Max range of 406mm/50

[STUCKER868]

It would depend on what you would call effective. With nine 16" shells, (each weighing over a ton)raining down on a coastal area, think of the damage and morale issues that would cause in an urban area etc. The database lists 17nm as the max range of the 16/50. Effective or not, it's inaccurate according to many sources and I am not trying to start any arguments but find out why 17nm is used.

ORIGINAL: Russian Heel

ORIGINAL: STUCKER868

In fact, I just looked at a several books and almost all of them say 42,345 yds MAX range for the 16/50.

I'm not trying to get in this argument because I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject, but is that maximum range or maximum effective range?

[STUCKER868]

Not sure if there is a record of any firing at max range. I am sure they tested it and probably there was a huge spread. The record for the longest hit on a warship is just over 15 miles I think (HMS Duke Of York in WW2 if I am not mistaken). Moving targets at 42,000 yards is one thing but against stationary targets with radar control? Sure why not.

ORIGINAL: Flankerk


Do we have any evidence of the guns being fired in anger at ranges beyond the 17 miles?
If so it would give good evidence to adjust for that type of combat.

I can see the idea that you could still hit an airbase with very innacurate shelling, I'm less sure nowadays the collateral damage from shells falling with a massive CEP would be accepted though?

[STUCKER868]

Yes, and don't forget that German tanks excelled at extreme long range kills with the Tigers and Panthers... Because they did not want those pesky T-34's getting close

ORIGINAL: Russian Heel

ORIGINAL: jdkbph

ORIGINAL: Russian Heel
I'm not trying to get in this argument because I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject, but is that maximum range or maximum effective range?

Well, that's the question.

Maximum range is (or should be) an accepted value based on empirical test or operational data (eg, demonstrated) as reported by a reliable source. In this case, it's fairly straight forward.

Maximum "effective" range can have many meanings. Are we talking about armor penetration (eg, the safe zone of an armor systems vs a specific weapon system)? Or are we talking about the ability to hit something? Is the "something" moving or stationary? Big or small? Do we even need to hit what we're shooting at to be "effective" or is close close enough (eg, suppression)? All of these factors would play into the question of "effective".

IMO, the "max range" should be what we find in the database.

The "max effective range" should be a judgement made by the player given the result of all the system performance factors + target factors + environmental factors + etc., etc., etc., type number crunching the game engine does.

This is essentially the same argument, albeit with better documentation, from a few days back regarding the K278 max depth. That's what I was referring to when I suggested there may be a trend here.

JD

Well, this is why I said it is a case by case basis. I mean the maximum range of an M-16 is 3600 meters but the max effective range is 550 to point 800 to area targets, and yet I never trained past 300. I never engaged real world targets past 75 meters with one(of course I was a tanker in a city and it was an M-4) The maximum range of the tank rounds I fired was much greater than the ballistic computer could accurately calculate solutions for. The max range of APFSDS-T is much greater than its effective range to have the ability to kill armored targets.

But for a submarine that spent thousands of hours underwater and less than 3 minutes at the depth of 1027 meters, in a controlled environment and only did any operational tests at depths of 800 meters twice, again in a controlled environment it is silly to give players the ability to cruise around the world at 1000 meters because a sub did it once for 3 minutes. I live a 6 minute drive from the Russian Central Naval Museum and a 40 minute drive from the National Submarine Museum and an hour 10 minutes from Kronstadt, I speak Russian and have spent a lot of time and money in the archives of these 3 places for some writing I am doing about the Soviet Navy. The game got K-278 right. However there are some other things they were too conservative or too liberal with in my opinion, but I'm not an expert enough on that subject matter to comment on it.

I don't know anything about battleship gun ballistics so I cant form an educated opinion, but the max effective range isn't 'subjective' it is clearly defined by doctrine developed by dudes way smarter than me testing stuff. As a tank commander I never would fire at targets past my max effective range and would rather them to be closer than that if possible. Direct fire trigger lines were usually well inside max effective range pf direct fire weapons systems. Again that is tanks not battleships though.

[jdkbph]

I don't know about that...

According to FAS, the CEP doesn't look that much worse at 36kyds than it does and 25kyds.

And the question of "acceptable" collateral damage depends very much on the times, places and circumstances, no?

JD

[ExMachina]

ORIGINAL: jdkbph

Exactly. We're not talking about ship targets at 40kyds here, but shore bombardment vs air fields, port facilities, entrenched formations, etc, etc. But even in the case of ship targets... you don't necessarily have to hit anything to disrupt up a formation.

We're not discussing "theoretical" ranges Ragnar. The 40kyd range was demonstrated. The essence of your argument seems to be "yeah, but you can't hit anything at that range". So be it. I assume the game engine is sophisticated enough to accurately factor range into the CEP calculation?

