NationStates

The Soodean Imperium wrote:If you look at the last time this came up, the person was making the same point. It was still debunked. The next few pages (and further up that page) are worth a read, they cover most of the main points regarding coastal bombardment.

I do appreciate that you're taking a conciliatory stance on this, though. Not everybody is as thoughtful.

I edited this reply because it's prior incarnation was extremely long-winded. Basically Anagonia is a very b ackwards nation, just like it's nation government type explains (Confederate States). So I'm just going by that and trying to stay canon. I think that's the simple explanation. Sorry for the prior long-winded one, it didn't make much sense I think.

And you're very welcome! It's why I wanted to post somewhere for peer review. Even if the design is useless I still want it to appear modern and useful.

Anagonia wrote:

The Soodean Imperium wrote:If you look at the last time this came up, the person was making the same point. It was still debunked. The next few pages (and further up that page) are worth a read, they cover most of the main points regarding coastal bombardment.

I do appreciate that you're taking a conciliatory stance on this, though. Not everybody is as thoughtful.

I edited this reply because it's prior incarnation was extremely long-winded. Basically Anagonia is a very b ackwards nation, just like it's nation government type explains (Confederate States). So I'm just going by that and trying to stay canon. I think that's the simple explanation. Sorry for the prior long-winded one, it didn't make much sense I think.

And you're very welcome! It's why I wanted to post somewhere for peer review. Even if the design is useless I still want it to appear modern and useful.

Operating a battleship is very expensive - the parts are old, often no longer in commercial production, and you need to pay a lot more crew members than a guided-missile destroyer would need. Replacing every part of the hull except the turrets (literal Ship of Theseus?) is insanely expensive as well, because you're essentially building a new ship from the keel up. And as Questers notes in the linked discussion, the smaller your navy is, the larger a percentage of your budget that essentially useless battleship will eat up.

A common misunderstanding on NS is the notion that "poor nation" or "backwards nation" means "we do the same things a rich and advanced nation does but with older equipment." I myself fell into this trap once. Really, though, what it means is that you end up using the same equipment, but in smaller quantities, and you do less with it. Instead of sending marines all around the world with a battleship to support them, you wouldn't be sending marines all around the world at all, except in a token force as part of a larger coalition.

"Our leadership isn't very smart and thought battleships were good" isn't a good explanation either. It might apply in the '30s to late '40s, or at latest the early '50s, when people were still (considering) building battleships despite the demonstrated advantages of aircraft carriers. But by the 21st century, it just isn't credible that a country with sufficient resources to rebuild Iowa in a Zumwalt hull would see no problems with doing so.

Battleships were withdrawn not just because they're comparatively useless, but because they require lots of people and money to operate, and later because the hulls and components were degrading past the point of economical repair. Keeping battleships in service from 1940 to 2017 then is a luxury of a large and rich nation, basically rule of cool, like how the US keeps USS Constitution and Britain keeps HMS Victory.

If you mean a new class, then a ship designed purely for big gun shore bombardment (I won't try to persuade you it's a bad idea at the outset) would look a lot different to a battleship. No need for armour, no need for speed, so you'd probably see something like a small cargo ship built to civilian standards, diesel engines, maybe 20 knot top speed, with probably a single big gun mount. Possibly automatic. Battleships were designed to fight other ships at a time when the big gun was the optimum weapon for doing so; no reason to expect a ship designed for a totally different mission and environment to look remotely similar.

edit: Either keeping battleships in service unmodified for 80 years or building new reproductions makes a lot more sense than converting them to battlecarriers and keeping them in service for 80 years though.

Would there be any feasibility to replacing the DP gun of a modern destroyer or cruiser with a much larger-calibre gun, or does the 12-16 inch "battleship" gun see some kind of diminishing returns for shore bombardment?

I'm sure that something beyond 130-152mm calibre (possibly over 200mm) is still feasible.

It was tried back in the 1980s by the USN, and they found that there really was no difference between a modern 5in and 8in gun... I can only assume the same is true for larger calibers.

Battleship gun calibre increased mostly to offer higher armour penetration. Most shore targets are not armoured at all, so the big gun offers no advantage there, while armoured shore targets can be armoured beyond the ability of any reasonably ship-portable gun to penetrate. So the big gun is not a well optimised tool for shore bombardment, which shouldn't be surprising as it wasn't designed for that task.

