Thank you for raising more issues I hadn't considered. One thing I found of interest if you are building ships after about 1910, is that the "Control Station" category gives you a lot of passive bonuses to base accuracy, long range accuracy and aiming speed. By the time 1930 comes, a bare BB 2 hull with no towers at all gets +31.5 base accuracy, +45 LR accuracy and +55 aiming speed. For me this means the relatively tiny incremental bonuses for different front and rear towers (and range finders) become much less important. Geometry, like taking the most compact rear tower as you did or getting a built-in barbette, is more important.
just got the game. i was expecting something a lot more basic and straight forward from the game. u brought up and showed me a lot of things i had no clue were even options lol. and did a great job showing, explaing everything. like penn values etc.
The size can't be overstated. The sweetspot for a BB is 45,000-50,000t. People, he's right. You don't need 80,000t. You can fit bigger gun on a the bigger hull, yes, but they're also going be a lower grade. There's very little upside to the truly giant ships. Dreadnought III, 44,000t, that you can often build around 1915 can take you through the game. Never scrap it. It's never too small. I even called my Chinese ships on that hull the Refit-class. It can have a bad foreweight offset, abxy solves that to some extent, but there are always trade offs. I often take TNT III over TNT IV for the flash fire reduction. Other differences are quite small.
Personally, I don't tend to keep my ships around for more than 15/20 years. Sure, the displacement might be the same, but even if you fully refit it, you still have crappy 1910s towers, a ship that can't do more than 25 knots without ballooning in cost, and because of the high refit costs, it still effectively costs as much as a modern battleship.
@@notarobot7620 My 1949 Dreadnought III disagrees. Can you build a better ship for $149m? What about maintenance costs? That was on 1.08.9, but the broader point remains. To replace a D.III hull as Austria-Hungary, you have to go quite a big bigger. They don't have many hull choices. (Or didn't. It could change.) And about 3 times I designed a new ship on a new hull, and couldn't justify building it.
I know exactly how to build my battleships. I have my own personal design philosophy I’ve nailed down and I’ve learned what works best for me. That said, it’s still interesting to see what other people do for their own ship designs. Definitely gonna give this a full watch when I get home.
The tips I have: 1. Prioritize accuracy and target acquisition. Keep them at arms length and the ship will preform well. 2. Your armor just has to be “good enough.” All it needs to really do is mitigate incoming damage. 3. Secondaries are important, don’t skimp on the secondaries, and use standard ratio for your ammo. AP is only effective on heavily armored ships. HE works on all of them. 4. Speed is important, once you get the layout, get that ship as fast as possible, battleships are especially vulnerable to torpedoes, speed is a soft counter to torpedoes. 5. The guns , while an important part of the ship, don’t need to be large caliber. Although it depends on the role the ships going to play. If it’s a battleship killer, higher than 13 inch. But if you just want a fleet supremacy ship that can take on other battleships, anything larger than 11 inch will work.
12:30 2" guns are mean little things. I've seen quite a few DDs get mulched by the unending storm of lead they put out, including a few of my own. 46:23 yep, that's about right for the AI.
I usually go with speed and armor, and close in, where small, fast firing guns become deadly, and slow ones become weak You can barely get hit, and if you do, it isn’t too much That does not mean I don’t like stuffing my ships full of large guns though
Good set up for the design-fase. For armour penetration, I usually multiply it by 1.4 or even 2 to account for the between 45-60 degrees oblique hits (and add some extra for the downward angle). That makes me work with a 5" penetration value for DD's armoured to 1,5" with high Krupp when looking at the HE options for the secondaries (while also eyeing the AP value of the smallest guns in order to size/calibre them to be able to pen a DD at a decent range). Did you mention it often enough that you should always go over the settings one more time in case you've missed something. No matter how many ships you've already designed! ;-)
All my battleships are "whatever I feel like making" I get a collection of a fleet going with both New York and Nelson-inspired ships with a few Bismarcks mixed in.
I have found going with a 3 tier design element helps with economy and war time preparation construction. 1. Pocket Battleships - small, armored, rapid firing brawlers that don't break the bank and can roll ships off in 18 months. 2. Your standard design as seen in this video. 3. A large caliber, long range, sniper. Not as heavily armored and is sort of slower. Just meant to out range enemies and let the escorts spot and keep the enemy at range.
Fire power all the way for me. Typically I get 4x3 17 inch guns combined with a vast array of secondary guns (6s,8s,5s,3s and 2s). My BBs only go 26 knots though so my BCs are the ones who have to chase after the CLs and DDs Edit: Plz note that you most definitely want mark 3s or higher for the main guns and auto loaders or else you can’t hit anything nor you can’t shoot for at all
That is the United States Navy approach in WW2. All you need is 4 triple turret guns of the highest caliber centerline alignment and you are golden with respect to the American naval wishlist line of hard hitting heavily armored battleships.
