Honorverse strategic wargame

Roguevictory wrote:Honestly I think having access to a simplified version of the design rules would help since it would let people test their weapon loadout ideas to make sure they before making the suggestion on the forums.

It's not all that difficult to figure out with the information already available. You have many classes of ships in the HoS Companion, complete with weapons fit. If the ship someone wants to change the loadout for is approximately in the same tonnage range, then you have a baseline as to what you can do.

The biggest issue would be remembering that you won't be able to remove energy mounts and replace them with missile tubes, because the magazines take up a *hell* of a lot of space. This is something skimper doesn't think or care about when he talks about throwing ungodly numbers of tubes in a hammerhead

OTOH, you *can* replace all missile tubes with energy mounts (and have *tons* of free volume afterwards), but why you'd want to do that, I have no idea.

Other things you'll need to take into account are the core hull (if the ship has one), and the boat bay(s). Core hulls, armored or otherwise, usually take up about half the height and between 1/4 and 1/3 the width of the main hull (the central portion). On smaller ships (which *do* have core hulls - just not armored), this is a pain in the ass to work around for adding missile decks, because you need a minimum length of launch tube to get the missiles out the door. That's partly the reason why in some cases, you'll see smaller ships with high weapons decks, rather than midline (see my Star Knight/Fearless renders), where the ship is widest. In many cases, the tubes will overlap the top of the core hull, with just a relatively narrow corridor between tubes on opposite broadsides.

Larger ships have high and low weapons decks because they *can*. They usually have so many tubes and energy weapons that it would be impossible to put them all on a single deck. That and much larger magazines (due to larger missiles and higher numbers of same) also means they need to be spread out on several decks.

For boat bays, you need to figure the bay goes up into the ship a *minimum* of two decks, or roughly 8 meters (I don't recall what the deck spacing is offhand, and I'm too lazy to check), plus space to allow for the docking arms. Again, look at my SK/Fearless renders. Then there's the matter of how many bays there are. DD's may have a single bay, or even a pair.

And while we're on the subject of boat bays, everyone knows that RD's are launched through the bays, right? Well RD's are stored inside the main hull on one end of the boat bay, and there's a big-ass hatch that opens into the bay that the RD's go through, which means you *also* need to allow for clearance with your small craft, so that you don't have to launch them in order to release an RD. You don't see them in my renders, but there are 14 RD's carried by the SK, and they take up a *lot* of space. While they're about the same length as a Mk-13, they're roughly 2.5-3x the size.

Most of this info is readily available by either reading the books, especially the companions, looking at my Fearless, or going back through some of the threads discussing my renders (and of course, checking the Pearls - I was even pointed to some info there just today that I had been asking about for my current project). About the only thing that hasn't been obviously available is the info I mentioned about the RD's (although if you look closely at one of the boat bay pictures, you can just make out the RD hatch in the forward end of the bay, on the right side) and the core hull.

MaxxQ wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:Honestly I think having access to a simplified version of the design rules would help since it would let people test their weapon loadout ideas to make sure they before making the suggestion on the forums.

It's not all that difficult to figure out with the information already available. You have many classes of ships in the HoS Companion, complete with weapons fit. If the ship someone wants to change the loadout for is approximately in the same tonnage range, then you have a baseline as to what you can do.

The biggest issue would be remembering that you won't be able to remove energy mounts and replace them with missile tubes, because the magazines take up a *hell* of a lot of space. This is something skimper doesn't think or care about when he talks about throwing ungodly numbers of tubes in a hammerhead

OTOH, you *can* replace all missile tubes with energy mounts (and have *tons* of free volume afterwards), but why you'd want to do that, I have no idea.

Other things you'll need to take into account are the core hull (if the ship has one), and the boat bay(s). Core hulls, armored or otherwise, usually take up about half the height and between 1/4 and 1/3 the width of the main hull (the central portion). On smaller ships (which *do* have core hulls - just not armored), this is a pain in the ass to work around for adding missile decks, because you need a minimum length of launch tube to get the missiles out the door. That's partly the reason why in some cases, you'll see smaller ships with high weapons decks, rather than midline (see my Star Knight/Fearless renders), where the ship is widest. In many cases, the tubes will overlap the top of the core hull, with just a relatively narrow corridor between tubes on opposite broadsides.