I'm not just complaining about this one system. I'm alarmed by what I'm beginning to understand is a design philosophy that has, at the very least, been applied selectively on a large scale, or perhaps even across the board.

Were this any other game, I would probably shrug my shoulders and say "eh, no biggie... I'll fix it myself". But... well... you know.

Again, apologies for beating on this, but I feel this is important.

JD

FWIW, I agree completely with your points in this thread.

I sense that there is indeed a tendency in CMANO to accommodate a very specific interpretation of weapons' and sensors' performances while ignoring situations that would test theoretical maximization of those systems' potentials. Some of this truncation of the models is surely due to the difficulties of accounting for the wide distribution of variances that individual weapons systems would display in edge cases--that seems to be non-optimal but at least defensible.

However another limiting factor that I suspect is also at work in CMANO is how well (or poorly) the AI is at handling such "ahistoric" or extreme situations--right now it seems to me (and I'm only judging based upon what I've seen so far) if given too much latitude in performance envelopes, the AI *will* try to exploit extreme cases even if the behavior results in ridiculously unbelievable actions. So in effect, the "sandbox" ideal that CMANO is striving for is being reigned in by the limitations of the AI.

And none of these criticisms should obscure my overwhelming enthusiasm I have for CMANO--I love the game [:)]

[jdkbph]

ORIGINAL: ExMachina

And none of these criticisms should obscure my overwhelming enthusiasm I have for CMANO--I love the game [:)]

Ditto... although it may not sound that way sometimes [8|]

JD

[STUCKER868]

Anyone notice that the Iowa (66-0) version is listed as only having 2x460/50 for the mount? I assume this means two turrets? What happened to the third? I don't show any records of this. Anyone?

[jdkbph]

There was an explosion in #2 turret in 1989. I don't think they ever restored it to operational status before decommissioning her in 1990.

JD

[StellarRat]

From the Wiki, Calabria: During the battle Warspite achieved one of the longest range gunnery hits from a moving ship to a moving target in history, hitting the Giulio Cesare at a range of approximately 26,000 yards...

[Russian Heel]

ORIGINAL: jdkbph

There was an explosion in #2 turret in 1989. I don't think they ever restored it to operational status before decommissioning her in 1990.

JD

But he is talking about the 1966 version in the CWDB. 23 years prior to 1989. I think it's just an over site in the entry.

[jdkbph]

I think you're right.

JD

[geozero]

Range of the main gun's 16inch guns will be dependent on which type of round it was fitted to fire. There were different types of rounds which included the MARK 8 super heavy round of 2700 lbs versus the lighter 2240 lbs round. Max range was 24 miles or 39 km. Or 20.8554 nautical miles.

[StellarRat]

ORIGINAL: geozero

Range of the main gun's 16inch guns will be dependent on which type of round it was fitted to fire. There were different types of rounds which included the MARK 8 super heavy round of 2700 lbs versus the lighter 2240 lbs round. Max range was 24 miles or 39 km. Or 20.8554 nautical miles.

Is that the absolute max. range or the maximum effective range? I have doubts they'd be able to hit another ship at that distance in combat. That's over the horizon by X2.

[geozero]

ORIGINAL: StellarRat

ORIGINAL: geozero

Range of the main gun's 16inch guns will be dependent on which type of round it was fitted to fire. There were different types of rounds which included the MARK 8 super heavy round of 2700 lbs versus the lighter 2240 lbs round. Max range was 24 miles or 39 km. Or 20.8554 nautical miles.

Is that the absolute max. range or the maximum effective range? I have doubts they'd be able to hit another ship at that distance in combat. That's over the horizon by X2.

I do not know how accurate this is what I found online (there are also a number of calculations available): assuming a clear day with 'unlimited' visibility, the formula is 1.17 * SQRT(height above sea level). So a 6' person standing on the shore is seeing the horizon approximately 3 miles away. Same person on a 100' tower (so eye is 106' above sea level) is seeing the horizon at a little over 12 nautical miles.

So the MAX range of 20.8554 nm is beyond even the normal visible distances (over the horizon if you will). HOWEVER, the IOWA employed spotter aircrafts and with these used it is possible that you could hit over the horizon. Lastly, most over the horizon bombardments would likely be against land targets (hard targets) rather than moving ships IMO.

[BB62squid]

This is correct. Warspite did have the longest gun hit in history. I want to point out that Warspite was a World War I retread and managed to pull off tthis remarkable feat. The Iowa's in World War II, even with the Mk 8 radars, had a much more accurate and reliable FCS. After the 80's refits and the addition of the 810 MVRs and reworked powders, accuracy and CEP were at an all time high. Iowa was the trials ship for 16" gunnery improvement project.
IIRC, off San Clemente we were dropping pretty tight patterns in excess of 30kyds. Granted, test conditions on a NGFS range and the ship wasnt maneuvering at speed.

