Possible to design rigged broadside ironclads?

[Stratos_MatrixForum]

I hope that once they release the expansion with the hability to design our and enemy ships without limits we will be able to design something like broadside ironclads, specially If we can add rigs somehow. Any idea If it will or if is already possible? Ships looking like this, and being able to fire only from sides or primitive turrets...

[thedoctorking]

I'd love to have this game extend back into the 19th century. I think the engine is a lot more fun with surface ships and only limited participation by aircraft, like up to (and maybe including) WW2, rather than the current attempt to expand into Command:MNAO turf by covering the early missile age.

[Stratos_MatrixForum]

If the devs add the proper guns and mounts we will be set!

[WLRoo]

As stated it would need a completely new gun system developing, firstly for the fixed guns as opposed to the current casemate system, then -3 or even -4 quality weapons to represent the muzzle-loaders that made up the typical armament of Box Battery and Central Battery Ironclads.

Not impossible, but it would need a fair bit of work.

Also need a check box for masts that must be ticked pre-1880 and phased out gradually according to ship class. Masts add weight, increase risk of fire (sails tend to burn well) but ships with masts can still make moves during wartime.

[Stratos_MatrixForum]

Does not seems a impossible thing to get, more or less fixed guns of very slow reload.
Masts and rigs can be abstracted I think.

[thedoctorking]

Another thing, if you have masts, you don't suffer range penalties.

[Xxzard]

A couple fundamental things would need improvement.

1870s or 1880s style battles would need to be fought at extreme close range, so close that the exaggerated size of the ship icons could start to be a problem. Even at very low speeds, you would need to click a lot to keep the ships in engagement range. Close in battles might be much more of a mêlée than anything else. Formations as we know them might be fairly useless during the shooting part of the battle unless they are tightened up a lot so that all ships are actually in range of a target.

Ramming and boarding would need to be more possible/intentional. While ramming is possible now, it's somewhat random. Historically, ramming or boarding ironclads was often necessary to stop the ship (e.g., Huascar, Battle of Lissa). Ships were fully designed around ramming (e.g., HMS Conqueror). The solid shot and simple explosive shells of the time were often just not enough to actually kill an ironclad, and this is exacerbated by the low rate of fire and terrible accuracy.

Some nations would have very few ships or need to undergo some border and colony changes depending on when you place the start date. 1880 would be pretty OK, similar enough to the 1890 start. 1870 would be challenging due to the Franco-Prussian war that year. 1871 or 1872 could be the better bet, once Germany and Italy exist in their modern form. A lot of nations would still be in the process of acquiring colonies - as this is now pretty random in game, some means of targeting new colonial acquisitions may need to be implemented.

Ship classes would be quite different. Existing restrictions on ship classes would need to be thrown out the window. For example, the 1872 German Imperial Navy planned for "eight armoured frigates, six armoured corvettes, twenty light corvettes, seven monitors, ... six avisos, eighteen gunboats and twenty-eight torpedo boats." Should CA = frigate, CL = corvette, and B = monitor? What should be done to represent non ocean going torpedo boats, if anything?

There are various other smaller issues, more easily solvable but which also need considering:

• How will legacy wooden ships be represented?

• Will there be a separation of screw driven and paddlewheel driven ships?

• Non VTE engines?

• Sails, as mentioned?

• 18 inch muzzle loading guns in 1882?

[Stratos_MatrixForum]

Thanks for the post, we need to brainstorm this, hope the developers notice!

[Larcrivereagle]

Q-3 guns already exist in game on a few starter ships representing rifled muzzle loaders, and can be acquired in any caliber via file editing if desired.
Another thing would be more discreetly modeling multiple decks of armaments. Currently, casemates in the main battery and tertiary battery are abstracted as being above casemates in the secondary battery, as only the latter imposes a flotation penalty (which is based solely on the number of guns, scaling at roughly 1% per 1 gun broadside)
"Fixed" (not really fixed) guns and pivot-mounted guns are something I think that would need modeling. Partially, I think you could do it just with technologies, where the angles on wing guns change over time, etc. Early non-turreted centerline mounts before turrets would be the pivot-mounted weapons, and so on. Oh, and end-on fire would be highly limited by superstructure and rigging setups. All of that is definable with a few game rules, there's already similar stuff controlling the varying arcs of wing and cross-deck turrets, as well as V turret's relation to X.

Regarding classification, corvettes are already in the game and pull double duty, representing some monitors. 'Armored Frigate' is a bastardized hold over classification, as it's simultaneously only a single covered deck of guns (so, a frigate, not a rated battleship of the line), while also being easily capable of taking on a ship of the line due to armor as well as much heavier weapons giving equivalent broadside weight. The classification dropped away, and the classifications' armored cruisers and battleships won out, but I'm not sure where you'd draw the line between those. Unprotected cruisers, IMO, would be the CLs of the era, until you unlock protected cruisers. Torpedo boats and gunboats can be easily modeled the same way MTBs or the auto-spawning defensive corvettes are, I've no idea why that isn't in the game already, honestly.

I did make a nation replacement mod for Kul Tiras that takes advantage of a graphical mod to add cosmetic sails to all its templates. I also gave them all sorts of RML using ships.
https://nws-online.proboards.com/thread ... cement-mod

[Stratos_MatrixForum]

Interesting ideas, wondering If we can make AI adopt them somehow?