Larger ships have high and low weapons decks because they *can*. They usually have so many tubes and energy weapons that it would be impossible to put them all on a single deck. That and much larger magazines (due to larger missiles and higher numbers of same) also means they need to be spread out on several decks.

For boat bays, you need to figure the bay goes up into the ship a *minimum* of two decks, or roughly 8 meters (I don't recall what the deck spacing is offhand, and I'm too lazy to check), plus space to allow for the docking arms. Again, look at my SK/Fearless renders. Then there's the matter of how many bays there are. DD's may have a single bay, or even a pair.

And while we're on the subject of boat bays, everyone knows that RD's are launched through the bays, right? Well RD's are stored inside the main hull on one end of the boat bay, and there's a big-ass hatch that opens into the bay that the RD's go through, which means you *also* need to allow for clearance with your small craft, so that you don't have to launch them in order to release an RD. You don't see them in my renders, but there are 14 RD's carried by the SK, and they take up a *lot* of space. While they're about the same length as a Mk-13, they're roughly 2.5-3x the size.

Most of this info is readily available by either reading the books, especially the companions, looking at my Fearless, or going back through some of the threads discussing my renders (and of course, checking the Pearls - I was even pointed to some info there just today that I had been asking about for my current project). About the only thing that hasn't been obviously available is the info I mentioned about the RD's (although if you look closely at one of the boat bay pictures, you can just make out the RD hatch in the forward end of the bay, on the right side) and the core hull.

True but I still think it would be interesting to have a building a Warship in the Honorverse section in one of the companions like there was a Building a Navy in the Honorverse section in House of Steel. Hopefully there will be but we'll see.

My belief is that David won't publish (or allow FSP) a ship design system until the series is done. I hope I'm wrong.

Anyhow, I'll talk to Terri and Sam next weekend and see what they let me say.

MaxxQ wrote:It's not all that difficult to figure out with the information already available. You have many classes of ships in the HoS Companion, complete with weapons fit. If the ship someone wants to change the loadout for is approximately in the same tonnage range, then you have a baseline as to what you can do.

The biggest issue would be remembering that you won't be able to remove energy mounts and replace them with missile tubes, because the magazines take up a *hell* of a lot of space.

Which reminds me of a piece from Friedman's book British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After. At or just after the end of WWII the British were looking into cruiser designs using new radar directed 3" dual purpose gun (with proximity fused AA rounds).

What they found what they couldn't actually build the ship they wanted, they couldn't fit the guns and magazines (and everything else) on the size hull envisioned. The 3" magazines needed to be so much bigger than the existing cruisers' 5" magazines that it drove up the displacement to the point where they believed it to be unaffordable.


They had a design rule about needing room to store 'X' minutes of fire per gun in the magazines, and the firing rate of the 3" was sufficiently higher than the old 5" guns that it needed much more volume for ammo despite each round taking less room.

Jonathan_S wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:It's not all that difficult to figure out with the information already available. You have many classes of ships in the HoS Companion, complete with weapons fit. If the ship someone wants to change the loadout for is approximately in the same tonnage range, then you have a baseline as to what you can do.

The biggest issue would be remembering that you won't be able to remove energy mounts and replace them with missile tubes, because the magazines take up a *hell* of a lot of space.

Which reminds me of a piece from Friedman's book British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After. At or just after the end of WWII the British were looking into cruiser designs using new radar directed 3" dual purpose gun (with proximity fused AA rounds).

What they found what they couldn't actually build the ship they wanted, they couldn't fit the guns and magazines (and everything else) on the size hull envisioned. The 3" magazines needed to be so much bigger than the existing cruisers' 5" magazines that it drove up the displacement to the point where they believed it to be unaffordable.


They had a design rule about needing room to store 'X' minutes of fire per gun in the magazines, and the firing rate of the 3" was sufficiently higher than the old 5" guns that it needed much more volume for ammo despite each round taking less room.

Most British "light" cruisers thru WWII were armed with 6" main batts. There were a few late built light cruisers specifically oriented for fleet air defense that had DP 5" as mains (similar to the U.S. Atlanta class), but they were not a predominant type.

Are you sure that the article was not talking about destroyer designs?

