The elevators were able to carry only 3 propellant bags per tray and they had 2 parallel trays able to be loaded simultaneusly.
If one of the 2nd charges needed 4 bags to fire the projectile it means the rammer inside the tower needed to make the complete load cycle to prepare the gun.
If the average time is 30s and the minimum is 28s with the projectile that only needed 3 bags it means that a full load, only focusing on reload, was around 32-35s, in line with other trials conducted by other navies.
We need two pieces:
Time taken by the elevator to descend 1 level.
Time taken by the rammer to ram 1 cycle.
With these data however we would still need to use logical reasoning to convince them. What will you base your argument on to convince them?
This one would be the end game as no other complains could be made. (as it was an automated system guiding that part of the process)
The only thing we know, as now, is that the rammer was slightly faster while loading the shell than when loading the charges.
It was programmed like this as the shell easily entered the chamber due to its shape while the charges, being cylindrical pouches, were a bit trickier to handle. (not “end of the world” trickier if someone want to ask, as they were already alligned and ready, but they were still cylindrical pouches so it was safer not to ram them full force into che chamber).
Raw data, as they seem to not accept any logic that’s not backed up by that. (at least in this situation)
Data that can prove the actual performance of the gun, zoning out all the safety measures that the italians took to preserve the guns, is the best way to clear any doubt.
If they will complain about this too then we’ll know that we can’t do anything else to persuade them, as there’s no better data avaiable. (unless someone can bring back the dead and interview one of the offiacials managing the guns on the Littorios? )
Found out the problem about the Littorio’s RoF and compiled a report explaining everything that caused confusion about it.
For the solution without the tecnical gibberish about shells and charges here’s the paragraph about it:
Spoiler
Now on the main topic: how the italians reloaded their heavy guns.
They used a method called “Caricamento ordinario”.
In this method the shell was loaded first and then the bursting charges were loaded into the powder chamber.
To be fully operatonal the powder chamber must be fully loaded so that the carges were closely in contact with the “Cannello” (the igniter) to avoid missfires or, in the worst case scenario, the return of the shell in the powder chamber and its detonation inside it.
For a first charge shot there were no problems as all six charges were loaded, securing the powder chamber, but what happened for the 2nd and 3rd charge shots?
In this case the missing gaps in the powder chamber were filled with a special pouch called “Stoppaccio”. This charge was inert and easily flammable, with exactly the same dimensions of a normal charge.
Its role was to push the true charges against the igniter and secure the projetile, completing the load.
This can be seen in this image (this is a visual representation from the author):
This means that, even during 2nd and 3rd charge shots, the loading mechanism must complete its entire cycle to secure both the chamber and the projectile in place to avoid major damage on the gun.
This validates the average times achieved by italian sailors during the 1941 trials where they reached a 30s average reload due to their better training and solved issues with these massive guns.
If you want to comment the report please only add additional information that support it, do not clutter it as it only slows down the validation process.
So basically what this means is that the gun was always loaded with the maximum amount of bags, regardless if they were actually full powder bags in the case of 1st charge, or a mix of full bags and inert bags in the lesser order charges?
So the reputation of the Littorios having slow firing guns by design was a myth all along huh?
I think it’s a mith probably stemmed by the use of primarly british sources by the hystorians, mostly because the italian language is pretty hard and translating hand written diaries and reports was nearly impossible for them without someone willing to help.
This meant that most of those reports were observations during combat or official printed statements meant to train how to properly and safely handle these massive guns to minimize risk of injuries or damage to the guns.
Now that the italian hystorians are also helping translating all those documents stored in the military vaults we’re getting better information about the italian navy in general.
( an example is one of the sources that I used, dated 2019, which is extremely new for normal standards).
@Smin1080p_WT sorry to ping you here but this need to be addressed as the report has been changed and closed without giving me a chance to reply.
In the report about the RoF of the Littorios I clearly explained that che powder chamber, to be able to fire, MUST be always full to avoid major damages on the gun.
This mean that every shot these ships took under tryals is the same as a first charge shot, but with less propellant to reduce the wear of the guns.
There’s no difference in the loading mechanism of the gun as missing the propellant charges were replaced with inert ones.
