Springsharp armor peculiarities

Started by Kaiser Kirk, January 10, 2020, 11:20:14 PM

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Kaiser Kirk

This is something I noticed long ago:
Belts and Bulkheads
The main belt and upper belt both have end bulkheads the same thickness as the belt, unlike most actual ships, which had thinner end bulkheads.
This makes "crossing the T" far less fearsome.

How to show it? 

Take a ship, LxWxD, add a freeboard.

Go to armor tab

Make Main Belt and Upper Belt both 100m long and 10m high and 100mm thick

Make the TDS the same

For the hull I was using
Weights are :

1,950
1,950
1,568

Should be the same size metal slabs, so why is one lighter?

Ok, now shrink the main belt to 1m long.
It's 485tons.

For 1% of the length it's 24% of the weight.

I've always taken that to mean the program adds in a calculation for the
length of the armored bulkhead at the beam where the belt ends.

Another proof you can try is take the same ship.
Keep the armor exactly the same.
Change the BEAM
The main belt weight changes.
Thats the bulkhead adjusting.

Torpedo Bulkheads
All torpedo bulkheads seem to have the same depth, regardless of "Beam between bulkheads"

Make an empty hull.
Say a 9:1 260mx30mx9m with default freeboard and leave 1950

Stick 35.33 knots of Engines in it.
Engines take 90.64m of hull.
Ship takes 6.2 torpedoes

Add 1mm of torpedo bulkhead.
Engines take 113.75m of hull.
Ship now takes 8.2 torpedoes

Make it 40mm
Engines take the same length (expected)
Ship now takes 13.1 torpedoes (better)

Now make "Beam between bulkheads" 30m
Engines take the same length

Now make "Beam between bulkheads" 20m
Engines take the same length

Now make "Beam between bulkheads" 10m
Engines take the same length

Now make "Beam between bulkheads" 5m
Engines take the same length


Armor decks
Adjusting the mainbelt length does not effect the length calculated for the citadel armor deck.

Ever have a ship you've crammed to top speed and you get the message :
"Main Belt covers 100 % of normal length
Main belt does not fully cover magazines and engineering spaces"

In this case, I took the above ship, gave it 100mm upper/end belt and bow/stern deck armor, but 150mm over the citadel - main belt and 'fore and aft decks'
took off the TDS, and shoved a bunch of large guns into it.
wound up with minimum belt length 195.83 vs. the default 169m.

So... just put in a longer belt, right?
Well..no.
That means your belt is long, but your citadel deck armor stays the same length.

The main belt covers the fore and aft decks on your freeboard tab.
So does your 'fore and aft decks' armor.

Extending your main belt, to say 200m long, and shrinking the end belt to 59... doesn't change the deck armor weight at all.
If you go to your freeboard tab and make 'Foreward' and 'aft deck' lengths total (200/260) 77%....so bow 13, stern 10.

Now look at your armor tab
Hey the deck armor is the same weight as before !
So, just select one of your deck armor numbers and retype the SAME number.
NOW the deck armor weight changes to reflect the new "'fore and aft decks" length.

NOW your ship has armor over the entire citadel.


Aux con
Apparently Aux Cons are made from air.

Try adding armor to the Auxiliary conning tower.
Look at the weight.
Given all the other +/- things I don't worry about that, I just try not to abuse it.
Did they beat the drum slowly,
Did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the death march, as they lowered you down,
Did the band play the last post and chorus,
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest