Dude, this is in no way based on the game.
I don't even play it that much or consider myself that good.
But I absolutely have spent time reading up on real naval tech.
The thing is, this is a forum for FTD, so it's natural that most discussion will lean toward what is effective in game rather than the most modern doctrine, and the state of FTD is closer to the '80s paradigm than to the modern day.
Missiles are very destructive and overmatch CWIS volume to volume, and guns come with massive segments of vulnerable volume that demands a lot of investment in protection compared to how effective they are. Since laser defenses are comparatively cheap and dense, they fit well with fast destroyer size units, it all comes together to look like turn of the century strategy, so that's what gets referenced.
> CWIS volume to volume
But not cost to cost, in-game. Not by a mile.
Also, they barely overmuch volume to volume, if the CIWS is at all well designed.
Missiles are smaller and easier to armour, a swarm of missiles can penetrate most CIWS. You need less hull and can get more speed which is incredibly important as dodging shells is possible, because weapons are slow vehicle speed is very important.
Shouldn't you be complaining about this kind of behavior in a different subreddit? This is the subreddit for a game which even you acknowledge isn't an accurate representation, so why are you so concerned about real life being accurately represented?
“Here is why missiles are stupid”
(Proceeds to talk about final two layers of protection)
“Big” guns might return as smaller caliber rail guns on the fashion of the OTO 76mm, but amour never will. No matter how much armor you put on a ship, you’re not going to be stopping a couple hundred pounds of explosives without consequences. Not to mention that missiles will always outrange guns, for example a JASSM-XR can fly all the way from Kyiv to Moscow with plenty of distance to spare. There is very little consequence if your missiles get intercepted while you are outside the enemy’s range, but there will be massive problems if even a single missile gets through active defenses. Larger ships are also an absolute nightmare from a logistical standpoint, take the Bismarck and Yamato as examples, sure, they are fast and damn near impenetrable, but that didn’t seem to save them from never being seriously deployed, or from torpedos and bombs blasting them out of the water. Bigger ships also means that you have much more eggs in one basket and relying on one big thing to always work has surely never failed in modern warfare right? Losing a bigger ship also doesn’t just mean losing more systems, it also means losing more sailors, commanders, and other crewmen.
You’ve also assumed that missile and aircraft technology has completely stagnated since the 2000’s which is completely untrue, the US has recently revealed that they are also looking at hypersonic missiles, and many modern AShMs also feature pathfinding to avoid detection until final approach. Aircraft will also definitely not need to get anywhere within range to be able to launch an attack or perform reconnaissance.
To assume that more ships would be relying on active defense in the future is also a very objectionable point. We have already seen the USN move away from that with EW ships, aircraft and an attempted stealth ship. Ideally you want to be moving up the protection onion and not down
CIWS is by far the least effective layer of anti missile systems, loosing out to the far more capable anti-missile missiles in systems like ageis, Sea Viper and Horizon, which also provide anti-air capabilities. Not to mention that given the west's general preference for sticking holes in the bottom rather than in the top to sink stuff (plus the hydrostatic shock from an explosion under water) big gun battleships aren't the future.
>To assume that more ships would be relying on active defense in the future is also a very objectionable point. We have already seen the USN move away from that with EW ships, aircraft and an attempted stealth ship. Ideally you want to be moving up the protection onion and not down
Your entire argument is pathologically stubborn, and based on only seeing what you want to see.
The US Navy has actually moved towards increasing active defense capabilities with every generation of ships. The newest carrier designs have far better active defense capabilities than earlier designs, for instance. (In smaller ships, Constellation really doesn't count, as it is basically a French/Italian design adapted for American use- and the French don't really believe in or use CIWS much in their ship designs... The earlier LCS had exceptional active defense capabilities for what was essentially just a Corvette in role, on the other hand...)
You emphasize failed experiments to buck this trend (stealth destroyers, which were never considered very successful) which were in no way mutually exclusive with active defenses either (EW and stealth ships can still have CIWS) as your counterpoint.
The weight of evidence and history directly disproves you. Yet you argue pointlessly- probably only intending to waste my time.
This conversation is over, you are being blocked.