My guess is Anagonia is not going to shift on this point, though.

I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

Anagonia, what you have asked of the thread is (and I paraphrase heavily here), 'how does into modern dreadnought?'

The answer to your question is, build something like Longbow, but don't expect it to work... at all. That's it, there's not that much else we can do. Longbow was built for that mentality, so taking inspiration from it is your best bet, it features everything and anything and was in the hundreds of meters in length by the end.

The problem we're having as a collected thread is that, it's such a bad idea that really you could spend that money doing literally anything else to make your navy more productively active and capable at being intimidating, such as investing in more submarines. We're trying o stop that mentality, but if its in your nation's canon to go full-battleship production, then we really can't do much for you.

Indeed, it's that alien of an idea to us that you probably are better off looking at Longbow or things like it to ensure that your ship at least does something for your navy of some use. That's about all the help we can be without telling you to not go battleship and go submarine or aircraft carrier instead.

Anagonia wrote:I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

And this is why I advised early on that if you don't want to RP realistically, and are only interested in feedback on the image, then you should acknowledge this and move the question to CYOE. Or, just accept that there's nothing to ask, because you're committed to battleships and aren't planning to change that.

As the title states, this is the military realism consultancy thread, and having battleships around in 2017 - whether newly built or heavily refitted or left unmodified - is inherently unrealistic. And it gets more unrealistic for a "backwards" Navy that's short on funds or staffed by inexperienced officers. Whether you like it or not, this is the uncomfortable truth, and it's the feedback you're going to get.

Asking the military realism thread to make you a realistic dreadnought for 2017 is like asking them to make you a realistic trireme for 1800.

The less likely something is to happen in real life, the harder it is to suspend disbelief. Exactly how hard that is depends upon the person.

Other forms of advice not related to realism best belong in CYOE, if imagery, and RP Questions Thread if related to anything else. This thread is strictly for assessing plausibility, and to a lesser extent, functionality.

Anagonia wrote:I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

In the end what specs do you actually need help with? I'm afraid I've got kind of confused as to what the overall project involves and wither it's a case of old hull returned or old guns on all new hulls.

If it's the old hull then most of the specs will be done and if it's new hulls then hopefully you should be able to get at least rough dimensions from any drawing you might have. Really for a ship it's having the hull dimensions and a rough idea of the propulsion setup that is important, the rest is fairly easy to backfill.

Anagonia wrote:I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

I wrote a long post giving detailed advise, but the modem died and ate the post and I am lazy, so have a truncated version:

• Make it look however you want it to look, tbh. Do a dreadnought, then edit the design slightly to make some nods to modern shipbuilding convention (e.g. clean lines, angles etc., and modern sensory systems - and a flight deck).
• Use specially-designed for the calibre gun-launched missiles. Then you can have the bombastic roar of a broadside of guns firing - but instead of shells they're firing anti-ship missiles, or land attack cluster-munition carrying missiles whose engines will activate a short distance from the ship to carry them onward. This gives you the badassness of gunnery with the actual effectiveness of missiles. If someone says you couldn't design a missile to survive the stresses of that, hand-wave it and say 'look, I want to fire missiles from guns. If it makes you feel better, pretend they're being launched from vertical cells, but otherwise I'll be the one deciding how effective my nation's missile launch technology is, thank you very much.'
• Remember to include self-defence CIWS and short-range SAMs.
• Ditch most of the armour, because it won't help if a missile direct-hits the protected area. Make it more of a fast battleship or something.
• Remember that this ship should be surrounded by escorts at all times. Maybe consider battlegroups of 1 dreadnought, 1 light carrier/flight-deck cruiser, 2 Air Defence destroyers, and a sprinkling of ASW and multi-role frigates?

Does this help? I do have extensive experience of being told that my ideas are too unrealistic to consider for advice by these threads (e.g. werewolf working dog teams, or battlemage deployment), but I still do them anyway because it's fun and what I want to write. And because it turns out you can integrate realism and stuff with fantasy.