It’s not a work of logic or fantasy, it’s pure data.
Have we tried yet to pass the report but written in russian?, perhaps the russian bug report manager might pass it(i think it has already happened before that all it took is giving the report in russian to make a report that wasnt accepted to be passed to the devs before)
Hi, we already managed to contact the devs thanks to a moderator that helped us on this matter.
Their answer is that they’ll implement missing parts of the ship (cement armor, reload rate etc…) based on how the ship will perform in game.
So…yeah, they’ll base their decision using “statistics” meaning that, if Roma will still do well in this nefed state due to how good its players are, they’ll never fix it.
Not sure if that helps, but according to statshark - Littorios have consistently the worst K:D ratio of all the Rank VII ships every month since they got released.
This is because the extremely long reload stops you from dealing the final hit on time before bots hit your target with a random HE shell stealing the kill.
There should be some kind of severe damage system like what we have with planes so that players can be rewarded for dealing major blows to a target ( the italian 381mm guns are extremely effective when they hit, often resulting in real damage or magazine detonations, but ,with capital ships, detonations usually don’t lead to immediate sinking and everybody can grief you, especially bots ).
Sorry for the late answer.
We already used all those books plus some private research on the OTO/Ansaldo archives to prove the perfomances of these cannons, but they keep rejecting everything because they still claim that they need more data to see if the Littorios are underperforming and the reload buff is necessary ( while we already have one ship clearly overperforming over everything at the top and there’s no sign of them balancing it ).
We don’t actually know what to use anymore to make a report.
We already proven that the powder chamber MUST be completely filled to avoid major damage during fire, so in all those 30s test shots that you can find, even if they were made with a 2nd charge shot, the tower performed the complete reload procedure, loading 6 bags ( 3 inerts if 2nd charge ) and the shell into the chamber.
On the Russian forum I was trying to suggest RoF reduction for balance reasons and was asked to post it in planned BR changes thread instead, so I believe if they don’t accept bug report, the only way would be to post balance suggestion (also mentioning bug report and explanation) in such thread, but we need some support to get attention to this issue.
PS imo RoF should be in general rebalanced for vessels, looking how same cannons have different reloading times depending on the nation (due to different values in paper sources) or just situation when some cannons have theoretical, but some practical RoF. I think there should be some balance coefficient to adjust reloading times of some cannons.
We should try to push some suggestions in the next Br changes then.
Righ now we’re always a bit all over the place as everyone try to fix something to save this mode ( like all those suggestions for those coastal ships with only one or two cannons at 3.7+ that keep facing late DDs ).
The fact that we’re so few compared to the massive amount of players for the other modes really makes you think that we should all focus on one or two suggestions at time so that we can get more support.
Yes, RoF standardization should become a must for bluewater ships, as right now, with the new repair mechanic in action ( even if you can disable it ), rapid fire guns have a major advantage over same caliber counterparts.
To further prove the point every gun in game have multiple reload times and chosing one of them based on “balance” is an error as it links the gun performance to a “human choice”, which is usually not a good idea.
For example, for the 381/50 cannons we have four reload rates:
Theoretical: 28s as stated in the contract Ansaldo signed with the Regia Marina while developing the gun.
Test based: 30s with 2nd charge shots during sea trials.
Practical: 45s to allow the crew inside the turret to operate without injuries.
Actual: Around 60s to allow tower and fire directors to properly verify where the shots landed and relay all additional orders to refine the next salvo.
This can also be said to every gun in game and it’s not really fair that only some of those guns can have their theoretical reload while others have to deal with the second longest one ( Littorios and American BBs for example).
Already tried and the answer was the usual “not a bug”, that’s why we can’t understand the reason behind how the reload rates are chosen and what parameters tell them if a ship will perform better or worse with that chosen RoF.
Unless is the usual " Better treatment for those ships that bring money " situation.
With more information collected I tried to report the incorrect vertical dispersion that’s affecting these guns.
The mix of horrible dispersion ( wrong by many standards ) and extremely long reload ( already proven wrong by official info ) these guns are the most inconsistent among all top tier BBs.
Let’s hope this won’t get labeled as “not a bug” as usual even with the official documents and firing tables from Ansaldo’s archive.
