Stats for Bismark and scharnhorst

I realize in game design one has to make calls on a variety of design compromises. That being said The Bismark has only 3 damage not 4 this makes the gun worse than the British 14" guns is this a miss print should they have 4 damage ? the same goes for the Sharnhorst class Should they have 3 damage or 11 penetration?

Hello Blownapart,
Indeed some design choices have been made, but a 14" gun cannot be superior to a 15" gun of course. I've checked the stats for you:

KM 15” = range 85cm, Damage 3, AP 12, RoF dice per barrel 0.7
RN 14”= range 85cm, Damage 3, AP 11, RoF dice per barrel 0.6

The cutoff for Damage 4 is dependent on shell weight and lies somewhere around 2000 lbs, the german 15" shell was a lot lighter than its UK counterpart:

KM 15” shell = 1764 lbs (dmg 3)
KM 11” shell = 728 lbs (dmg 2)
RN 14” shell = 1590 lbs (dmg 3)
RN 15” shell = 1938 lbs (dmg 4)

As you can see the 11” shell is a lot lighter than a 14 inch shell. So I’ve put the damage on 2, to make it way more lethal than an 8” shell, and increased the AP to 10 over 9 for an 8” shell. Still the weight difference is too much to put the DMG rating on par with an 14” shell.

So, tough design choices indeed considering the bandwidth of values I can play with. I hope you can see a bit of the logic behind it? If you have reasonable arguments to put the values differently I’m open for suggestions though.

Ow, and by the way. Do not underestimate the one point increase in AP value of a 15" over a 14". It makes Bismarck's guns way deadlier to other battleships than KGV's.

Thanks! I understand totally about your bandwidth problem Our comparisons also included the British 15" guns -- damage 4 while the German 15" gun was damage 3. We also noted the penetration and actual explosive charges of each shell. The German 15 " was more than equivalent to the British 15" the !!" Certainly was lees than a British 14" But not by much. Game design is certainly about real statistics but a heck of a lot more about the feel and play ability. It some instances it just feels like The German 15" and 11" are under powered as compared to the other navies in the same class.

Thank you again for your work

Well, I have to pick a cutoff point somewhere, but it is still arbitrary, so if you can come up with a convincing source that the 15" German shell is more than equivalent to the British 15" shell, despite the weight difference (maybe because of other factors) I'd be more than happy to change the values. I'm not biased against the Kriegsmarine. Actually, the Deutschlands are some of my favorite ships, which is why I've tried to give them as much leniency with their 11" guns as I could considering the data I take into account, but I could always have missed something.