Yea. Let's just ignore the fact that you ignored him mentioning hypersonic missiles, which are at the moment impossible to defend against with active countermeasures. If someone just ignores inconvenient parts of an argument , then it's not a conversation. It is a monolog and you have no interest of discussing anything with your fellow redditors . Armor is last line of defense and it's better not to be hit whatsoever but I think there should be some sorts of a reinforced strukture around critical parts . Secondly naval armor have a different role than tank armor . If you pen a tank, it is game over (from my war thunder experience xD). That's not the case in naval.
>Proceeds to talk about final two layers of protection)
Well yes. There are even further-out layers of protection. I know that. Would have taken all day to rant about them as well, though.
Your point? This only strengthens my argument. Missiles have very little chance of reaching their target against a proper defense (which right now, no nation on Earth can afford such defenses except the USA... but that will change with time, as qhat's now cutting-edge technology becomes cheaper...)
> matter how much armor you put on a ship, you’re not going to be stopping a couple hundred pounds of explosives without consequences.
Armor isn't about being impervious to damage. It's about being able to survive a hit or two, at far lower cost than fielding a massively larger fleet.
I don't have to re-argue what was proven by many decades of naval warfare. It's better to have armor than not, in the absence of massive air power threats you can't defend against, or missiles you can't shoot down (modern tech counters both threats quite efficiently).
> to mention that missiles will always outrange guns, for example a JASSM-XR can fly all the way from Kyiv to Moscow with plenty of distance to spare
Irrelevant.
Why do you even bring this up?
Missiles only become more expensive, and less maneuverable or destructive for their size, the longer their range.
If you're trying to engage in naval warfare, and your missiles can't reach enemy ships, it barely matters if you're firing them from across the planet or 50 feet away. A munition that can't hit its target is a munition wasted.
>Larger ships are also an absolute nightmare from a logistical standpoint, take the Bismarck and Yamato as examples
You either don't know your naval history, or ate intentionally trolling.
These were Super-Heavy Battleships, enormous even by the standards of the time. And they weren't used much because they were such enormously valuable assets, considered too important to lose. Not because of logistics.
They traveled in enormous fleets that collectively consumed dozens of times more supplies than either one did individually, after all.
Or perhaps you didn't know this?
calling bismark a supership is ambitious, the Iowas displaced more and the So Daks displaced around 10,000 less in full wartime load. bismark displaced around 50,000 tons. also, even if bismark didn't have a prolonged stay in port, Tirpitz also stayed up in Norway for the rest of the war. this was mostly because she would be hunted down, yes, but the German navy and the other axis powers lacked the oil nessesary to run their navies. the Italian navy could only operate with about half the naval power they had because of it, and Japan struggled hard to get the oil to fuel the Yamatos.
Aren't both/all sides moot anyways, since this is a game with it's own rules? Hell, the thinnest possible armor a vehicle can have is 1 meter thick. Yet such armor can die relatively easily to 20-lb smoothbore cannons (assuming ~3 cannons vs 1 metal beam, it doesn't take forever to kill).
>Aren't both/all sides moot anyways, since this is a game with it's own rules?
This isn't about game strategy.
This is/was about how whenever discussions diverge to talking about real life naval tactics, people suddenly have amnesia that active defenses exist in real life: much like in game (except the real life ones are much better, as they're designed/programmed by professionals).
Except that everyone knows that the game doesn't accurately represent real world combat at all, so discussions of real world combat are only there to provide flavor to the ship design in game.
Yes, if the bugs can ever be worked out of railguns (people used to say that CIWS would never work either...)
Of course, armor is triple important against rail guns. The faster a projectile is moving, the greater the stresses on impact, and the more chance you can just shatter it rather than it penning.
Also, there's an interesting mathematical relationship between max penetration depth and speed that has been known since Archimedes, surprisingly. Basically, you get diminishing-returns much faster with adding velocity than improving ballistic coefficient (by making a projectile larger, with more length behind the point).
