Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought

OlorinNight wrote:I disagree with you, Dilandu:

While it's true that Merlin helped and lead in the right direction Charis, he did not just dumped the KH on them. In fact, he did not even gave them the blue prints of them.

He gave them the principle, but there wwas still a lot of development and calculus to do, which was made by real people (remmeber that most people involved in Charis technological development are not aware of the Inner circle, OWL and all that).

He was in fact instrumental in a few things: get them to start innovating, explaining some basics concepts, and help them avoid getting sidetracked on dead-end techniques. But only when they started thinking about it, and always by explaining why it was a dead end. He did not teach by imposing his knowledge, but by showing the way.

A better way to present it, is to see scientifics of safehold developing new ideas and theories as adevnturers walking on a twisting trails. Some of them have a light showing them the way (Charisians), other are walking in total darkness (CoGA). But all of them are walking the path by themselves...

He gave them the technical and theoretical base that on Earth took more than a century to develops, gave them a supercomputer for all calculation, gave them historical data... There are simply impossible for Charisian to INVENT the KH's after they just invent the primitive casemate iron lads. The gap is bigger than between galley and the casemate ironclad.

The so-called "dead ends"? They are experience. After all, ALL armoured ships is dead end! Aviation and missiles deal with them once and for all. So, why waste resources on them at all? Let's start building airplanes in Charis.

For example: if KH were just a iron-hulled casemate or barbette ironclads of 1870-1880, I may agree: the Charisians COULD invent them as a next step. But the admired cruiser of 1890 is simply a too great step. There are no way that so many ideas - citadel armour (wihout heavy enemy guns to stand against!), long-barrel artillery (without the enemy armour to pierce!), barbette guns (without any expirience of steam navy warfare!), sloped armor deck... They are impossible to invent for Charisian position at all. Without Merlin, they couldn't took this step at all for decades of engineering expirience.


And Merlin gave them this ships without reason. I may agree, if the Charis were losing war at sea and urgently needed a technological miracle. But in Charis case, the much simpler iron lads - the ones, that they could invent by themselves - would do the job. The Merlin Mary-Sue intervention was completely unnecesaru

Because you are missing my point:

Merlin is showing them the way for development, some time making things a little faster thanks to access to aowl computing capacity, but he is NOT jumping them two or three centuries away.

He takes them along the same track that took centuries on earth, he just help them doing it faster.

And, again, most of the people working on the projects (KH and others) are solving all the problem by themselves, making their own calculus, bringing their own ideas,....

He just dismiss some of those ideas, when he knows they would take time, ressources and Manpower better used elsewhere because those ideas are dead-end (scientifically speaking, not in terms of armoured ship being or not dead-end). But he always brings an explanation on why it would not work.

In fact, the scientific and technological development on Safehold has reach such a point that it has become impossible for Merlin and the rest of the Inner Circle to be fully involved in it.

They only things he does know is watching over some of the most proéminents one, and developing some new stuff (steam powered engines) when he knows that the society is ready for it (both technically and in term of mindset).

And he only does that because he knows that Charis, in order to win, needs to stay on top of development. But, again, he just slip the idea in the minds, and let them do all the work.

OWL did not do the blue print for the KH. OWL may have checked them to be sure they missed nothing, but the calculus, the measuring, the blue prints, everything was made by real people working (and thinking) hard on it...

Because you are missing my point:

I'm afraid, you are missing mine.

Ok, let's look at some ship, that was truly innovative for her time: the "Dandalo"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 80_001.jpg

Bendetto Brin was a genius. He was one of the most brilliant naval engineer of XIX century. Before him, the only ironclads that Italy ever build were the pretty usuall central battery, fully-rigged ships. And then "Dandalo"

Let us try to reconstruct the Brin's logic, shall we?

Brin thought: "We can't afford to build as many ships as France of Britain. So, we must build our ships to be most powerfull ships in the world! Let's beat quantity with quality: our ironclads must be powerfull enough to defeat any other ironclad. So, they should have a superior guns, best possible defense and best possible speed"

1) Guns. The big guns. Only the hevay guns may pierce the enemy armour. So... we must have the most powerfull guns ever!

