Tides of War

I am an old "big ships" fan. I love all aspects of naval warfare, but I'd rather drive a BB than a torpedo boat. So far Enigma seems geared to subs and small ships, with big ships as primarily a backdrop.

After I won both SP IGN campaigns and unlocked the Wilhelm class BCs I have been playing around with them in the Patrols section. They sure look good, but man they turn like the Exxon Valdez. It takes the Hood class around 12 minutes to come about 180? on hard rudder at flank speed. They seem to be very, very sluggish and slow to respond to the helm. I have some information about turn rates at different speeds on capital ships somewhere. I can't locate it right now, but this seems way off. I hope these things aren't just designed for as targets.

If heavies are going to be included in the multiplayer game, will they be able to fight with their full capacities? Will fleet combat between battleships be possible in this game? or are things heading toward the aircraft carrier?

Regards,

SeaWolf

The faster you go the lower your turnrate. The bigger the ship the lower your turnrate. It's as simple as that, your magic word is inertia.

You can try out ourself. Walk slowly along a path and then turn right. Then run down the path as fast as you can and turn right again. You'll find it far more difficult to turn right at high speed.

When you reduce your ship's speed it works far better, and try pivoting. You can perform a 180? turn with a BC in less than three minutes.

(But I wouldn't advice you to do so while you're under fire, because you're sitting like a dead duck in the water while you're pivoting )

Ok, I am well aware of the physics involved here. Thats why I posted all the factors that would effect the turn radius. I know ya got a enormous mass of steel hurtling at high speed and that there is a lot of enertia to be overcome. But I still say this is way off of the mark. These were warships, not oil tankers. The ability to maneuver is important to the big ships as well as the small ones.

Now if this is done to prevent the battleship from dominating the ERT arena, I can understand that. I'll just board a DD instead and be off, but I wanted to ask the question. Are the big ships really going to be included as a viable part of the multiplayer game, with realistic strengths and weaknesses, or is the focus going to continue to be small ships? To be fair, on the negative side for big ships of this era, they were much less able to handle underwater hits than they are given credit for in this game, at least so far. I put at least 16 torpedoes into the Hood in one scenario when in reality two to four would have probably done her in.

Btw, Ulsterman, I ran another experiment. I got the Wilhelm up to 15 knots, 2/3 speed and the gave hard left rudder. This time it took her 18+ minutes to wallow about 180?! Didn't seem to be much magic in that enertia word after all m8.

Regards,

SeaWolf

I tried the pivot, starting at 15 knots, and it took me over 6 minutes to bring her about 180?, and she ended up doing 1 knot. Not a good thing for an already huge target.

Regards,

SeaWolf

Anyone with some good hard data on performance of the big ships I'd welcome it. We suspected that the big ships cornered a little too slow. It was the source of numerous "discussions" out of which the proper thing was not done.

--East

I tried the pivot, starting at 15 knots, and it took me over 6 minutes to bring her about 180?, and she ended up doing 1 knot. Not a good thing for an already huge target.
Regards,

SeaWolf

That's the problem with pivoting, it only works at slow speed, because half of the ships screws have to turn for forward movement, the other half for backward movement.

OK, let's imagine you're going 15 knots. Order BACK FULL or BACK FLANK and wait until your speed reaches 0 (this in fact seems to happen rather fast and doesn't feel realistic, but that's another point). Once your speed is down to 0 order ALL STOP and PIVOT RIGHT/LEFT. You'll see that one engine lever shows forward movement, the other backward, both should be at 1/3. Now manually set the lever that indicates forward speed to flank. The other will automatically be set to back flank. It'll take roughly a minute to turn 180? from now, all you have to do is ordering 'HOLD COURSE' once you like your new course.

It could be that you even don't have to do anything manually, but I can't remember at the moment whether ordering AHEAD FLANK stopps you from pivoting.

Well, I gave a look at my navy books and didnt find anything about BB and DD turn radius at various speeds.

Anyway there are some famous pics (for example some taken during the battle of Midway) of axis BBs/CVs engaged by dive bombers and/or torpedo bombers that give an idea about how well could those monsters maneuver at medium/high speeds ... I know we cannot estimate *exactly* their speeds but for sure turn radius in ERT looks weird ...

Nice Pics

The turn rate on those big monsters shouldn't be that long. I most defiently agree with Seawolf on that issue.

Now I am no expert on turn rates of ships, I will more than do my research, but I know it shouldnt' be that slow for the BC.

I'll get back to ya when I find something out.

Asked grandfather, apparently the Italian battleships turned only slightly slower than his cruiser when Malta got attacked during a convoy run he was on.

He said: by the time his ship had closed from enemy gun range to their gun range at flank (ranges were 12mi and 3mi, I think he said), the three battleships were already turned around and outrunning his cruiser as they returned to the med.

I think one of the three ships was the "Conte Di Cavour".

The thing people forget is that despite the size and inertia, those are massive engines. Battleships could outrun cruisers, simply because the engines were so much more powerful in proportion to size/mass.

I think one of the three ships was the "Conte Di Cavour".

Ahhh, I love how they name capital ships after someone important

Count Cavour........da man with the plan to unify Sardinia Piedmont into Italy

And of course dont' forget the Germans....and The Bismark

:D