I always start by making sure the fore and aft armour are the same value. After the towers i place the funnel to make sure i have enough weight. I love going for slow, fortress like battleships with a lot of sec. Guns.
@@BrotherMunro To quote Nuke from Nuke'sTop5 YT channel. "It did not go well". Ships designed 1920 (Germany), First fight near mexico in Dec 1922. The ships themselves are throwing allot of shells down range and getting hits in, just not big damage, which was to be expected with 14's i guess. But in reality it didn't go well because of mines, well i think it was mines, even though i have CL's and DD's with mine sweeping all my DD's were immobile from the start of the fight. everything except my BB, 2 BC's and one CA was written off before the fight.
@@ussenterprisecv6805 I'm good now thanks sir. The horrors of submarines seem to have disappeared and a number of gun bugs which I'd not noticed before too. Enjoying a japan early start playthrough now.
"how to build battleships for dummies" Step 1: GUNS Step 2: MORE GUNS Step 3: EVEN MORE GUNS Step 4: realize you need to add more armor and a funnel. Step 5: ??? Step 6: profit
In balancing a ship, I favor altering armor thicknesses. I also tend to-- where I can-- purposely set up an aft offset so I can put more armor on the bows.
The reason I don’t recommend this is because using the armour values will increase your pitch and roll instead which will negate the benefits of having no offset. Armoured prows certainly do have advantages though (especially for all forward designs).
@@BrotherMunro Yeah. I have a tendency to push towards my opponent, and having an armored bow is helpful in that endeavor. I am still quite nooobish while designing ships, but I find the actual design fascinating. I also tend to try to mix in a little bit of history into my designs ie I put torps on Japanese cruisers while generally not using them on US (though that depends on when the US cruisers were designed--Looking at you Omaha, Atlanta) or at least my "skin deep" knowledge aids me in that. (I would love to create a Belfast like ship, but the models just aren't there..) Anyway, I am going a little bit off topic. My design preferences aside, if after moving things around doesn't quite get your offset to where it's outside of your tolerance, I don't think you should shy away from using armor to bring it within tolerances. (Like moving the offset by 1-2 percentage points, or however many points that doesn't compromise stability.) I arbitrarily picked those numbers btw. Perhaps something like that would be worthy of an Advanced Design vid? Though it might be too broad of a subject? Love your vids.
I find that, at least after the early 1910's, I don't really need any more flash fire protection beyond barbette 2 or 3. By the time a competently armored battleship is seeing hits that can proc a flash fire, it's probably combat ineffective and at deaths door already. I'd rather take the weight savings and invest in better speed and maneuverability. Max barbette thickness I find is best in smaller ships that are more likely to see full penetrattion from high caliber HE rounds, particularly battlescruisers
I havnt gotten to later years, but for BB and BC I tend to go more for speed, decent armor and the biggest guns I can get that have a fire rate over over a round a minute.
One of the battleships I designed I called the meme machine. Lots of armor, fast, and lots of smaller caliber guns. This was mid 1900 I think and no gu was over 11 inch I think. Was it super effective, not too much but the sheer number of rounds it put out was awesome. But still wasn't enough dakka
I will say, that level of armour is way overkill. The way I do the "protect against your own guns" approach (which is my usual way of figuring out armour) is to include all the citadel layers but one (so the first two layers on all-or-nothing) into the math, which typically lets me protect battleships pretty comfortably down to the 10km range (I'm not 100% sure how the math works for the shell pen reduction between layers, but I've been running on the assumption that each layer is 2x more effective than the previous one and haven't had a non-flash-fire or torpedo-induced catastrophic explosion yet).
Have you got any suggestions for 16” barrel calibre? I was thinking of trying a variation on your design, but I don’t want to be ham strung with slow reload times. I’ve found that can be fatal! Thanks
Is it just me or has the campaign recently started favouring really large battles? Yesterday I had a one-battle war with Spain in my US 1910 campaign. Spain brought 1 BB, 25 CA, 22 CL and 24 DDs versus my 5 BB, 3 BC, 8 CL and 25 DDs. Now France is going to war against me and the first battle will be in excess of 100 ships fighting.
I'm new to the game, but 20" of belt armour seems insane to me. The closest to this design is probably the Littorio class, which had 70mm RHA, 250mm cellulite, 280mm cermented steel, 150mm oak backing, on a 15mm steel backing plate, then there were further 36mm and 24mm RHA bulkheads. Usually, only the 70mm and 280mm plates are considered the "main belt armour" though (for a total of 350mm or ~14"), with everything else being various bulkheads to catch splinters. Unless everything is being included in the "belt armour" number this seems off... The total thickness of steel in the Littorio's horizontal protection only added up to 425mm (16.7") (that is all angled, but still). If you were to count up all the layers of KGV, you would still only reach 18.25" (over the magazines).
