Damage for 13.5" and 15" guns

[rh4389a]

I have a question about the damage values for the British 13.5" and 15" guns.

While penetration was higher for the 13.5", damage is the same (6) as the 12"/45 and 12"/50, despite a shell that was 400-500 pounds heavier 1295/1400 vs ~850lbs). The 15" guns in CoD only do damage 7, despite a 1900 pound shell.

Are these reduced to compensate for the inferiority of British shells (which should be accounted for by the British optional rule), or is it a typo? Have people experimented with increasing the damage done by the 13.5" (especially for KGV, Queen Mary, Tiger and Iron Duke classes, which could fire the 1400 pound shells) and 15", and how does that play out?

Thanks!

[TheDreadnought]

Keep in mind that a gun's damage is a function of both it's penetration value and it's damage value. If you have 2 guns that do 6 damage, but one has a higher penetration value than the other, the gun with the higher pen value is going to do more damage on average across a range of opponents than the other.

There's a natural tendency amongst gamers to want to say X shell weight = X hit points of damage, but it's not that simple. After all, ships don't really have "hit points" and the characteristics of a shell are really defined by a combination of both penetration and damage. The rules actually do a pretty good job of capturing the many subtle factors that determine the severity of a shell hit. . . but you have to consider the overall effect of the rules in total. . . not just any one individual gun stat.

[Martin Lefebvre]

I would also add that the range advantage of the 13.5 over the 12s can be very decisive. Just look at the battle that I had between HMS Canada and SMS König.

thenortherngamer.blogspot.ca/2012/12/an-incident-in-gulf-of-tonkin.html

[atomlad]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I was actually doing some comparison research with Konig and Iron Duke. The German 12" SK /L50 was notably superior to the British 12" guns, having almost as much pen as the British 13.5". In NT the 12" guns of both navies have the exact same value, which I think underrates the Konig/Derfflinger in particular.

I think the German gun should have +1 pen over the British 12", and the British 13.5" should have +1 damage.

This ties also to the ship values, Konig is rated as worth 33 more points than Iron Duke, when they have almost the same exact pen probabilities against each other, (ID has +2 pen, K has +2 armor) and the Duke enjoys a good range advantage.

[warchariot]

I have always felt the German 12" and British 13.5 were about the same pen value. I wonder if using the British ammo rule would, over a game, even this out without messing with the values? In real life, maybe the poor ammo was why the 12" seems the equal of the 13.5"?

[TheDreadnought]

Clash of Dreadnoughts was written with an eye towards less detail than Battleship Row.

The intention being that Clash of Dreadnoughts could be used to run Jutland. Obviously, nothing that scale ever gets run under the WWII rules.

So the CoD rules are less detailed, but in my experience still produce a fairly historical result.