Dockyard output doesn't scale enough

[Dimmie_Dumm]

How about you use dockyards to build the main part of the ship, so the hull and engines. It military factories are used to build the guns, radar, torpedoes, etc. Then ships become a bit like divisions. You select you want to build five battleships. It then pulls together the equipment from the stockpiles, say five completed hulls, the correct number of guns and so on. And it takes a period for these to be fitted out. If you are short of specific equipment it can't be fitted out until the shortfall is made up.

That's right how it should have been designed from the start. Code-wise ships already are divisions (i.e. full-fledged units, not equipment). This will also fix a lot of dubious things like inability to launch a ship (and thus reassign dockyard production to other tasks) if you're short of manpower intended to service the combat-ready ship.

 

[Captain Palmtree]

How about you use dockyards to build the main part of the ship, so the hull and engines. It military factories are used to build the guns, radar, torpedoes, etc. Then ships become a bit like divisions. You select you want to build five battleships. It then pulls together the equipment from the stockpiles, say five completed hulls, the correct number of guns and so on. And it takes a period for these to be fitted out. If you are short of specific equipment it can't be fitted out until the shortfall is made up.

This sounds like the perfect solution. Britain and Germany amongst others had massive military factories like Krupp and Royal Ordnance building booth artillery for the army and naval guns for battleships. Being able to chop and change between calibres would be far more dynamic for players. You could then take advantage of the scaling of Mil techs late game in that you can make more guns and therefore make more ships. You could even refit suitable ships with bigger and better guns once the tech is available just like the Japanese did with their heavy cruisers.

 

[Casko]

However, what I find disturbing is that wartime shipbuilding is no different to peacetime one, and all we have is the same slot allocation gradually covering that full cost. No cutting corners, no usage of existing left-overs or prebuilt stuff. Hell, we can't even switch designs midway to accomodate new modules once they unlock even if it's just a radar. Really?..

I know its merely a stop-gap and nothing more, but I feel like the game would do well to have increased Naval dockyard output modifier for heavy ships in the War Eco and Total Mobilization. So you COULD at very least partially represent US and UK's massive naval effort, or get to see Bismarck from Germany.

 

[davidc929]

This sounds like the perfect solution. Britain and Germany amongst others had massive military factories like Krupp and Royal Ordnance building booth artillery for the army and naval guns for battleships. Being able to chop and change between calibres would be far more dynamic for players. You could then take advantage of the scaling of Mil techs late game in that you can make more guns and therefore make more ships. You could even refit suitable ships with bigger and better guns once the tech is available just like the Japanese did with their heavy cruisers.

Thank you. Not sure if the game told be able to handle it now. But surely worth a try. It also means ships go through a period of "trying out" with their crews before going off to war.

 

[Axe99]

Historically, a lot of ships as I recall were delayed by awaiting for new guns and turrets to become avaliable, by sorting out reliability issues of the innovative engines etc. Sticking to already proven solutions then might/should provide a construction speed bonus. As usual, I dare summon @Axe99 for proving me wrong

Sorry, busy week - thanks for the tag, and an interesting discussion And there's no proving wrong to be had, you're on the money Only issue I can see is more design/development-resources based (ie, big changes are big changes, and so involve lots of resources and not small amount of bug/design risk).

My personal solution though would be allowing +5 slots allocated for each ship once at war, but the efficiency of each added one would drop by say 10-15%, i.e. the last one would contribute only half to quarter of its normal IC output. This way we could have an option of switching from efficient peacetime construction in parallel to wartime rushed churning, using both as we see fit.

In case useful context, a lot of the increased dockyard speed during wartime was through working extra shifts (ie, having the dockyard run 24/7) - so there's certainly scope to increase productivity. However, it was through applying more people, rather than using more of the dockyard for a ship. @Casko 's suggestion best represents this I reckon. The same could well apply to military factories (which iirc do get differential bonuses/reduced maluses from economic laws).

However, what I find disturbing is that wartime shipbuilding is no different to peacetime one, and all we have is the same slot allocation gradually covering that full cost. No cutting corners, no usage of existing left-overs or prebuilt stuff. Hell, we can't even switch designs midway to accomodate new modules once they unlock even if it's just a radar. Really?..