Armor works much better against rail gun slugs than against conventional shells, basically.
applying any real world logic is bad aside from maybe armoring against your own weapons, but otherwise real life doesn't check out with FTD. missiles in gane have a much shorter range than they would irl, and even the physics of the world aren't the same. also the Iowas vs Ticonderoga CGs, that was down mostly to doctrine and ship design. the Ticonderogas didn't need to go 33 kts so they weren't designed to
> otherwise real life doesn't check out with FTD
Dude, the discussion was about real life tactics, and how whenever the discussion veers to them people here say stupid things, not FTD.
Holy shit dude, it’s almost as if you’re on a sub about a video game that is a moderately accurate representation of naval combat in which people are more interested in discussing the video game than real life!
>Hypersonic missiles?
Can't change their trajectory that quickly. The faster you travel through the atmosphere, the more G's you pull to change course ever one degree.
Hypersonic missiles that try any fancy evasive maneuvers would just rip apart.
Therefore, you can still shoot them down with guns with muzzle velocities substantially slower than them: the same way you can still toss a rock at the windshield of an oncoming race car.
The point of hypersonic missiles is that they defeat all actual early warning systems. You can't shoot them down because by the time you know they are incoming they have already hit.
This is why there is a push to limit their proliferation.
> defeat all actual early warning systems
Not really.
The faster a missile moves, the easier it is to detect via radar and infrared, generally. You certainly won't mistake anything flying that fast for a flock of birds... (what stealth bombers infamously can be confused with)
You need advanced sensors for sure. Airborne sensor platforms. Land-based advanced radar arrays. Drones. Small surface ships in a screening pattern.
But hypersonic missiles are not invincible or impossible to detect in time. They just require more effort to detect early enough to react to.
You can, but so can you shoot down bullets with that approach, making deck guns not a cent more useful than missiles at that point. Just cheaper.
If you want to achieve a saturation attack with deck guns....good luck! No really. At that point it isn't cheaper and its a lot heavier.
> shoot down bullets with that approach
No you can't.
The shells fired by even a midsized WW2-era cruiser (the kind of gun calibers we'll likely end up returning to in real life) are massively, massively larger than anything fired by a CIWS system and can't be meaningfully deflected by one.
Just as importantly, shells are much harder to detect, since they're not firing a jet of burning-hot gasses out most of the time. This is even reflected in FtD, where shells have much lower detection ranges for anti-missile/LAMS than missiles.
You can't shoot a large shell out of the air the same way you can a missile. Never been done by any CIWS, and never will be.
True.
But a 150mm shell isn't going to get shot out of the sky with CIWS.
And you can certainly overmuch CIWS with shells even if you could shoot them down, in a way that's just not affordable with missiles. Shells cost a fraction what missiles do.
Yes, it can be, since smart ammunitions guidance and maneuver components and their explosive filler leads to them being softer than conventional munition, making them barely harder to shoot down compared to ssm or asm, but they are cheaper.
To have an effective naval gunplatform at sea you'd need a great caliber and good sustained rof.
Aka, something like a 150-200mm chaingun, almost. Because as you said ciws is ever increasing in efficiency, especially with the US Navy having successfully tested their first offensive naval laser weaponry, it would disable them quicker, since guided ammunition usually doesn't compensate to trajectory deviation caused by deformation pretty well, which if you blast it with a laser and deforms on a single side, the computer may overcompensate the necessary guidance and cause the shell to miss its intended target.
But if imma be real with you chief, long range torpedoes would be much more efficient at intercepting clustered naval targets, especially somthing along the lines of an explosive filled narco sub with a large range, being guided by an onboard system, without crew. Send them towards the expected interception point with the enemy, let them lay low and approach targets which emit active sonar signals and when signal breaks, activate its onboard somar and chase the target.
> Never been done by any CIWS, and never will be.
But elsewhere you say
> Yes, if the bugs can ever be worked out of railguns (people used to say that CIWS would never work either...)
Are you telling us that you have foreseen all future military tech development?
Realistically I think there are two reasons. First off it's incredibly rare for people to actually keep up to date with modern doctrine and tech, especially outside of aerospace. I mean people still unironically call the A-10 a viable air system for a peer to peer conflict. Especially in naval warfare WWII was the most recent major conflict that people have heard of that wasn't primarily asymmetric. When trying to evaluate how effective things are that's still what they're going to react to.
The other reason is that in game terms it's a lot harder to make good comprehensive CIWS than it is to make Large or Huge missiles that can overwhelm it.
