Ship cannot be identified as any legal ship type

[thedoctorking]

This guy's design went through fine with 16" guns and improved director. During the four months that we were waiting for the design to be completed, we discovered 17"/0 guns and Advanced Director. So I opened the design for reconstruction, reduced the guns in the A turret to 3, jumped the director up, and presto, the system can't identify a ship type. When I reduced the speed to 23, it said it was a B.

I have all-forward design tech.

illegal ship design.jpg (1.02 MiB) Viewed 48 times

[thedoctorking]

The issue appears to be the 17" guns. If I leave it at 16" and give it the improved director the game doesn't have any problems with it.

Reiterating: the whole idea of limiting the player's choice of ship types is very strange and offputting. At least the game should make the rules violation clear (say, if a proposed BB design is being rejected, the game should say "BBs must have X armor, X guns, X speed").

[WLRoo]

It's not the calibre, it's the number of main battery guns and turrets.

The complicated requirement is 3 (or more) Q-1 (or better) guns in 3 (or more) turrets.

The simpler requirement is 8 guns in 2 turrets.

The second requirement probably does want tweaking to either 5 or 6 (or more) guns of Q-1 (or better) in 2 turrets.

Edit: I have since realise it's most likely the Dunkerque/Richelieu layout

[thedoctorking]

Yeah, you're right. When I just jumped it up to 17" but left the two forward turrets with four guns each it liked it.

Larger point still stands. This is a ridiculous rule and the devs should jettison it and let you call your ships whatever class you want. And base the selection of ships for a combat on the actual qualities of the ship - armor, guns, speed, tonnage - and not some arbitrary and poorly-documented set of rules that appear to change regularly without warning.

[WLRoo]

The rules are there for the AI more than the player.

Otherwise you'd have players trying the '18" Light Cruiser' like Fisher did with HMS Furious whilst the AI is stuck building 8,000-10,000t 6" CLs, which would be significantly outmatched.

Some of them probably do need tweaking, and a more comprehensive list would help when trying to work out where the error is.

Freeform building will definitely not be allowed, though.