NAVY: What is firepower ? and possibly other naval questions.

Greetings,

I just read a bit about firepower here and there, found nothing conclusive. So what does firepower represent ? what is it ?.

I had a look through the unit cards (on Quillan's que) in custom battle and it shows a lot more information per ship than the construction or campaign unit card does. For example, a 5th rate (IIRC) has a firepower of 734, range of 500. In fact most of the ships I took in this custom battle had range of 500, suprisingly the 1st rate had a range of 400. Mouse over unit card says range can be improved by researching the rifling tech. Accuracy and reload time improved by experience level, misfire rate reduced. The in battle unit card shows total hitpoints for the ship and can be brought up at any time during the battle to show remaining hitpoints. Speed is completely different when you click the unit card in battle, I guess it shows the speed at current heading taking wind direction and wind speed into account.

I'm guessing firepower on the in battle unit card is the total firepower of all guns on board i.e that is the damage they will do if all hit simultaneously. I'm not too sure about this though and would appreciate some solid feedback.

Cheers and happy hunting !

They probably mean the weight of your broadside. Bigger ships had bigger guns; for example, a 74-gun 3rd rate has less than twice the guns of a 40-gun frigate, but the weight of the shot fired by the 3rd rate might be 5 times heavier than the frigate.

It's probably a calculated value as a combination of number of guns, calibres, reload times, accuracy and so forth.

I believe its a per-cannon figure.
(saw some discussion of this elsewhere or in an earlier thread here)

Galleys have firepower 256 or something but only 4 cannon vs 2nd rates with 90 odd cannon & about the same firepower.
Likewise I understand 3rd rates have higher firepower than 2nd rates but fewer guns.

So assuming its per cannon:
Galleys have total 1,024
2nd rates (say firepower 250 * 90 cannon) 22,500
3rd rates (say 258 * 74) 19,092

So firepower does make sense if its per-cannon.

According to the in-battle unit stat cards, each gun on a typical frigate or ship-of-the-line has about 16 firepower. The in-campaign unit stat cards are different.

In the real world the fire power was all based on the weight of metal a ship could fire in one broadside.

Carronades made things a bit weird, they had limited range & were smooth bore so inaccurate, but were smaller & lighter than long guns, a 32 pound carronade weighed about a ton, while a 32 pound long was about 3. So small ships could fire a very heavy weight of metal, of course the draw back of this was that you had to be incredibly close to hit anything.

To get some idea of how small the cannons on some ships could be a sloop commander called Cochrane found he could carry cannon balls from both broadsides in his coat pockets.

I agree with Prodigal and the Marquis. Should be the weight of a broadside. But Hoom's approach seems also correct ... :inquisitive:

@Prodigal: Cochrane? The famous "carrying cannon balls in his coat pockets" Cochrane and his "Speedy"?

Marten

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marten

@Prodigal: Cochrane? The famous "carrying cannon balls in his coat pockets" Cochrane and his "Speedy"?

Marten

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Indeedy, was bitten many years ago with the O'Brien bug that led me inexorably to Cochrane. Proof that fact is stranger than fiction.

I'm not sure it's a per cannon figure. I think it's damage point output of the entire ship's canon, if fired at the same time. Either that or it's the damage output of an entire broadside. The problem is that the inbattle and stratmap cards do not match, so one of them is wrong or I've got my math mixed up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sinan

I'm not sure it's a per cannon figure. I think it's damage point output of the entire ship's canon, if fired at the same time. Either that or it's the damage output of an entire broadside. The problem is that the inbattle and stratmap cards do not match, so one of them is wrong or I've got my math mixed up.

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If it was the entire output of the ship's cannons then galleys would be totally freaking awesome at 256 firepower.

I've stopped looking at the firepower stat completely and only use number of guns as a pointer now since it usually makes more sense. I'm sure there's some logic behind it but right now all theories have some really weird exceptions to them to make them fit.

Firepower seems to be the weight of all its guns, at least in terms of galleys. This is probably a bug.

A volley from a galley makes a noticeable difference in a ship of the line's health while a brig or sloop with far more guns have pretty much a negligible impact with a broadside.

Furthermore, they are so tiny and hard to hit, especially the light variety. Their only weakness is morale and being able to field enough. Against a few enemy ships, 3-4x the number of light galleys will take them out very cost effectively.

For the truly big behemoths, bring rocket ships.

If firepower is the weight of all guns, it would make for some strange cases like 3rd rates having more than 2nd rates.

Also, what's the advantage of razees and carronades? The firepower and number of guns seem lacking to me compared to their price.

Carroncades are smoothbore short guns. 1/2 the weight with the same fire power at a very short range. So you sail up to someone and let loose the power 1.5 1st Rates from a Fourth Rate hull.