I think its important to realise that real world battleships settled on (for the most part) 14 to 16 inch guns, against which a 14 ish inch belt is fine. In UAD though you will have to deal with much much bigger guns, so protection is often considerably more than real world designs.
So if your actual thickness is X and the apparent thickness is Y and your armour quality (as a decimal so 150% is 1.5) is Q then: X=Y/(1+Q) and Y=X*(1+Q).
i know you said that battleships are like the most important kind of ship, but i wonder if it would be possible for a like extra challenge to do a no battleship campaign, where the largest ship you build is a BC. Considering here 15 inch guns proved very capable, and if a BC runs into a battleship it can't handle it usually can just run away. Maybe one of the weaker economy nations.
This may sound like a strange question (and for an older video), but is it more efficient to go for quadruple turrets or triple turrets? In theory, a ship like that might be able to go 3 x quad turret 14" guns.
Depends on your definition of ‘efficient’. Dual turrets are the most accurate so in terms of tons per hit they are actually the best option as triple and quadruple turrets have accuracy and rate of fire penalties. I would say though that this very much depends on the hull, some suit a 4 turret arrangement but many do not. You kinda get a feel for main gun layouts as you play but this video is very much intended to be a base for new players to work off, not a definitive ‘do this and only this’ sort of thing :)
@@BrotherMunro Think of efficiency as the ratio of penetrations for a given mass. So in that regard, the formula is: Efficiency = (Accuracy at 10 km x Rate of Fire x Number of Barrels) / (Gun Weight + Offset Weight) In other words, the goal is to develop a system that causes the most penetrations of a given amount at range, for a given weight.
@@crazyelf1 under that criteria dual guns are the most efficient unless the shorter citadel tips the balance in favour of triples which is only really doable once triples have their accuracy/RoF penalties reduced with techs
@@BrotherMunro That's fair - so that would suggest that in the late game, triples might be the best option. It would also entail looking at another option - for example, if the 13" cannons had a higher Mark, 4 sets of quadruple 13" "Super Heavy" shells for a total of 16 guns on the ship might be viable and possibly superior, unless the deck of the enemy battleships were thicker than the Yamato (230mm or about 9 inches at the thickest points).
@@crazyelf1 generally speaking higher marks are better but armour in UAD (especially deck) tends to be much thicker than historically so 13’s tend to lack enough punch for capital ship warfare
Thank you for your explanations, just checked them out for armor once again. Still one question: You suggest a all or nothing armor scheme... but what relations, what values would you suggest if I want more than minimum fore and aft belt and deck?
The best way to determine that is to pick a particular weapon type to armour against. Easiest option is to look at the HE pen of your own main guns and armour your extended bits enough to prevent them from penning your own armour, but you can also plop down a ‘sample gun’ like an 8” and look at what it can go through to get a different target.
I don't know if you've covered it but why bother putting 2-3 inch guns on that BB, by the time potential enemy reaches to 1km range (when guns get accurate) superior 4-5 inch guns are already hitting enemy long before.
2 and 3 inch guns fire so quickly that accuracy is irrelevant; they basically just hose any DDs that get into their range with fire which can knock out the funnel and torpedoes on anything that made it past your bigger secondaries (which can happen if the AI decides to just charge and your gunners have decided to shoot with their eyes closed as they tend to do occasionally in game)
Broadly following your setup using the latest version of the game. Due to game up dates, 20" main belt and 10" main deck armour isnt really feasable anymore, so I'm using 16" main belt, and 8" main deck, with 1.5" everywhere else save for the tower which is still at 21". However I'm finding that I'm taking a lot of flooding hits - do I need to up the armour thickness on the 1.5" areas, or has the game evolved to better shells since this vid was made? Thanks.
You might want to up the extended armour yes (I’m assuming you are playing with the Dreadnought Improvement Mod) 3-4” should protect against all but the very largest HE shells.
@@BrotherMunro yep playing the latest version of DIP. I’ll give those suggestions a try. Keep turning out the videos - this is a great channel. I’ve been putting your shell experiments to use!
So going with a smaller gun that fires more often but is firing higher pen shells is better than a higher caliber? Do smaller guns tend to hit more often the deck than belt at higher range due to lower muzzle velocity (but have also a lower chance to hit)?
It really depends on the era and what you prefer. I’d advocate a balance between raw hitting power and rate of fire, so typically mid to late game battleships would have 14-16 inch guns.
@@BrotherMunro Two other things: First, great profile picture! I just realised that you are Battlebrother Munro! Second, you talked about special layouts for 7" secondaries, do you have or know a video referring to those special layouts of BBs?
@@TheyBrutus I don’t think I’ve done a video on them but you can mount 7” guns in a similar way to Yamato’s secondary guns by using a secondary barbette to fire over the top of the main guns
Did things change this much from 1.09 to 1.4, or is this a "custom battles" vs campaign difference? Campaign start, 1930 Japan, and modern battleship I hull won't let me go below 60,000t and costs over 300million for the "bare" hull...
@@BrotherMunro - yeah. Looks like a lot of things changed. I've been trying to recreate some of your designs from this series, and can't match them at all, even money aside. Though maybe it's a country issue? Is a particular hull the same for all countries? Or is a Spanish "Modern Cruiser I" different from, say, a Japanese "Modern Cruiser I"?
hold on is not 100% armor quality the defoult and then you can go up to 1.5 the thickness by having 150% quality? are you sure the 150% is a 2.5 multiplaier not that it's a 1.5 ? i mean if you are right then i stand corrected but i thought 100% was more acordingly to that the armor would hold 100% up to it's thickness as it did not have debuffs by being worse quality.
It can be confusing until you realise the definition the UA:D devs use, that the default armour (and many other properties) is 100% and then modifiers are applied. At the start of an 1890 campaign you have the choice of: Iron Plate Armour, at -25% quality (but with belt armour weight savings), or - Compound Armour, at +35% quality (with much smaller weight savings). The -25% quality of Iron Plate Armour means your armour is only 75% as effective as you think, so 4" of armour gives 3" of protection against a shell hitting perpendicularly. It doesn't mean you have negative armour.
The default (even though it is impossible to actually get at the moment) is 0% - this is when the actual thickness and apparent thicknesses are the same
@@BrotherMunro okay thank for the clarification, i seem to need to chose a bit different ammo than i currently use ;) i thought for sure so much extra pen would cause over-pens and no citadal hits
I usually prioritize speed over firepower and tend to have good deck armor edit: I also go for 5-10 percent longer barrels and increased ammo since I usually build mine for long slugouts anyways
It all seems pointless to me, no matter what 'tips' I try I keep getting completely wiped by 13-14 inch gun armed battlecruisers in the 'Dreadnaughts vs. Modern Cruisers' scenario of the Academy... that one mission seems just deliberately designed to be unfair. I had 12-inch deck armor and still took a four-digit damage hit!
Oh the naval academy is ludicrous - this guide is absolutely not intended for that. I haven’t even played it in ages, but you need to repeat missions a lot and go with very janky builds like armoured bathtubs and such
@@BrotherMunro I barely finished this mission, once... then 1.09 dropped and erased my progression. D:< Doesn't help I'm all of a newbie at this still. I was having fun with all the missions before and after even, just this one single example is complete bollocks.
That particular mission seems broken, for some reason the AI's accuracy is godlike while even with the best training and tech it takes a few salvos to start getting hits, by which point you're taking accuracy penalties from damage taken. Baring the enemy pulling a Hood idk how you're meant to do that one.
The guns are fucking ridiculous in this game 20 inch belt that’s 4inches more then Yamato had. to protect against 15/45 guns the British bl mk2 15/45 guns penned only 14 inches at that range
![ละลาย (LALALYE) - DAOU PITTAYA ต้าห์อู๋ พิทยา [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wo6r9TgausI/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you for raising more issues I hadn't considered.
One thing I found of interest if you are building ships after about 1910, is that the "Control Station" category gives you a lot of passive bonuses to base accuracy, long range accuracy and aiming speed. By the time 1930 comes, a bare BB 2 hull with no towers at all gets +31.5 base accuracy, +45 LR accuracy and +55 aiming speed.
For me this means the relatively tiny incremental bonuses for different front and rear towers (and range finders) become much less important. Geometry, like taking the most compact rear tower as you did or getting a built-in barbette, is more important.
Definitely agree.
just got the game. i was expecting something a lot more basic and straight forward from the game.
u brought up and showed me a lot of things i had no clue were even options lol. and did a great job showing, explaing everything. like penn values etc.
Glad I was able to help!
The size can't be overstated. The sweetspot for a BB is 45,000-50,000t. People, he's right. You don't need 80,000t. You can fit bigger gun on a the bigger hull, yes, but they're also going be a lower grade. There's very little upside to the truly giant ships.
Dreadnought III, 44,000t, that you can often build around 1915 can take you through the game. Never scrap it. It's never too small. I even called my Chinese ships on that hull the Refit-class. It can have a bad foreweight offset, abxy solves that to some extent, but there are always trade offs.
I often take TNT III over TNT IV for the flash fire reduction. Other differences are quite small.
Personally, I don't tend to keep my ships around for more than 15/20 years. Sure, the displacement might be the same, but even if you fully refit it, you still have crappy 1910s towers, a ship that can't do more than 25 knots without ballooning in cost, and because of the high refit costs, it still effectively costs as much as a modern battleship.
