u/ShermanMcTank

Making a big American ship as a counterpart to Imperatritsa Mariya was one of the oldest ideas I had months ago, but because back then I was basically Illiterate in Cold War-Era US warships, I didn't really know where to even start. This past week however after ogling at US CGNs, mainly the Virginia-class and USS Truxtun, I've finally had the inspiration to go somewhere.

The result is kind of a mashup of both of those and some others, with the main superstructure and masts being very inspired by the Virginias, the superstructure forward of the bridge with the Phalanxes being taken from Truxtun, and the ASROC + Magazine combo from the Californias. My main "unique" ideas were the very extended helipad, the Armored Box Launchers placed amidship and the wing-mounted 5inch guns (I resisted the urge to use twin gun turrets this time).

The main upgrade in my build technique is shifting to solely using guard rails from Rails and Stairs 1.0 and 2.0, because of a unique, likely unintentional quirk that should be a PSA at this point : Modded parts can have their size adjusted with the scale tool, regardless of what they are (yes even guns). This means guardrails can be stretched to fit the required length, unlike the base game ones that have set sizes.

Mods used :

- AN SLQ-32 (V)3 Electronic Warfare Suite

- Modern European Parts

- Louisiana Modpack / US Decoration parts Modpack

- Numbers

- (Vanilla) USN Stencil Words and Numbers

- Rails and Stairs 1.0 and 2.0

- US Radar Set

- [BGM-109]Tomahawk

- AN/spg55b

- Universal Decorations

- CVBIP's USN Decoration Pack

French ship time ! (If you tell me it looks too soviet I'm gonna go commit Graf Spee)

Ironically the base of the hull started from a scrapped Soviet gun cruiser project I attempted, but it's been altered so much that there's nothing in common anymore.

The French cruiser part came from me trying to make a French version of the American CGNs of the 70s, but it wasn't as easy as I thought since the only cold war French cruisers I could use as reference were Colbert, which was too late-WW2 looking for what I wanted, and Jeanne D'arc, which was a specialized Helicopter cruiser, so didn't fit either. The frigates like the Tourville, Suffren and Georges Leygues where more what I was looking for, but I had a lot of trouble scaling their distinctive features up to cruiser size, aside from the basic isosceles trapezoids superstructure shapes.

Masts were also annoying to do since France only really made lattice masts or macks, so with nuclear propulsion the former were the only option.

As always despite my initial fears I think it turned out quite alright in the end, and researching cold war French warships made me understand how the Masurca reload system works, and that the weird structure behind Crotale launchers was actually the magazine for reloads.

The gun is a weird one I found on the workshop, that the author describes as a mix between the AK-130 and the French 100mm/55 gun. I picked it because it felt more appropriate for a ship of this size than a single 100mm gun. The torpedoes are the classic American triple torpedo launcher, which I picked because didn't have a modern option, and because it was the more plausible one given that France had already acquired some of their systems like the Tartar missile+launcher.

Mods used :

- British radar set

- Bar-class battleship Weapon Pack

- French Radar Set

- Numbers

- (Vanilla) USN Stencil Words and Numbers

- Rails and Stairs 1.0 and 2.0

- US Radar Set

- AN/spg55b

- Universal Decorations

- AM-127/54 "Niszczyciel"

- Ponaproni's Combined Weapon System

So this one was a request by u/SeBoss2106. I was a bit intimidated at first when they mentioned that they wanted something inspired by the F-123 and F-124 class frigates, as they are more modern than what I was used to, but looking back I think it turned out alright.

A positive about doing more modern vessels is that you won't struggle as much to find high quality reference pictures. A negative however is that I looked at F-123 pictures so much that I struggled to not make my design too inspired by it. Still I suppose the armament and those side superstructure segments are enough to make a difference.

