NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Given the infrastructure damage sustained during the recent war with AMF, and the fact that the mere size of the ship will require massive upgrades to the naval construction yards, it will be weeks before this ship actually starts construction. Currently, it is being pulled from within a secret vault deep within the bowels of the underground complex beneath our bombed-out naval base. This thread is to make sure that this abomination of the sea:

1. Remains MT.
2. Is a huge motherfucking ship.
3. Is more than capable of standing up to most other MT nations' warships.
4. Won't get me accused of Godmoding, God Moding, G-d Moding, Allah Moding, or any other synonym one cares to substitute.

To further that goal, I'm inviting discussion on the proposed specifications of my new SD. (I suck at naval battles, just ask AMF.)

And so, without further ado, I introduce the proposed design for my SD.

Chuck Norris-class Super Dreadnaught

RKS Chuck Norris

Ordered: 5 December 2005

Displacement: 250 million tons
Length: 15,000 m (9.32 miles)
Beam: 650 m (2132 ft)
Draught: 40 m (131 ft)
Power Plant: Twelve A4W reactors, producing a total of 6.6 GW
Top Speed: 45 km/h (28 mph)
Crew: 25,000 sailors, 1,000 officers
Armament: 18 1000 mm (39") cannon, 72 762 mm (30") guns, 180 600 mm (24") guns, sixty Patriot SAM missile batteries, twenty depth charge batteries
Expected annual cost of operation: 450 billion Racist Shekels (580 billion USD)
Expected construction cost: 1.3 trillion Racist Shekels (1.677 trillion USD)
Expected service life: 150 years

Engineers and scientists from nations friendly to Kahanistan are welcome to help us modify the design to make it workable.

OOC: have you signed up at the NS Draftroom?

OOC: Huh?

Here's the link. (http://s13.invisionfree.com/The_NS_Draftroom/index.php) Save it to your favorites.

Yeah, it's giving me a hard time about letting me post. Let's keep this thread going...

OOC: First of all, 15 kilometres will in no way be considered MT, nor will 250 million tons. Most Super Dreadnoughts are in the neighbourhood of one kilometre. Also, 1,000 mm guns are 1) going to be extremely slow, 2) going to be extremely inaccurate, and 3) require frequent replacement of the barrel. The 30 inch naval gun is often considered excessive for most legitimate SDs. I'd also not use huge naval guns as secondary or tertiary armaments, especially with the relative closeness in size. That causes fire control issues that will be hard to correct if you ever have to fire those in anger. And you're thinking of using SEVENTY TWO 30 inch guns?! And ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY 24 inchers? Some SD designs use about 20 twenty four inch guns.

On another note, speed for naval ships is usually noted in knots, which refers to nautical miles, which are longer than statue miles. Kilometre or statue mile lengths aren't often used for naval measurements. The Patriot is considered obsolete by many NS countries; and some don't employ U.S.-built systems at all. The depth charge hasn't been used much since World War II, if at all since then.

I can offer some suggestions and perhaps even help you with designing your ship.

Personally, I think that there's bang for the buck in using smaller battleship sized ships (like my Carlos Hathcock-class battlecruiser) than there is with SDNs. More survivability in numbers, and more rounds on target (as well as more possible targets to engage).

OOC: Logic dictates Super Dreadnoughts are certainly NOT Modern-Tech, even the "small" 1000-meter-long ones. They're just not feasible nor practical.

DEMOCRATIC SOVIET REPUBLIC OF KAHANISTAN
Kahanistan Republic Navy

The Government of Kahanistan has reviewed the input we have received regarding our proposed Chuck Norris-class Super Dreadnaught. We require advising on our anti-submarine and anti-air defenses. Also, we find the use of 'knots' as a measurement of speed to be too difficult to convert into land measurements, and believe it more convenient to use kilometers across the board. (Kahanistan uses the metric system, but with conversions to old form measurements.)

We have taken into consideration that it would not be cost-efficient to construct super dreadnaught fleets. This is why only one was planned. But after the disastrous loss of over 80%, and possibly over 90%, of our navy, we wanted a warship that could stand up to numerous peltings with bombs and shells, but significantly larger than a Doujin, and preferably the largest Super Dreadnaught ever constructed.

Signed,
Vice Admiral Katrina Dolgova,
Sub-Commander, 4th Fleet, Head of Project Dreadnaught

The revised design is as follows:

Chuck Norris-class Super Dreadnaught

RKS Chuck Norris

Type: General purpose warship
Displacement: 5.6 million tons
Length: 1,500 m (0.932 miles)
Beam: 155 m (2508 ft)
Draught: 40 m (131 ft)
Power Plant: Eight A4W nuclear reactors, producing a total of 4.4 GW
Top Speed: 45 km/h (28 mph)
Crew: 11,000 sailors, 700 officers, can field up to 50,000 Imperial Marines
Armament: 16 1000 mm (39") cannon, 400 12.5mm (.50 caliber) machine guns, forty Patriot SAM missile batteries, twenty "Fido" Mk.24 acoustic torpedo batteries, ten Tomahawk cruise missile launchers
Defenses: 1.5 meters (59") of Tantalum armor, 1 meter (39") Niobium armor
Expected annual cost of operation: 45 billion Racist Shekels (58 billion USD)
Expected construction cost: 130 billion Racist Shekels (168 billion USD)
Expected service life: 120 years

OOC: Logic dictates Super Dreadnoughts are certainly NOT Modern-Tech, even the "small" 1000-meter-long ones. They're just not feasible nor practical.
[OOC: Neither feasiblity nor practicality have any bearing on whether or not something is possible, although I would dispute that they are either of those things anyway.

Kahanistan - This particular ship is unnecessarily large. Your 39" guns will actually give you worse range and muzzle velocity than a 30" or 32" weapon, your mix of weapons will really screw up fire control and who the hell needs 180 SD calibre guns on a single ship, even if the price was accurate and you could afford it?]

1. Somebody whose navy just got a royal assraping.
2. In case you didn't see the last post, I radically reduced the size of the proposed design, to only sixteen monster guns.
3. I don't know about reducing the range, but during the last war, I had pathetic 155 mm coastal defense batteries (I was used to land-designed weapons, and had minimal experience with naval warfare) and I got told they would only fire ~30 km. I'm hoping to get huge shells that fire 80 - 100 km (350 km with rocket assist), and with bigger shells than the 762mm (30") shells used against my fleet to great effect. I don't want the range to be too great, this ship isn't going to win wars on its own, you know.
4. I want the ship to be huge, I'm only planning to make one SD, mostly use it probably as a show of force for the next war (hopefully by the time I build Chucky, I'll have disentangled myself from the Kraven mess.) Imagine a warship nearly a mile long showing up in your waters. Unless you're a naval superpower, you'll probably think twice about how you form policy toward Kahanistan.

[OOC: Ok, I see what you're getting at now. However, a 39" gun really isnt a very good idea. You'll be firing a heavier shell than basically anyone else afloat, but they will outrange you by a considerable distance, and their KE rounds will be more powerful than yours. They will also be able to fire much faster, and wont have to withdraw as soon to change barrels. Go with 25" - 30". I believe that most nations that operate SDs use 25" for anti-SD, and 30" for shore bombardment (at least that's what I do). Hogsweat (Questers) uses 27" for all his SDs. As for size... size means you need more reactors and you dont turn as quickly, so keep it as small as possible for a specific armament.]

Well... with 16 monster guns and then comparatively tiny guns... you've got nothing in between, which is bad planning. You'd be a lot more efficient with say 8 32" or 30" guns, 12 27" guns, 20 24" guns, 30 16" guns, and so on. It'll cost about the same, but they could fire more often, work better, and probably inspire more fear due to the number. Save the 39" and larger cannons for land where you can afford to clean and repair them all the time, and will have the room for something that excessive.

Also, you can always use cruise missiles, railguns, and ASMs from bombers for assaulting enemy forces... just 39" guns is a bit excessive.

Lower the size of those guns. My first SD design (the disasterous Guillen class) had 30" guns and they didn't fair too well.

My current SD is extremely small compared to most nation's super dreadnoughts. It is the Netanyahu class with 15 x 24" guns. It is much more realistic and actually more effective as it has a high muzzle velocity, good accuracy, more maneuverable, more versatile, and cheaper allowing greater numbers. I think anyone who was around in the summer of 2004 can recall the problems of the Guillen. (apologies to the great Ozzie Guillen for putting his name on such trash.)

