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Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought

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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by runsforcelery   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 2:35 pm

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Michael Everett wrote:
runsforcelery wrote:(2) We need a consistent design philosophy for our Navy, which has always been to match the defensive and offensive capabilities as closely as possible. Therefore we need to armor our shit against her own guns.

Please tell me that that was a typo (or mis-spoken word)...



Sorry, not only was I using voice-activated software, but it was the voice activated software on my iPhone, which I seldom use for email or online work, and the size of the screen makes it easier to miss little things like that. So, yes, it was a misheardo generated by the phone and not caught by me.

Sorry about that. :oops:


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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 2:51 pm

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runsforcelery wrote: So, yes, it was a misheardo generated by the phone and not caught by me.

Sorry about that. :oops:


More than just fully understand: faced with the same problems on a regular basis... :( The stubborn program simply refuses to understand some of the words correctly.
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Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by AncientMariner   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:10 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:(2) We need a consistent design philosophy for our Navy, which has always been to match the defensive and offensive capabilities as closely as possible. Therefore we need to armor our shit against her own guns.



Sorry, not only was I using voice-activated software, but it was the voice activated software on my iPhone, which I seldom use for email or online work, and the size of the screen makes it easier to miss little things like that. So, yes, it was a misheardo generated by the phone and not caught by me.

Sorry about that. :oops:


I don't know, the misheard version has a certain... panache! :lol:
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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by kbus888   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:25 pm

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=2014 /09/29=

Hi Greenhair

WELCOME TO THE FORUMS !!!

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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by runsforcelery   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:26 pm

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Dilandu wrote:
runsforcelery wrote:Okay, let's start with the fact that an elemental principle of Naval design is that you design your armor to resist the power of your own guns.


Wrong, i'm afraid. It may work only in assumption that the enemy have similar guns and the similar ideas how to use it.

For example, if the enemy placed a few ultra-heavy guns as a main weapons, there is simply no point to protect the all side. And the citadel scheme would work well. For example: "Royal Sovereign"-class battleships (XIX century, of course)

But if the enemy armed his ships with smaller, fast-firing guns, the citadel scheme may not be the best. And you may well trade the thickness of armour for the greater armoured area. For example: "Majestic"-class battleship.

In the situation, were the enemy guns are clearly inferior, and would be inferior for decades, it's simply make no sense.

The ships are armed with artillery which was designed for the specific purpose of smashing fortifications and being longer ranged then anything else afloat.


For what reason? The main purpose of fortification bombardment is to hit GUNS. They are small. The long-range bombardment of fortifications always was the awful waste of ammunition. Or you need really MANY guns to concentrate.

In that case, the 10-inch rifles on "King Haarald" is useless. Their rate of fire is too low, and the targets simply isn'tprotected enought. The uniform 8-inch armament would work better: the ammount of shells would be much greater.

(2) We need a consistent design philosophy for our Navy, which has always been to match the defensive and offensive capabilities as closely as possible. Therefore we need to armor our shit against her own guns.


For what reason? The "philosophy" of navy didn't make much sense: this navy changed his entire philisophy at least three times for no more than three decades (from galleys to galleons, from galleons to ironclads, from ironclads to battleships).

In that case they should already start to build anti-torpedo defense and anti-air guns. ;) Just in case. ;) What if Holy Langhorne blessed the Clyntahn with the ability of flying, or breathing underwater?

(3) How should we do that? We'll use the new armor which has been developed for the river ironclads, And we'll apply it in a belt to the side of the ship instead of armoring the entire freeboard of the vessel, the way we did in the ofriginal, crude ironclads.


Well, if we got unlimited supply of armour, workforce and money, we MAY do it. But it would be the useless waste of resources, that could be used on the other, more important diretions.

There really isn't anything in this ship's design that wouldn't have occurredto the Charisians without Merlin's input. What would have happened without him is simply that they wouldn't have been able to accomplish all of the logical steps involved as rapidly. But that's sort of the point, isn't it?


I'm afraid it isn't. All this design simply couldn't appear from Charisian. All this assumption here didn't really make much sence: "let's build the super battleship only in case that the Mumbo-Jumbo tribe somehow build a 406-mm/50"

The realistic "King Haarald" - that COULD been build by Charisian without Merlin saying to them directly how to do this - would probably be:

- Сomposite-hulled (the simple matter of field repair)

- Fully armored at least on the waterline against ENEMY guns (we could repair the upper part of the hull pretty easly; the hit near the waterline would be much more ugly)

- Have a flat armored deck on the upper part of the belt

- Have two-or-four heavy rifled guns in 1870-1880 type
barbettes with the light protective domes. Not the 1890th type turrets.

- Have a large casemated battery of 6-or-8 inch rifled guns.