@@notarobot7620 r/ultimateadmiral/comments/wm4154/a_dreadnought_iii_hull_battleship_first_launched/
@@notarobot7620 My 1949 Dreadnought III disagrees. Can you build a better ship for $149m? What about maintenance costs? That was on 1.08.9, but the broader point remains. To replace a D.III hull as Austria-Hungary, you have to go quite a big bigger. They don't have many hull choices. (Or didn't. It could change.) And about 3 times I designed a new ship on a new hull, and couldn't justify building it.
I know exactly how to build my battleships. I have my own personal design philosophy I’ve nailed down and I’ve learned what works best for me. That said, it’s still interesting to see what other people do for their own ship designs. Definitely gonna give this a full watch when I get home.
Can you please elaborate what your philosophy is, I'm interested to see what it is
I try to make them fast but still have a pretty good punch too them, so they usually have 15-16 inch guns.
@@jaxton2207So italian
The tips I have:
1. Prioritize accuracy and target acquisition. Keep them at arms length and the ship will preform well.
2. Your armor just has to be “good enough.” All it needs to really do is mitigate incoming damage.
3. Secondaries are important, don’t skimp on the secondaries, and use standard ratio for your ammo. AP is only effective on heavily armored ships. HE works on all of them.
4. Speed is important, once you get the layout, get that ship as fast as possible, battleships are especially vulnerable to torpedoes, speed is a soft counter to torpedoes.
5. The guns , while an important part of the ship, don’t need to be large caliber. Although it depends on the role the ships going to play. If it’s a battleship killer, higher than 13 inch. But if you just want a fleet supremacy ship that can take on other battleships, anything larger than 11 inch will work.
12:30 2" guns are mean little things. I've seen quite a few DDs get mulched by the unending storm of lead they put out, including a few of my own.
46:23 yep, that's about right for the AI.
I like building of an warship (BB, BC, CA, CL and DD) in Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts.
This is interesting!
I usually go with speed and armor, and close in, where small, fast firing guns become deadly, and slow ones become weak
You can barely get hit, and if you do, it isn’t too much
That does not mean I don’t like stuffing my ships full of large guns though
Kinda sounds like StealthGaming16's Austria-Hungary campaign he abandoned
Great video! ~900 hours in the game and I learned quite a bit.
Good set up for the design-fase.
For armour penetration, I usually multiply it by 1.4 or even 2 to account for the between 45-60 degrees oblique hits (and add some extra for the downward angle).
That makes me work with a 5" penetration value for DD's armoured to 1,5" with high Krupp when looking at the HE options for the secondaries (while also eyeing the AP value of the smallest guns in order to size/calibre them to be able to pen a DD at a decent range).
Did you mention it often enough that you should always go over the settings one more time in case you've missed something. No matter how many ships you've already designed! ;-)
I've forgotten to put more AP ammo on my battleships despite having almost 2000 hours
All my battleships are "whatever I feel like making"
I get a collection of a fleet going with both New York and Nelson-inspired ships with a few Bismarcks mixed in.
I have found going with a 3 tier design element helps with economy and war time preparation construction.
1. Pocket Battleships - small, armored, rapid firing brawlers that don't break the bank and can roll ships off in 18 months.
2. Your standard design as seen in this video.
3. A large caliber, long range, sniper. Not as heavily armored and is sort of slower. Just meant to out range enemies and let the escorts spot and keep the enemy at range.
😂😂😂
I just remembered my 4x4 21.9” +20% length barrel, 49knot battlecruiser.
Fire power all the way for me. Typically I get 4x3 17 inch guns combined with a vast array of secondary guns (6s,8s,5s,3s and 2s). My BBs only go 26 knots though so my BCs are the ones who have to chase after the CLs and DDs
Edit: Plz note that you most definitely want mark 3s or higher for the main guns and auto loaders or else you can’t hit anything nor you can’t shoot for at all
I tend to favour firepower and armour over speed but I have built the occasional small fast ship as a battlecruiser hunter
That is the United States Navy approach in WW2. All you need is 4 triple turret guns of the highest caliber centerline alignment and you are golden with respect to the American naval wishlist line of hard hitting heavily armored battleships.
I always start by making sure the fore and aft armour are the same value. After the towers i place the funnel to make sure i have enough weight.
I love going for slow, fortress like battleships with a lot of sec. Guns.
meanwhile me:ha ha fast BB go zoom
Excellent Building guide! Time to put it to the test in a campaign
Let me know how it goes!
@@BrotherMunro To quote Nuke from Nuke'sTop5 YT channel.
"It did not go well".
Ships designed 1920 (Germany), First fight near mexico in Dec 1922.
The ships themselves are throwing allot of shells down range and getting hits in, just not big damage, which was to be expected with 14's i guess.
But in reality it didn't go well because of mines, well i think it was mines, even though i have CL's and DD's with mine sweeping all my DD's were immobile from the start of the fight. everything except my BB, 2 BC's and one CA was written off before the fight.
I also didn't realise that 1/3 of my ships had flaws.. Is there a way to fix those?