The heavy guns are, literally, heavy. We couldn't place more than a few of them. The boardside arrangement for them isn't practical; we won't be able to concentrate the fire.

So... the turrets! The turrets allow us to aim our guns in any point. They are heavy by themselves: we couldn't place more than two of them on the ship, and we couldn't place more that two guns in each. So, our guns must be truly enormous, if there are so few of them. 100-tonnes 17,72 inch rifled muzzle-loaders would fit just fine.

But the turrets on the centerline have a problems with chase and retreat fire. So... Let's place turrets in echelon arragement! Then we would be able to give them the wide arc of fire, and still be able to put all guns to the boardside.

But the guns are too long to be retracted into the turrets fo reload. So... let's just reload them outside the turrets, through hatches in the deck! All we need is to depress the muzzle! Yo-ho! Brilliant!

2) Armour. To stand against the heavy shots of heavy rifles the armour must be thick. Very thick. And very heavy. We can not protect the entire side of the ship, it is too heavy.

But... what if we concentrate all the vital parts in the center of the hull? And protect this... relatively small "citadel" with as thick armour as possible?

The ends could be damaged by enemy fire, of course. But the heavy guns are slow-firing, so it's unlikely, that they could destroy the ship by blastin out the unarmored ends. We could reduce damage by dividing them into a many small watertight compartments!

And against the possibility that some heavy hinged shell may penetrate the ship from the top to the bottom, we place the armour deck on the waterline level to the full lenght of ships! Brilliant? Brilliant!

3) And the speed. The ship should be fast. Really fast it could be only under steam. And the machines are heavy. So... maybe we could go without the sails and masts? Yes, it would reduce the range... but we aren't ocean-going state and we haven't got any colonies (yet). So get rid of the sails! Our new battleship would be low and stable. Brilliant!

And... what we have? We have a ironclad, that was the most powerfull in the world for a plenty enough years. Only the british "Admiral"-class and french "Hoshe"-class ironclads were more powerfull than "Erico Dandalo" and they appeared only a long after it was launched.

So. We recostructed the logic of Brin when he build the "Dandalo"

Could you, please, reconstruct the same way a logic of Charisian engineers, when they "invent" the KH's?

Dilandu wrote:

Because you are missing my point:

I'm afraid, you are missing mine.

Ok, let's look at some ship, that was truly innovative for her time: the "Dandalo"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 80_001.jpg

Bendetto Brin was a genius. He was one of the most brilliant naval engineer of XIX century. Before him, the only ironclads that Italy ever build were the pretty usuall central battery, fully-rigged ships. And then "Dandalo"


Let us try to reconstruct the Brin's logic, shall we?

Brin thought: "We can't afford to build as many ships as France of Britain. So, we must build our ships to be most powerfull ships in the world! Let's beat quantity with quality: our ironclads must be powerfull enough to defeat any other ironclad. So, they should have a superior guns, best possible defense and best possible speed"

1) Guns. The big guns. Only the hevay guns may pierce the enemy armour. So... we must have the most powerfull guns ever!

The heavy guns are, literally, heavy. We couldn't place more than a few of them. The boardside arrangement for them isn't practical; we won't be able to concentrate the fire.

So... the turrets! The turrets allow us to aim our guns in any point. They are heavy by themselves: we couldn't place more than two of them on the ship, and we couldn't place more that two guns in each. So, our guns must be truly enormous, if there are so few of them. 100-tonnes 17,72 inch rifled muzzle-loaders would fit just fine.

But the turrets on the centerline have a problems with chase and retreat fire. So... Let's place turrets in echelon arragement! Then we would be able to give them the wide arc of fire, and still be able to put all guns to the boardside.

But the guns are too long to be retracted into the turrets fo reload. So... let's just reload them outside the turrets, through hatches in the deck! All we need is to depress the muzzle! Yo-ho! Brilliant!

2) Armour. To stand against the heavy shots of heavy rifles the armour must be thick. Very thick. And very heavy. We can not protect the entire side of the ship, it is too heavy.

But... what if we concentrate all the vital parts in the center of the hull? And protect this... relatively small "citadel" with as thick armour as possible?