VSS Velkya

Type: Surface Superiority Warship
Displacement: 943,000 tons
Length: 1,031 m
Beam: 128 m
Draught: 29 m
Power Plant: 6 Water Jet-Linked Nuclear Reactors
Top Speed: 28 knots
Crew: 12,000 Crew, plus 500 aircrew and 500 Marines
Hull: Trimaran (2 gun hull and 1 flight hull)
Armament:
Naval Cannons:
12x 30-inch ETC cannons, mounted in 6 bigun housings. 20-18 inch ETC cannons, mounted in 10 bigun housings.
Missiles:
300x VLS launching cells on each gun hull, 600x in total.
75x QMSAM (Quick Manuever Surface to Air Missile) Pods, 25x on each hull.
10x Angelfire Launch Tubes
50x Mark 112 Barracuda VLS torpedo cells
CICW Systems
75x Phalanx II ETC CICW cannons, 25x on each hull.
150x Mallard SMES (Small Missile Engagement System) pods, 50 on each hull.
Defenses: 1.7 meters of Tugstanium (Tungesten Steel-Titanium alloy)
Aircraft: 30x MR-3 Trinity multirole fighters, along with 20x Pelican Dropships

Cost: 400 billion total, running costs classified.

Even this ship is considered to be quite large.

Here are the stats for the Sentinel class SD, which I'm sure you remember.

****************
Name: Sentinel Class
Type: Command Battleship (Super Dreadnought).

Image:

Large image. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v195/The_Freethinkers/SentinelClasssmall.jpg)



Dimensions:802M L x 225M W x 25M D
Displacement (Fully Loaded): 2,200,000 Tons
Powerplants: 8-10 Pebblebed Nuclear reactors, total output of 2-3 GW
Propulsion Arrangement: 6 Waterjets (Four in main hull, one in each secondary hull). Bow thrusters and Azipod maneuvering thrusters for docking.
Speed: 27 kts (cruising), 31kts (conventional top speed), 33kts (flat out short range sprint)
Endurance: Limited to Nuclear Reactor life, ~15 years. Up to 12 months of stores can be carried.

Crew Complement
-Standard: 12,500 (including air group)
-Minimum: 8,500
Marines
-Standard: Space for 4,000 (8,000 in an emergency)

Cargo Capacity
-General Cargo: 16,000 Tons (Dry)
-Troop Equipment: Smalls arms, light vehicles and artillery can be carried and landed, but space is limited.

Onboard Craft
Boats: Rear well deck for boats, LCs and LCACs. Can accommodate up to 12 US style LCACs in a 3 x 4 arrangement. Fully enclosed when rear ramp is shut.

Aviation: One cross-hull flightdeck, 220m x 120m, four EM catapults going off to starboard, arrestor wires for ships landing on the port side. Four elevators to a two deck hangar, can support ~120 aircraft.

Radar:
LR air/surface search (phased array)
SR air/surface
Back up system.
LADAR (LOS only)

Fire Control:
Fleet Command System
Integrated Ship weapons system
Missile control.
Gunnery Control
Host arrays for multilink combat systems (such as AEGIS)

EW:
ECM/ESM
Chaff/Flare Decoy
Towed Decoy

Sonar:
Bow mounted array

Weaponry
-Artillery:
5 main turrets, either:
Triple Mounts for 15” Railguns (6,000 Rounds per turret)
Quadruple Mounts for 25”/64 ETC Guns (2,400 Rounds per turret)
12 x 10”/52 Naval guns
-Ranged Missiles:
There are 64 armoured hatches, each covering 4 slanted missiles tubes. These tubes are reloadable and up to seven reloads can be carried for each launcher. Total missiles carrying capacity is 2048 ASCMs, SAMs or similar.
-Self-Defence
76 x 6-barrel 30mm CIWS Units
44 x Light Cannon Mounts
-Underwater Warfare
4 x Twin ML 650 mm/12.75 inch MR Torpedo Tubes (180 Torpedoes/Mines/Depth Charges)
16 x ASHUM-style UWSC guns

Armour Type: Second Generation ‘Doujin’ scheme, combining the original Titanium VA/Ballistic Composite layers and lateral TVA rods, also now includes Ablative panelling and ERA, along with new heat absorbing solid layer to absorb damage from Plasma rounds. The ship’s frame is a Freethinker-style honeycomb type with additional shock absorbers and anti-shatter brackets placed along the frame.

Passive Protection Features:
-Double Bottomed hull
-Reinforced, displaced Keel
-Extensive firefighting and NBC equipment and filters.
-Pressure release systems to reduce missile damage.
-Multiple vertical bulkheads
-Ultra-Modern damage detection and reporting equipment
-Heavy Flooding and anti-flooding pumps
-Reserve radar and communication arrays.
-Extremely Effective Resistance to EMP attack through numerous design features.

Purchase Cost:~US$250,000,000,000

Velkya: Perhaps after I build Chucky, we can do some wargaming. You probably would have more SD's, but mine's bigger, and we'd probably both have escort fleets...

The 1000mm guns will stay, but I might add some 600mm cannon as well, maybe even 300mm "light" shells in addition to the cruise missile launchers I already have on it. Chucky's going to have its weaknesses, namely shitty range and very slow speed, that's what the escort fleet is for.

Probably have to stick more reactors in there to keep what little speed it has, I just slapped more cannons on it.

By the way, this ship isn't intended to be uber-efficient (if I was worried about efficiency, I wouldn't be looking into SD designs, and I certainly wouldn't be going for one that dwarfs a Doujin), it's designed to scare the hell out of hostiles, to project force, to make the next human rights violator shit themselves when they see it.


Design Gamma:

Chuck Norris-class Super Dreadnaught

RKS Chuck Norris

Type: Deterrence warship
Displacement: 5.7 million tons
Length: 1,500 m (0.932 miles)
Beam: 155 m (508 ft)
Draught: 40 m (131 ft)
Power Plant: 10 A4W nuclear reactors, producing a total of 5.5 GW
Top Speed: 40 km/h (25 mph)
Crew: 14,000 sailors, 1,000 officers, can field up to 15,000 Imperial Marines / Republic Guards
Minimum crew: 9,000
Armament: 16 1000 mm (39") deterrence cannons, 18 600mm (24") coastal bombardment guns, 24 300mm (12") anti-ship guns, 250 12.5mm (.50 caliber) machine guns, forty Patriot SAM missile batteries, twenty "Fido" Mk.24 acoustic torpedo batteries (anti-sub), ten Tomahawk cruise missile launchers
Defenses: 1.5 meters (59") of Tantalum armor, 1 meter (39") Niobium armor, Titanic-derived compartment grid on lower deck to prevent flooding
Expected annual cost of operation: 45 billion Racist Shekels (58 billion USD)
Expected construction cost: 482 billion Racist Shekels (622 billion USD)
Expected service life: 100 years

I'd defenetly check up on package deals that can allow you to rebuild your miltitary efficently and quickly. Check up on DMG's, Leafinistan's, Bonstocks and Phoniexus's storefronts, those are the ones I primaily shop at.

Once your fleet (and Chucky) is built up, I'd be happy to wargame. But for now, if you would like some of your survivng pilots intergrated into the Allied Union Air Force and the Allied Union Navy to gain combat experience to teach to your new pilots, that'd be fine too. To top it off, we'll deck out your airforce with Velkyan types, and aid you in devolping indiginous aircraft of your own until your aircraft industry can get back on it's feet.

PS: Get MSN Messenger, all the cool kids have it.

