WesWorld

I'll have to look at your designs folks. as to sticking to the treaty - look at history. Japan built 13000 t cruisers (that aroused suspicion), Germany did as well, but the point was moot after the war began. The UK stuck to the treaty, Italy didn't (Trento class 11500t to 12000 t standard), The USA did, France didn't (Suffren class 11000t standard).

So IMHO it comes down to national policy. I have raised this topic before, but I think you weren't there then, so it needs to be readressed. IMHO 15% oversize (around 4% points in BC) are not really noticeable and won't raise a lot of eyebrows. Remember that the CT does not allow for inspection teams that can check documentation etc.

But we really need a majority consenus on this - before anybody really gets ticked off.

The floor is open - again.

Bernhard

I'd personally favour; No cheating with Capital ships, aircraft carriers or cruisers. though 100t may be overlooked.

With smaller ships i don't really care because they cannot get that much better and numbers come into play moreso.

The US did cheat, E.g. Lexington being 3000t larger. Also not counting pieces of equipement that had not existed at WT. the UK cheat was Unicorn.

I intend to stay within limits, but I'd set the "won't make a fuss about it" level to about 5%

When we first had this discussion a few months ago, I indicated that I could accept a ship that was 2-3% over its limits. Such a limited amount would not significantly alter the performance of the ship in question. It could also be explained as a mistake in the design or construction process - "Turns out she displaces 18.2' of water, not 18' like we intended".

This would be the case whether the explanation was genuinely true or not.

5% as suggested is, I think, pushing the limit. 15% is unacceptably high, and not something that can be easily passed off as an accident or mistake. An aerial photo of the ship in question will let the designers determine her block coefficient; length and beam also. Draught may be more complicated, but some human intelligence work can puzzle that out. A frogman, for example.

I agree that national policy is important in this regard. I haven't decided whether or not Germany will end up with over-sized ships - mainly because there's hardly any to build during the '20s. I also haven't decided how vocal Germany will be about suspected cheats.

India will, for now, stay within 2-3% of the limit. Primarily it's because the Raj considers himself to be an honorable man, and doesn't like to go back on his word. He's also far more likely to sound off on suspected cheats - unless the cheat is an ally - because he'll take it personally.

arial photography for BC:

I don't think so:

decks overhang and even if it were correct it onl gives you one of 3 needed planes. Also is there _any_ evidence of this having been done in our time period? Were any eyebrows ever raised about the Italian and French ships? I'd really like to know. Suffren was 10% overweight, Trento 20% and the Japanese cruisers that actually raised suspicions were 30% overweight ....

Mind you I like your point about the Raj taking his word serious.

Bernhard

An aerial photo would give deck length and maximum beam, as well as block coefficient of the deck itself. All you need is an appropriate scale to measure against - three or four people on deck will suffice, so will gun barrel diameters. I agree that this may not exactly accurate, but I don't think anything besides a carrier changes its block co-efficient dramatically at different hull levels.

A few photos from shore or another ship would provide the necessary data to determine waterline length and beam at waterline.

I have no idea if this has been done in real life, but the Americans seemed to have a good handle on Soviet ship dimensions in the Cold War - I dout the Soviets provided that info to them.

I don't question that a 5 or maybe 10% oversize would hard to prove, but 20 or more should be noticeable.

Anyway, we're straying from the question of whether to cheat or not. If somebody's going to cheat, I want to see their genuine design and their fake design. If the cheating is smart - that is, the two don't differ in length by thirty feet - I'll role-play like I don't know any better.

Unless something happens to provide evidence to the contrary...

"Odd...that guy's news post says a cruiser ran aground in 22 feet of water, but Jane's says its draught is only 18 feet..."

oh if I cheat I will always post both designs. this is necessary also to decide any engagements involving this ship. This after all is about historical behaviour and cheating between the countries, not cheating between the players.

Quoted

"Odd...that guy's news post says a cruiser ran aground in 22 feet of water, but Jane's says its draught is only 18 feet..."

Jane's also claims that Bismarck was a twin screw design - see BB vs BB board

Bernhard, honourable cheat :-)

BC is something that'll be a guess. How big would a BC error be ?

I calculated that a 3% error at BC 0.42 would give you an error of 7.1% with displacement. With a BC of 0.6, that error would be 5%.

