Naval "Gun Value" for Ships

[Yaab]

The salvo may include AA guns as well. I guess creating a DD class with naval guns only and the same class with the same naval guns + 1 x 20mm Oerlikon AA gun should give us the final answer.

[m10bob]

IMHO the gun value of a weapon should be determined by known accuracy...ROF...size of charge....penetration...and type of fire direction,and size and number of guns.(Some turrets did not all have the ability to fire in the same direction in a broadside, ala Omaha class). (which might improve with upgrades in game).

WITP does not take these things into consideration, but each may be researched for mods.

Many of us did the same with Steel Panthers.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

IMHO the gun value of a weapon should be determined by known accuracy...ROF...size of charge....penetration...and type of fire direction,and size and number of guns.(Some turrets did not all have the ability to fire in the same direction in a broadside, ala Omaha class). (which might improve with upgrades in game).

WITP does not take these things into consideration, but each may be researched for mods.

Many of us did the same with Steel Panthers.

I disagree with the part about accuracy and rate of fire not being taken into account - those things go into the calculation of hits in the combat portion of the game. The gun value figure is just an indicator, like AV for LCUs, and that value is just a start point for calculations.

There would be no way to pre-calculate the values for gun turrets that cannot fire in a given direction and have that apply in instances where that gun turret could fire. For example, in surface combat I have seen instances where only the guns on one side or fore/aft seem to be firing and in other instances the ship has additional firing of guns shown in the animation, confirmed by ammo usage after the battle. The game does not show all the maneuvering during combat but it calculates it in the background.

[Yaab]

Guys, now I get why CL Boise was referenced in many AARs as a "quick-firing" ship. She is a CL from the Brooklyn CL class. This class, along the Helena class, is the only CL class which has 15 (sic!) main guns! Five turrets! Other US navy classes max out at twelve or ten guns. And if she can get into 15,000 feet range in combat, she can also use her 8 x 5-inch guns, and 4 x 3-inch guns, a whopping total of 27 naval guns. Her early-war Jap CL opponents max out at seven naval guns.

When I came to this game I just memorised that she is quick-firing ship but I attributed that to her guns having higher ROF and more advanced design (the competing Omaha class has a profile of an older design with a row of slanted smokestacks). Never really saw the need to count her guns.

[LargeSlowTarget]

Yes, she is well-armed and sits right in the middle of the Japanese "Centrifugal Offensive". She can be deadly to badly escorted Japanese "shotgun" invasion forces. Therefore it is important to sink her asap and many AARs report on her successes or demise.

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: m10bob

IMHO the gun value of a weapon should be determined by known accuracy...ROF...size of charge....penetration...and type of fire direction,and size and number of guns.(Some turrets did not all have the ability to fire in the same direction in a broadside, ala Omaha class). (which might improve with upgrades in game).

WITP does not take these things into consideration, but each may be researched for mods.

Many of us did the same with Steel Panthers.

I disagree with the part about accuracy and rate of fire not being taken into account - those things go into the calculation of hits in the combat portion of the game. The gun value figure is just an indicator, like AV for LCUs, and that value is just a start point for calculations.

There would be no way to pre-calculate the values for gun turrets that cannot fire in a given direction and have that apply in instances where that gun turret could fire. For example, in surface combat I have seen instances where only the guns on one side or fore/aft seem to be firing and in other instances the ship has additional firing of guns shown in the animation, confirmed by ammo usage after the battle. The game does not show all the maneuvering during combat but it calculates it in the background.

I agree with what you say because perhaps my comment was poorly written.

If you look in the editor at the % accuracy numbers, you will see what my issue is.

Some of those main guns have an accuracy rating in the single digits for first shot, (IIRC), whereas IRL some crew had the ability to hit on the first salvo!.

It's bad enough NONE of the ships in game are given historic ammo load outs but then to cripple historic accuracies to that level for "game play", etc, is dumbing down the beast just a tad much, (IMHO)...

Of course these factors apply to ALL sides and was not meant to favor one or the other...just not representative of how awesome the lowly Tin Can really was against a convoy of enemy AK's, as an example.

EDIT:Just checking some of my local ref books, it seems the current naval gun accuracies may be loosely based on info gleaned from the Battle of Jutland by the Royal navy, concerning number of rounds fired vs hits achieved?(WAG).

Further info gleaned seems to indicate that during the world wars many improvements were made in all areas of naval gun accuracy...and accuracy was increased from "approx 1-3% of WW1" to up to 10% by the beginning of WW2.

The U.S. was not the only navy playing with RADAR target acquisition assistance.

Spotter aircraft tended to add to accuracy but we also know those planes were a liability if its' parent ship had them aboard when getting hits.

Different ships also used different dye in their rounds so in daylight, spotters could discern which ships were getting good salvoes on a target.(Orange dye in the water near an enemy ship would indicate the ship using orange dye was close to its' target.)
I can find no single source giving accurate and uniform info regarding naval gun accuracy, and the original designers likely had this issue as well?

[US87891]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: m10bob
IMHO the gun value of a weapon should be determined by known accuracy...ROF...size of charge....penetration...and type of fire direction,and size and number of guns.(Some turrets did not all have the ability to fire in the same direction in a broadside, ala Omaha class). (which might improve with upgrades in game).