Here's a design I came up with that ended up becoming a new class for me, but these are some ideas I had for your flagship:

Length: 823 m; Beam: 176 m; Draught: 21 m
Displacement: 1.75 million tonnes fully laden
Armament: 5 x 3 610 mm ETC guns in A, B, C, X and Y positions; 12 x 155 mm naval railguns port and starboard; 10 x 90 mm autocannons; 12 x 96 Mark 48 VLS tubes; 24 x ‘Hornet’ SAM launchers; 8 x 533 mm TT; 36 x ‘Millennium Gun’ CIWS
Protection: 975 mm-1,200 mm advanced armour composite (titanium, vanadium, aluminum, amorphous steel, ballistic ceramics); double bottomed, reinforced keel with void spaces along a titanium/aluminum honeycomb frame. KERI foam installed in void spaces, composite rods, and KE reducing ceramic tiles reduce effect of kinetic attacks.
Propulsion: Eight Pebblebed nuclear reactors; four internalised waterjets; 36 knots.
Aircraft: Can carry 36 SZ-20 ‘Valkyrie’ strike fighters; 36 SZ-21 ‘Coronet’ air superiority fighters; 24 SZ-23 ‘Aurora’ scout fighters; 12 SZ-24 ‘Tyr’ electronics warfare reconnaissance fighters; and 8 SZ-25 ‘Archduke’ light bombers. Space available for 10 SZ-15 ‘Dragon’ ASW helicopters.
Complement: 8,800 plus 1,600 aircrew
Electronics: AN/SLY-2 (V) Advanced Integrated Electronics Warfare System; AN/SPY-4 MFR and AN/SPN-23 navigational radars; AN/SQR-6 (B) passive towed array and AN/SQS-57 dual-mode mounted digital sonar array; A/P Mounted Sonar: AN/SQS-57 active/passive, preformed beam, digital sonar providing panoramic echo ranging and panoramic (DIMUS) passive surveillance.
Countermeasures: Decoy: AN/SLQ-25 Nixie
Price: $165 billion
Running Costs: $25 billion

<snip>
Well now you still have the space wasted by the 39" guns, but you also have a whole bunch of other, very similar guns which will mess up fire control beyond all recognition. Multiple big gun armaments went out with the launch of the [i]HMS Dreadnought[i] way back before WWI.

Well now you still have the space wasted by the 39" guns, but you also have a whole bunch of other, very similar guns which will mess up fire control beyond all recognition. Multiple big gun armaments went out with the launch of the [i]HMS Dreadnought[i] way back before WWI.

Yep, drop the inchs. You really dont need any bigger than 32" but even smaller is better. The larger the guns, the SLOWER they fire and the SLOWER they can rotate and target a moving vessel.

My Imperial Battleships have 28" guns. You'd be best with something around there - smaller guns = more guns too.

who the hell needs 180 SD calibre guns on a single ship,

If my memory serves me right, dosnt Masspwnage have an SD in design stages with 30-30in guns ?

and also, Kahanistan, i could supply some funding for the design, if you wanted, along with supplies and electronics and such.

If my memory serves me right, dosnt Masspwnage have an SD in design stages with 30-30in guns ?
1) How would I know?
2) Why does it matter?

If my memory serves me right, dosnt Masspwnage have an SD in design stages with 30-30in guns ?
If he does, it's a ridiculous waste. IMO, you don't need more than 20-24.

To be honest, there really isn't much value to having anything more than 25 inch guns. I used the construction of a new battleship class to decide between 24 inchers and 25 inchers and ultimately went with 25s.

There's also a pretty massive difference between 30 guns and 180 guns...

And nobody noticed post 17, where I cut down the number of guns radically.

Thirty four SD-sized guns (600 mm and above) is still too many. Those 39 inch guns are too big for the reasons we've outlined (limited range, slower to turn and fire, slower rate of fire, greater barrel wear, limited accuracy). Having 24 inch guns AND 39 inch guns just invites fire control problems and weight problems. I strongly suggest you drop the 39 inchers. You also don't need 250 .50 calibre machine guns.

The armour's much too thick for this to be anything but a floating fortress TBH. I'd use no more than about five feet (60 inches) combined.

Actually, according to Hoggy, at 5.7 million tonnes this is a Floating Fortress.

Although that's beside the point.

And nobody noticed post 17, where I cut down the number of guns radically.
I was talking to Willink. Your new design is now vaguely sane/

Praetonia: Didn't expect to hear from you, I thought you were ignoring me after you didn't respond to my post in your embassy thread. Glad to know I was wrong there.

I also forgot the information I'd put in the wiki. (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Chuck_Norris_class_Super_Dreadnaught) For those who don't care to check it, the third draft of the design, the one in current service, is the one in the Wiki.

Czardas: Yes, this is a floating fortress and command vessel, designed more for psychological warfare than utility.

---

A vessel that just takes punishment and keeps taking it is going to demoralize the enemy, even if the ship isn't very accurate, while my Fleet Admiral and other important commanders will be safe on Chucky.

The 39" guns will probably only actually be used against other SD's (they've got nothing on Kraven's 2500mm (98"!) siege cannons used against Freekish warships), otherwise they just sit there, doing nothing against the 24" guns' fire control. The 24" ones will be used largely against enemy battleships and other large vessels in addition to coastal bombardment, and the 12" cannons have longer range and are effective on enemy destroyers and other escorts.

The machine guns are for use against small vessels with really big bombs, e.g. you try to sneak a nuke up to Chucky in a speedboat (think USS Cole, but this ship is bigger and would require a larger weapon to disable) the machine guns can target and destroy the intruder, and the sheer number of them means something's guaranteed to hit. At very close range they can also shoot enemy crew who are on the top deck, and machine-gun planes on enemy carriers before they take off, saving the heavier guns for battleships. They would also see a lot of action firing on enemy marines on the coast, and can be wired to CIWS computers if necessary, not that it needs CIWS with its thick armor.

I hope those 39" guns are very long, and are supported by some large crane mechanism, or simply said the propellant won't expand in the given barrel length, meaning the round will actually be underpowered, meaning you won't get the range of smaller rounds, and you won't get the penetration of smaller rounds. If I remember correctly you are strictly modern technology, meaning railguns are out of the question, although even then length restrictions are an issue [especially on railguns, not as especially on coil guns]. And as far as it's concerned I rather have more smaller guns than less larger guns, simply because in naval warfare you don't necessarilly need a large round - a smaller round, even a round using submunitions, can cause a lot of damage to the superstructure and sensor arrays on the deck, meaning if you put enough lead into it you can 'blind' the enemy ship, and at that point it's a sitting duck. I would just stick with the 24" guns, or if you're really looking for something that's purely for psychological warfare perhaps 30" to 31", but at at this calibre the problems with propellant expansion begin and the gunnery gets less effective.

Yep, drop the inchs. You really dont need any bigger than 32" but even smaller is better. The larger the guns, the SLOWER they fire and the SLOWER they can rotate and target a moving vessel.

My Imperial Battleships have 28" guns. You'd be best with something around there - smaller guns = more guns too.
I personally believe that 24" is the best caliber. You can fit more, have greater accuracy, more range, and a higher muzzle velocity. Plus 24" is very easy to justify as MT since the IJN designed 20" guns back in WWII. The 24" gun ship has a good chance of beating one with 30+" guns.

Just a historica note

I know many people advocate for varried gun sizes, but the origional HMS Dreadnaught had only large guns. What is wrong with just having the big guns?

Just a historica note

I know many people advocate for varried gun sizes, but the origional HMS Dreadnaught had only large guns. What is wrong with just having the big guns?

No (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_%281906%29) it didn't, it also had batteries of 4" guns.

Just for you Kahanistan, I'm going to paste some of what I've written for the Hood's main guns here to give you an idea of size etc. Remember this is for a 1.6km ship.

The main armament is the five gun turrets on the ship.
Each turret is fitted with five Type 95 L80 rifled 76.25cm naval cannons with 120 grooves per barrel. Each cannon is 58.12 metres long and has a maximum declination of -2 degrees and a maximum inclination of 42 degrees. The maximum weight for each turret is around 13,000 tons – turrets measuring over 13200 tons will not be fitted on the ship. Each gun is provided with 80 shells, of which 38 are stored in the turret. This adds to a grand total of 190 shells to a turret. The other 42 shells are located in the magazine: each turrets magazine can hold 210 shells and weighs approximately 1900 tons.


Without assistance, each gun’s maximum range is approximately 120 kilometres – the highest marked number is 134 km in tests before the shells were fitted to the ship. Note that this number may be significantly disproportionate because of the stability differences of a land firing platform and a naval firing platform. Using the Type 95A2 Stockford Advanced Naval Round [SANaR], the Questarian equivalent of the US ERGM, the shell can fire to approximately 800km – the longest shot being 821.3km, again fired from land. The use of the SANAR round is limited in the Questarian Royal Navy – only 20 rounds per gun are SANAR rounds, and they are kept in the magazine. However, SANAR is a vital part of the Admirals’ main gun system. The standard shell, the Type 95A1(A3 for HE, A4 for AP), is a 6,400 kilogram projectile, with either a high explosive core or armour piercing cap. The HE core shell is designed to be fired on shore targets – it has a higher charge and more explosives. The AP cap is designed to be fired on other vessels. It weighs 6,600kg.