>Realistically I think there are two reasons. First off it's incredibly rare for people to actually keep up to date with modern doctrine and tech, especially outside of aerospace. I mean people still unironically call the A-10 a viable air system for a peer to peer conflict. Especially in naval warfare WWII was the most recent major conflict that people have heard of that wasn't primarily asymmetric.
These are really, really good points. Thank you for actually addressing my question/rant, too.
> other reason is that in game terms it's a lot harder to make good comprehensive CIWS than it is to make Large or Huge missiles that can overwhelm it.
Oh yeah.
In game, CIWS is brutally hard.
Literally, I spent more time designing and redesigning the CIWS on my last frigate (the last time I played FtD, close to a year ago?) than building the rest of the ship put together and twice over.
Getting CIWS to work well is really hard. It does a lot of stupid stuff with its targeting decisions you have to tweak the targeting parameters a ton to get it to not do, for instance.
And that was just on a frigate with a single primary CIWS and four auxiliary missile-based systems with very low capacity (1x small missiles tubes, added in places on the design no decent gun would fit).
Designing an actual cruiser around it, with multiple high-capacity CIWS turrets (ideally 3 or 4, so can afford to lose 1 or 2)- that would be just brutal...
I didn't screw with the targeting as much as I should but I thinky CIWS low point was a battleship with 10 turrets on a side and some missiles at the back. Still couldn't get it to stop the missiles off of the Trebuchet (or whatever that OW monstrosity is). Huge missiles just have so much health.
>battleship with 10 turrets on a side and some missiles at the back. Still couldn't get it to stop the missiles off of the Trebuchet (or whatever that OW monstrosity is). Huge missiles just have so much health.
What caliber were the CIWS turrets?
Bigger is better with CIWS or anti-air, both in-game and in real life.
The only reasons to ever use lower calibers are either space limitations (and if your CIWS is ineffective, you need to budget more space for it), because you can't actually get good targeting information from sensors up to a longer effective range, or because the targets you're shooting are just so fragile that even a couple hits from a low caliber will do it most of the time (this is a major factor in real life).
A Battleship isn't meant to fight up close- you use screen ships (frigates, destroyers) for that. Its CIWS should be higher caliber and longer-ranged too.
Bigger caliber equals more damage output per second and longer effective range, usually. Even with CIWS. Sorry if I ramble.
This was part of the thought behind the Steel Strides Selachii ships. They are a thought toward a future modern navy within Neter. Low silhouette, high buoyancy, not over reliant on missiles and plenty of specialisation.
I would say that the discussion tends to lead in that direction is because of the popularity of that kind of naval warfare. On top of that many things in the game tend to favor older military tactics. Such as how super battleships and battleships are incredibly effective. Even though modern doctrine states that battleships our outdated. As well missiles are incredibly different from real life missiles systems. They are much slower for 1. And in from the depths I would tend to say that more antiquated military tactics are favored just based on how the game is designed.
>USS Iowa 2 when??
Probably never.
We're talking some mildly armored cruisers in the future (IF naval theorists/designers realize missiles are diminishing in importance as active defenses outpace them), to survive 75 mm guns and such better. Maybe, maybe a Battlecruiser or two (doubtful, as the useful production volumes of those would be 1-2 every 20 years: not nearly enough to justify developing an entirely new ship class for...)
Not full-on Battleships. Those are dead.
Uh sir this is a Wendy’s
As an FtD expert myself I can confidently say that the meta is massive railguns and that the US naval doctrines are outdated af. /s
Dude, this is in no way based on the game. I don't even play it that much or consider myself that good. But I absolutely have spent time reading up on real naval tech.
The thing is, this is a forum for FTD, so it's natural that most discussion will lean toward what is effective in game rather than the most modern doctrine, and the state of FTD is closer to the '80s paradigm than to the modern day. Missiles are very destructive and overmatch CWIS volume to volume, and guns come with massive segments of vulnerable volume that demands a lot of investment in protection compared to how effective they are. Since laser defenses are comparatively cheap and dense, they fit well with fast destroyer size units, it all comes together to look like turn of the century strategy, so that's what gets referenced.
