Considerations about naval designs

Draken wrote:We have first ironclads coming online soon, so what about creating proper battleships in next generation? I'm thinking about something similar to KGV or Bismarck, they were great designs and with Merlin help Charis could upgrade them even further, but we don't have access to electricity so turrets would be pain in the ass to turn them. But for that we need diesel engines, so any freak hit can't easily destroy boilers and boil whole crew. Also diesels are better for huge ships they're more compact and they use less fuel per mile. Another useful design could be very small ship no bigger than 10 kT, but very fast so we could use it to hunt any privateers and even destroy normal fleet. KHVII design is very powerful, but for our standards relatively slow and it could only be use as normal battleship. My smaller design should have enough speed to be used as destroyer and enough armor and weapons to be used as battle cruiser. Building any submarines for long time is very risky thing, we have a lot of very big and nasty creatures underwater and they could try to eat that ship. Another thing needed for submarine is sonar and radar so it could sail safely, without it, it's possible to sail underwater but it's very dangerous, cus we don't know where are we sailing.
Now it's time for questions about weapons for ships.
Do we have any guns for medium and short range fight? Something similar to 150-100 mm guns used on most of battleships and battle cruisers as secondary weapon and to fight lighter ships. If I'm correct Charis ironclads will only have big 360 mm guns, they're nice and powerful, but useless against something very fast and small. Another thing is that 406 mm guns are a little heavier but have much bigger range and they're much more powerful.
My last question for today do we have any kind of light guns for our ships? Same as 76-100 mm guns used on most capital ships during WWII, they're great if we have any kind of boarding action and to destroy one thing, without destruction of whole town.
What about designing something similar to 4x20 mm Oerlikon or Bofors guns? They're great at really short range and could be used to suppress any infantry on enemy deck.
How hard is it to creat good diesel engine for ship? If I'm right 99% of current ships are using diesel engine, only 1% is using nuclear reactors and other ways to generate power.

Jeroswen wrote:snip

Cayleb and Sharlayn both need to get production going in Chisholm and Emerald, one way or the other. Charis cannot handle the demand currently in place. There needs to be someone assigned to getting production rolling in Emerald and Chisholm. Someone who will knock heads, buy out people who are standing in the way, and get the job done. There are business men in both countries who realize how much money Howsmyn is making and would love to emulate him. They need to find someone who can find those people and give them the push and funding they need to get it started. Cayleb and Sharlayn do not have the time to monitor growing a new tech base in both countries. They need someone who could drive the process along and keep as much graft as possible from hampering the process.

Draken wrote:What about using powerful diesel to stabilize guns? They should have enough power to do it.

Weird Harold wrote:

Draken wrote:What about using powerful diesel to stabilize guns? They should have enough power to do it.

The big guns -- in fact, many big ships -- are stabilized by massive gyroscopes. It doesn't take a huge amount of power to spin them up to speed and even less to maintain that speed. A lawn-motor motor would be powerful enough given some time and gearing to work with.

I'm not sure that gyroscopes big enough to stabilize big guns or entire ship can be controlled precisely enough without electricity to manage feedback; Turns would have to be coordinated with the Gyroscope to prevent gyroscopic forces from defeating the whole purpose of having a gyroscope in the first place.

Draken wrote:What about copying backup system from battleships, turrets were manual if I'm correct and even diesel engine should be precise enough for turning it.

Weird Harold wrote:The problem isn't really turning the turrets/barbettes but in stabilizing the guns (and/or ship) relative to the horizon so they can be aimed with some accuracy.

Graydon wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:The problem isn't really turning the turrets/barbettes but in stabilizing the guns (and/or ship) relative to the horizon so they can be aimed with some accuracy.

Another way to think of this is that turning the turret is easy; apply power. Stopping the turret in the exact right place is hard. You get all sorts of feedback and control issues because you're trying to point with precision at something a long way away.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Jeroswen wrote:snip

Cayleb and Sharlayn both need to get production going in Chisholm and Emerald, one way or the other. Charis cannot handle the demand currently in place. There needs to be someone assigned to getting production rolling in Emerald and Chisholm. Someone who will knock heads, buy out people who are standing in the way, and get the job done. There are business men in both countries who realize how much money Howsmyn is making and would love to emulate him. They need to find someone who can find those people and give them the push and funding they need to get it started. Cayleb and Sharlayn do not have the time to monitor growing a new tech base in both countries. They need someone who could drive the process along and keep as much graft as possible from hampering the process.

Sharleyan and Cayleb understand that they need to spread the wealth. The major problem in Chisholm is that a large part of the land and resources required to develop those industries are controlled by nobles who are already sufficiently wealthy, and don't want to rock the boat, or who are opposed to the crown (still having wet dreams of recovering the power they had under her grandfather), and are obstructing the efforts to industrialize Chisholm. We have had no textev of problems in Emerald, but I would guess that Nahrman had his nobles under pretty tight control, and that is is proceeding apace, it's just that RFC hasn't had a plot need to discuss it to this point, and since he is writing a series of novels, not a detailed world history, a lot of things are going to happen off stage that never get mentioned.

Jeroswen wrote:
You could be correct on Emerald as I am making an assumption. However, in all the books all the bottlenecks in production are in Charis. So an assumption was made on my part that they need to spread production around.

I remember reading that the nobles were standing in the way of Chisholm joining in the manufacture of goods. However, they need someone who isn't distracted by a thousand different details to head up the project of breaking through the resistance. The empire is fighting for its life and these nobles could be argued to be endangering the state with their tactics. So the empire should buy out the holdings that are needed. The nobles can take the money or not, but the state is seizing the land and putting up manufacturing sites. This sucks as it sets a very, very bad precedent. Here this falls under eminent domain. I wonder if the empire needs to institute a similar ruling on eminent domain to get this done?