Fully agree - sensors and close-in AA definitely changed during time in dockyard hands. Other things were less likely, but not impossible (but often quite expensive in terms of industrial resources and time).

Maybe you could have some way of accounting for the need for periodic refits. IRL ships need periods in dock every so many years/miles for overhauls of key systems. This would give you a reason to undergo major work anyway.

This would be cool - working up is good

So youd probably end up with a quantity over quality thing in game, even though (as I understand it) naval research advances in real life were particularly sensitive to quality based improvements. Ie a ship based on 5+ year old tech would have not only lost to but wouldve been completely outclassed by a more advanced version of that same class of ship.

This depends a lot on which five years and what's changed. The 'radar revolution' was huge - so a ship in gunnery duel without reliable radar versus one with reliable radar is at a huge disadvantage. But the relative improvements in gunnery, for example, where much less - so a 4.7in destroyer gun from WW1 wasn't that much behind a more modern 4.7in destroyer gun from WW2. Subdivision and armour also improved between the two world wars, but again not so much that WW1 vessels were irrelevant - the modernised Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were still valuable ships - not as effective as a Littorio or a Bismarck, but also given they were significantly lighter in terms of size/tonnage, surprisingly competitive. Nelson and Rodney, from the 1920s, were armed and armoured in a way that was quite competitive with the early 1940s battleships (but suffered when it came to speed and AA defences).

In many cases, the difference between 1935 and 1940 destroyers, for example (assuming same tonnage) was negligible. On the other hand, those same 1935 destroyers would have a substantial advantage in a gunnery duel over the 1940 destroyers if the 1935 destroyers had reliable radar-directed fire control, and the 1940 destroyers did not.

You could even refit suitable ships with bigger and better guns once the tech is available just like the Japanese did with their heavy cruisers.

It's important to note that (IIRC) the Mogamis were built with this in mind (as were the Scharnhorsts). Things like barbette diameter, ammunition supply, weight distribution and so on are significantly affected by a change in main armament - and the hull needs to be strong enough to take the higher stresses of more powerful guns. If it's built with it ready to go, then it's alright, but otherwise it can be a quite expensive overhaul. It makes sense for relatively modern ships like the two classes mentioned, as they were otherwise very modern ships, but regunning WW1-era capital ships, for example, would be a very expensive and costly undertaking.

 

[Captain Palmtree]

It's important to note that (IIRC) the Mogamis were built with this in mind (as were the Scharnhorsts). Things like barbette diameter, ammunition supply, weight distribution and so on are significantly affected by a change in main armament - and the hull needs to be strong enough to take the higher stresses of more powerful guns. If it's built with it ready to go, then it's alright, but otherwise it can be a quite expensive overhaul. It makes sense for relatively modern ships like the two classes mentioned, as they were otherwise very modern ships, but regunning WW1-era capital ships, for example, would be a very expensive and costly undertaking.

That's very true of the ships mentioned but given the suggestion put forward by @davidc929 of military factories building AA and main guns for ships like they do for divisions I could see a possible solution where you can over turret a ship as they did IRL and then once the naval treaties have gone you can up arm them to fit these larger turrets. This would allow early on for a large production of heavy cruisers and battlecruisers that will remain useful into late game.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

This would allow early on for a large production of heavy cruisers and battlecruisers that will remain useful into late game.

Isn't this the case already? It's not like late-game ships get that much better, even without upgrades that you can easily put on them (which is pretty much anything other than armour and engine).

 

[Captain Palmtree]

Isn't this the case already? It's not like late-game ships get that much better, even without upgrades that you can easily put on them (which is pretty much anything other than armour and engine).

That's true if you're playing vanilla but a different system could be used further in mods to allow a decent tactical advantage to emerge.

 

[Axe99]

That's very true of the ships mentioned but given the suggestion put forward by @davidc929 of military factories building AA and main guns for ships like they do for divisions I could see a possible solution where you can over turret a ship as they did IRL and then once the naval treaties have gone you can up arm them to fit these larger turrets. This would allow early on for a large production of heavy cruisers and battlecruisers that will remain useful into late game.

