VEHICLE HIGHLIGHT
 

This week, we'll be taking a look at the USS Spruance, the first and titular ship of the Spruance-class destroyer.

The ships were being built right into the year Blue Water takes place, 1983, making them the new, modern ships of the time, including automated guns and digital weapon control systems.

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With the increasing threat from improving Soviet Submarine technology, their designed task was to serve as ASW escorts for carrier battle group.

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Working from bow to stern, first we have our Mark 45 5" guns. These have a rate of fire of 16-20 rounds per minute each, and have an effective range of 24 km, and a magazine with 600 rounds.

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Behind it is the Mk. 16 Mod 7 RUR-5 ASROC launcher. Although the Spruance itself was new, the ASROC dated back to the 60's. They could launch either a 10-kt W44 nuclear depth charge or a Mk.46 torpedo 19 km. Upon arriving to the specific location, the Mk.46 would separate, parachute, enter the water, and begin searching for nearby submarines.

The Spruance also carried two additional reloads for each in the launcher, for a total of 24 missiles.

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Above the bridge and above the hanger is a Phalanx Block 0 CIWS. These are newer than the Spruance itself, with the USS Spruance not originally having been built with them, and only having just, in 1983, barely been modernized with their addition. Their weapon is an M61 Vulcan capable of putting out 3,000 20mm rounds per minute. Its primary role is to shoot down incoming missiles, though it's also more than adequate against any nearby aircraft. Usage against ships is also possible.

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Below are the two quad RGM-84A Harpoon canisters. Being 1983, some RGM-84Cs would be in service as well. These sea-skimming, high-subsonic cruise missiles have a range of 92.6 km.

They have the name "harpoon" because they were originally designed in the 60's as a counter to surfaced Soviet submarines - thus they were weapons to be used against large submerging leviathans, and were called the "harpoon".

While their uses are far more general than that, that role may still prove useful should an Echo or Juliet surface and begin preparing to fire from a far (but not far enough) distance.

Notice the starboard canister has expended two missiles.

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Next we have, what may arguably be the most useful ASW weapon on the Spruance. Given the Seasprite has already gotten its own highlight, there's not much to add here. These will prove invaluable in expanding the search area against Soviet "whales", or making full use of the RUR-5's range.

https://i.postimg.cc/dkGMWgxb/BW273.png

Being primarily an ASW vessel, the Spruance only had (relatively) short-range RIM-7 Sea Sparrows for extended air defense beyond the Phalanx's range. Like the ASROC, it only has a range of 19 km - but against sea-skimming missiles, this may be all the warning you'll get, anyways. Like most SAMs, it is semi-active radar homing.

https://i.postimg.cc/m14vK8xt/BW274b.png

https://i.postimg.cc/Wq7BVgjS/BW275b.png

And finally, all too easy to miss, yet still a possible godsend in the worst scenarios...

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A pair of Mark 32 Triple torpedo tubes on each side of the ship, in a torpedo room within the ship's aft hull, for six Mk. 46 torpedoes ready to launch at any time.

https://i.postimg.cc/ykvn0BPD/BW279.png



And finally, two more shots of the Spruance during the day - with the last one to show the hanger in the closed position.

https://i.postimg.cc/R3DV5rGq/BW276c.png

Believe it or not, both of the helos actually can fit in that hanger... But only barely.

https://i.postimg.cc/qhKrPNzZ/BW277b.png

That's it for this week, please keep the questions and comments coming, and I'll shoot to be more timely for next week. Until then, good sailing.

Absolutely stunning. Love the R2D2! Also, the Seasprite flies now! One thing, though, anything white seems to glow, I think they reflect too much light. Everything else looks lovely.

Are you still aiming for the November release of the game?

I think it's worth it to get the sparkling water, though getting everything white to not be so blinding but keeping the sparkling water would be ideal. Should definitely be possible. Will look into it.

As for November, aiming is the key word, here. I'm beginning to wonder if it's realistic - it may have to be delayed, but I'm not ready to give up on it quite yet.

WEEKLY UPDATE
 

Hello again,

There's not a whole lot to show off - not all work is equally flashy, as I'm sure most here are already aware, but progress is still happening.

One part of that that does create some nice eye candy, though, is recently the model for the P-500 Bazalt has been done, so I decided to make a video and put some pictures together so there's something to show off this week.

With a range of 550 km, cruising at Mach 2.5 and either a 1,000 kg high explosive warhead or a 350 kt nuclear warhead, it is not a missile you want to go up against. The one saving grace is they couldn't/didn't fly lower than 50 meters, and made rather large targets, being about 12 meters long and a meter wide.