@@frankiesan_FT23 It's been 2 months do you still need help for dealing with flaws?
@@ussenterprisecv6805 I'm good now thanks sir.
The horrors of submarines seem to have disappeared and a number of gun bugs which I'd not noticed before too.
Enjoying a japan early start playthrough now.
"how to build battleships for dummies"
Step 1: GUNS
Step 2: MORE GUNS
Step 3: EVEN MORE GUNS
Step 4: realize you need to add more armor and a funnel.
Step 5: ???
Step 6: profit
You forgot speed
@@_su0p speed? No no no, speed is for battlecruisers.
This is known as the Ork method
@@Fighterpilot555 no no speed is speed
@@BrotherMunro Paint battlecruiser red? It go faster.
In balancing a ship, I favor altering armor thicknesses. I also tend to-- where I can-- purposely set up an aft offset so I can put more armor on the bows.
The reason I don’t recommend this is because using the armour values will increase your pitch and roll instead which will negate the benefits of having no offset. Armoured prows certainly do have advantages though (especially for all forward designs).
@@BrotherMunro Yeah. I have a tendency to push towards my opponent, and having an armored bow is helpful in that endeavor. I am still quite nooobish while designing ships, but I find the actual design fascinating. I also tend to try to mix in a little bit of history into my designs ie I put torps on Japanese cruisers while generally not using them on US (though that depends on when the US cruisers were designed--Looking at you Omaha, Atlanta) or at least my "skin deep" knowledge aids me in that. (I would love to create a Belfast like ship, but the models just aren't there..) Anyway, I am going a little bit off topic.
My design preferences aside, if after moving things around doesn't quite get your offset to where it's outside of your tolerance, I don't think you should shy away from using armor to bring it within tolerances. (Like moving the offset by 1-2 percentage points, or however many points that doesn't compromise stability.) I arbitrarily picked those numbers btw.
Perhaps something like that would be worthy of an Advanced Design vid? Though it might be too broad of a subject?
Love your vids.
I find that, at least after the early 1910's, I don't really need any more flash fire protection beyond barbette 2 or 3. By the time a competently armored battleship is seeing hits that can proc a flash fire, it's probably combat ineffective and at deaths door already. I'd rather take the weight savings and invest in better speed and maneuverability.
Max barbette thickness I find is best in smaller ships that are more likely to see full penetrattion from high caliber HE rounds, particularly battlescruisers
I havnt gotten to later years, but for BB and BC I tend to go more for speed, decent armor and the biggest guns I can get that have a fire rate over over a round a minute.
Personally, I prefer the 1910 start and tend to use more heavily armoured battlecruisers more than battleships backed up with cruisers
Wow, the AI BB got absolutely DUMPSTERED! Love the level of detail!
One of the battleships I designed I called the meme machine. Lots of armor, fast, and lots of smaller caliber guns. This was mid 1900 I think and no gu was over 11 inch I think. Was it super effective, not too much but the sheer number of rounds it put out was awesome. But still wasn't enough dakka
Can be decent if range is ok, and you aim to knock enemy out through burning them. Just don't expect ap ammo to really matter.
I will say, that level of armour is way overkill. The way I do the "protect against your own guns" approach (which is my usual way of figuring out armour) is to include all the citadel layers but one (so the first two layers on all-or-nothing) into the math, which typically lets me protect battleships pretty comfortably down to the 10km range (I'm not 100% sure how the math works for the shell pen reduction between layers, but I've been running on the assumption that each layer is 2x more effective than the previous one and haven't had a non-flash-fire or torpedo-induced catastrophic explosion yet).
Have you got any suggestions for 16” barrel calibre? I was thinking of trying a variation on your design, but I don’t want to be ham strung with slow reload times. I’ve found that can be fatal! Thanks
For 16’s anything from 40-50 calibres is usually ok, I wouldn’t go past 55
Many thanks. I’ll give it a bash
Is it just me or has the campaign recently started favouring really large battles? Yesterday I had a one-battle war with Spain in my US 1910 campaign. Spain brought 1 BB, 25 CA, 22 CL and 24 DDs versus my 5 BB, 3 BC, 8 CL and 25 DDs. Now France is going to war against me and the first battle will be in excess of 100 ships fighting.
The AI likes to doom stack but will definitely do it if the player does
@@BrotherMunro Well I'm definitively looking forward to that 5 FPS experience 😆
Speed retention during turn is my main reason for preferring balanced.
I'm new to the game, but 20" of belt armour seems insane to me.
The closest to this design is probably the Littorio class, which had 70mm RHA, 250mm cellulite, 280mm cermented steel, 150mm oak backing, on a 15mm steel backing plate, then there were further 36mm and 24mm RHA bulkheads.
Usually, only the 70mm and 280mm plates are considered the "main belt armour" though (for a total of 350mm or ~14"), with everything else being various bulkheads to catch splinters.