For the armament I will have to invoke the rule of cool, as it's not fully logical. The main issue is why have a dedicated ASROC launcher when you already have MK41 VLS cells ? Well because it looks cool. The Exocet launchers are less of an issue because the F-123 initially had them, but unlike the F-123 I didn't switch them for Harpoons because, again, they look cool, and there's a tiny bias from my part cause I'm French. I kept the rear RAM launcher unchanged, but added two on the sides of the forward hull section to compensate for the one in front I ditched for the ASROC launcher. It has 4 MLG-27s, I wanted to try the MIDAS CIWS at first, but they were just too big to fit anywhere.

The main gun was probably the biggest headache for me. I wanted something bigger than the OTO Melara 76, but every 100, 127 or even 155mm option I found looked either too dated, or way too sleek and modern. In the end I gave up and went for another version of the Italian 76, as I think that aesthetic is close enough to what I wanted.

Still in the end I like the look it has, and overall it was a good learning experience. I really thank u/SeBoss2106 for this request as it took me out of my comfort zone for once.

Here's the workshop link for the ship, where you will also find all the mods I used.

Ha ! Bet you didn't expect me to post an Italian warship !

More seriously this is one of my favorite builds in a while. I've always wanted to try my hand at a NATO-style warship, mainly American, but seeing photos of the helicopter cruisers Vittorio Veneto and Andrea Doria on r/WarshipPorn made me realize that this is what I wanted to do.

Well only the cruiser part, since the helicopter cruisers had already been done perfectly by Italy themselves. I did however keep the 76mm spam found on these two ships with 8 turrets along with 4 40mm DARDO CIWS. The missile armament consists of 8 OTOMAT missiles in 2 quadruple launchers, and 2 RIM-66 Launchers, one fore and one aft, and it has two Mark 32 torpedo launchers, which are very convenient in terms of size.

Here I can really thank the devs, because these 76mm and 40mm turrets, along with the OTOMAT launchers have all been added in a fairly recent update.

the radar towers have also been inspired by the ones on Vittorio Veneto, although I placed a generic funnel instead of the ones attached to the mast because I didn't like them as much.

Mods used :

- AN/spg55b for the radar of the same name, surprised it's not in the base game considering how widespread it was, and the fact that it's needed for the RIM-66 we already have (although that later point applies to pretty much every weapon we have lol).

- Rails and Stairs 1.0 and 2.0 for one staircase used to climb over the side gun directors

- USN RADAR for the SPS-52 found on the fore mast

- US Radar Set for some radars here and there

- Universal Decorations self explanatory

- Italian Radar Set for the 76mm FC radar and a small radar on the fore mast

Two months ago I made a post about this ship, and since then I reworked it like my Project 1255, albeit not as thoroughly because I'm still happy with the core of this one.

The main changes are :

- Added rounded edges pretty much everywhere. the technique I used on my previous two ships was way too consuming, when I could just lower each part by 0.1, and stack another 0.1 part above that I angled inwards also by 0.1. It's a small thing that adds a lot.

- Raised the waterline, as I felt the ship had way too much freeboard

- Added an ugly sonar bulge that you can't see thanks to the water

- Swapped the premade funnel for a homemade one

- Trimmed the fat behind the funnel, removed the rear RPK-1 launcher, and instead added a third radar tower because you can never have enough radars

- More lifeboats

- Swapped the AK-100 turrets for this neat fictional twin 100m one, which is either from this mod or this one. Both of them add so much and there are some overlapping ones so I don't remember what is from what.

- Redid the main radar tower to be a bit more pyramidal in shape.

- Swapped most short guard rails for regular sized ones, that way the ship isn't suitable only for midgets.

- Cool name plaque

- Smoothed up the bow a bit

- reshuffled the main armament, the RPK-1 is pushed much more forward so that its spot can be used by a homemade flat Metel missile launcher, with reloading hatches behind it like those found on the Kynda-class cruisers. (That feature sucked irl but it looks cool)

- The sextuple wing-mounted Metel launchers have been replaced by two twin P500 missile launchers from this mod, as I felt the sextuple launch tubes looked a bit silly.

- Added two extra Kortik mounts above the helicopter hangars, and two RBU-6000s on the bow.