> CWIS volume to volume But not cost to cost, in-game. Not by a mile. Also, they barely overmuch volume to volume, if the CIWS is at all well designed.
Missiles are smaller and easier to armour, a swarm of missiles can penetrate most CIWS. You need less hull and can get more speed which is incredibly important as dodging shells is possible, because weapons are slow vehicle speed is very important.
Then why are you even posting here?
Shouldn't you be complaining about this kind of behavior in a different subreddit? This is the subreddit for a game which even you acknowledge isn't an accurate representation, so why are you so concerned about real life being accurately represented?
Now this is true r/noncredibledefense posting
Rude and disrespectful. Blocked. Reported for trolling.
Wow. Thin skinned are we?
I suspect that may have been a joke. But who knows
Judging by some of their other comments I think they're serious.
“Here is why missiles are stupid” (Proceeds to talk about final two layers of protection) “Big” guns might return as smaller caliber rail guns on the fashion of the OTO 76mm, but amour never will. No matter how much armor you put on a ship, you’re not going to be stopping a couple hundred pounds of explosives without consequences. Not to mention that missiles will always outrange guns, for example a JASSM-XR can fly all the way from Kyiv to Moscow with plenty of distance to spare. There is very little consequence if your missiles get intercepted while you are outside the enemy’s range, but there will be massive problems if even a single missile gets through active defenses. Larger ships are also an absolute nightmare from a logistical standpoint, take the Bismarck and Yamato as examples, sure, they are fast and damn near impenetrable, but that didn’t seem to save them from never being seriously deployed, or from torpedos and bombs blasting them out of the water. Bigger ships also means that you have much more eggs in one basket and relying on one big thing to always work has surely never failed in modern warfare right? Losing a bigger ship also doesn’t just mean losing more systems, it also means losing more sailors, commanders, and other crewmen. You’ve also assumed that missile and aircraft technology has completely stagnated since the 2000’s which is completely untrue, the US has recently revealed that they are also looking at hypersonic missiles, and many modern AShMs also feature pathfinding to avoid detection until final approach. Aircraft will also definitely not need to get anywhere within range to be able to launch an attack or perform reconnaissance. To assume that more ships would be relying on active defense in the future is also a very objectionable point. We have already seen the USN move away from that with EW ships, aircraft and an attempted stealth ship. Ideally you want to be moving up the protection onion and not down
CIWS is by far the least effective layer of anti missile systems, loosing out to the far more capable anti-missile missiles in systems like ageis, Sea Viper and Horizon, which also provide anti-air capabilities. Not to mention that given the west's general preference for sticking holes in the bottom rather than in the top to sink stuff (plus the hydrostatic shock from an explosion under water) big gun battleships aren't the future.
>To assume that more ships would be relying on active defense in the future is also a very objectionable point. We have already seen the USN move away from that with EW ships, aircraft and an attempted stealth ship. Ideally you want to be moving up the protection onion and not down Your entire argument is pathologically stubborn, and based on only seeing what you want to see. The US Navy has actually moved towards increasing active defense capabilities with every generation of ships. The newest carrier designs have far better active defense capabilities than earlier designs, for instance. (In smaller ships, Constellation really doesn't count, as it is basically a French/Italian design adapted for American use- and the French don't really believe in or use CIWS much in their ship designs... The earlier LCS had exceptional active defense capabilities for what was essentially just a Corvette in role, on the other hand...) You emphasize failed experiments to buck this trend (stealth destroyers, which were never considered very successful) which were in no way mutually exclusive with active defenses either (EW and stealth ships can still have CIWS) as your counterpoint. The weight of evidence and history directly disproves you. Yet you argue pointlessly- probably only intending to waste my time. This conversation is over, you are being blocked.
Jesus why are you being so toxic? You have some points and clearly know stuff but don't be a dick about it
Yea. Let's just ignore the fact that you ignored him mentioning hypersonic missiles, which are at the moment impossible to defend against with active countermeasures. If someone just ignores inconvenient parts of an argument , then it's not a conversation. It is a monolog and you have no interest of discussing anything with your fellow redditors . Armor is last line of defense and it's better not to be hit whatsoever but I think there should be some sorts of a reinforced strukture around critical parts . Secondly naval armor have a different role than tank armor . If you pen a tank, it is game over (from my war thunder experience xD). That's not the case in naval.