Using automated loaders and advanced crew training, Royal Navy personnel can reload and fire a Type 95 L80 cannon at 42 degrees to 120km within 83 seconds – the most lengthy portion is elevating the gun to that level, and secondly, to allow the recoil-assisters to stabilise themselves. It should be noted that the Royal Navy Heavy Artillery Division spends over 3 million pounds on training each gunner that is qualified to fire a 600mm or higher cannon.

OOC: Hoggy, planning on giving Kahanistan's Super Dreadnaught a picture?

You're gonna need a big muthafuckin' dock for this big muthafuckin' ship.

[Dude, I hate to discourage anybody from doing what they want, but if you suck at naval battles you have no business building this thing. The reason you lost wasn't because you didn't have SDs, it was because of a fundamental lack of tactics. I have SDs, lots of them, but I know how to defeat enemy SDs without them. You apparently don't, so you need to be about the business of boning up on naval tactics and building a strong core of smaller ships.]

(I have a thread where the Kahanistanian military reforms take place with international advisors. I don't know your IC stance toward Kahanistan, but the reform thread is pretty open. If you have advice for the navy, the leaders there will be glad to hear it. :) )

OCC: In WWII, using basic propeller planes and dumb bombs, battleships failed. The bigger the ship, the easier it is to hit it. Not one battleship is active in any navy in the world. They were a monument to the arrogance of man, giant vessels that were easily wiped out by small airplanes. Modern tech allows for larger ships to operate safely, but anything this big is too big to be operable.

Do what Scandavian States said, go with smaller ships.

[Actually, that's not true at all. The USN didn't lose a single battleship on the open ocean, Pearl Harbor was an anamoly because the battleships weren't underway and were for all intents and purposes sitting ducks. Also note that during the war in the Pacific most of the USN battleline were ships pulled up from the bottom of Pearl Harbor and rebuilt. For that matter, the Japanese didn't lose any battleships until their screening forces started taking heavy casualties. The fact of the matter is that no battleship is easily destroyed and it takes a sustained beating to bring one down. There are cases where this is not so, like Pearl Harbor, but had those battleships not been in the shallow waters of Pearl they wouldn't have been touched in any substantial way.]

OOC: SS has a point, but lets not forget the Bismark, even though it pretty much failed as being a battleship. :p

OCC: In WWII, using basic propeller planes and dumb bombs, battleships failed. The bigger the ship, the easier it is to hit it. Not one battleship is active in any navy in the world. They were a monument to the arrogance of man, giant vessels that were easily wiped out by small airplanes. Modern tech allows for larger ships to operate safely, but anything this big is too big to be operable.

Do what Scandavian States said, go with smaller ships.

Actually, you're wrong. If you take every single battleship by aircraft sinking in WW2, none of them had air escorts. Yamato and POW+Repulse are the famous ones but there are more. Secondly, battleships did and still do have a use. I think our boys at Normandy appreciated the battleship guns supporting their assault, don't you? And in NS, battleships in the large calibre are pretty hard to sink (in fact, damn hard) with just aircraft alone, and once in range of shoreline, they can cause havoc, utter havoc. Thirdly, they're also alot cooler than aircraft carriers.

Actually, you're wrong. If you take every single battleship by aircraft sinking in WW2, none of them had air escorts. Yamato and POW+Repulse are the famous ones but there are more. Secondly, battleships did and still do have a use. I think our boys at Normandy appreciated the battleship guns supporting their assault, don't you? And in NS, battleships in the large calibre are pretty hard to sink (in fact, damn hard) with just aircraft alone, and once in range of shoreline, they can cause havoc, utter havoc. Thirdly, they're also alot cooler than aircraft carriers.

1. Yep, I agree, they are a whole lot cooler

2. The ships were not sunk because they did not get into the battle much. I know all that but one of the battleships at Pearl Harbor were recovered, but it took a long time to do so. In the crucial Battle of Midway, the US Navy had 0 battleships. The Yamato first fired her main guns the first time in battle during Leyte Gulf. The US battleships were mainly used as anti-aircraft shields for carriers. Yes, they did bombard well, but destroyers and cruisers did a lot of it as well.

3. The US only three carriers (All pre 1940s) in WWII and they were lost early in the war, before the battleship fleet was present in the Pacific.

4. At D-day there were 6, possbily 7 battleships, most were older ships, for all the beaches. The 23 cruisers and 104 destroyers present made the bulk of the force.

5. I am not saying Battleships are not great for shore landings. The Marines fought the Missouri and Wisconson decommisions because they felt the ships excelled at it. Missles are more frequently used for ship-shore salvos, but battleships are more stable.

6.I just feel that because of the "coolness" they thought to be too strong, just like the old Admirals before WWII that thought the carrier was worthless and the huge battleships were unsinkable fortresses.

7.I am not saying that a battleship is as worthless as a floating log. I am saying in the open sea, the carrier is the ship that has dominated war since World War II. The Battleship significantly only helped the nations that invaded.

As long as they are used as auxillary craft, I have no problem.

[I rather disagree with you, but leaving that aside I want to point something out. Over at the NS_Draftroom we have a guy designing his first SD. Do you know why? Because he found out the hard way that BBs/DNs/SDs are hard to kill when you don't have your own. Frankly, he got the living sh!t kicked out of him because he couldn't fight them effectively and he couldn't get away from them.]

OOC: Given the infrastructure damage sustained during the recent war with AMF, and the fact that the mere size of the ship will require massive upgrades to the naval construction yards, it will be weeks before this ship actually starts construction. Currently, it is being pulled from within a secret vault deep within the bowels of the underground complex beneath our bombed-out naval base. This thread is to make sure that this abomination of the sea:

1. Remains MT.
2. Is a huge motherfucking ship.
3. Is more than capable of standing up to most other MT nations' warships.
4. Won't get me accused of Godmoding, God Moding, G-d Moding, Allah Moding, or any other synonym one cares to substitute.

To further that goal, I'm inviting discussion on the proposed specifications of my new SD. (I suck at naval battles, just ask AMF.)

And so, without further ado, I introduce the proposed design for my SD.

Chuck Norris-class Super Dreadnaught

RKS Chuck Norris

Ordered: 5 December 2005

Displacement: 250 million tons
Length: 15,000 m (9.32 miles)
Beam: 650 m (2132 ft)
Draught: 40 m (131 ft)
Power Plant: Twelve A4W reactors, producing a total of 6.6 GW
Top Speed: 45 km/h (28 mph)
Crew: 25,000 sailors, 1,000 officers
Armament: 18 1000 mm (39") cannon, 72 762 mm (30") guns, 180 600 mm (24") guns, sixty Patriot SAM missile batteries, twenty depth charge batteries
Expected annual cost of operation: 450 billion Racist Shekels (580 billion USD)
Expected construction cost: 1.3 trillion Racist Shekels (1.677 trillion USD)
Expected service life: 150 years

Engineers and scientists from nations friendly to Kahanistan are welcome to help us modify the design to make it workable.
The Chuck Norris, lol. Sounds like a kickass ship, though.

[I rather disagree with you, but leaving that aside I want to point something out. Over at the NS_Draftroom we have a guy designing his first SD. Do you know why? Because he found out the hard way that BBs/DNs/SDs are hard to kill when you don't have your own. Frankly, he got the living sh!t kicked out of him because he couldn't fight them effectively and he couldn't get away from them.]

Well, it depends how you RP. I am not saying they are worthless, just that modern war is more about speed then is used in NS war. It is the same way with the huge tanks/planes people build. People seem to think that having a massive SD will defeat anything, not true it is more about tactics than brute force, as you said. Just my own opinion though, as you never can find out unless you have the real stuff in real life.

To each his own.

[The problem is you're talking about real life. In NS tactics differ because of the environment that exists. Thus, for a nation to have a powerful and successful navy they need dreadnaughts and superdreadnaughts. Here, battleships are superfluous and unuseful because they're horribly undergunned.]