*

Kouralia wrote:

Anagonia wrote:I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

I wrote a long post giving detailed advise, but the modem died and ate the post and I am lazy, so have a truncated version:

• Make it look however you want it to look, tbh. Do a dreadnought, then edit the design slightly to make some nods to modern shipbuilding convention (e.g. clean lines, angles etc., and modern sensory systems - and a flight deck).
• Use specially-designed for the calibre gun-launched missiles. Then you can have the bombastic roar of a broadside of guns firing - but instead of shells they're firing anti-ship missiles, or land attack cluster-munition carrying missiles whose engines will activate a short distance from the ship to carry them onward. This gives you the badassness of gunnery with the actual effectiveness of missiles. If someone says you couldn't design a missile to survive the stresses of that, hand-wave it and say 'look, I want to fire missiles from guns. If it makes you feel better, pretend they're being launched from vertical cells, but otherwise I'll be the one deciding how effective my nation's missile launch technology is, thank you very much.'
• Remember to include self-defence CIWS and short-range SAMs.
• Ditch most of the armour, because it won't help if a missile direct-hits the protected area. Make it more of a fast battleship or something.
• Remember that this ship should be surrounded by escorts at all times. Maybe consider battlegroups of 1 dreadnought, 1 light carrier/flight-deck cruiser, 2 Air Defence destroyers, and a sprinkling of ASW and multi-role frigates?

Does this help? I do have extensive experience of being told that my ideas are too unrealistic to consider for advice by these threads (e.g. werewolf working dog teams, or battlemage deployment), but I still do them anyway because it's fun and what I want to write. And because it turns out you can integrate realism and stuff with fantasy.

This is exactly what I've been wanting all along. Thank you. I sent you a telegram.

EDIT
Removed confrontational statements.

Crookfur wrote:

Anagonia wrote:I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

In the end what specs do you actually need help with? I'm afraid I've got kind of confused as to what the overall project involves and wither it's a case of old hull returned or old guns on all new hulls.

If it's the old hull then most of the specs will be done and if it's new hulls then hopefully you should be able to get at least rough dimensions from any drawing you might have. Really for a ship it's having the hull dimensions and a rough idea of the propulsion setup that is important, the rest is fairly easy to backfill.

Anything and everything if possible. I'll Telegram you.

And thus does the "I want battleships" cycle make it's way into the anger phase.

Anagonia wrote:I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

It might help if you reformulated your request. Initially you asked for realism:

"I need some assistance with specifications. I know some guys didn't like me asking for help to design a model, so I had a commission done of it. It's an updated and modernized Iowa-class. I was wondering if anyone could direct me towards someone better suited to spell out proper specifications for realism."

So, having been told that the realistic outcome is that such a ship would not be built or retained (except perhaps as symbolic, not military project), you still seem to want to keep it, so if not realism what is your requirement? Hard to give any other answer without knowing that.

HMS Queen Elizabeth wrote:

Anagonia wrote:I had formulated a well thought out reply to this, but I'm at the point of throwing my hands up because it feels like I'm being stonewalled here. If you guys can't help me, that's fine. Can you point me to someone who can? I feel extremely disregarded in my point of remaining true to canon. With all due respect, I'm not trying to change your status quo. I'm sorry if you feel that way.

It might help if you reformulated your request. Initially you asked for realism:

"I need some assistance with specifications. I know some guys didn't like me asking for help to design a model, so I had a commission done of it. It's an updated and modernized Iowa-class. I was wondering if anyone could direct me towards someone better suited to spell out proper specifications for realism."

So, having been told that the realistic outcome is that such a ship would not be built or retained (except perhaps as symbolic, not military project), you still seem to want to keep it, so if not realism what is your requirement? Hard to give any other answer without knowing that.

I submit I am not the best at communication.

However I assumed, wrongly, that it would be clear I was requesting what would be realistic for the ship to have. Not if it should exist, which I never implied.

I apologize to all parties involved.

North Arkana wrote:And thus does the "I want battleships" cycle make it's way into the anger phase.

I am unsure what you imply by "I want battleships" when I already have them.

You have battleships, but not their dimensions or design except that you have them. Your best bet for deciding equipment, again, would be to look at Longbow. It used specially built arsenal systems, extreme range radar, and a supermassive superstructure for the mounting of said radar systems.

Kassaran wrote:You have battleships, but not their dimensions or design except that you have them. Your best bet for deciding equipment, again, would be to look at Longbow. It used specially built arsenal systems, extreme range radar, and a supermassive superstructure for the mounting of said radar systems.

Thank you, I'll do that right now while I'm thinking on it.