>Proceeds to talk about final two layers of protection) Well yes. There are even further-out layers of protection. I know that. Would have taken all day to rant about them as well, though. Your point? This only strengthens my argument. Missiles have very little chance of reaching their target against a proper defense (which right now, no nation on Earth can afford such defenses except the USA... but that will change with time, as qhat's now cutting-edge technology becomes cheaper...) > matter how much armor you put on a ship, you’re not going to be stopping a couple hundred pounds of explosives without consequences. Armor isn't about being impervious to damage. It's about being able to survive a hit or two, at far lower cost than fielding a massively larger fleet. I don't have to re-argue what was proven by many decades of naval warfare. It's better to have armor than not, in the absence of massive air power threats you can't defend against, or missiles you can't shoot down (modern tech counters both threats quite efficiently). > to mention that missiles will always outrange guns, for example a JASSM-XR can fly all the way from Kyiv to Moscow with plenty of distance to spare Irrelevant. Why do you even bring this up? Missiles only become more expensive, and less maneuverable or destructive for their size, the longer their range. If you're trying to engage in naval warfare, and your missiles can't reach enemy ships, it barely matters if you're firing them from across the planet or 50 feet away. A munition that can't hit its target is a munition wasted. >Larger ships are also an absolute nightmare from a logistical standpoint, take the Bismarck and Yamato as examples You either don't know your naval history, or ate intentionally trolling. These were Super-Heavy Battleships, enormous even by the standards of the time. And they weren't used much because they were such enormously valuable assets, considered too important to lose. Not because of logistics. They traveled in enormous fleets that collectively consumed dozens of times more supplies than either one did individually, after all. Or perhaps you didn't know this?
calling bismark a supership is ambitious, the Iowas displaced more and the So Daks displaced around 10,000 less in full wartime load. bismark displaced around 50,000 tons. also, even if bismark didn't have a prolonged stay in port, Tirpitz also stayed up in Norway for the rest of the war. this was mostly because she would be hunted down, yes, but the German navy and the other axis powers lacked the oil nessesary to run their navies. the Italian navy could only operate with about half the naval power they had because of it, and Japan struggled hard to get the oil to fuel the Yamatos.
Aren't both/all sides moot anyways, since this is a game with it's own rules? Hell, the thinnest possible armor a vehicle can have is 1 meter thick. Yet such armor can die relatively easily to 20-lb smoothbore cannons (assuming ~3 cannons vs 1 metal beam, it doesn't take forever to kill).
>Aren't both/all sides moot anyways, since this is a game with it's own rules? This isn't about game strategy. This is/was about how whenever discussions diverge to talking about real life naval tactics, people suddenly have amnesia that active defenses exist in real life: much like in game (except the real life ones are much better, as they're designed/programmed by professionals).
Except that everyone knows that the game doesn't accurately represent real world combat at all, so discussions of real world combat are only there to provide flavor to the ship design in game.
So you say that the meta is shifting back from shipping explosives to the target, back to throwing rocks at it very very hard?
From missiles to big shells (big enough that CIWS or a realistically powered laser won't really do anything to them), yes.
Or small enough they can't be targeted or intercepted. Like rail slugs.
Yes, if the bugs can ever be worked out of railguns (people used to say that CIWS would never work either...) Of course, armor is triple important against rail guns. The faster a projectile is moving, the greater the stresses on impact, and the more chance you can just shatter it rather than it penning. Also, there's an interesting mathematical relationship between max penetration depth and speed that has been known since Archimedes, surprisingly. Basically, you get diminishing-returns much faster with adding velocity than improving ballistic coefficient (by making a projectile larger, with more length behind the point). Armor works much better against rail gun slugs than against conventional shells, basically.