The fact is that battleships fared badly against aircraft in WWII for two reasons:

1) They were generally unescorted by carriers.

2) They and their escorts had little more than machineguns and light cannon with which to combat aerial threats.

However, as the anti-battleship brigade seem so insistant on stating, the world has moved on and we are no longer in WWII. With any ship able to carry a capable anti-air defence in the form of SAMs, and with a battleship practically immune to all RL and most NS escort-carriable missile ordnance, battleships are not only viable but their big guns are necessary in the NS world.

Even in RL, destroyer "escorts" are reaching the size of WWII cruisers and pre-dreadnought and early dreadnought era battleships. The reason battleships aren't being developed nowadays is two fold:

1) No one uses them anymore, or any ship with any appreciable armoured protection, so they are unnecessary except for shore bombardment, which no one feels the need to do on any real scale anymore. This is untrue of NS.

2) They are more expensive than relatively unarmoured escorts, and so the latter will always be used for as long as 1) is true. In NS, 1) is not true and military budgets are much larger. NS is also a multipolar world, which RL is not.

In essence, arguing that because in RL WWII battleships were no good is completely non-sequitur when applied to NS, because not only is the modern era not WWII, but NS is not RL.

The fact is that battleships fared badly against aircraft in WWII for two reasons:

1) They were generally unescorted by carriers.

2) They and their escorts had little more than machineguns and light cannon with which to combat aerial threats.

However, as the anti-battleship brigade seem so insistant on stating, the world has moved on and we are no longer in WWII. With any ship able to carry a capable anti-air defence in the form of SAMs, and with a battleship practically immune to all RL and most NS escort-carriable missile ordnance, battleships are not only viable but their big guns are necessary in the NS world.

Even in RL, destroyer "escorts" are reaching the size of WWII cruisers and pre-dreadnought and early dreadnought era battleships. The reason battleships aren't being developed nowadays is two fold:

1) No one uses them anymore, or any ship with any appreciable armoured protection, so they are unnecessary except for shore bombardment, which no one feels the need to do on any real scale anymore. This is untrue of NS.

2) They are more expensive than relatively unarmoured escorts, and so the latter will always be used for as long as 1) is true. In NS, 1) is not true and military budgets are much larger. NS is also a multipolar world, which RL is not.

In essence, arguing that because in RL WWII battleships were no good is completely non-sequitur when applied to NS, because not only is the modern era not WWII, but NS is not RL.

I understand NS is not RL, and that because WWII battleships would have been more useful as one of the carriers that won the war, that battleships would fail now. The big guns may be necessary, but do not think just having a SAM missle makes such a ship invincible. It all seems past MT to me.

I am just saying in all my research and historical studies that bigger is not always better. The the natural tendency to take a huge thing and think, oh its huge must be better is a logical fallicy.
Yes SDs are very powerful, I agree. It is just that if budgets were there to make a massive ship, the funds would be there to make a missle to blow it up.

With explosives, it is always easier to kill something than defend it.

I wouldn't even aim to sink the super dreadnought, I would just use more smaller guns with base bleed shells and shower the decks with sub munitions, destroying sensors and such. Any ship becomes useless once its blind, regardless of its size. I admit that a super dreadnought would be more difficult to 'blind', but it's not impossible, and the super dreadnought should not really be advertised a 'super ship', when it really isn't. The bad press of the super dreadnought began with the Doujin, and done specifically by Doujin himself [as in, it was not Freethinker's design, it was how Doujin used it]. He made it sound invincible, when it really wasn't - and he did this by godmodding its capabilities and abilities to take damage. And although I do field super dreadnoughts [right now around eight or nine], I would be happy to have one sunk if the person I was fighting did so in a viable manner. I think that if the users of these ships agreed that their ships were not gods, and they were just as sinkable as everything else, the bad press on the super dreadnought would end.

[Mac, the legit users of SDs will be the first to admit that SDs aren't invincible. You know it as well as I do. The SD still gets bad press when those who use SDs point out that the anti-SD brigade isn't ever going to get an SD on its own to do what they want to do with it. That results in bitching and moaning to the effect of, "See! You admit you think SDs are OMG uber!"

Er, no, we're just better tacticians than they are.]

I understand NS is not RL, and that because WWII battleships would have been more useful as one of the carriers that won the war, that battleships would fail now. The big guns may be necessary, but do not think just having a SAM missle makes such a ship invincible. It all seems past MT to me.
No, not having a SAM. Having tens of thousands (obviously, not all carried by the SD). And SAMs not being MT? That assertion is just bizarre...

I am just saying in all my research and historical studies that bigger is not always better. The the natural tendency to take a huge thing and think, oh its huge must be better is a logical fallicy.
I dont think that anyone has justified making an SD by saying "It's big therefore it's better!!!112!!" Generally people build them because they carry the most powerful guns, loads of missiles and are bloody hard to sink.

Yes SDs are very powerful, I agree. It is just that if budgets were there to make a massive ship, the funds would be there to make a missle to blow it up.

With explosives, it is always easier to kill something than defend it.
Ok so what is the end result of this line of thought? Never build anything because something will always be cheaper that can blow it up? A navy full of suicide jetskis with machineguns? Somehow I don't think that this will be all that effective. The fact is that there will never be a battle where it is 1 SD vs <number of anti-SD ships equal in worth to the SD>. The battle will be SDs + huge accompanying battlefleets vs whatever you have in the area at the time. The SD is not meant to be a 'navy in a can', it is meant to be a flagship and powerful gun-armed combatant that can destroy enemy armoured ships. No number of jetskis packed with C4 will replace that capability.

With explosives, it is always easier to kill something than defend it.
The problem with this assertion is that while it is true, by implying that SDs are not worth it because of this particular fact you can also say that anything is not worth building because destroying it involves using munitions at a lesser cost. By then even having a military is useless because you could just use some nails and explosives to blow up an entire infantry squad into smitheerens.

Yes SDs are very powerful, I agree. It is just that if budgets were there to make a massive ship, the funds would be there to make a missle to blow it up.
The only one missile capable of defeating an SD would be a tactical nuke, and a lot of RPs don't allow them. Some people don't even have nukes (me for instance).

And SDs aren't impossible to kill. I can think of a few ways that have worked in the past:

1) Keelbreaker torpedoes, cf. the HMS Hood.
2) Missile spam (even an SD won't be able to down all of 10,000 missiles, especially in multiple volleys. So I learned during the Invasion of Czardas).
3) DU penetration shells (a few direct hits with anything above 508mm ought to do it).
4) Shower the thing with small cannons, EMP, and cluster munitions to disable sensors, then fire missiles at it and watch it sink.
5) Launch a multilateral attack (sea, air, submarine at once); the ship won't be able to deal with everything at once.

There are probably more, too.

Before I begin, my apologies for being unclear previously, I thought I was.

Mac stated much comes from that abuse. I started my nation then and that was my first intro to the SDs. I have been inactive until about a month or so ago, so if the SD is more legit, like in Czardas' post above, than I have no problem, endo story. Once I feel I need them, I will probably make one and may ask for your guys help.


But I will clarify what I meant to make sure you dont think of me as some crazed maniac:

No, not having a SAM. Having tens of thousands (obviously, not all carried by the SD). And SAMs not being MT? That assertion is just bizarre...

I said that all seems past MT, as in the whole SD design, sorry for not being clear. SAM missles are of course MT.

I dont think that anyone has justified making an SD by saying "It's big therefore it's better!!!112!!" Generally people build them because they carry the most powerful guns, loads of missiles and are bloody hard to sink.

Ok so what is the end result of this line of thought? Never build anything because something will always be cheaper that can blow it up? A navy full of suicide jetskis with machineguns? Somehow I don't think that this will be all that effective. The fact is that there will never be a battle where it is 1 SD vs <number of anti-SD ships equal in worth to the SD>. The battle will be SDs + huge accompanying battlefleets vs whatever you have in the area at the time. The SD is not meant to be a 'navy in a can', it is meant to be a flagship and powerful gun-armed combatant that can destroy enemy armoured ships. No number of jetskis packed with C4 will replace that capability.


The easier to blow something up is thing is that nothing is invincible, as some people seem to RP SDs as. I did not mean revert to jet ski C4 guys, that makes no sense at all. I meant more a long the lines of ship defense systems not being perfect, as shown in the Persian Gulf with the USS Missouri and the Phalanx gun system.