WITP does not take these things into consideration, but each may be researched for mods.

Many of us did the same with Steel Panthers.

I disagree with the part about accuracy and rate of fire not being taken into account - those things go into the calculation of hits in the combat portion of the game. The gun value figure is just an indicator, like AV for LCUs, and that value is just a start point for calculations.

There would be no way to pre-calculate the values for gun turrets that cannot fire in a given direction and have that apply in instances where that gun turret could fire. For example, in surface combat I have seen instances where only the guns on one side or fore/aft seem to be firing and in other instances the ship has additional firing of guns shown in the animation, confirmed by ammo usage after the battle. The game does not show all the maneuvering during combat but it calculates it in the background.

Saw this thread. Thought I would comment to keep this from becoming yet another erroneous urban legend.

It is true that ‘Gun Value’ is simply an indicator. The value is not used anywhere else, neither by any combat calculation algorithm nor any other calculation algorithm. It is simply a calculation that is posted to the TF screen so a player may eyeball the “relative” capabilities of various TFs. It is a value that is completely irrelevant to any other part of the game engine. In other words, do not worry about it and do not try to do anything to change it. Modify your data for something that has meaning in an effective algorithm, not for some quantity that is meaningless, unless you wish to corrupt your database for meaningful calculations.

Ammo has some basis in reality (at least in DBB). For as many guns as we could find (using NavWeaps), the ammo number is 1/10 of the listed “ammunition stowage per gun”. For AAA autoweaps, this was hard to find, so used what data we could find for the Bofors loadout. Turned out that 1/50 was good and that translated into a sort of standard that had ammo of 36, 24, 18, etc., (adjusted up or down depending on availability of real data), depending on ship size/style.

This is sort of what Gary Grigsby used for his original paradigm values, and has the further advantage of being centered within his calculation algorithms. In other words, it works.

Matt

[geofflambert]

What is your connection to the game if I might ask? What are your bona fides? You seem to present yourself as an authority familiar with inside info. Are you experienced in the way Bill Olson is, or like Alfred is, or somewhere in between? I don't remember running into you. That's my fault, you wouldn't sign as "Matt" unless you knew some or many forumites were familiar with you.

[Yaab]

Well, I have just created a TF with a single Brooklyn class CL. In the ship list her gun value is listed at 169, just above 140 value of the older classes. Once created it jumps to 597.

I have always used the ship list to choose combat ship based on their endurance, AA, torpedo and ASW, as these values are varied in the ship list. The gun value in the ship list is mostly the same for many ships in the same class (almost all US Navy DDs have the gun value of 62),so I didn't bother checking the guns on the ships. Yet, there is a huge difference between CL Brooklyn and DD Porter and their counterparts in their respective classes. These two ships classes are perfect for bombardment runs or pure naval surface combat, yet the ship list obscures this fact for no easily discerned reason. If the Brooklyn CL class had 597 gun value in the ship list, and the older, less armed CL classes had i.e 300 gun value, I would know at the glance who are my hard-hitters are. No need for the mundane click-fest and checking the ship individually. Just a thought.

[DOCUP]

Geoff: I believe that US87891 is on JWE's modding team.

[m10bob]

Just one of the great concepts of our game.

I am sure a thread could be created identifying good reference sources for the 'purists" amongst us...especially we retired types with the time to fool around...?

I did create such a thread for the original WITP years ago, but many of the sites I listed then are no longer active.

[Yaab]

I for once would like to see the dynamic gun value in the ship screen. I do not understand the rationale behind the present static gun value.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Yaab

I for once would like to see the dynamic gun value in the ship screen. I do not understand the rationale behind the present static gun value.

Difficult to do in a way that gives a fair measure of each gun's potential performance. E.G. - what time scale for the firing? A QF gun could put out a lot of rounds in the time a BB fires one and reloads.

What about ammo available at the time of viewing the stat. After a bombardment the gun's potential is less if the combat will last longer than the ammo - but what if the ammo is still sufficient for the combat? All this is unknown until the combat happens.

What about accuracy? This is not a linear function with range - larger guns can retain their accuracy better over longer ranges than smaller guns. So the potential of the gun in combat varies with the combat range.

I am convinced there are too many variables to give a "true dynamic" gun rating that would apply in every instance.

[Yaab]

OK, semi-dymanic then. Broadside salvo meaning all undamaged turrets which can fire both sides + guns firing to one side. Ammo not factored. Thus, my Dec 7, 1941 DD list in PH would look like this: 110, 55 and 34 gun values instead of 62 gun values. These three values tell me that my DDs fall into the three categories: hard-hitters, average and escort stuff. I can then easily pair the hard-hitters with CL Brooklyn class to form a raiding/bombardment TF. This game is great, but any way to reduce the clickfest would make it greater.

[m10bob]

Speaking of ammo for bombardment and ammo for ship to ship battles....The editor allows each weapon to have an "armor" rating vs a "soft" rating..
Perhaps if naval guns were given 2 separate load outs...one for bombardment, the other for naval battles, (as IRL)..
Could a land target be designated "soft" in spite of terrain which would allow the separate types of shells to be carried?
It is not historical for a battlewagon to expend AP rounds on a shore bombardment, and then be forced to avoid a juicy enemy AK convoy arriving at the same target, LOL