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Once CIWS is available, should I layer both CIWS and radar guided MAA, or replace the radar guided MAA with CIWS?

Both.

I strongly advise you read the manual where it explains about issues with multiple RGMAA and CIWS mounts

WLRoo wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2023 6:10 pm Both.

I strongly advise you read the manual where it explains about issues with multiple RGMAA and CIWS mounts

Thank you for the strong advice but I have read the manual thoroughly. It describes the useful limits on radar MAA (8) and CIWS (4-6). What it doesn't do is say whether or not 8MAA and 6CIWS on the same ship is effective. There is a 'layering penalty' for using multiple calibers for the same job elsewhere in the game and the manual and ship designer are silent on whether the same principle applies here.

For HAA, for example, there is a total HAA effectiveness factor included in the designer. This reflects the HAA layering penalty and is very useful for designing secondary and tertiary batteries. It showed me that on a BB with 6" and 4" secondaries, it can be a poor idea to make the 6" battery DP because the substandard additional HAA from the 6" may not make up for the penalty applied to the 4" DP guns.

I suppose what I'm asking for is an additional field in the designer that calculates the missile defense factor of the whole design, like the current HAA factor. 8 radar MAA eat a lot of topweight. It would be nice to have a number for how much they contribute, to evaluate whether they're worth keeping on topweight limited ships like KEs and DDs after CIWS appears.

There is no penalty from both MAA and LAA being combined on a single ship.

MAA gets replaced by the Radar Guided version, LAA by CIWIS. There is no mention of issues from mounting both weapons.

Though if you want to be historically accurate, MAA was replaced by Light SAMs (such as SeaCat) before CIWIS entered service.