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:Most British "light" cruisers thru WWII were armed with 6" main batts. There were a few late built light cruisers specifically oriented for fleet air defense that had DP 5" as mains (similar to the U.S. Atlanta class), but they were not a predominant type.

Are you sure that the article was not talking about destroyer designs?

dreamrider

5.25", to be precise, and the Dido-class weren't particularly successful. The 5..25 wasn't adequate as surface-to-surface armament and wasn't as good as the U.S. 5" in the anti-aircraft role. The Atlanta-class weren't a successful all-purpose design, either, though deadly as anti-aircraft escorts. Their losses were all to surface ships or submarines.

dreamrider wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Which reminds me of a piece from Friedman's book British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After. At or just after the end of WWII the British were looking into cruiser designs using new radar directed 3" dual purpose gun (with proximity fused AA rounds).

What they found what they couldn't actually build the ship they wanted, they couldn't fit the guns and magazines (and everything else) on the size hull envisioned. The 3" magazines needed to be so much bigger than the existing cruisers' 5" magazines that it drove up the displacement to the point where they believed it to be unaffordable.


They had a design rule about needing room to store 'X' minutes of fire per gun in the magazines, and the firing rate of the 3" was sufficiently higher than the old 5" guns that it needed much more volume for ammo despite each round taking less room.

Most British "light" cruisers thru WWII were armed with 6" main batts. There were a few late built light cruisers specifically oriented for fleet air defense that had DP 5" as mains (similar to the U.S. Atlanta class), but they were not a predominant type.

Are you sure that the article was not talking about destroyer designs?

dreamrider

Pulled the book out and double checked. I'd gotten a little mixed up in my memory. At least part of this was directly in a section about a proposed upgrade for the Tiger class cruisers to add a trio of twin 3"/70 mounts for AA. When it was realized the magazines could only offer 6 minutes of fire an alternate plan was proposed to substitute a pair of twin 4.5" mounts for AA (though the ships were built with the 3"/70 mounts)

And part of it was investigations into upgrading other classes post war. Specifically they noted if AA upgrades were desired for the Dido class that they go from 5.25" guns to 4.5" -- because the twin 3"/70s would have only 3 minutes of fire.


I think, but couldn't quickly find, some other spot in that book made comparison between the magazine sizes needed for the twin 3"/70 and the expected new 5"/70 gun that was envisioned as superseding the 3", 4.5", and 6" guns for 1960s era cruiser designs.

Hi Jonathan_S,

Sounds like typical RN cruiser policy.

Did the book detail if the 8" cruisers from the '20's ever elevated their guns to the AA angles claimed, let alone ever practice?

The only thing they'd have a chance at hitting would seem to be a zeppelin.

I'm curious about how the 3"/70 compares with the USN 3"/50, I suspect reliability is another reason the 3'/70 didn't last long in the RN, besides ammunition expenditure.

I've wondered since the dive bomber was more of a threat to the carrier than high altitude bombers above 15,000', should the 4.5" guns have been replaced with more [24?] 3" despite the prewar 3" being older, with a lower velocity etc, yet the higher rate of fire against dive bombers might have prevented the damage that nearly sank the Illustrious, given the whole RN design premise was based on inaccurate assumptions.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:*quote="dreamrider"*[quote="Jonathan_S"]Which reminds me of a piece from Friedman's book British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After. At or just after the end of WWII the British were looking into cruiser designs using new radar directed 3" dual purpose gun (with proximity fused AA rounds).

What they found what they couldn't actually build the ship they wanted, they couldn't fit the guns and magazines (and everything else) on the size hull envisioned. The 3" magazines needed to be so much bigger than the existing cruisers' 5" magazines that it drove up the displacement to the point where they believed it to be unaffordable.


They had a design rule about needing room to store 'X' minutes of fire per gun in the magazines, and the firing rate of the 3" was sufficiently higher than the old 5" guns that it needed much more volume for ammo despite each round taking less room.*quote*

Most British "light" cruisers thru WWII were armed with 6" main batts. There were a few late built light cruisers specifically oriented for fleet air defense that had DP 5" as mains (similar to the U.S. Atlanta class), but they were not a predominant type.