Errors in length, beam and draught would atribute to the error. Having looked at the Nagato, a 10 ft error in length would add 1.2%, a 1 ft error in beam would add 0.9%, and a 1/2 ft error in draught would add 1.6%.
An error in fuel tonnage would cause an error in standard displacement calculation. Before you know it, you have an error of over 10%. I'm not sure if any other factors would atribute to a calculation error but there wil be a few more.

If you would use length of people on the deck, then you'll see that those guys just happen to be the tallest Nordmarkian sailors there are at 2 meters, and you think that they would be 1.7m long.

I think that 10 % would be best. Perhaps in history the percentage could be more but it would be easiest with the calculations using 10%.

As to posting 'true' designs and 'cheat' design, the 'true' data should be posted on the ship design board, the 'cheat' data could be posted as a navy information article on the news and stories board.

Walter

10% I could definitely live with.

Bernhard

So why will Iberia be making the decision to cheat?

10% would be the max I think. With a 12,000 ton cruiser an extra 500/600 tons would be acceptable, but I tend to focus on the desired tonnage limit and the tonnage of the finished product. Visually another 500/600 tons wouldn't be noticed but as with the washington treaty would you really want to accuse another signatory of cheating? Hooman stated it best in that you can take springstyle and try the design yourself and see if its over the limit set. I have often found that I can get a sturdy design based on an over weight design, so I think that a certain amount of over weight ships will be built. Consistantly being over weight will definately get you into trouble.

Perhaps adding up all the displacements would put Iberia over the limit in one or more categories.

Walter

at least for me. I simply feel uncomfortable with the armour we can give our cruisers. and for some reasons it seems to have been a matter of principle.

Also let's not forget that we are playing nation states fighting for their interest. This "let's adhere to the rules" has a certain level of British Public School spirit that to me as a continental European is rather alien.

Bernhard

My apoach to the treaty limit with cruisers is to design a 10,000 ton ship and then add an additional 2000 tons of armor and guns. The 10,000 ton cruiser was really difficult to balance out but with an additional 2000 tons you can surely get a balanced design. Enevitably someone will try to create a tin armored ship with an incredible ammount of guns but that IMO will seriously hinder that ships performance in a sloberknocker with another compareably armed cruiser, sure she can get some licks in but wait till she takes a critical hit that wouldn't be so critical to the other ship!

I have thought about the question a bit more and my answer as to "why would Iberia cheat?" is really "why wouldn't it?"

Officially accusing any signatory of the CT of cheating is going to create a serious international incident. The whole point of the CT (lest we have forgotten this) was to stop a new arms race that would have been ruinous and would have increased the chances of another war. Is a 1500 t overrun on a heavy cruiser worth starting a new war? I don't think so and that prolly was the reason why even Japan did not get challenged about the grossly overweight cruisers.

Therefore a government can decide to play with that. It's called realpolitik. And I admit that there is something in me that refuses to follow rules just because they are rules. Cheating will create stronger ships, so that is what I am going to do if i feel that it is needed i.o. to create a balanced design. Obviously within the framework we agree upon. Again Iberia is looking at cheating on the CT, not me at cheating on y'all ...

Bernhard

Just some comments on the noticeability of cheating.

First of all, an aerial photograph of a cruiser (which you are going to get when and how?) will not tell you much. I would estimate the deck-area coefficient to be at minimum 0.6, even for ships with a block-coefficient of 0.4. A deck-area coefficient of 0.5 is achieved by the edges of the deck (as seen from above) being straight from the bow to the beamiest point of the ship, and then straight from that point to the stern. Once the sides of the deck start curving out (being convex) that coefficient goes up. I have yet to see a design where the sides as seen from above curve inwards (concavely). Also, take note that there is A LOT of cutaway under the stern. Submerged bulges or other appendages are also unlikely to be discovered by aerial photography - remember that you are unlikely to get good, clear, accurate aerial photographs of any power's vessels unless they are in your home area. To be properly usable, the angle from the axis of photography must also be known, and one also has to take into account any differences between length+beam of deck and length+beam at waterline.

Also, the combination of draught and loading-submergence of the hull is a significant factor - a 10408ton (standard) design I have done earlier has a submergence of 699tons/foot. This means that floating one foot deeper, it would displace 11107 tons standard - and how are you going to spot the difference of submergence of one foot, particularly when you most likely will never have the chance to get an accurate measurement of the ship's actual draught, or the freeboard from the surface to the lowest row of scuttles? Also, keep in mind that when the ship is observed, it will almost always displace more than its standard tonnage, since it will always carry fuel and reserve feedwater - and you will not necessarily know how many tons of that my ship can or does carry. The one exception is if it has been in combat and worked itself low on ammunition and fuel.