The only one missile capable of defeating an SD would be a tactical nuke, and a lot of RPs don't allow them.

I meant a missle type. That if the budget could support this big of a ship, it could produce missle tech far greater than seen today.

In conclusion:

I have no problem with legit users!

Ok understand why I thought the way I did? Or is it time to misunderstand this utter failure at Writing in English again?

The only one missile capable of defeating an SD would be a tactical nuke, and a lot of RPs don't allow them. Some people don't even have nukes (me for instance).

Where does this notion originate from? I'm not trying to insult you, but in general, this is the ignorance that II shows then presented with a new problem. No, tactical nukes are not the only missiles that can sink a SD. A bunker buster, or my extended range bunker buster, would work just fine. Given that the range is low, you do still have to take out the sensors if you want a successfull strike without loosing the grand majority of your aircraft, but you don't necessarilly need a tactical nuke.


1) Keelbreaker torpedoes, cf. the HMS Hood.
2) Missile spam (even an SD won't be able to down all of 10,000 missiles, especially in multiple volleys. So I learned during the Invasion of Czardas).


The problem with missile spam is that people, like me, begin to develope ships that are crowded with SAM launchers, meaning missile spam is met by missile spam, which devolves into a very ugly roleplay.


3) DU penetration shells (a few direct hits with anything above 508mm ought to do it).


The problem with this is that it would lack an explosion, meaning that the shell would penetrate but would do nothing. In fact, if anything, it would damage unimportant aspects of the ship, or be caught by the bulkheads. APFSDS shells are not good for naval warfare - you could use an armour penetrating shell, but that's what ships use anyways [it's an explosive shell capped with a penetrator - they are very heavy].

4) Shower the thing with small cannons, EMP, and cluster munitions to disable sensors, then fire missiles at it and watch it sink.


Probably your best option - it's what I do. And then I drop the bunkerbuster to sink it.

So wait... a single bunker buster can sink an SD? I suppose a direct hit would work though...

I meant a missle type. That if the budget could support this big of a ship, it could produce missle tech far greater than seen today.
Ah, ok, that was unclear. But really one doesn't need new missile techs; we can use combinations of existing missiles: cluster munitions, EW armed warheads, and bunker busters for instance.

Oh, and I thought of a few more things for deleting SDs

Godrods, with their KE impact;
Anything similar to Red Tide's "Falling Star" program;
Swarm it with these (http://s13.invisionfree.com/The_NS_Draftroom/index.php?showtopic=1136), take out the underwater defenses, and drill through the armor with multiple torpedoes or Firestars.

'I meant a missle type. That if the budget could support this big of a ship, it could produce missle tech far greater than seen today.'

Well, yes, but put it this way; there is only a limit of a.) fuel b.) payload you can put on a missile before it becomes either a.) too big to launch b.) too easy to shoot down.

Not a single bunkerbuster; but ten of them would do.

'I meant a missle type. That if the budget could support this big of a ship, it could produce missle tech far greater than seen today.'

Well, yes, but put it this way; there is only a limit of a.) fuel b.) payload you can put on a missile before it becomes either a.) too big to launch b.) too easy to shoot down.

I was talking about harder to shoot down, faster/smaller with same punch, even though I realize this would not help a whole lot.

[The problem with that design philosophy is that it results in incredibly short-range missiles. Don't know about you, but for me aircraft and, especially, pilots are more expensive to replace than missiles.]

I was talking about harder to shoot down, faster/smaller with same punch, even though I realize this would not help a whole lot.
Using the same logic you could just replace entire divisions with covert operation and special forces groups, and through the same logic it would be beneficial to build 2000 ton submarines as opposed to the large SSNs we are seeing now. Unfortunately, things work both ways, so let's not forget about that.

As for defeating SDs, I personally have double-digit tons heavy bunker busters that will easily defeat a SD hull; otherwise, I'm surprised that few (aside from Czardas) has mentioned large torpedoes.

SDs are far from invincible. My original class of them was the Ozzie Guillen class. 3 of the 4 ships were sunk and the 4th is rusting off of Haifa (she still has some heavy damage too from her last battle). I think the SDs have a place in NS wars. The Marines who fought at Leyte Gulf can testify about the importance of battleships. Battleships are also good for ship to ship combat in NS with ETC shells. The shells have the range now to hit ships at distances far beyond visual range.

I personally think SDs need to come down to smaller gun sizes. I can see how the 30" is possible with the tech of most nations on NS, but I don't see it as effective as one in the mid 20s. I think the 30" first seen on the Doujin and copied by many is good for nothing more than intimidation. At 30", you don't have the range or accuracy of 24-26" guns. 30" guns also require a much larger ship that is only used rarely due to the costs of using it and the difficulty of maneuvering it. I personally believe 24" is the optimum caliber. The ship can maneuver better and be used in more sitautions. Besides, a well aimed shot from a 24" can do some serious damage to a larger SD. Anyone who says a 24" shell can't penetrate their armor is godmodding. NOw a 24" hit may not pack us much explosives, but it will have a higher muzzle velocity and better accuracy so it should be able to penetrate deep.

Plus, it's better accuracy might give you the chance to score a hit on a turret and turn the enemy SD into a fireball just as the German ships did to the British ships at Jutland. If that battle taught us anything, accuracy and fire control can help you win even if the other side has bigger guns.

Using the same logic you could just replace entire divisions with covert operation and special forces groups, and through the same logic it would be beneficial to build 2000 ton submarines as opposed to the large SSNs we are seeing now. Unfortunately, things work both ways, so let's not forget about that.

As for defeating SDs, I personally have double-digit tons heavy bunker busters that will easily defeat a SD hull; otherwise, I'm surprised that few (aside from Czardas) has mentioned large torpedoes.
I think anyone who was around in the period from April-July 04 devoped such weapons. I do have some large anti-dreadnought torpedoes that can be launched from some of my surface ships and modified Galaxy class SSNs. I also developed the giant bunker busters, but I never got to use them on an actual SD. I guess the dreadnought arms race luckily ended without everything going to hell. (Although, a foolish me almost sent things that way. Damn I was dumb when I first started here.)

[I rather disagree with you, but leaving that aside I want to point something out. Over at the NS_Draftroom we have a guy designing his first SD. Do you know why? Because he found out the hard way that BBs/DNs/SDs are hard to kill when you don't have your own. Frankly, he got the living sh!t kicked out of him because he couldn't fight them effectively and he couldn't get away from them.]
Who was that guy specifically Scandavian States? Is it Kahanistan, whom I talked about in the "Using Super Dreadnaughts as 'pin-cushions'." thread in the Naval Tactics section, or somebody else?

Probably not, I never posted my SD design on the NS Draftroom.

SDs are far from invincible. My original class of them was the Ozzie Guillen class. 3 of the 4 ships were sunk and the 4th is rusting off of Haifa (she still has some heavy damage too from her last battle). I think the SDs have a place in NS wars. The Marines who fought at Leyte Gulf can testify about the importance of battleships. Battleships are also good for ship to ship combat in NS with ETC shells. The shells have the range now to hit ships at distances far beyond visual range.

I personally think SDs need to come down to smaller gun sizes. I can see how the 30" is possible with the tech of most nations on NS, but I don't see it as effective as one in the mid 20s. I think the 30" first seen on the Doujin and copied by many is good for nothing more than intimidation. At 30", you don't have the range or accuracy of 24-26" guns. 30" guns also require a much larger ship that is only used rarely due to the costs of using it and the difficulty of maneuvering it. I personally believe 24" is the optimum caliber. The ship can maneuver better and be used in more sitautions. Besides, a well aimed shot from a 24" can do some serious damage to a larger SD. Anyone who says a 24" shell can't penetrate their armor is godmodding. NOw a 24" hit may not pack us much explosives, but it will have a higher muzzle velocity and better accuracy so it should be able to penetrate deep.

Plus, it's better accuracy might give you the chance to score a hit on a turret and turn the enemy SD into a fireball just as the German ships did to the British ships at Jutland. If that battle taught us anything, accuracy and fire control can help you win even if the other side has bigger guns.
Still, all your examples refer to World War II and even World War I events! Things that happened 60+ and 80+ years ago. There's nothing to learn from that, since such tactics have been proven obsolete decades ago. Most anti-ship missiles outrange almost any gun you can come up with, and the ones that actually come close are so incredibly large and slow it's just not worth it.