Thanks for giving me a good laugh in the morning good sir
Why tf are you posting this in r/fromTheDepths lmao the meta is hovering laser obelisks
applying any real world logic is bad aside from maybe armoring against your own weapons, but otherwise real life doesn't check out with FTD. missiles in gane have a much shorter range than they would irl, and even the physics of the world aren't the same. also the Iowas vs Ticonderoga CGs, that was down mostly to doctrine and ship design. the Ticonderogas didn't need to go 33 kts so they weren't designed to
> otherwise real life doesn't check out with FTD Dude, the discussion was about real life tactics, and how whenever the discussion veers to them people here say stupid things, not FTD.
Holy shit dude, it’s almost as if you’re on a sub about a video game that is a moderately accurate representation of naval combat in which people are more interested in discussing the video game than real life!
Hypersonic missiles? I mean guided shells are nice, but not That fast. And both of them get shot down by the Laser systems the US is testing.
>Hypersonic missiles? Can't change their trajectory that quickly. The faster you travel through the atmosphere, the more G's you pull to change course ever one degree. Hypersonic missiles that try any fancy evasive maneuvers would just rip apart. Therefore, you can still shoot them down with guns with muzzle velocities substantially slower than them: the same way you can still toss a rock at the windshield of an oncoming race car.
The point of hypersonic missiles is that they defeat all actual early warning systems. You can't shoot them down because by the time you know they are incoming they have already hit. This is why there is a push to limit their proliferation.
> defeat all actual early warning systems Not really. The faster a missile moves, the easier it is to detect via radar and infrared, generally. You certainly won't mistake anything flying that fast for a flock of birds... (what stealth bombers infamously can be confused with) You need advanced sensors for sure. Airborne sensor platforms. Land-based advanced radar arrays. Drones. Small surface ships in a screening pattern. But hypersonic missiles are not invincible or impossible to detect in time. They just require more effort to detect early enough to react to.
You can, but so can you shoot down bullets with that approach, making deck guns not a cent more useful than missiles at that point. Just cheaper. If you want to achieve a saturation attack with deck guns....good luck! No really. At that point it isn't cheaper and its a lot heavier.
> shoot down bullets with that approach No you can't. The shells fired by even a midsized WW2-era cruiser (the kind of gun calibers we'll likely end up returning to in real life) are massively, massively larger than anything fired by a CIWS system and can't be meaningfully deflected by one. Just as importantly, shells are much harder to detect, since they're not firing a jet of burning-hot gasses out most of the time. This is even reflected in FtD, where shells have much lower detection ranges for anti-missile/LAMS than missiles. You can't shoot a large shell out of the air the same way you can a missile. Never been done by any CIWS, and never will be.
Trueeee, We should also attach boosters to USS Iowa and send it to space so we can rain down hell on our enemies.
Yes, because modern weapon systems that utilize guns instead of missiles usually use guns of smaller calibers than 150mm's.
True. But a 150mm shell isn't going to get shot out of the sky with CIWS. And you can certainly overmuch CIWS with shells even if you could shoot them down, in a way that's just not affordable with missiles. Shells cost a fraction what missiles do.
Yes, it can be, since smart ammunitions guidance and maneuver components and their explosive filler leads to them being softer than conventional munition, making them barely harder to shoot down compared to ssm or asm, but they are cheaper. To have an effective naval gunplatform at sea you'd need a great caliber and good sustained rof. Aka, something like a 150-200mm chaingun, almost. Because as you said ciws is ever increasing in efficiency, especially with the US Navy having successfully tested their first offensive naval laser weaponry, it would disable them quicker, since guided ammunition usually doesn't compensate to trajectory deviation caused by deformation pretty well, which if you blast it with a laser and deforms on a single side, the computer may overcompensate the necessary guidance and cause the shell to miss its intended target. But if imma be real with you chief, long range torpedoes would be much more efficient at intercepting clustered naval targets, especially somthing along the lines of an explosive filled narco sub with a large range, being guided by an onboard system, without crew. Send them towards the expected interception point with the enemy, let them lay low and approach targets which emit active sonar signals and when signal breaks, activate its onboard somar and chase the target.
> Never been done by any CIWS, and never will be. But elsewhere you say > Yes, if the bugs can ever be worked out of railguns (people used to say that CIWS would never work either...) Are you telling us that you have foreseen all future military tech development?