- Added 2 torpedo mounts on each side covered by hatches, but I should probably remove 2 of them as 4 is a bit excessive. I just don't know whether to remove the fore or aft ones.

Two months ago I made a post about this ship, which itself came two months after the original one, showing progress I made on the ship. Well here I made more progress, mostly me taking the advice I had given to someone else here : "Try and resist the urge of taking the easy way out when building complex sections. By that I mean using fewer blocks because it’s quicker, not remaking a section you’re unhappy with because it would take too long, etc. "

The main problem was the superstructure, which I was still somewhat unhappy with : Mismatched and inconsistent shapes, and remnants of the original build technique which relied on adjustable blocks rather than my currently much preferred vertex edit blocks.

Along with that I reworked the bow again to have that thicker section at the top that I do not know the name of, straightened the stern so that it only curves at the very end, and added the signature stern hatch for the towed sonar array. Then there's the decorations everywhere, including the proper clusters of lifeboats instead of only having an isolated one every 20 feet, and cablings and hatches everywhere to make the superstructure seem less flat.

Armament got some notable changes, AK-630s were switched to Kortiks because there was no reason not to on a ship of this size, 3k95 missiles and the accompanying radars were added for a better short range SAM capability (and because they were only added in after the previous post), and more subjectively, the AK-176s were switched for AK-725s because I love them and more barrels is always better right ?

I also switched the premade smokestack for a handmade one that is more like the ones found on the kirov, and I'm happy with the result.

Mods added in the meantime

- Sov Star - Very small, but it's here on the bow

- AK-130 (130mm) - We do have that gun ingame, but I found that version to look better with more details

The A-217 was the first design for a 130mm naval gun developed during the late 70s, but its lower rate of fire meant that the twin barreled A-218 was chosen instead, and would end up becoming the AK-130 we all know and love.

This one came mainly from a desire to make a ship that doesn't end up ballooning in dimensions, so I had some strict-ish size restrictions : 130m in length, and a beam of 16m, which is roughly Neustrashimy-class sized. In the end I still ended up breaking those limits, but not by much, as I only increased the length by 5 meters.

After that I wanted to slap 4 AK-725 turrets, because they're very cool and I wanted to go for a kind of post-war anti-aircraft ship vibe. To complement them I went for the SA-N-4 SAM because they're also neat, very compact and have a large missile capacity for the size. I originally placed 4, but then I ran into the issue of space, which was a very recurring problem during this build. I experimented with other SAMs, but in the end I stuck with these two launchers.

Other than that I kept going with my method of rounding edges that I started with my previous ship, and while it's time consuming it just looks much more sleek than without. I also tried my hand at scaffold radar towers instead of solid blocks, and a handmade smokestack instead of the premade ones, and I'm happy with how they look.

Now the elephant in the room : Who or what is "Yulia Leskova" ? Basically all these ships I'm making tie in to the worldbuilding of a military/sci-fi/romance story I've been working on for a while now, and Yulia is the protagonist of that story. To cut all the details, at one point in the story she made a sacrifice that ended up saving a task force of ships in the Baltic sea, so way later the navy would end up naming this ship after her to honor her heroic act.

There were two elements that made me hesitate about that name, the fact that she was still alive when the ship was be launched, and the fact that she wasn't part of the Navy. But after searching I found two precedents that would back my decision :

1. The dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariya entered service in 1915, and while Maria Feodorovna was no longer on the throne by that point, she was very much still alive.
2. For the "part of the navy" thing there were a few examples, including the one above, but possibly the most egregious one for me is the Kirov class cruiser Kalinin (now Admiral Nakhimov). Mikhail Kalinin was a Soviet politician who had nothing to do with the navy, nothing to do with the military, and didn't even hold a pitchfork during the revolution. In short he only got his name on the ship because he was a notable communist figure. Aside from that several non-navy war heroes had ships named after them, so I think it's fair my fictional character had a fictional ship named after her.

Enough yapping, the mods are the same as on my previous ships, except the RBU-6000 mod that isn't necessary anymore.