Anagonia wrote:

HMS Queen Elizabeth wrote:It might help if you reformulated your request. Initially you asked for realism:

"I need some assistance with specifications. I know some guys didn't like me asking for help to design a model, so I had a commission done of it. It's an updated and modernized Iowa-class. I was wondering if anyone could direct me towards someone better suited to spell out proper specifications for realism."

So, having been told that the realistic outcome is that such a ship would not be built or retained (except perhaps as symbolic, not military project), you still seem to want to keep it, so if not realism what is your requirement? Hard to give any other answer without knowing that.

I submit I am not the best at communication.

However I assumed, wrongly, that it would be clear I was requesting what would be realistic for the ship to have. Not if it should exist, which I never implied.

I apologize to all parties involved.

How can I know how a fictional ship would realistically be equipped, any more than I can estimate the fuel consumption of the star ship Enterprise? I can apply certain principles of design to such a ship and all of them tell me "build a different ship". You liked the reply by Kouralia for instance - even though what he tells you to do is, essentially, take off the guns and armour. In other words, do not build a battleship at all.

Anagonia wrote:

Kassaran wrote:You have battleships, but not their dimensions or design except that you have them. Your best bet for deciding equipment, again, would be to look at Longbow. It used specially built arsenal systems, extreme range radar, and a supermassive superstructure for the mounting of said radar systems.

Thank you, I'll do that right now while I'm thinking on it.

Longbow being an oversized guided missile destroyer, not a battleship.

(And even for what it is, not a particularly good or interesting design.)

IRL shore bombardment ship:

The Switzo-Polish Republic's new Kunz Heavy assumption tank has two turrets. Should it?

The Soodean Imperium wrote:
As the title states, this is the military realism consultancy thread, and having battleships around in 2017 - whether newly built or heavily refitted or left unmodified - is inherently unrealistic. And it gets more unrealistic for a "backwards" Navy that's short on funds or staffed by inexperienced officers. Whether you like it or not, this is the uncomfortable truth, and it's the feedback you're going to get.

No, it's not unrealistic.

People in this thread are married to a definition of realism that has nothing to do with realism, except using the word 'realism'.

People imply that 'realism' means 'similar to what a reasonable military would do IRL', which time and time comes down to 'what my limited knowledge of what guides military decisions tells me Western militaries do.

Time and time again people on NSDraftroom and on NSMRC were shocked to discover that a variety of entirely unreasonable designs were mass-produced, fielded, and existed in the real world.

In the real-world endless numbers of unreasonable decisions were made by actual, real-world militaries. This is because of a variety of complex cultural factors, flawed decision-making processes, and outright idiocy.

There's nothing unfeasible about imagining an alternate universe in which the US could have continued fucking the Iowa cactus for a decade more.

It's more or less possible for people on this thread (or elsewhere) to decide a design is unrealistic due to its not meetingf physical constraints - weight, internal layout, technology, etc. But the community continuously runs into problems when it tries to debate issues of historical realism, because they're endlessly less well-known and because people's personal biases color their opinions so heavily.

There's nothing unrealistic about a battleship existing a an in-character mistake by someone's nation and its decision-making process or a representation of some flawed cultural thing that leads to such a mistake. Countries have committed, IRL, far costlier mistakes than this, and continue to commit them all the time.

HMS Queen Elizabeth wrote:

Anagonia wrote:
I submit I am not the best at communication.

However I assumed, wrongly, that it would be clear I was requesting what would be realistic for the ship to have. Not if it should exist, which I never implied.

I apologize to all parties involved.

How can I know how a fictional ship would realistically be equipped, any more than I can estimate the fuel consumption of the star ship Enterprise? I can apply certain principles of design to such a ship and all of them tell me "build a different ship". You liked the reply by Kouralia for instance - even though what he tells you to do is, essentially, take off the guns and armour. In other words, do not build a battleship at all.

I came here because I consider you and your peers experts. I wanted advice on what you'd think should be in the design, not being told over and over again I'm foolish or a part of some "conspiracy" to "want battleships". It's entirely silly to tell me I "want battleships" when they've been a part of my canon since 2003.

What I didn't want was...whatever the hell just happened.

Longbow being an oversized guided missile destroyer, not a battleship.

(And even for what it is, not a particularly good or interesting design.)

Thank you.