and folks should be working out for themselves what can be done. I can see Eriks arguements but the crazy kitbash brigade still won't take much notice and we'll forever be dogged by pixel issues as members fight over whose counting is the most accurate.
There are pro's and con's in both ways. I orginally thougth of having the directors also shown, but space and the fact that many of the guns actually operated with various kinds of directors easily made it impossible. Making Nationwide would be (as mentioned) good for superpowers, USN, RN, VMF and RM certainly would fill a sheet, with Japanese and German not farbehind...but then there would still be the odd weapons from little nations and stuff like that.
Personally I cannot relate to "jokers" who place stuff where they want, so I don't know how to appease or teach them properly, but perhaps Im too "old school bucketeer" from the times when those who draw also knew what they were supposedly doing, we didn't came here to learn about ships
But time have indeed passed by
Also, Im intended NOT to have these to turn into megalists, I agree wholeheartly that they are no good and use. Thatst why I want them to remain as small as possible. If we cannot prevent that, then we have to choose some other method.
Ace, your current sheet is in "mega" cathegory (and without too much of anger), they still lack some guns. Did You notice the little sheet over Bofors guns I posted here?
I try to put out some more guns myself as well.