[REL] Real Fleet Boat

[Beery]

After all this deck gun talk, I'm proposing rethinking the deck gun ROF and basing it more directly on Wahoo's ROF. Until now I've held back on speeding it up too much since my aim has been to go for a medium-high ROF that represented a good but not elite crew. The idea being that we're simulating good captains but not genius captains (in deference to the real genius commanders such as O'Kane, Fluckey et al).

Anyway, here's what I'm considering:

Make RFB's deck gun reload at 23 seconds per round. This is the precise average ROF of Wahoo's gun for all the ammo expended on the day of the report I've been using as the primary basis for RFB 1.29's deck gun.

My reasoning is as follows:

Wahoo was manned by an elite crew at the top of their game. Two of the best commanders of the war were in the command room and on the bridge on the day this action took place. As such it seems to me that this boat was likely to have one of the highest rates of fire of any boat in the Navy.

Given the above, SH4's crew quality feature will reduce ROF to more average results (30 seconds per round or slower) if the player ignores deck gun crew quality. After a couple of patrols increases the crew's abilities players who manage their crew well will be able to achieve the 23 seconds per round of an elite crew like that of the Wahoo.

SH4 does not allow two ROFs for ready-use ammo and ammo store ammo. So we are forced to go with ready use or ammo store ROF, or a combination. I'm still fairly convinced that a combination gives the most realistic result, since if we go with ready-use ammo that gets us to 17 seconds per round but in reality this couldn't be sustained for more than 90 rounds. If we go with post-ready-use ammo that gives us a ROF of 30 seconds per round. Both of these are extremes that only represent a minority of the deck gun's ammunition whereas the average represents nearly all of it.

I'm thinking that all three guns will reload at the same base rate (23 seconds). This is because the 3" shell was lighter and could be transported to the gun faster but the early boats it was mounted on were not optimized for the deck gun as well as later boats. Conversely although the 5" gun was mounted in a way that optimized its ROF the round was much heavier and getting it to the gun would take longer. Until we have some data on which to base a realistic ROF for these guns I feel that using the same ROF for all three is probably a good compromise.

The final reason - it's only another two seconds faster than what I was thinking of before, plus it binds the ROF directly to an actual 4" gun action that has lots of specific details and is fairly bulletproof. The 4" gun is the middle gun of the three types in the game, so it represents an average from that standpoint. Also this is an example of a Gato boat - the sub that had the longest service period of any sub in WW2 - so this isn't some boat that's 'nearly' one of the game's subs - it's right in the middle of what we're likely to be commanding in the game.

What do the mod's users think of this idea? By the way, don't anyone get the idea that knocking another two seconds off the reload time will make the slightest difference to the deck gun's detractors - they won't be satisfied until the deck gun is firing with a ROF that matches the stock game. Hell will freeze over before I go that far (unless a combat report comes to light that supports it).