I'd see the using MIC for guns/AA as a different issue to re-turreting. If there was to be re-turreting, then I think (if we're looking for realism) then it might be worth adding a cost penalty on the original design (as there's more design work, and it's being built to cope with greater shock from heavy calibre guns, even if it's not fitted with them as built). Up-arming of ships really wasn't that common, and there were good reasons for it. Far more common to improve the armament already carried (for example, altering turrets to allow higher elevation) - and even this usually only occurred for capital ships.

As per other parts of my post, it's worth noting that (historically) ballistically there wasn't a huge advantage from late-game guns - even the US 16in Mk 7's main benefit came from using a super-heavy shell (noting that ammunition supply and the firing chamber needs to be able to fit this, so it wasn't necessarily easy to build heavy shells for earlier ships, although it did happen, and was planned for the Nelsons, for example, but the RN couldn't afford it). Bear in mind that Vanguard was a competitive battleship with guns that were 30-odd years old when it was completed. There was a large advantage from semi-automatic, fast-firing 8in and 6in guns, but I'm not aware of any proposals to retrofit these (which doesn't surprise me, as the ammunition supply arrangements and differences in the turrets would (I expect) have made it a very expensive endeavour).

 

[vermicious knid]

Ship production time is one of the areas where I care more about fun vs. realism. The game is better when the AI churns out ships at a rapid pace and repenishes losses. Murdering the whole AI fleet in a month and thus decisively winning the entire naval war is extremely anticlimactic.

 

[Louella]

there wasn't a huge advantage from late-game guns

Wasn't there a study done by the US Navy, that showed the British 15" gun had the overall best record in WW2, for numbers of rounds without failures, accuracy, etc ?

 

[Captain Palmtree]

Wasn't there a study done by the US Navy, that showed the British 15" gun had the overall best record in WW2, for numbers of rounds without failures, accuracy, etc ?

That was the British 14" guns on the KGV class. Highest hit rate and most ships sunk per shot.

 

[Louella]

That was the British 14" guns on the KGV class. Highest hit rate and most ships sunk per shot.

Hmm. wonder what I was thinking of.
Maybe it was how the 15" was the most economic, as it was useful in both wars.

Did remember that the 14" was the only gun in WW2 to outright destroy a modern capital ship (Duke of York vs Scharnhorst, also KGV&Rodney vs Bismarck) by gunfire though. all other battleships destroyed by gunfire were WW1 designs.

 

[Captain Palmtree]

Hmm. wonder what I was thinking of.
Maybe it was how the 15" was the most economic, as it was useful in both wars.

Did remember that the 14" was the only gun in WW2 to outright destroy a modern capital ship (Duke of York vs Scharnhorst, also KGV&Rodney vs Bismarck) by gunfire though. all other battleships destroyed by gunfire were WW1 designs.

Quite possibly although the 15" was very effective against the targets it faced (2nd battle of Narvik and battle of Cape Matapan)

 

[Axe99]

Ship production time is one of the areas where I care more about fun vs. realism. The game is better when the AI churns out ships at a rapid pace and repenishes losses. Murdering the whole AI fleet in a month and thus decisively winning the entire naval war is extremely anticlimactic.

This is partly an AI/mechanics issue - no actual navy in the period actually set out to get itself wiped out in the first month of conflict - but certainly agree an enjoyable game is the most important thing

Hmm. wonder what I was thinking of.
Maybe it was how the 15" was the most economic, as it was useful in both wars.

Did remember that the 14" was the only gun in WW2 to outright destroy a modern capital ship (Duke of York vs Scharnhorst, also KGV&Rodney vs Bismarck) by gunfire though. all other battleships destroyed by gunfire were WW1 designs.

Nothing coming from my brain at the moment, but I expect @Captain Palmtree is on the money (I can recall, vaguely, some more detailed work that highlighted how accurate and reliable the 14in Mk VII was relative to other guns of the period). The 15" had a very good reputation as well, though.