With the Japanese cruisers, the one thing that lead the Western powers to suspect that they were severely overweight (despite the Japanese attempts to build the ships so that they would have the proper standard tonnage) were the capabilities of the ships - I believe British naval architects are on record as saying that the Japanese cruisers were either within tonnage-limits but built of cardboard, or else severely overweight, when asked why they themselves couldn't build equally good cruisers. As such, increased protection going into cheating tonnage will make suspicion less likely, while cheating to allow for instance a 30knot 16x21cm/8.2inch cruiser on ostensibly 13000tons standard is likely to cause much suspicion abroad.

With regards to larger vessels, such as capital ships, discrepancies even as large as several thousand tons are unlikely to be much noticed - if my typical

Okay, so nobody's fond of the idea of aerial photos. But there's nothing difficult about getting them, even in 1921. Warships spend most of their time in their homeports. One only has to arrange an overflight using one's own aircraft or better yet, a civilian aircraft. If the warship's exercising, there's a good chance the event will be reported in advance; send a plane out to look for it, either from a base or a ship. Unless the owner has a policy of shooting down everything that overflies his ships and facilities, you'll eventually meet with success.

Regardless...if the photos can't tell you enough, it's a moot point unless you want basic information about the ship. If nothing else, at least the idea has earned me the clearest explanation of block coefficients that I've seen yet.

The Realpolitik answer is reasonable, Bernhard. Is cheating worth a war over? It depends on how seriously the other signatories take the treaty. Some will say that nothing is worth a war, others will take it as an act of war.

But a war need not happen - somebody can send a message to the suspected offender via torpedo or limpet mine. Which should not be interpreted as India or Germany threatening Iberia, incidentally - I'm just making the point that the suspicious country needn't start a war or even really say anything at all. Though this would obviously be rather difficult to sim in the absence of a referee.

From the Indian perspective, a treaty that is not observed by its signatories is not binding. As the smallest navy within the Treaty, I'd say India has the most to lose from other signatories' cheating. If enough signatories are even suspected of cheating, the Raj would renounce the treaty and consider himself free of its terms. I'm sure that would bring about its own set of interesting diplomatic discussions.

J

Quoted

From the Indian perspective, a treaty that is not observed by its signatories is not binding. As the smallest navy within the Treaty, I'd say India has the most to lose from other signatories' cheating. If enough signatories are even suspected of cheating, the Raj would renounce the treaty and consider himself free of its terms. I'm sure that would bring about its own set of interesting diplomatic discussions.

Public school morals again (and I am sure the Raj was educated at Eaton or somewhere *g*) or at least puritan ones. To quote from "Pirates of the Caribbean": "The Code is not a fixed set of rules, more like guidelines ..." cool film BTW if you haven't seen it yet. Sad disappointment from the fencing side of things, but as a navalist and for storyline etc it was cool :-)

End of the day you can only cheat so far. The CT will still fulfill it's basic function and that is limiting an arms race. Calibres will stay limited, so will general sizes. The details of displacement are really only jockeing for position. Don't expect the CT to give a level playing field - there are no referees! But it will curb excesses and that is the main function. No G3 BCs, no Felipe II BBS, no El Cid CAs, they end up being undersized BCs etc. It still fulfills more than 90% of it's function. Just that weird Anglo-Saxon sense of "fair play" is IMHO slightly silly ;-)

Bernhard

Atlantis would be more than happy to design over weight ships but none the less will try as hard as she can to adhere to the treaty limits as a matter of keeping her word. Is a 1000 tons a real barn burner?, I don't think so....the Germans and japanese cheated on the Washington treaty and only got marginally better designs, nothing that would destroy another fleet resoundingly. The real area of consern is capital ships and very few of those will be built and the ones that are will only be the most powerfull untill the next capital ship gets built. Having the edge in naval technology will be very dificult unless a full out war breaks out.
As I stated before, if a nation consistantly builds over weight designs they will be in trouble, where as if they have 1 or two ships over weight they can go "oops, that was bogger!"

But the really sneaky types will build ships that are individually within the limits, but which exceed the tonnage limits for the class of ships!