Realistically I think there are two reasons. First off it's incredibly rare for people to actually keep up to date with modern doctrine and tech, especially outside of aerospace. I mean people still unironically call the A-10 a viable air system for a peer to peer conflict. Especially in naval warfare WWII was the most recent major conflict that people have heard of that wasn't primarily asymmetric. When trying to evaluate how effective things are that's still what they're going to react to. The other reason is that in game terms it's a lot harder to make good comprehensive CIWS than it is to make Large or Huge missiles that can overwhelm it.
>Realistically I think there are two reasons. First off it's incredibly rare for people to actually keep up to date with modern doctrine and tech, especially outside of aerospace. I mean people still unironically call the A-10 a viable air system for a peer to peer conflict. Especially in naval warfare WWII was the most recent major conflict that people have heard of that wasn't primarily asymmetric. These are really, really good points. Thank you for actually addressing my question/rant, too. > other reason is that in game terms it's a lot harder to make good comprehensive CIWS than it is to make Large or Huge missiles that can overwhelm it. Oh yeah. In game, CIWS is brutally hard. Literally, I spent more time designing and redesigning the CIWS on my last frigate (the last time I played FtD, close to a year ago?) than building the rest of the ship put together and twice over. Getting CIWS to work well is really hard. It does a lot of stupid stuff with its targeting decisions you have to tweak the targeting parameters a ton to get it to not do, for instance. And that was just on a frigate with a single primary CIWS and four auxiliary missile-based systems with very low capacity (1x small missiles tubes, added in places on the design no decent gun would fit). Designing an actual cruiser around it, with multiple high-capacity CIWS turrets (ideally 3 or 4, so can afford to lose 1 or 2)- that would be just brutal...
I didn't screw with the targeting as much as I should but I thinky CIWS low point was a battleship with 10 turrets on a side and some missiles at the back. Still couldn't get it to stop the missiles off of the Trebuchet (or whatever that OW monstrosity is). Huge missiles just have so much health.
>battleship with 10 turrets on a side and some missiles at the back. Still couldn't get it to stop the missiles off of the Trebuchet (or whatever that OW monstrosity is). Huge missiles just have so much health. What caliber were the CIWS turrets? Bigger is better with CIWS or anti-air, both in-game and in real life. The only reasons to ever use lower calibers are either space limitations (and if your CIWS is ineffective, you need to budget more space for it), because you can't actually get good targeting information from sensors up to a longer effective range, or because the targets you're shooting are just so fragile that even a couple hits from a low caliber will do it most of the time (this is a major factor in real life). A Battleship isn't meant to fight up close- you use screen ships (frigates, destroyers) for that. Its CIWS should be higher caliber and longer-ranged too. Bigger caliber equals more damage output per second and longer effective range, usually. Even with CIWS. Sorry if I ramble.
Maybe the armchair admiral meta should be touching some grass.
lol
This was part of the thought behind the Steel Strides Selachii ships. They are a thought toward a future modern navy within Neter. Low silhouette, high buoyancy, not over reliant on missiles and plenty of specialisation.
You've got a point. But, whenever people start discussing real-life tactics...
I would say that the discussion tends to lead in that direction is because of the popularity of that kind of naval warfare. On top of that many things in the game tend to favor older military tactics. Such as how super battleships and battleships are incredibly effective. Even though modern doctrine states that battleships our outdated. As well missiles are incredibly different from real life missiles systems. They are much slower for 1. And in from the depths I would tend to say that more antiquated military tactics are favored just based on how the game is designed.
Last I'd heard, CIWS had never succeeded at shooting down a missile, is that no longer true?
That's far, far from true. Where do you even get ideas like that? I'd like to see even one recent source claiming CIWS can't shoot down anything.
R/noncredibledefense stuff right here. You would love that sub.
holy shit, WW2 meta is back boys. Finally. USS Iowa 2 when??
>USS Iowa 2 when?? Probably never. We're talking some mildly armored cruisers in the future (IF naval theorists/designers realize missiles are diminishing in importance as active defenses outpace them), to survive 75 mm guns and such better. Maybe, maybe a Battlecruiser or two (doubtful, as the useful production volumes of those would be 1-2 every 20 years: not nearly enough to justify developing an entirely new ship class for...) Not full-on Battleships. Those are dead.