Unless everything is being included in the "belt armour" number this seems off... The total thickness of steel in the Littorio's horizontal protection only added up to 425mm (16.7") (that is all angled, but still).
If you were to count up all the layers of KGV, you would still only reach 18.25" (over the magazines).
I think its important to realise that real world battleships settled on (for the most part) 14 to 16 inch guns, against which a 14 ish inch belt is fine. In UAD though you will have to deal with much much bigger guns, so protection is often considerably more than real world designs.
@@BrotherMunro well the immunity zones were just quite small irl.
Many ships had a
“If that happens , cry” story of my life
I’m sorry I didn’t follow exactly how 150% armor quality becomes dividing by 2.5, could you explain that conversion?
So if your actual thickness is X and the apparent thickness is Y and your armour quality (as a decimal so 150% is 1.5) is Q then: X=Y/(1+Q) and Y=X*(1+Q).
Basically an increase of 100% is the same as doubling, 200% would be tripling so 150% is x2.5
Ahhhhh, I understand. Thank you so much.
wish you put sections in the video for guns, armor etc...
i know you said that battleships are like the most important kind of ship, but i wonder if it would be possible for a like extra challenge to do a no battleship campaign, where the largest ship you build is a BC. Considering here 15 inch guns proved very capable, and if a BC runs into a battleship it can't handle it usually can just run away. Maybe one of the weaker economy nations.
Might I recommend this video? 😇 th-cam.com/video/gMtXl6Dg-jk/w-d-xo.html
Sounds doable, should lessen him to heavy cruisers.
This may sound like a strange question (and for an older video), but is it more efficient to go for quadruple turrets or triple turrets? In theory, a ship like that might be able to go 3 x quad turret 14" guns.
Depends on your definition of ‘efficient’. Dual turrets are the most accurate so in terms of tons per hit they are actually the best option as triple and quadruple turrets have accuracy and rate of fire penalties. I would say though that this very much depends on the hull, some suit a 4 turret arrangement but many do not. You kinda get a feel for main gun layouts as you play but this video is very much intended to be a base for new players to work off, not a definitive ‘do this and only this’ sort of thing :)
@@BrotherMunro Think of efficiency as the ratio of penetrations for a given mass. So in that regard, the formula is:
Efficiency = (Accuracy at 10 km x Rate of Fire x Number of Barrels) / (Gun Weight + Offset Weight)
In other words, the goal is to develop a system that causes the most penetrations of a given amount at range, for a given weight.
@@crazyelf1 under that criteria dual guns are the most efficient unless the shorter citadel tips the balance in favour of triples which is only really doable once triples have their accuracy/RoF penalties reduced with techs
@@BrotherMunro That's fair - so that would suggest that in the late game, triples might be the best option. It would also entail looking at another option - for example, if the 13" cannons had a higher Mark, 4 sets of quadruple 13" "Super Heavy" shells for a total of 16 guns on the ship might be viable and possibly superior, unless the deck of the enemy battleships were thicker than the Yamato (230mm or about 9 inches at the thickest points).
@@crazyelf1 generally speaking higher marks are better but armour in UAD (especially deck) tends to be much thicker than historically so 13’s tend to lack enough punch for capital ship warfare
Thank you for your explanations, just checked them out for armor once again. Still one question: You suggest a all or nothing armor scheme... but what relations, what values would you suggest if I want more than minimum fore and aft belt and deck?
The best way to determine that is to pick a particular weapon type to armour against. Easiest option is to look at the HE pen of your own main guns and armour your extended bits enough to prevent them from penning your own armour, but you can also plop down a ‘sample gun’ like an 8” and look at what it can go through to get a different target.
Quick note: You stayed with Standard Bulkheads on this one. Any reason for that?
Standard is fine, many and maximum are nice to haves but not auto includes.
I still don't understand if beam and draught have any impact on manoeuvrability or not? Shouldn't it?
They do though I’d have to check exactly which stat they change and by how much
@@BrotherMunro are unconventional designs possible or would I need a mod?.
I don't know if you've covered it but why bother putting 2-3 inch guns on that BB, by the time potential enemy reaches to 1km range (when guns get accurate) superior 4-5 inch guns are already hitting enemy long before.
2 and 3 inch guns fire so quickly that accuracy is irrelevant; they basically just hose any DDs that get into their range with fire which can knock out the funnel and torpedoes on anything that made it past your bigger secondaries (which can happen if the AI decides to just charge and your gunners have decided to shoot with their eyes closed as they tend to do occasionally in game)
Super helpful Video, thank you.
Glad you found it useful!
God I would fucking love a video like this for Pre-Dreadnaught gameplay, in the 1890s to 1910s
I am having an absolutely tragic time of things lol.