Iowa-class battleships were refitted just so the US could have anything to stand up to the Soviet Kirov-class heavy missile cruiser, but in a real battle it'd have failed miserably. In the end, it was extremely expensive to maintain and only useful as an artillery platform for shore bombardment, in which area, again, guns are beaten by missiles.

On the whole, guns are dead, long live missiles!

Even though your standard missile can't do shit to an SD?

Btw, using ERGMs, 30" guns can shoot to 750km. That outranges TSAM, Harpoon, Exocet, and Yakhont.

You can say that the battleship is outdated, but you'll be the one losing out when you face a real superdreadnought with aircraft carriers and anti shipping missiles. The best way to kill an SD is with guns: that is a commonly known fact.

OOC: Wingarde, no offense intended, but you're wrong. And the battleship's obsolete? Guess what, this is NATIONSTATES, not REAL LIFE. But even in RL, the battleship's capability on the modern battlefield is still a controversial one.

Let's see how well you down Clan Smoke Jaguar's argument. (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=292413) (scroll down)

Even though your standard missile can't do shit to an SD?
Sure, I'd fire ONE missile, right.

Btw, using ERGMs, 30" guns can shoot to 750km. That outranges TSAM, Harpoon, Exocet, and Yakhont.
I find that extremely hard to believe.

You can say that the battleship is outdated, but you'll be the one losing out when you face a real superdreadnought with aircraft carriers and anti shipping missiles. The best way to kill an SD is with guns: that is a commonly known fact.
Doubt it. Super-dreadnoughts are the same as battleships in principle, only larger and a more obvious target. The thing is, there's never been a true battle between modern ships, so people speculate wildly about how one would turn out. Most of you overestimate your point defense systems, but don't realize that a missile swarm can quickly overwhelm them and they will certainly be unable to shoot more than a dozen down before they hit.

Even though your standard missile can't do shit to an SD?

Btw, using ERGMs, 30" guns can shoot to 750km. That outranges TSAM, Harpoon, Exocet, and Yakhont.

You can say that the battleship is outdated, but you'll be the one losing out when you face a real superdreadnought with aircraft carriers and anti shipping missiles. The best way to kill an SD is with guns: that is a commonly known fact.

Of course a missile can damage an SD. It would have to be a floating behemoth to be immune.

OOC: Wingarde, no offense intended, but you're wrong. And the battleship's obsolete? Guess what, this is NATIONSTATES, not REAL LIFE. But even in RL, the battleship's capability on the modern battlefield is still a controversial one.

Let's see how well you down Clan Smoke Jaguar's argument. (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=292413) (scroll down)
Yes, the NS world is different, but I don't see your point. How can that affect whether the battleship's obsolete or not? In NS, nations progressed to missile-based ships too.

I repeat, battleships are only useful for shore bombardment. And just because this is NS, BBs should be even more useless than in real life. In our world, we only have (arguably) one superpower, one who picks fighting with vastly inferior nations. Things are never even, and even then the battleship's only use is shore bombardment. If the Cold War had heated up, all Iowas would be on the bottom of the ocean by now.

In NS, nations are frequently on even grounds: similar technology, equally advanced ships, so this kind of vessels are even more vulnerable, because there are more countries that can take them out.

PS: CSJ barely mentions the range issue, which is one of the BB's largest problems. Against modern vessels, the BB would get sunk before ever reaching gun range. As for advantages, he mostly bases his claims on the situation of the real world, which is much different and considerably more benevolent to battleships than NS'.

CSJ is also regarded as an NS world leading designer and expert. And since World War II and Cold War era tactics closely resemble the NS world's warfare, it's quite accurate.

CSJ is also regarded as an NS world leading designer and expert. And since World War II and Cold War era tactics closely resemble the NS world's warfare, it's quite accurate.
Think for yourself for a moment. WW2 tactics are way obsolete, and nobody's really applying anything learnt from the Cold War. As I said, the Iowa was refitted in an attempt to have something to stand up to the Kirov, and it'd have failed miserably should a real battle had taken place. I'm sure that if the Cold War had went on, the US would've eventually come up with a heavy missile cruiser similar to the Kirov.

Current RL naval warfare is very different from NS. Again, I repeat myself since you seem to ignore what I'm telling you, we've got one superpower picking on smaller nations disadvantaged in almost every way in RL. In NS, we've got dozens of superpowers battling each other with similar or equally-advanced vessels, so a radically different arsenal is needed. If NS were the real world (ignoring the fact it'd have been more irradiated than you can possibly imagine due to the stupid use of nuclear weapons, but this is NS, so it's OK to ignore the consequences of radiation), the US would've made drastic changes to its equipment.

All in all, everything's reduced to: "all the cool kids have obsolete yet immense ships called super-dreadnoughts, I want one too!". Face it, the origin of this vessels is coolness and not actual usefulness.

All in all, everything's reduced to: "all the cool kids have obsolete yet immense ships called super-dreadnoughts, I want one too!". Face it, the origin of this vessels is coolness and not actual usefulness.
That's essentially what NS warfare has been reduced to by ignoramuses (not saying what you are one, FYI).

All in all, it wasn't The Freethinkers (who created and designed the most famous SD of them all - the Doujin) who designed it badly. It was the PERSON THAT REQUESTED IT AND USED IT FOR HIS OWN NAVY, DOUJIN HIMSELF. I'll show you what The Macabees said and he is damn straight right.
I wouldn't even aim to sink the super dreadnought, I would just use more smaller guns with base bleed shells and shower the decks with sub munitions, destroying sensors and such. Any ship becomes useless once its blind, regardless of its size. I admit that a super dreadnought would be more difficult to 'blind', but it's not impossible, and the super dreadnought should not really be advertised a 'super ship', when it really isn't. The bad press of the super dreadnought began with the Doujin, and done specifically by Doujin himself [as in, it was not Freethinker's design, it was how Doujin used it]. He made it sound invincible, when it really wasn't - and he did this by godmodding its capabilities and abilities to take damage. And although I do field super dreadnoughts [right now around eight or nine], I would be happy to have one sunk if the person I was fighting did so in a viable manner. I think that if the users of these ships agreed that their ships were not gods, and they were just as sinkable as everything else, the bad press on the super dreadnought would end.

According to Globalsecurity, the maximum effective range of these SSMs are as follows:
Exocet: 65km
AGM-84 Harpoon: About 120km
Yakhont: ranging from 120km - 300km

Admittedly, Tomahawk has ranges varying from 500km to 2500km. HOWEVER, Tomahawk is a crappy SSM, as is Harpoon. Western SSMs cannot be relied on to do *damage* to an NS SD. In fact, the only really effective RL SSMs in NS are the later Russian models - SS-N-26 +.

Who cares whether the Iowa is useful in RL or not - that is not the discussion. The discussion is that an NS superdreadnought isn't just for show, its a capable combatant too. What I think you utterly fail to understand is that these aren't just aluminium/steel hulls that crack like paper - mostly its concentrated and well manufactured armour that would laugh off any modern SSM. Missiles don't penetrate advanced large battleship armour, full stop. The most effective way to do this is with large calibre armour penetrating shells.

Whether you agree or not is not the point. You can keep your carrier based navy until you realise that NS battleships can shrug off hundreds of anti shipping missiles and then retaliate with their own arsenals of large, long ranged missiles. They don't just have guns, you know. Noone is that stupid.

And um, no, it's not like that at all. A modern, flexible, NS navy, that wants to attempt force projection needs an SD.

Who cares whether the Iowa is useful in RL or not - that is not the discussion. The discussion is that an NS superdreadnought isn't just for show, its a capable combatant too. What I think you utterly fail to understand is that these aren't just aluminium/steel hulls that crack like paper - mostly its concentrated and well manufactured armour that would laugh off any modern SSM. Missiles don't penetrate advanced large battleship armour, full stop. The most effective way to do this is with large calibre armour penetrating shells.
Mac suggested bunker busters, and keelbreaker torpedoes are also apparently useful... as you probably know. :p

Whether you agree or not is not the point. You can keep your carrier based navy until you realise that NS battleships can shrug off hundreds of anti shipping missiles and then retaliate with their own arsenals of large, long ranged missiles.
That is, if they're Questarian designs and thus carry more missiles than a small country... (Admittedly other SDs do carry up to 4,608 missiles, like the Doujin, but still; I'm beginning to doubt the credibility of something 1km long that carries 50,000+ launch tubes.)