So we have something like HMS "Sultan" of french "Ocean". And it is completely within the logic of Charisian shipbuilding. It could be done without any "Wisdom-from-above".

If you want to insist that in order to be "legitimate" no new development can have his fingerprints on it anywhere, then the entire logical framework of the books is obviously unacceptable to you.


I only and humbly think, that the KH's pretty much ruined the previous pattern of steady, logical improvements.


You are obviously going to accept no analysis which doesn't concur with your views on the subject.

The traditional standard for warship design for as long as people have been armoring ships, is that you armor them against the threat of their own weapons because that's the best yardstick you have for the threat someone else is going to produce. You don't "assume that the other side's weapons will be inferior for decades," especially when the entire objective is to induce the other side to undertake development that they would not otherwise undertake. So you armor your ship to a standard which will absolutely force them to push their own technology to the limit and beyond.

Now, having said that, allow me to point out to you that while I used the example of armoring a vessel against the threat of its own guns, the King Haarahlds are not, in fact, protected against their own guns any more than the American battleships of the North Carolina or South Dakota and Iowa classes were. In fact, the differential is even greater. The 10" gun of the King Haarahld will penetrate close to 10" of face-hardened armor, and the ships carry only a 6" belt, 6" casemate armor, and 6" shields on the main battery. This armor thickness was chosen because it will defeat any weapon the Church is likely to be able to produce in the foreseeable future. If they'd wanted to truly armor the ships against their own guns, then the belt would have been at least 10"-11" thick.

In what universe do you live where hitting guns in fortifications depends on scoring direct hits on the artillery? You take out shore fortifications by either scoring direct hits on the guns (if you are totally unreasonably lucky) or by demolishing the fortification in which the guns are mounted. That takes fire power and the ability to smash masonry and to penetrate deeply into earthen fortifications so that you blow big craters in them. Any other approach is imbecility (to use one of Jackie Fisher's favorite words). You keep harping on the low rate of fire of the King Haarahld's 10" guns, but they don't have a low rate of fire. They have, in fact, a very high rate of fire. These ships are not designed to sail up a river and engage a battery of field guns drawn up in an open field to shoot at them. They are designed to go after hard fortifications protecting harbors. They are designed to go after masonry walls 20 feet thick or earthen berms up to fifty feet thick in order to get at the guns they are protecting. That is precisely the function which I have given you for them every single time they've been discussed, and you keep going back, at least in spirit and by inference, to the example of the Alexandria forts and the totally different and less capable artillery used against them.

The Imperial Charisian Navy changed the types of ships that it's using, and it changed the types of tactics but it's using, but it has never changed the design philosophy under which it operates. And that design philosophy has always been to strike the best balance between defense and offense that it could. What's changed are the parameters which to find that balance. When it was galleys going after galleys, the parameters were speed, seaworthiness, maneuverability,, and boarding combat, and Charisian galleys struck a balance between those factors best suited to Charisian tactics, which emphasized the invincibility of the Royal Charisian Marines. When the galleon was adopted, the parameters changed to seaworthiness, firepower, clear broadside firing arcs, scantlings and timbers heavy enough to stand up to the pounding, and the line of battle, and the ships Charis designed merged does factors in the best balance between offensive and defensive capabilities it could. Now the parameters are armor protection, the penetration power of the guns, steam, and the shorter operating radius imposed by a ship dependent upon the fuel it carries rather than the force of the winds, and they are once again — within the same basic design philosophy — looking for the best balance between offense and defense they can achieve. And, unlike your rather facetious recommendation that they should be preparing to defend themselves against torpedoes and missiles, the Church is not nearly so far away from producing heavy rifled artillery as you seem to think that it is. Suppose, for example, just for instance, that the Church was able to deploy eight 10" Parrott Rifle? Fired from a shore mount, that gun would penetrate any wooden galleon like swiss cheese. It would also threaten to do a number at ranges of up to, say, 2,000-4,000 yards on a relatively lightly armored ironclad. And note that the armor on the King Haarahld is intended to stop weapons in exactly that range. Moreover, you seem to persistently, consistently, and willfully ignore the idea that the ships are being built — I will say this one more time — to make it perfectly, abundantly, indisputably, inarguably, and blatantly clear that they cannot be defeated by any weapon currently in Mother Church's arsenal or conceivably attainable by any opposing navy which continues to be bound by the Proscriptions. What this means, is that of course the ships are ridiculously overprotected against current-generation threats. THAT'S THE ENTIRE IDEA.

At this point, I'm done debating this particular issue with you. It makes absolutely no — as in zero — sense for Charis to for some obscure reason deliberately build these ships to a lower level of capability than it could otherwise attain. And, I would simply point out, that you appear to be assuming — again, and despite my having explained to the contrary — but these are the only armored ships the Imperial Charisian Navy is building. They aren't. What they represent is a very small number of very powerful ships, deliberately conceived of as "super weapons" in order to drive the pace of innovation on the other side, while many more armored vessels of smaller size, with lighter armaments, are being built to serve other functions.