Broadly following your setup using the latest version of the game. Due to game up dates, 20" main belt and 10" main deck armour isnt really feasable anymore, so I'm using 16" main belt, and 8" main deck, with 1.5" everywhere else save for the tower which is still at 21". However I'm finding that I'm taking a lot of flooding hits - do I need to up the armour thickness on the 1.5" areas, or has the game evolved to better shells since this vid was made? Thanks.
You might want to up the extended armour yes (I’m assuming you are playing with the Dreadnought Improvement Mod) 3-4” should protect against all but the very largest HE shells.
@@BrotherMunro yep playing the latest version of DIP. I’ll give those suggestions a try. Keep turning out the videos - this is a great channel. I’ve been putting your shell experiments to use!
So going with a smaller gun that fires more often but is firing higher pen shells is better than a higher caliber? Do smaller guns tend to hit more often the deck than belt at higher range due to lower muzzle velocity (but have also a lower chance to hit)?
It really depends on the era and what you prefer. I’d advocate a balance between raw hitting power and rate of fire, so typically mid to late game battleships would have 14-16 inch guns.
@@BrotherMunro Thank you! I am currently in 1920 in my campaign so I know what to look out for👍👍
@@BrotherMunro Two other things: First, great profile picture! I just realised that you are Battlebrother Munro! Second, you talked about special layouts for 7" secondaries, do you have or know a video referring to those special layouts of BBs?
@@TheyBrutus I don’t think I’ve done a video on them but you can mount 7” guns in a similar way to Yamato’s secondary guns by using a secondary barbette to fire over the top of the main guns
Did things change this much from 1.09 to 1.4, or is this a "custom battles" vs campaign difference? Campaign start, 1930 Japan, and modern battleship I hull won't let me go below 60,000t and costs over 300million for the "bare" hull...
That’s a 1.4 thing they massively upped the costs
@@BrotherMunro - yeah. Looks like a lot of things changed. I've been trying to recreate some of your designs from this series, and can't match them at all, even money aside. Though maybe it's a country issue? Is a particular hull the same for all countries? Or is a Spanish "Modern Cruiser I" different from, say, a Japanese "Modern Cruiser I"?
Did i do something wrong because mine is 613mil while his is still 138 mil
They changed the costings after I made the video, ships are a lot more expensive now
3:43 I was expecting you'd say very very nice
I started the us campaign 1900 and the soviet union took over in july 1907.
hold on is not 100% armor quality the defoult and then you can go up to 1.5 the thickness by having 150% quality? are you sure the 150% is a 2.5 multiplaier not that it's a 1.5 ?
i mean if you are right then i stand corrected but i thought 100% was more acordingly to that the armor would hold 100% up to it's thickness as it did not have debuffs by being worse quality.
It can be confusing until you realise the definition the UA:D devs use, that the default armour (and many other properties) is 100% and then modifiers are applied.
At the start of an 1890 campaign you have the choice of:
Iron Plate Armour, at -25% quality (but with belt armour weight savings), or -
Compound Armour, at +35% quality (with much smaller weight savings).
The -25% quality of Iron Plate Armour means your armour is only 75% as effective as you think, so 4" of armour gives 3" of protection against a shell hitting perpendicularly. It doesn't mean you have negative armour.
The default (even though it is impossible to actually get at the moment) is 0% - this is when the actual thickness and apparent thicknesses are the same
@@BrotherMunro okay thank for the clarification, i seem to need to chose a bit different ammo than i currently use ;) i thought for sure so much extra pen would cause over-pens and no citadal hits
I usually prioritize speed over firepower and tend to have good deck armor
edit: I also go for 5-10 percent longer barrels and increased ammo since I usually build mine for long slugouts anyways
It all seems pointless to me, no matter what 'tips' I try I keep getting completely wiped by 13-14 inch gun armed battlecruisers in the 'Dreadnaughts vs. Modern Cruisers' scenario of the Academy... that one mission seems just deliberately designed to be unfair. I had 12-inch deck armor and still took a four-digit damage hit!
Oh the naval academy is ludicrous - this guide is absolutely not intended for that. I haven’t even played it in ages, but you need to repeat missions a lot and go with very janky builds like armoured bathtubs and such
@@BrotherMunro I barely finished this mission, once... then 1.09 dropped and erased my progression. D:< Doesn't help I'm all of a newbie at this still. I was having fun with all the missions before and after even, just this one single example is complete bollocks.
That particular mission seems broken, for some reason the AI's accuracy is godlike while even with the best training and tech it takes a few salvos to start getting hits, by which point you're taking accuracy penalties from damage taken. Baring the enemy pulling a Hood idk how you're meant to do that one.
The guns are fucking ridiculous in this game 20 inch belt that’s 4inches more then Yamato had. to protect against 15/45 guns the British bl mk2 15/45 guns penned only 14 inches at that range
B o a t
I made a billion dollar battle ship once lol
Noooooooooooo, Do not design a battleship without sliding to maximum bulkheads.
Can’t stress that enough.