Historynerd

Hmmm... how about the destruction of Force Z? Planes attacked two battleships at peak condition and sent them to the bottom?

True, but its success was made possible by several factors, difficult to repeat: 1) Inadequacy of passive and active air defenses: the lack of coordination between the Regia Marina and the Regia Aeronautica and the lack of something that could resemble an early warning alarm bell made it impossible for the RA fighters to intervene; Taranto was defended by many barrage balloons, but the most part had been blown away by strong winds in the previous days and had not been replaced. 2) Inadequacy of underwater defenses: caused by both a reluctance to protect each ship with dedicated anti-torpedo nets (to avoid the time needed to open them every time it had to sail) and by the delay in producing them, there were only a fraction of the anti-torpedo nets preventivated in place. Besides, had all of them been available, it wouldn't have made a difference, as they didn't reach the bottom of the harbour, and the British torpedoes ran right above it. These conditions could not happen again in the course of the war. Besides, astounding success is too big a word, I'm afraid. First of all, the battleship Andrea Doria could have been hit, too, but the torpedo sank in the mud right before reaching her. Then, both the Littorio and the Duilio were readily beached, and could be repaired and returned to service in a relatively short time (six months at most); the same thing would have been possible for the Cavour, had the admiral commanding its division not butted in and delayed the beaching till it was too late, causing it to sink in shallow water up to the gun turrets. Anyway, its virtual loss was no big deal: the modernized battleships after Punta Stilo were seen as being unable to face off against the British battleships anyway. And in the end, even after Taranto the Royal Navy was not able to either paralize the Regia Marina's battlefleet, nor gain dominance over the central Mediterranean or stop the sea routes from which the Italian forces in Lybia were being resupplied and reinforced. So, a success by all means. But not a decisive one.

Debatable, as Taranto had many peculiar factors going on (lack of active and passive air defenses, lack of adequate torpedo nets,...). It was by all means significant, but I'm not sure it was that significant.

Perhaps this should be better discussed in the dedicated section of the forum...

Well, a ship can be versatile only if it's balanced between its most important stats - mainly firepower, protection, speed. These "large light cruisers" blatantly disregarded that rule, so I'm afraid they didn't fall into that category. Turning them into carriers was a very wise decision - had they remained as they were, nobody would have been able to find a viable use for them.

Overall, the 16-inch Mark I guns of the Nelson-class can be considered worse weapons than the 14-inch Mark VII mounted on the King George V-class. The latter were good, balanced weapons which did the job. I might agree with you on the judgement about Littorio's guns, if we postulate the use of good shells of even quality, because if we don't the lines are blurred, I think. I don't know anything about the 16-inch built for the never-built battleships, though.

Size isn't everything. As usually is with ships, the best gun is the most balanced, namely between its characteristics of RoF, muzzle velocity and weight of shell. Following the "big gun" dragon leads you nowhere.

Um... you can't use Spanish in this forum; only in the dedicated section, when it will be opened.

Well, there might be something to tweak around about Roma... her speed (if I'm not mistaken, she was mofidied when she was being completed with the new bow design), her AA (from the beginning she already had the additional AA MGs on the turrets), and maybe other things like that...

It's Alfa Romeo and Peroni, in fact. Still, it's quite irritating.

"Quite versatile"... I think IRL it made her somehow useful as a carrier (since it's WWI we're talking about), but absolutely useless as a surface fighting vessel. The 18-inch gun sure does look impressive, however it had slow reload speed, and being completely and tragically alone its usefulness can be seen as questionable... at best. Besides, these ships were infamous for having light cruiser-scale protection only, so anything except destroyers could turn that into Swiss cheese. Not to mention that these were large ships, so it would be a very nice and tempting target, even for torpedoes. So, maybe it can work here, but I do have more than a few doubts, especially about her armament and her protection. I think these are two pretty big issues that make this ship a big question mark, IMHO.

It is in times likes this when I start laughing ironically about all the hype that there is in Italy about knowing English, and then things like these keep coming out... "seldom images", really?

It sure would be nice to have Littorio in the tree and Roma as a premium...

From Ectar's post on FAQs: So there.

I agree, I myself am eager to play with them.

The Washington "standard" displacement did not include the boiler's water, if I remember correctly. The Iowa-class' boilers could deliver an output of 212'000 horsepower; this seems higher than 150'000 hp.

Is it legitimate to consider post-war battleships conditions? Without ending up with the Iowa and its missiles, I'm not sure that it's balanced, as some BBs were modernized after WWII and some not. Richelieu's full load was around 48K tons; so it seems that the Regia Marina wasn't the only Navy in the world used to do trials on light loads.

Maybe it's an announcement because we are getting... ...SUB-titles!

If it was the latter case, he was in good company. An Italian submarine commander claimed (in good faith, or so it seems) to have sunk, in two separate occasions, two American battleships, and his story was milked for all of what was worth.

Essentially, this game is about engagement of naval fleets in a determined period. Monitors didn't have any place in them in said period, so they won't be in.

On a purely theoretical point of view, I agree with you. But I'd rather not have to use it...

Open discussions are ok, as long as proposals are meant to be useful and are well thought. Then they will be considered. If a suggestion is just plain dumb because one does not want to leanr four bloody acronims, don't cry if all you get is sarcasm.

Oooh, someone got the truth! Quick, we must eliminate him, the Illuminati/Alien overlords order it!!! Or.... You could just presume for a split second that maybe it was your suggestion that was dumb.

You are talking about making things easier, when you say that it's too complicated to learn four stupid acronyms? You are not making sense, my friend.