I don't think there's any way that I can be clearer about this. It would be internally illogical for Howsmyn, Merlin, and Cayleb to "dumb down" their available capabilities in ships built for the purposes I have repeatedly listed just because building them unbalances the playing field too heavily in your view.

I will add only that you really ought to read what I told you about these ships. They don't have 1890-style turrets; they have barbettes with gun shields. I don't recall telling you that they didn't have composite hulls. I don't recall telling you that they didn't have flat armored decks. I don't recall telling you that they are designed to engage enemy targets at 16,000 yards, with main armored decks, splinter decks, and burster decks. And, silly me, but I thought they had a battery of four heavy rifled guns and a casemated battery of 8" guns. Wait! That sounds remarkably like the King Haarahld, now doesn't it?

Part of the problem, as nearly as I can tell, is that you persist in defining these ships in your own mind as something that I never told you they were, on the one hand, and that you appear to totally misunderstand the threat they are intended to face and the tasks (and purposes) they are intended to achieve. And you also appear to be laboring under the misapprehension that none of the King Haarahld's design features originated anywhere except with Merlin Athrawes, which is, in fact, wrong. Remember that these ships were redesigned — by Charisians — in the wake of the Great Canal Raid. The recoil mechanisms on the guns were designed not by Merlin, but by Baron Seamount and his staff, none of whomare members of the inner circle. The notion of an interrupted screw breech was devised by a Charisian outside the inner circle. Merlin gave them the steam engine, and Howsmyn developed face-hardened armor with the advantage of Owl's input. Almost all of the other features of these ships, specified by Seamount and his staff, originated with Charisians outside the inner circle. The inner circle's members latched on to those features and, having prototyped them for the most part in the early ironclads, pushed them much further in the King Haarahlds for the reasons I've given above (and repeatedly) where pressure on the Proscriptions was concerned. The outcome is a logical consequence of the confluence of all those factors.

You obviously don't see it that way. I do, and of the two of us, I am somewhat more intimately familiar with both the details of their construction and the capabilities of the empire building them.


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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by isaac_newton   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:45 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:
Dilandu wrote:
Wrong, i'm afraid. It may work only in assumption that the enemy have similar guns and the similar ideas how to use it.
SNIP

I only and humbly think, that the KH's pretty much ruined the previous pattern of steady, logical improvements.


You are obviously going to accept no analysis which doesn't concur with your views on the subject.

SNIP

You obviously don't see it that way. I do, and of the two of us, I am somewhat more intimately familiar with both the details of their construction and the capabilities of the empire building them.


OUCH - thats gotta hurt!

I'm just wondering if Dilandu is an encryption of Skimper? :lol:
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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by Caliban   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:50 pm

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That's gonna leave a mark.... :shock:
====================================


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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by ksandgren   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:53 pm

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In the Honorverse forum, we run in to the same mindset in Lord Skimper. Dilandu seems to have a little more sense, but is just as incapable of listening when told outright that he is off base.
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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by tootall   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 4:32 pm

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runsforcelery--Dilandu--runsforcelery---etc-etc


You obviously don't see it that way. I do, and of the two of us, I am somewhat more intimately familiar with both the details of their construction and the capabilities of the empire building them.

OMG- What a fun read!! - Thanks- as good as another snippit.
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Re: Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought
Post by PeterZ   » Mon Sep 29, 2014 5:25 pm

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Dilandu wrote:
They can't make that extrapolation.


The Temple can't. The ordinary peoples - pretty much could. Remeber: we are talking not about supedrnatural intervention, but about the supedrnatural inspiration. And if i don't forget something, the Writ admit, that the Shang-Wei could influence mens, that are willing to sold their souls to her, and gave them the forbidden knowlege. So the reaction for "the damned heretics undoubtedly edify by the Shang-Wei" isn't the reaction for "the damned heretics summon the shang-wei herself in the world."

The problem is, that the sudden appearances of the PERFECT solution would look like pretty illogical even for many Charisian. And illogical look dangerously close to "supernatural", especially if the "enlightened ones" is a small group that just suddnely start mass-produce the perfect (and logically impossible) solutions.


Sorry but I disagree profoundly. Zhan and Zhayne Q Puhblyk are the ones making the leap that success means God favors the successful. That Writ says so. These folks are not theologians, but they can follow simple logic to its direct conclusions.

If something is supernatural but is successful, that means God favors it. If God favors it and it is supernatural, it is a miracle. The logic is simple, direct and difficult for the CoGA to refute.
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