Are you sure that the article was not talking about destroyer designs?

dreamrider

Pulled the book out and double checked. I'd gotten a little mixed up in my memory. At least part of this was directly in a section about a proposed upgrade for the Tiger class cruisers to add a trio of twin 3"/70 mounts for AA. When it was realized the magazines could only offer 6 minutes of fire an alternate plan was proposed to substitute a pair of twin 4.5" mounts for AA (though the ships were built with the 3"/70 mounts)

And part of it was investigations into upgrading other classes post war. Specifically they noted if AA upgrades were desired for the Dido class that they go from 5.25" guns to 4.5" -- because the twin 3"/70s would have only 3 minutes of fire.


I think, but couldn't quickly find, some other spot in that book made comparison between the magazine sizes needed for the twin 3"/70 and the expected new 5"/70 gun that was envisioned as superseding the 3", 4.5", and 6" guns for 1960s era cruiser designs.[/quote]

Getting back to the game,
I have a few ideas.

1) There is a website, tripleawarclub.org, that is a download version of the axis and allies board game. You can add maps for it, and people have created maps for things like Lord of the Rings. It would probably be possible to make a map for the Honorverse. The first havenite war would be easier to make.
However, there would be a lot of missing parts-tech, diplomacy, politics, and tactical scale engagements.

2)In an eventual (computer) game, I think that the best way to do it would be to have the gameplay shift depending on rank. A captain or lower would be commanding a single ship, or maybe a LAC, and as you go up the ranks, you lose some of the detail and gain a wider view. If it was implemented that way, you could choose what level to play at, and either stay at that level or move up the ranks.

For lower levels, you might receive new tech, or be ordered to return to refit your ship(s) with a new system. For higher levels, you might have some input on areas of tech to focus on, but it would be a surprise where the breakthroughs actually occurred.

As to the canon issue, I think that the game should stay within the canon of already published books, or maybe whatever snippets MWW wants to add. There is plenty of room within that framework - several wars across decades of time gives you a lot of options.

3)If there is some sort of skirmish mode, I envision it something like battlefront 2, where you direct overall strategy, but can also zoom in to oversee a particular battle. The honorverse game should have more layers than battlefront, with the grand overview containing uncertainty about where exactly everything is - time delays. Depending on how complex the game is, it could have everything from First Space Lord to Lieutenant Commander. At the lower level you are in direct control of the ship.

4)The game shouldn't focus on just battle - you should need to build up your crew at the lower levels, and deal with politicians, ambassadors, technology, and foreign officers at higher levels.

I know this isn't likely to happen, due to money or time issues - I've just been thinking about an honorverse game for a while and this is the direction I would want it to take.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Jonathan_S,

Sounds like typical RN cruiser policy.

Did the book detail if the 8" cruisers from the '20's ever elevated their guns to the AA angles claimed, let alone ever practice?

The only thing they'd have a chance at hitting would seem to be a zeppelin.

As best I recall that book didn't specifically cover that, but I'm now reading his Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns and Gunnery and in the bits about the WWII Royal Navy experience it does cover the use of the 6" and 8" cruiser main battery for anti-aircraft use.

Unlike the dedicated high angle guns the main battery wasn't designed to engage tracked targets, but rather to form part of the timed barrage or umbrella barrage fire to break up incoming formations. (The guns didn't have the rate of fire to make it worth trying to track and kill an individual airplane; especially at high angles of fire because the loading equipment wasn't designed to operate at that elevation). But put 9 or so 6"-8" rounds per ship in front of level bombers or diver bombers approaching the formation and it can really disrupt attack coordination (not to mention occasionally get lucky and actually knock down a plane)

The British put a lot of stock and effort in the ability to quickly fire barrages of time fused AA shells, in large part to support or defend other units within a formation. During Operation Pedestal HMS Rodney even expended some 16" rounds for that purpose!?!. (Even though RN policy explicitly excluded guns larger than 8" from the barrage plan)

They even accepted compromises in the positioning of their destroyer screen in order to allow the safe use of both medium and heavy guns for AA.
The DDs had to be farther out that optimal for full ASDIC coverage, to put them beyond the self-destruct range of 20-40mm fire. But they still had to be close enough that any 4.5-8" fire would land beyond them, so not as far out as you might like for aircraft or MTB warning.