It was made to fire in Salvos of eight, and the Slava-class carried sixteen.

https://youtu.be/ulGqNsPVbx8

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Awesome! The cruise missile looks great!:up:

That is generally how Harpoon simulates the missile, too.

However, I remember an NWAC developer saying that the missile in his game had a slower cruise speed in transit and only increased speed when it neared the target area because it would have insufficient fuel for maximum speed throught the flight profile.

I would not profess to know which behaviour is wrong or right. Have you considered different operational parameters?

looks good
 

All i can say is this game is looking good and looking forward to its development

Thanks!

This got me digging again.

So, to clarify, these are P-500 Bazalts. These were later upgraded to P-1000 Vulkans, which do have a terminal boost to above mach 3, but weren't cleared for service until the late 80's.

Some sources cite the Bazalt's top speed as Mach 2.5, others cite it as Mach 2 or even Mach 1.7. In any case, its drag would be largely dominated by wave drag. Wikipedia had some nice equations for wave drag. Approximating the Bazalt as a double-wedge aerofoil to get its drag at Mach 2.5, then using the specific fuel consumption of the R-15 turbojet (in afterburner) (since it's a turbojet engine from a similar era, so fuel economy should be very similar), I found it'd only take a few hundred kg of fuel for it to travel its entire range at Mach 2.5, using fairly conservative estimates.

The research on the missile is interesting, though. Learned more detail on their guidance AI and found a small tweak I'll probably make to their visual launch effects. This is another funny case where realism will probably look unrealistic - real pictures of Bazalts or Vulkans launching show an impressively large flame plume from the booster rockets.

On the topic of its guidance, I haven't spoken at length about the Bazalt's guidance software, but as some here may know, it was very impressively sophisticated. I haven't gone over it yet because I'm not sure I can implement it on the game's Early Access release, but realism holds some interesting challenges when it comes to balance.

Sources often vary, which begs the big question, will players be able to modify operational data if they feel one source is more credible than another? This is how it is done in both Harpoon and NWAC, the games do not profess to be omniscient. Players can enter their own operational data parameters. Of course, there are some self-important developers (of games that cannot be mentioned) who think they know it all and only have one set of 'allowable and acceptable' performance data.

I read about a hypothetical Soviet missile guidance system whereby one missile acted as the targeting system facilitator for a group of other missiles that actually carried warheads. This was supposedly used to facilitate long-range over-the-horizon engagements. It was only mentioned in a novel, so I do not know if it ever existed or not (probably not.)

Will the game be able to simulate and allow such potential systems?

That goes right in with modability - so it's something I'll definitely be aiming to include.
More than hypothetical, that's the actual way the P-500s and their derivatives/modernizations work.

Both of these things are the sorts of things I'd definitely want to include - the latter in particular has been on my mind as I've been working on the cruise missiles, since something like this would so radically alter their behavior.

Hard to say what'll make it into the early access or not, though.

WEEKLY UPDATE
 

Progress.

https://i.postimg.cc/ht0rV5x5/BW294.png

https://i.postimg.cc/GmRK8CBD/BW295.png

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I only see on real life the GoalKeepper firing, but the russian version have realy this "green" trace ?

The GoalKeepper is more yellow/orange. :hmmm:

I've seen Soviet tracers depicted as usually being green as far back as WWII. Here's a video clip of what's ostensibly an AK-630 firing - the colors are hard to read on the old video quality, and the old video quality would suggest using tracers was more of an 80's thing - but they do appear like they're green, just as green shows up on relatively older cameras.

(1:06 seconds)
https://youtu.be/t3w5NFMddXw?t=66

Also, source 1 on the gun itself mentions it a few times, and another about the ammo, where you'll have to scroll down to "Naval Weapons", list tracers as one of their rounds.

But I've seen plenty of US C-RAM guns (a Phalanx plopped on land) firing red tracers - my guess is the tracer color is related to what resources are more naturally/commonly available in each country.

Addendum: Wikipedia and a Quora seem to back up this supposition - US/Western tracers typically working around Strontium, which seems a bit more complex to get it to work well, with Chinese and Russian tracers using green-burning Barium salts. Could be resource availability or just preference for what may be a simpler construction? Not sure, but it seems they use green tracers, either way.

How about a simple feature that allows a player to set the tracer colour for each side? It might not be perfectly realistic, but it would accommodate those who suffer from colour blindness and other oddities (such as old eyes.) :sunny:

Cold Waters also models tracers as green, and I remember reading somewhere that NATO generally fires red tracers to WP's green.