The best figure I have personally seen for sustained fire in combat by a battleship with guns 14” or larger is that Navweaps quoting John Roberts’ “The Final Action: The Sinking of Bismarck , 27 May 1941” credits HMS King George V with an overall 1.7 salvos/min for the first half hour of the engagement before running into mechanical trouble. While not impressive by game standards it’s a performance any Brit should have reason enough to be proud of, since the next best sustained rates I’ve seen are for American 16” guns in shorter duration engagements, hovering around a 1.5rpm. Which I think really illustrates that it’s folly to claim any battleship in game was hitting nearly the shell output irl that even a poorly leveled crew manages in game.
I would mention this is exclusive to Nelson and Rodney, G3 and perhaps the Lions. KGV and Vanguard retain the familiar 2 deg/sec as do the refitted QE’s.
I think a clear line needs to be drawn about just how much of a sim the game is trying to be, and an even standard should be applied to all. If some ships are allowed to use loading angle trial shoots to establish rate of fire, that standard should apply to all. I’m personally alright with guns having tightened dispersion compared to irl, since it acts as a counter to crews being able to accomplish repairs inside a minute that a yard couldn’t hope to manages in a month. At the end of the day it is still a game, and implementing certain features I think would have a negative enough effect on the player numbers that the tired old three naval players joke would stop being one at all.
Come back to the topic, issues about Rodney on Dev server.
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Firepower
A. Fire rate
Might be historical, but @Rileyy3437 once saids it could be shortened irl too, so if anyone have source, it would be nice job to do.
B. AP penetration
While almost every shells currently has ‘buffed’ drag(including British 15’‘), it seems Rodney’s 16’’ doesn’t have thoe ‘buff’. This is actually problematic as we could not present how ‘big’ those buff Gaijin has given to other shells.
C. No HE shell for auxiliary guns.
D. No torpedo -
Protection
A. Totally wrong armor
Don’t even need to discuss this. WIP my guess and it will fix.
B. Wrong shell room and magazine position
Shell room sits too low and doesn’t share same deck with magazine. -
Mobility and Hydroplane
A. Wrong speed
Currently it is 41 km/h in maximum, but it seems she was able to make ‘trial speed’ when chasing Bismarck. So it should be 43 km/h.
B. Hydroplane
While La Galisonniere receives hydroplane on its turret(cannot use for now due to direction problem), why not Rodney? She also has one in third turret.
Thankyou for making this summary, saves me a big task as I don’t have dev access.
Should also have HE-VT or at least TF but VT is possible also, depending on the refit.
I’ll open a thread about rates of fire when I get home. But yeah, let not derail the subject here.
Rodney is obviously a WIP (the area around her guns makes that obvious) and we’ve to see how she doesn in combat. Keep eyes peeled for armor holes.
For those who may have question about Rodney’s armor on dev server
Total mess so don’t know where to start from XD. Just have to wish developers have more time to focus on this ship.
I’d keep an eye on the barbette especially. I’ve only been able to do protection analysis testing but it looks like something relating to to the barbette bug they just fixed is going on internally. Maybe it’s just an internal geometry issue, but on some ships it looks like the barbettes are being treated as almost hollow in some cases, and in others like shell fragmentation is ignoring lower barbette armor with how wide the frag pattern is throughout the ship after a barbette penetration. That may not strictly be the case since I’m still trying to come to a good theory of what is going on, but it looks like a pretty fair number of ships might need a look at their internal damage models in any event.
And of course, as Arkhangelsk is not ‘British’ british battleship, it receives resonable draft and no problematic crew compartment
I’m not the one believing Gaijin is ‘soviet bias’ on naval. But I certainly believe Gaijin is ‘British hater’.
Addtional issue on Rodney
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firing arc of main guns
It seems No.3 turret firing arc is little narrower than it should be. Not signifcant but feels like it is not 25 degree but 30 degree. -
lifeboats blocking auxiliary turret.
Life boats on each side blocks No.1 6-inch turrets from firing in steep angle. Usually these boats were eliminated in test drive and battle for other ships, so consistency required.
There’s nothing so called “new penetration calculator”. Penetrations calculator has been always the same one. What was different is the ballistics parameters, i.e. remain velocity, angle of descent etc
Yeah. Only shells with ‘changed’ drag or following ‘historical’ velocity. Isn’t Dunkerque also following historical velocity?
Thanks for clarification. Also, it was during last month of update ‘Alpha Strike’ when dev server of ‘Seek & Destroy’ just opened when change was made. I found my log on other site that I talked about penetration change at June 1 this year.
A small detail that many ppl might have overlooked - Gaijin actually distinguished the 16" Mk.1 and Mk.2 rifling of her guns:
Two guns out of the three in Turret B was of mk2 rifling that has 797m/s MV instead of 788m/s. This also confirms that the ship’s year configuration to be pre Feb 1942, after which the all three guns in Turret A was replaced by mk.2 rifling as well. I think the ship is most likely be in 1941 configuration, i.e. during the hunt of Bismarck.
It seems to me that Rodney was given to us in 1940 modernization. Because in 1941 it should have had 3 more Pom-Pom units installed.
Late 1941 actually. Pom Pom in No.2 turret was installed in August 1941. Hunt for Bismarck was May 1941.
They also installed 2x8 Pom-Poms on the aft superstructure instead of art-directors.
It would be nice if they just said which version they picked
But that would make bug reporting it too easy