Bismark Armour

[underling]

...but is a ship's speed used as a defensive modifier when targetting it? That's where a destroyer becomes hard to hit as its fleetness is its "armor". Just curious.

Yes.
Ships that have moved faster than 7 inches are at a -1 to hit.
I didn't scan the whole book, but it looks like most cruisers and larger ships have movement rates of 7 or less.
Destroyers have a movement rate of 8.
So if you keep your destroyers moving at top speed they'll be harder to hit.
Kevin

 

[Epaminondas]

http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm

For a good discuession on who was the biggest and baddest battleship of WWII.

Bismarck was an interesting mix of good and bad design ideas- for the 30s, with the conditions they faced, not a bad ship. Fog was expected to be a significant tactical factor in the North Sea...

Even after factoring in Bismarck's flaws however; there are only 6 possible armor (7 with 0) values. Is say an Iowa class BB really 18% better armored then a Bismark?

How about a KGV?

basing a game on a d6 really limits your spread of values- even if you take a 0-20 armor scale like battlefront. When you go 0-14 like GW; or 0-6 like mongoose; your are sharply limiting the availible values and thus losing granularity between historically different weapons and armor schemes.

 

[DM]

When working out the armor rating I used a combination armor thickness from main turret face, main turret barbarette, belt armor over engineering, belt armor over magazines, deck armor over engineering, deck armor over magazines and control tower armor.

But Rich, thats not the official method as proumlgated by Matt. There is a risk that we are developing stats using an inconsistent basis.

 

[rbax]

rbax, I'm only just slightly confused by your wording that a 1 always penetrates but why destroyers were given a 2? Was the next part "we did want units such as destroyers and such" really meant to be written as "we did not want units such as destroyers and such". That makes better sense when compared with the balance of your comments. I won't make an argument whether that was the best idea or not, but I'll only say that the nickname of "tin cans" was an accurate description of the ship type and they did not stand up well to being smacked about by incoming fire. In other words I'd treat DDs defensively just like any unarmored target like a cargo ship, with the exception of their speed and armament (torpedoes) being where the builders put their focus toward. I am at a disadvantage as I don't have the rules as of yet, but is a ship's speed used as a defensive modifier when targetting it? That's where a destroyer becomes hard to hit as its fleetness is its "armor". Just curious.

Your correct on the missing "not." Just typing to fast for my own good.

In terms of destroyers and their speed in place of armor....we felt we wanted a slight chance the a hit didn't automatically mean damage. Lots of destroyers got hit in the war without taking real damage, lots of stories about a shell carrying away the radar or communication antenna's, or boring its way through the empty mess hall and out the otherside without exploding or some such....... its a chance that no real damage is done.

--- Rich

 

[rbax]

When working out the armor rating I used a combination armor thickness from main turret face, main turret barbarette, belt armor over engineering, belt armor over magazines, deck armor over engineering, deck armor over magazines and control tower armor.

But Rich, thats not the official method as proumlgated by Matt. There is a risk that we are developing stats using an inconsistent basis.

As of the last pre-release issue (as I have not got my rulenbook to confirm this yet) all armor recommondation made by me were put in place. So that all armor values todate are consistend with the values generated by the process discussed above. Unsurpisingly, most of the results matched what was generated by Matthews belt armor only formula (as belt armor tends to dominate) but there were some changes as a results of my method.

---- Rich

 

[BuShips]

Is say an Iowa class BB really 18% better armored then a Bismark?

Yes.

First, I'll state right off that getting into the level of detail where this answer goes is at the other end of the data spectrum for what is desired for a game such as Victory at Sea. In other words, this is that "road to madness" that Mongoose did not wish to travel that would have otherwise added the game to a list of games with simply too much detail, and thus then lose their appeal to a majority of gamers. The United States "cheated" by the use of a layer of STS "Special Treatment Steel" which was laminated to the outside of the belt armor, which they then inclined to an angle of 19 degrees (told you they cheated!-heh). Note that inclined armor on a tank is better than vertical armor (I think the Russians showed the Germans how to make better tanks using this method). Based upon a very detailed and entertaining study at http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm#armor and further at http://www.combinedfleet.com/b_armor.htm, he gives the Iowa a rating of 146% of Bismarck when considering the total armor rating. When he breaks this down to belt armor alone, he puts the Iowa at twice the strength of Bismarck's armor, even though Bismarck's is thicker than the Iowa.
Look at the belt armor index: http://www.combinedfleet.com/f_armor.htm

This quote pretty much says it all-
"Using Nathan Okun's article on battleship protective schemes, I quantified their total vulnerability zone range (using the Navy Ballistic Limit as the benchmark for penetration). For instance, Bismarck could put a shell through her own belt from any range under 29,000 yards (the weakest score), whereas she would have to close to within 16,400 yards to punch through Iowa's (which had the best). [Note: for the purposes of this computation, I am rating Iowa's side protection as equivalent to South Dakota's, which is the ship Nathan actually shoots at in his article. Iowa's belt scheme was practically identical to South Dakota's, and both had STS shell plates outboard which serve to de-cap incoming AP projectiles, which is why (stunningly) South Dakota's belt is slightly more effective than Yamato's!]."

What does this mean to VaS? Nothing I think, as the game researchers should not have been looking for what various armor designs would do in decapping an armor-piercing projectile. This is not what VaS was built to do, and thank God for that. :wink: What does all of this drivel I'm posting mean? It's just some interesting trivia to digest, and that's about it, heh. For me at least when I first saw this a few years ago, I was fascinated. That's all that I was attempting by this was to entertain. I hope you found it interesting.

 

[BuShips]

By the way, "de-capping" is similar to decapitation. The pointy end :wink: of an AP projectile is made of very hard steel in order to punch through the also very hard belt armor of the target. Since the entire projectile cannot be made of this material, the armor penetrator can be detached or "de-capped" if the projectile hits the target's armor belt at other than a 90-degree angle. By inclining the armor belt and adding an extremely hard outside layer of STS you have a good chance at knocking off and neutralising the part of the projectile that's only job is to make the hole for the payload (the explosive and part of the projectile that goes "boom"). Here is something to take note of that just about "caps it" :roll:. The armor belt of an Iowa class battleship will de-cap all projectiles up to 18.6" . 'Nuff said there! Finally with even all of this, there were some defects found within the system. Changes were made to BB65 and BB66 that would have improved armor system performance by as much as an additional 20 percent, but these ships were never to be completed and launched.

 

[BuShips]

"...but these ships were never to be completed and launched." Umm, I just couldn't let go of that comment without saying that the bow of the USS Kentucky lives on and is a permanent part of the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor (think "kidney transplant from a relative") .

Edit: My memory proved false this time around, as the USS Wisconsin was the recipient of the Kentucky's "organ donation" due to a collision with a destroyer. While the Missouri did indeed go hard aground once, it only suffered keel damage and my subconscious mixed up the two "accidents".

 

[DM]

So that all armor values todate are consistend with the values generated by the process discussed above.

Rich, please see email that is on its way to you now.

 

[BuShips]

So that all armor values todate are consistend with the values generated by the process discussed above.

Rich, please see email that is on its way to you now.

Can you say "Incoming!" :lol: