Anti-clown car: post excellent designs from the AI here

[neph]

I was recently blessed by two of the most excellent late dreadnought/early superdreadnought battleship designs I've ever seen from the AI.

A 6x2 12" unified battery with an excellent 8" casemate secondary battery and a 3-4" tertiary battery. Only problem with this is a pair of idiotic 3x 5" turrets that block the firing arc of Z turret. 25 kt, 14.8" Krupp III belt. Veteran crew. Few bulkheads (not terrible per se)

 

And her even more excellent, upgunned & uparmored sucessor, 5x2 14" unified battery with a 7" mixed casemate & triple trurret secondary battery and a similar 3-4" tertiary battery. 22.5 kt, 14.6" Krupp IV belt. Trained crew. Many bulkheads.

 

Overall great designs with only a few quirks. What have you seen that made you go "wow, the devs' work is showing"?

Edited September 25, 2021 by neph

[Commander Reed]

The lack of posts here just goes to show how terrible the AI is at designing ships in general, although the thread IS relatively new but we'll see.

I myself have never seen anything worth noting. The AI is pretty terrible in regards to design.

[Stormnet]

38 minutes ago, Commander Reed said:

The lack of posts here just goes to show how terrible the AI is at designing ships in general, although the thread IS relatively new but we'll see.

I myself have never seen anything worth noting. The AI is pretty terrible in regards to design.

Clown car thread has also been lacking in designs lately.

I think the AI is finnaly begining to just make "Ok" ships.

Not (usually) bad enought for Clown Car, but not anywhere near expert.

Ofc, ocasionally it will make a bad ship and other times it will make a good one by chance, but I think the average is now okay.

EDIT: I have to remove what I said. After bumping the clown car thread, all of a sudden this exploded.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Stormnet

[neph]

Slightly wonky B placement, but overall an excellent 9" cruiser from the AI.

[arkhangelsk]

This is not a ship, but a reminder that sometimes the AI can make good decisions:

Couldn't decide how to evade the two torps on the left, so clicked AI button On. Then the AI fired another torpedo (one on right) at my destroyer. AI dodged them all beautifully.

[DougToss]

If I remember confused splashes aren’t modelled yet, but it goes without saying an 8 inch secondary battery would have a host of problems, that displacement would have been better used to protect or propel the ship. 
 

10 8 inch guns that could have been better used on a cruiser and would make the main battery gunnery worse - hence the Dreadnought in the first place - is better than what we have seen, but by no means good.

[neph]

 

Lovely Alsace-esque super 15" BB

[Noobito]

13 hours ago, neph said:

 

Lovely Alsace-esque super 15" BB

That ship looks really undergunned for its size, better at least have impossibly thick armor to match or be really fast.

[madham82]

Yea we shouldn't just be looking at the "layout" but the overall build to post a "good" design. Though realistically the clown ship thread probably focused more on the layout too. 

Regarding the above Alsace type, I would rate the layout bad as why did the AI not put the 3rd quad on the stern. A mid mount like that is practically useless. Even when they were used, it was in addition to stern mounted guns not a replacement for one. 

[Commander Reed]

Cuz AI is Dumb.

[Masonator]

 12 x 15" guns on 85,000t is "really undergunned" now?  ...What?  The only issues I see with that design are the oversized barbette for the secondary turret aft and the sub-optimal gunnery arrangement (I would've gone with an all-forward or A-B-X design, but I hate midships turrets in general).  It's otherwise fine.

 Anyone complaining about the current AI designer is clearly forgetting when it would regularly give you ships like this godawful monstrosity, or this unholy abomination, or Jackie Fisher's wet dream.

 Back to the topic, here's to Fuso as Queen Elizabeth was to Iron Duke. 8x15" guns, 28kts, 14" Krupp III belt, max bulkheads.

Edited November 18, 2021 by Masonator

[StoneofTriumph]

1 hour ago, Masonator said:

 12 x 15" guns on 85,000t is "really undergunned" now?  ...What? 

Well... Under the current damage model, it kinda is. Once you get up to the tech levels where 85,000 ton ships are even possible, ship resistance can stack to the point where those 15" guns are doing embarrassingly low damage even on penetrating hits. Once you get to Tillman range, you absolutely need to be packing 17-18"+ guns. And you need to think about raw damage, because it becomes nearly impossible to sink battleships (especially AI battleships) with anything other than  structure damage.

Edited November 18, 2021 by StoneofTriumph

[Masonator]

21 hours ago, StoneofTriumph said:

Well... Under the current damage model, it kinda is. Once you get up to the tech levels where 85,000 ton ships are even possible, ship resistance can stack to the point where those 15" guns are doing embarrassingly low damage even on penetrating hits. Once you get to Tillman range, you absolutely need to be packing 17-18"+ guns. And you need to think about raw damage, because it becomes nearly impossible to sink battleships (especially AI battleships) with anything other than  structure damage.

 A maneuverable ship with 16" guns is more than capable of killing a slab with 20"ers.  Damage is irrelevant if you don't take a hit.

 Also, someone clearly isn't using their torpedoes...

[madham82]

2 hours ago, Masonator said:

 A maneuverable ship with 16" guns is more than capable of killing a slab with 20"ers.  Damage is irrelevant if you don't take a hit.

 Also, someone clearly isn't using their torpedoes...

Not sure how maneuverability is really going to help in this game. A ship with a destroyed rudder moving at 1kt gives the same penalty as 40kt DD turning figure 8s. So that shows maneuverability is really irrelevant (again in the game as of now). 

Also torpedoes are seriously broke against high levels of torpedo protection, but the protection does not reduce with multiple impacts. Couple that with max bulkheads and anti-flood making flooding incapable of sinking large ships. Only thing they are good for is slowing a ship down at this point. 

All of this is a mute point since we don't know any of the details besides the visual layout of ships in this thread anyway. 

[neph]

More lightly armed & armored than I'd like but otherwise a very passable design. Well done!

Edited December 4, 2021 by neph

[neph]

10"+change belt, so slightly under-armoured for my taste. Otherwise excellent slow dreadnought for the 1915 era.

[neph]

Pretty 15" modernized superdreadnought!

[neph]

And on that note: damn! Beautiful 20" superbb. gg AI japan

[neph]

In love with this CL design from the Italians

 

[akd]

16 hours ago, neph said:

In love with this CL design from the Italians

 

Makes no sense from a machinery arrangement standpoint, but sadly game totally ignores that.

[neph]

6 hours ago, akd said:

Makes no sense from a machinery arrangement standpoint, but sadly game totally ignores that.

Concurred. So much of the ship builder would be improved if you had to consider the space in the interior which each turret's magazine occupies and the location & size of the machinery. 

Still looks cool!