Step 6: Implementing Hardware (and Firepower) Upgrades

Who ever said "firepower is the difference between life and death"? I can't remember where I heard it from - feel free to leave a comment to refresh my memory - but weapon systems performance is certainly of paramount importance in a first rate fighting ship.Tsesarevich's weapon systems configuration were experimental and meant for gunnery training purposes, in Borodino I had made the following changes to the armaments:1), and fire 'double charge' flatter trajectory shells. The elevation is also restricted to 20 degrees maximum, limiting effective range to believable levels. 20 degrees elevation is plenty, when before the Battle of Tsushima, naval planners expected battle ranges to be somewhere below 2 miles!2); this was done by matching optimal shell and cartridge/propellant length to expected barrel lengths, leading to more efficient propellant combustion. Matched correctly, you can attain reasonably high muzzle velocities out of short barrels, whereas a long cartridge in a short barrel leads to huge wastage, excessive heat and recoil.3)I realized it's a bad idea to leave the casemate mounts to 'fire at will' - if their traverse is left to 180 the gun will not fire on anything outside its traverse range, but neither will it fire at targets of opportunity besides what the ship's AI core is tracking.By restricting field of fire for all guns, the individual weapon controllers will ignore anything outside of its engagement envelope, and fire on anything crossing its field of fire independently of the main AI. This allows for better multi-target engagement capability, making full use of the ship's absurd amount of secondary and tertiary weapons.Note I don't use failsafes. They aren't necessary unless I'm working with amidships turrets intended to fire on both broadsides but blocked fore and aft.4)are also implemented - since it's a one click change between guided and unguided torpedo, I do not tend to enforce and nitpick on this topic. Arguably, letting the AI have guided torpedoes more realistically reflects the danger of a well plotted torpedo firing solution - the hit rate of a guided torpedo simulates that the torpedo crew of a ship had done its homework and laid in a good spread of torpedoes.Whereas making the AI make do with unguided "One Turn" torpedoes means they will miss with every shot, all the time. Even if the target were stationary, because the AI is not programmed to handle gyro torpedoes of the period.This is where players' discretion comes in - for historical accuracy, Borodino's torpedoes are unguided. For gameplay and AI effectiveness, Tsesarevich's torpedoes have sonar heads. Again, this is to illustrate the ever present 'gray area' between realism and gameplay.If it were up to me, I'd focus on gameplay first. After all, you're looking at these ships to use them in battle against steampunk and sci fi AI units, and a variety of fantasy units constructed by other virtual shipwrights.In any case, switching torpedoes from unguided to guided, is a one-click affair. Don't fret about it. It's impossible to please everyone when building a replica. Some prefer a '67 Mustang in its original technology level with all the vices, others prefer- the same classic car with modern performance and all the safety of advanced suspension and tire technology.Thanks to the flexibility of FtD's blueprints and weapon system configuration quick menus, the same hull can be configured both ways at the end-user level.