The ends could be damaged by enemy fire, of course. But we could reduce damage by dividing them into a many small watertight compartments! And against the possibility that some heavy hinged shell may penetrate the ship from the top to the bottom, we place the armour deck to the full lenght of ships! Brilliant? Brilliant!

3) And the speed. The ship should be fast. Really fast it could be only under steam. And the machines are heavy. So... maybe we could go without the sails and masts? Yes, it would reduce the range... but we aren't ocean-going state and we haven't got any colonies (yet). So get rid of the sails! Our new battleship would be low and stable. Brilliant!

And... what we have? We have a ironclad, that was the most powerfull in the world for a plenty enough years. Only the british "Admiral"-class and french "Hoshe"-class ironclads were more powerfull than "Erico Dandalo" and they appeared only a long after it was launched.

So. We recostructed the logic of Brin when he build the "Dandalo"

Could you, please, reconstruct the same way a logic of Charisian engineers, when they "invent" the KH's?

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. The ships are armed with artillery which was designed for the specific purpose of smashing fortifications and being longer ranged then anything else afloat. The designers know what their own guns can do, and they armored the ship against it. I don't believe I ever said that they were armored against long-range, plunging fire. This isn't the case of the NEVADA's "all or nothing" armor. It's actually a fairly simple scheme, just metallurgically advanced.The ship's engines are straightforward developments – admittedly, "crashed through" to higher steam pressures, but the original river I am glad that you seem to think I aren't too advanced operated at equally high pressures.The large size is a consequence of the need for a long operating endurance, and the desire to build a ship technologically advanced enough to kick off an arms race that will push the MAINLAND realms into discarding the limitations of the proscriptions is a major factor in chooses ing such a high design speed.

So, what do we have here?

(1) We need powerful, long-range guns.

(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.

(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.

(4)In terms of speed, we want to make this ship fast enough to make it completely clear to every other navy they literally CANNOT hope to produce anything capable of standing up to this ship without adapting the same technologies. Therefore, we'll push the engine tech we already have to its logical conclusion, but we WON'T introduce geared turbines, despite the fact that we have that technology ashore already.

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?

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.

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)...

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.

and the desire to build a ship technologically advanced enough to kick off an arms race that will push the MAINLAND realms into

In that case they clearly overshoot. The mainland simply couldn't understand HOW they could build something like that. There is a great possibility, that they simply decide "there is clearly a Shang-Wei work... there is logically impossible to make such a great leap in such a short time" and became much MORE restricted.

The more simply ironclads - that the mainland realms COULD understand the logic behind them - would work mich better.

Ok, it you think that i pushed too far with my opinion, i'll close that question. But my IMHO stays.

Dilandu wrote:

and the desire to build a ship technologically advanced enough to kick off an arms race that will push the MAINLAND realms into

In that case they clearly overshoot. The mainland simply couldn't understand HOW they could build something like that. There is a great possibility, that they simply decide "there is clearly a Shang-Wei work... there is logically impossible to make such a great leap in such a short time" and became much MORE restricted.

The more simply ironclads - that the mainland realms COULD understand the logic behind them - would work mich better.

They can't make that extrapolation. If Charis' excellence is a result of Shan-wei, then where is God or the Archangels? The Writ asserts that God will intervene should Shan-wei's touch re-emerge from the depths of hell. If Charis' innovations are a result of demonic inspiration, then where is the angelic inspiration?

The conclusion is that Charis isn't inspired by Shan-wei. God's absence from the CoGA illustrates his disapproval of their actions. Charis' success illustrates God's approval of their actions. If God approves of Charis, then might God not have inspired those innovations to fight the CoGA He disapproves of? Of course He might.

Bottom line is that the more Charis succeeds, the more likely it will be perceived that God supports its actions. The greater the failures for the CoGA, the more likely it will be perceived that God disapproves of them. So if God approves a course of action, then pursuing it will be a truly godly endeavor regardless of how impossible it might initially seem.

As to the conclusion that the impossible MUST be viewed as demonic, balderdash! Impossibilities are called miracles and miracles are the province of God. Demonic corruption simply cannot prevail over Divine Goodness. Any mistaken impressions regarding what is or isn't a miracle is surely a product of human failing.

In aggregate, your logic fails to consider the mindsets involved. I fear the poster doth project too much.