German Dreadnought Modernization

[Bjoring]

The German fleet was scuttled after WWI, meaning that their dreadnoughts could not receive the extensive modernization that other countries' battleships received in the interwar years. If reflected in-game, this would put the pre-Scharnhorst German battleships at a considerable disadvantage compared to their peers; they would have no option to upgrade their propulsion, fire control, etc. Most importantly, being stuck with their WWI hulls would give them cripplingly weak AA.

 

WG could presumably work around this by giving the German dreadnoughts completely fictional modernizations for their "B" and "C" hulls, but I think a game about historical warships should avoid totally ahistorical changes whenever possible. It would be preferable if the German navy itself had planned, but never implemented, modernizations for their dreadnought fleet that WG could draw from when designing upgrades. Does anyone if plans like these existed, and what they would have entailed?

[Goose21891]

You do realize there's already ships in-game that either never existed or never got off the drawing board that have made up AA suites, right?

[ZombieFlanders]

WG will probably just come up with 'best guess' modernization scenarios based on plans that may have existed. so we will probably end up with dreadnought era ships mashed up with some design studies from the 20s or something.  

 

its what WG does to fill in the blanks. 

[TenguBlade]

 

Bayern is as high as the WWI-era dreadnoughts get.  Personally I think their weakness to air attack will be a defining trait (if Tirpitz is any indication), so modernizations probably won't happen or won't see them getting huge AA suites.

[mr3awsome]

The modernisations of the Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein will probably be an influence. 

[Goose21891]

The modernisations of the Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein will probably be an influence. 

Probably only partially, since I doubt they would remove all the casemate guns like they eventually did to Scleswig-Holstein.

[TheStarSlayer]

At Tier V and above ships need to be capable of fighting in the 40s, otherwise they will have an extremely tough go of it.  Which is why I hope WG might eventually grace us with a limited MM "Jutland Mode" so all these Great War era ladies can duke it out in their original configurations.

 

By trunking and capping funnels, replacing casements with turret secondaries and possibly adding Atlantic bows the Bayern,  Derfflinger and Mackensen would make for competitive WW2 fighting platforms.  There are a few "what if" refits floating round Google. 

 

[AdmiralPiett]

I have faith in Wargaming to make any modernizations look completely believable. They did an excellent job with Amagi, Izumo and Myogi. The Amagi-class was never completed, and Izumo and Myogi never left the drawing board.

[Bjoring]

You do realize there's already ships in-game that either never existed or never got off the drawing board that have made up AA suites, right?

 

​Yes, but they are in lines that include real ships that actually received modernizations, so we can make educated estimates of the sort of upgrades that the paper ships would have received. For example, the fictional upgrades on the Amagi are informed by the real upgrades that the Nagato received. As far as I know, though, none of the German dreadnoughts were ever modernized, so we don't have a basis for even theoretical upgrades unless unimplemented plans already existed.

[VonMelon]

Avalanche Press a wargaming company did the research for this for their alternative history game in "The Kaiser's Navy" for the Second World War at Sea Series of games so data does exist for the modernization of the German World War 1 Dreadnoughts.

[TheStarSlayer]

They will need some form of modernization to compete and at the end of the day WG can go full ham like RM did with the Caio Duilios or just some add some incremental upgrades to FC and secondaries like French did to the Bretagnes.

[Hunter_Steel]

Their dreadnoughts will most likely get modernizations. Amagi never was completed and she has her modernized hull which looks believable. Myogi as well and the same with Izumo. They also did a good job with Yorck, Roon and Hindenberg as well as with MOST of the VMF tech tree, Ibuki and Zao, let us not forget their modernization of Monty as well.

 

I am confident in WG's ability, and since Bismarck is a copy of Bayern, Bayern might just end up looking like Bismarck XD

 

~Hunter