Regardless, I dont see why there is apparent bias. The 5" guns in the game are all quoted at 9 miles which is pretty standard. Why impose a personal belief system on your favored or not so favored platforms, weapons, and sensors? As I see it, we are modeling real world systems...so go with whats in the widely available sources out there. Personal opinion seems irrelevant here.

--Mike

[ComDev]

Hmmmmm yeah tough call. May even have to separate surface and land ranges in the database for this to work properly.

Seems this is a post-1.03 item.

[StellarRat]

ORIGINAL: BB62squid

This is correct. Warspite did have the longest gun hit in history. I want to point out that Warspite was a World War I retread and managed to pull off tthis remarkable feat. The Iowa's in World War II, even with the Mk 8 radars, had a much more accurate and reliable FCS. After the 80's refits and the addition of the 810 MVRs and reworked powders, accuracy and CEP were at an all time high. Iowa was the trials ship for 16" gunnery improvement project.
IIRC, off San Clemente we were dropping pretty tight patterns in excess of 30kyds. Granted, test conditions on a NGFS range and the ship wasnt maneuvering at speed.

Regardless, I dont see why there is apparent bias. The 5" guns in the game are all quoted at 9 miles which is pretty standard. Why impose a personal belief system on your favored or not so favored platforms, weapons, and sensors? As I see it, we are modeling real world systems...so go with whats in the widely available sources out there. Personal opinion seems irrelevant here.

--Mike

My point was that the Warspite had visual contact with the target and the range was WAY less than the max. range, but even then that was considered a "record" shot at the time. I'm thinking that the effective range ship to ship is far less than the max. range or the effective range against land/stationary targets. Just the amount of time it take the shells to reach a moving target at max. range would make a moving/dodging target difficult to hit not considering any other factors. The 16" has a muzzle velocity of 2500 ft/sec with AP. To reach 20 miles would take around 42 seconds. That would make a small target maneuvering nearly impossible to hit and a even a large ship at speed could probably change course enough to get out of the way.

[jdkbph]

Do ships in the game have an actual size and shape? If so wouldn't the gun's CEP provide a way to differentiate between a hit and a miss without having to fiddle about with the max range values? I am assuming now that the gun calculations are based on a predicted point of impact generated when it is fired, and that target motion is factored.

For example...

1 Classify target.
2a Generate solution for target range/range rate of change, and target bearing/bearing rate of change.
2b Factor wind, temp, humidity, etc. (are we factoring environmentals?).
2c or just fudge 2a and 2b and set a desired point of impact, then apply the proficiency factor.
3 Shoot.
4 Calculate actual point of impact.
5 Determine target's movement during projectile flight.
6 Apply CEP.
7 Calculate hits.

No?

JD

[jdkbph]

Also, I don't think Warspite's performance is a relevant example of the best that can be done, say, today... or in the recent past.

Since then we've added target spotters/trackers in various forms that can communicate target and environmental factors in real time; computers that can adjust for that when calculating fire control solutions; better manufacturing, storage and handling process controls around ammo and propellants; sensors that can track the actual projectile in-flight and correct for subsequent shots; and who knows what else.

Yes, at the surface this appears to be the same basic evolution, but factoring all of the above, I think it's really a completely different ball game.

JD

[BB62squid]

As JD said...the ship's FC system generates a solution based on ownship movement AND target movement, and predicts future movement. Is it 100%? Hardly. Believe it or not, a large ship (BB/BC) moving at 30+ knots doesnt actually travel that far in the time it takes a salvo to cover the distance...relative speed of target ship vice projectile is negligible. Does this mean Im going to start lobbing 16" salvoes, rapid and continuous, at a destroyer maneuvering erratically at full speed @ 40k yards? No.
Do remember that Iowa got a straddle on Nowaki at Truk lagoon @ 32kyds. Also remember that shorts and overs within certain parameters may constitute hits due to the possibility of striking masts and upperworks, or projectiles traveling underwater trajectories.

Bottom line is...a computer game can never model all the intricacies of real war...its just a number crunching beast. It cant account for errant shots or blind luck. I think the weapons should be entered based on specs in source material, and let the players use or not use them as they see fit.

My personal input: having worked with it personally, the Mk 1A and the 16"/50 is an amazing weapon system that has had some teething issues. In the NFS role it is more than satisfactory (ask any Army grunts that called for fire during Vietnam). While maybe not as pinpoint accurate as the 5"/54...it doesnt have to be. The weight of explosives tears up alot of real estate, and gives you better stand off ranges too. A battleship can do in minutes what would take a CG or DDG hours or days to accomplish--assuming they can reach the target.