And um, no, it's not like that at all. A modern, flexible, NS navy, that wants to attempt force projection needs an SD.
Agreed. Even I have one, and I don't need to tell you what my navy is like.

That's essentially what NS warfare has been reduced to by ignoramuses (not saying what you are one, FYI).

All in all, it wasn't The Freethinkers (who created and designed the most famous SD of them all - the Doujin) who designed it badly. It was the PERSON THAT REQUESTED IT AND USED IT FOR HIS OWN NAVY, DOUJIN HIMSELF. I'll show you what The Macabees said and he is damn straight right.
Hold on, let me get this straight. In one post you're justifying super-dreadnoughts and then in the next you're doing the complete opposite?

The discussion is that an NS superdreadnought isn't just for show, its a capable combatant too. What I think you utterly fail to understand is that these aren't just aluminium/steel hulls that crack like paper - mostly its concentrated and well manufactured armour that would laugh off any modern SSM. Missiles don't penetrate advanced large battleship armour, full stop. The most effective way to do this is with large calibre armour penetrating shells.

Whether you agree or not is not the point. You can keep your carrier based navy until you realise that NS battleships can shrug off hundreds of anti shipping missiles and then retaliate with their own arsenals of large, long ranged missiles. They don't just have guns, you know. Noone is that stupid.
Right, hundreds of missiles, that's right. Provided I purposedly aim at where armour's the thickest (there's sensitive equipment exposed on the deck) and set them to fly at 100 km/h so your point defense can actually have time to shoot them all down. Let's see how can you retaliate without sensors and fire control systems.

My point with the Iowa-Kirov comparison was to show the power of missiles versus guns, how the latter is completely obsolete when compared to the former in naval warfare.

All this time, for the sake of the argument, I've ignored the unfeasibility of actually building such a huge vessel with modern construction techniques. You know, at present supertankers cannot be made larger because of the enormous stresses imposed on hulls by hogging and sagging in heavy seas, leading to catastrophic failures like the breaking in half of the 243-metre-long Prestige off Spain on November 19th, 2002.

1) No, he's condemnig a player that misused them.
2) The Kirov couldn't touch an Iowa, it's missiles were insufficient to penetrate an Iowa's armour. The Soviets admitted to this and were terrified of the Iowas because of it.
3) DNs and SDs don't use "modern" construction techniques. Supertankers are worse in the steel/aluminum eggshell department that destroyers, in general they're cheaply built and poorly designed. An NS warship, on the other hand, commonly has layered armour as you see on a tank, except a lot thicker, supported by a honeycomb frame. What's more, they aren't going to sheer because their l:d ratio isn't 10+:1.
4) You can't claim to be MT and be able to have your missiles autonomously aim at sensors. Sorry, not going to happen.

First of all, how can you claim an entirely fictional ship is better designed than a real, professionally-built yet civilian vessel? And secondly, you said it yourself, DNs and SDs aren't built with modern construction techniques. Therefore, they're not MT.

Anyway, there's never going to be an end to this, and realize why this thread was let to sink into the depths of this forum...

Notice I put modern in quotes. Ships are designed to be as cheap as possible because even the US couldn't afford to design a truly solid destroyer and maintain it. It can be done, but it just isn't because it isn't cost effective for RL nations.

Let's go back to the basics, assuming these things can be build. Simple question: how can a vessel with enough armour to "shrug off" wave after wave of anti-ship missiles be even able to float, huh?

Um, Czardas, i've never designed something that long with that many missiles.. my missiles are much smaller than the ones carried by the Doujin and i've measured out width and depth and they do actually fit and I have RPed the consequences of packing lots of missiles into one short space.

Wingarde, little thing called buoyancy. A ship of ANY displacement can float with the sufficient dimensions.

Let's go back to the basics, assuming these things can be build. Simple question: how can a vessel with enough armour to "shrug off" wave after wave of anti-ship missiles be even able to float, huh?

The weight of the water that the ship displaces is equal to or greater than its real weight. IOW, bouyancy.

well, to shrug off my torpedoes, you'd need armour 10 feet thick (RHAe)
long range format of these may travel up to 240 km
[48" dia harpoon(ish) rocket with 21" supercav torpedo fitted]
Standard format only goes about 40 km.

And if I see fit I might modify an MRBM into a 48" diameter supercav torpedo.
(est ange of 1,000 km, 48 foot RHAe penetration)

And yes, in RL there are missiles that autominously home into sensors, the Standard ARM, Shrike, and HARM for example.

Actually torpedoes that are the size of regular torpedoes shouldn't be designed to pierce the hull. What does the damage on a torpedo are the shockwaves form by the explosion and the explosion itself. Keelbreakers [1000mm+] torpedoes, however, are designed to break through the keel of a ship.

well, to shrug off my torpedoes, you'd need armour 10 feet thick (RHAe)
long range format of these may travel up to 240 km
[48" dia harpoon(ish) rocket with 21" supercav torpedo fitted]
Standard format only goes about 40 km.

And if I see fit I might modify an MRBM into a 48" diameter supercav torpedo.
(est ange of 1,000 km, 48 foot RHAe penetration)

And yes, in RL there are missiles that autominously home into sensors, the Standard ARM, Shrike, and HARM for example.

They don't autonomously hone, they just find the bigget signal and track on it. They're rather dumb, frankly, and easily fooled. The smarter you make them, the more vulnerable they are to measures such as LPI and its advanced variants. They also don't attack passive sensors and unless an attack manages to take out all sensors in a fleet the ship still isn't blind if it has a combat link to other ships in the fleet.

Actually torpedoes that are the size of regular torpedoes shouldn't be designed to pierce the hull. What does the damage on a torpedo are the shockwaves form by the explosion and the explosion itself. Keelbreakers [1000mm+] torpedoes, however, are designed to break through the keel of a ship.

Yes, I know that, but my supercav torpedoes are, how you would call it, rather dumb (delayed contact fuse only), and lack the sophisticated fuses necessary to make even halfway decent keelbreakers, that task I leave to conventional torpedoes.

Battleships and dreadnaughts also are normally given reinforced keels to prevent satndard 21" keelbreakers from doing significant damage anyways.

They don't autonomously hone, they just find the bigget signal and track on it. They're rather dumb, frankly, and easily fooled. The smarter you make them, the more vulnerable they are to measures such as LPI and its advanced variants. They also don't attack passive sensors and unless an attack manages to take out all sensors in a fleet the ship still isn't blind if it has a combat link to other ships in the fleet.

Partly true, but it is a step in the correct direction, and the Standard ARM, (based off a naval SAM/SSM) was a particularily potent Anti radiation missile, its modern replacement was the HARM, which although shorter ranged, was a bit 'smarter' (could take orders faster, and more flexible) and was much less expensive.
The Shrike and 'SideARM' where interim weapons slapped inside an AAM, and are rather poor at the task, I believe you where reffering to these, the ones listed previously are much harder to fool, and with some additional tweaks, could be made sufficiently capable at blowing the sensor masts off a boat, this mast also contains radio arrays thus rending the ship partially deaf, blind, and mute.

And 'partial' means limited to visual LOS commuication and tracking. Semephore flags anyone?

Probably not, I never posted my SD design on the NS Draftroom.
Ah. So Scandavian States, here's my question again:
Who was that guy specifically Scandavian States? Is it Kahanistan, whom I talked about in the "Using Super Dreadnaughts as 'pin-cushions'." thread in the Naval Tactics section, or somebody else?
So who was it?

This ship is just not practical. How are you going to fit all those weapons on it? 18 guns alone would take up a lot of space.

The Wisconsin (Iowa class) had twenty 5" guns, and nine 12". His boat I believe is going to be much bigger, although I agree that 18 12"+ size guns is a bit much (I'm settling for 8" guns, especially one I figured the recoil of a certain 'super gun' of the 2 pounder catagory [enough to swamp the Yammato with pure recoil])

Um.. no.. the Iowa had 16" guns, and the Yamato 18". My Hood has more guns than this does. It's not really that many.