I feel like refitting ships takes far too long

[Col.Klink]

I think the japanese case is worst. Half of a fleet slow as a tortoise in land.

Lol, I have avoided playing Japan thus far especially bc I have man the guns and realized that I am simply way over my head there.

Are the Japanese cruisers slow because too much armor? Or is it because they have engines that are already outdated by 1936? Speed is something at least having a passing knowledge of naval warfare I think is something that a cruiser desperately needs. It literally is meant to cruise lmao.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

I'm new to this but I really can't believe Italian cruisers have no armor! How can it be a "cruiser" if it doesn't have the armor to shrug off the guns of the destroyers it's chasing!? lol.

Italy had 3 quirks when it came to ship design:
1.) A bunch of Italian cruisers ran a confusing line between destroyer and cruiser size, and were developed as counters to the overly-large French destroyers like the Le Fantasque and Mogador classes. As destroyers, their armor isn't quite so bad (just shy of 1 inch is still bad, but DDs aren't known for armor).
2.) Italy really wasn't planning on fighting a major war, and only joined WWII because the Allies looked like they were about to collapse in 1940. As a result, Italy ran into some serious problems when designs that gave them statistically-good ships--or more ships--ended up screwing them in wartime.
3.) Italy, as well as France (who was their main rival, and the nation they designed their ships to counter), really liked fast ships.

I think the japanese case is worst. Half of a fleet slow as a tortoise in land.

This at least isn't a historic flaw, the 1922 cruiser engine isn't based on interwar cruisers. Almost nothing produced in the interwar period did less than 30 knots, and the 1922 engine only really represents pre-WWI cruisers and coastal defense ships.

 

[Col.Klink]

Italy had 3 quirks when it came to ship design:
1.) A bunch of Italian cruisers ran a confusing line between destroyer and cruiser size, and were developed as counters to the overly-large French destroyers like the Le Fantasque and Mogador classes. As destroyers, their armor isn't quite so bad (just shy of 1 inch is still bad, but DDs aren't known for armor).
2.) Italy really wasn't planning on fighting a major war, and only joined WWII because the Allies looked like they were about to collapse in 1940. As a result, Italy ran into some serious problems when designs that gave them statistically-good ships--or more ships--ended up screwing them in wartime.
3.) Italy, as well as France (who was their main rival, and the nation they designed their ships to counter), really liked fast ships.



This at least isn't a historic flaw, the 1922 cruiser engine isn't based on interwar cruisers. Almost nothing produced in the interwar period did less than 30 knots, and the 1922 engine only really represents pre-WWI cruisers and coastal defense ships.

Well to be fair to the italians the japanese did knock the crap out of the chiness navy decades ago by focusing on fast rapid firing ships. That was the end of the chinese imperial navy! (Built i hear by the French)

The question i have, do destroyers in game really need go be fast? I would assume they are only useful for destroying shipping (thus "destroyer") anti sub warfare and acting as a human shield for the battleship or carrier.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

Ships have a reduced-chance to be hit by enemy fire based on their speed, so getting DDs (which have very poor HP) to go fast is very important for their survivability. ASW destroyers really don't need engines, since the only thing it helps with is getting to convoys faster when they get attacked (and making more escorts by building them cheaper is generally a better idea anyways in that regard).

 

[SophieX]

1. Ships have a reduced-chance to be hit by enemy fire based on their speed, so getting DDs (which have very poor HP) to go fast is very important for their survivability.

Yes; speed is the most important survival-factor for DD.

2. ASW destroyers really don't need engines, since the only thing it helps with is getting to convoys faster when they get attacked (and making more escorts by building them cheaper is generally a better idea anyways in that regard).

I'm not sure, whether I understand you right. You mean that for the ASW-task quantity is more important than speed? This would be a contradiction to your point 1, because in screen-task DDs do AAW to protect capitals.

 

[hkrommel]

I'm not sure, whether I understand you right. You mean that for the ASW-task quantity is more important than speed? This would be a contradiction to your point 1, because in screen-task DDs do AAW to protect capitals.

It's only a contradiction if you use the same DDs for both. Historically and in-game, it's optimal to have "fleet" DDs which focus on AA or torpedoes (I usually go for torpedoes and have my CLs be AA-focused) and cheaper DDEs for escorting convoys. These only need the bare minimum components plus depth charges and sonar.

 

[SophieX]

It's only a contradiction if you use the same DDs for both. Historically and in-game, it's optimal to have "fleet" DDs which focus on AA or torpedoes (I usually go for torpedoes and have my CLs be AA-focused) and cheaper DDEs for escorting convoys. These only need the bare minimum components plus depth charges and sonar.

Thanks, this sounds logical for me.

...but this didn't hit my playing-style for DDs, which I designed as multi-purpose ones. For tier3 and tier4, I always put sonar and radar in the lower row best engines best AAW and mp-gun, and in the upper row 1 (2 ) depthcharges, 1 torpedo and 1 multipurpose gun ( same as in the lower row ).
Multi-purpose for the reason of having more flexibility for tasking them.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

Thanks, this sounds logical for me.

...but this didn't hit my playing-style for DDs, which I designed as multi-purpose ones. For tier3 and tier4, I always put sonar and radar in the lower row best engines best AAW and mp-gun, and in the upper row 1 (2 ) depthcharges, 1 torpedo and 1 multipurpose gun ( same as in the lower row ).
Multi-purpose for the reason of having more flexibility for tasking them.

Flexibility is a fair point, but as the US or UK, and sometimes even powers like France, you often hit a point where you have a lot of fleet units but are struggling to maintain convoy escort groups. Mass-producing escorts to protect a large area can be difficult, and skimping on quality is usually the best way to drop costs. I rarely even bother with tier 3 or 4 destroyers, since I'm usually focusing more on cruisers for high-quality ships and by the late game am focused more on land and air techs (even in navy-focused games, I tend to skimp on DD tech). Things like DP primary guns are very expensive and cost extra steel, and the steel costs for higher-tech DDs (+1 steel on 1940 hulls, +2 steel and 1 chromium on 1944 hulls) tend to be prohibitively-expensive even for the USA (I often simultaneously-produce high-tech ships with high resource costs as producing lower-tech variants that don't have the same steel requirements, such as 1936 cruisers with tier-1 armor).

My preferred method when I'm not sure if I'm going to need more screens or more escorts (such as when I'm doing an alt-history run with a fascist Britain), I like to make cheaper destroyers by just not fully loading them (i.e. 1 or 2 empty slots, only 1 torpedo and depth charge module). That way they keep a DD's higher survivability, but are still cheaper than regular destroyers to build. Nonetheless, they still end up seeming to outperform the better-armed low-tech DDs that most navies start with a million of, and I end up using things like the Clemson-class as escorts despite their decent torpedo attack.

 

[thedarkendstar]

Look I understand if you replace the engines or the guns its gonna take awhile but you cant seriously tell me upgrading a much smaller ship takes as much time as building a SUPER BATTLESHIP.

 

[SophieX]

... but as the US or UK, and sometimes even powers like France, you often hit a point where you have a lot of fleet units but are struggling to maintain convoy escort groups. Mass-producing escorts to protect a large area can be difficult, and skimping on quality is usually the best way to drop costs.
....

For sure those are good reasons to act like you described. But it depends on the players situation, his strategically plans and last but not least playing style ( how many fleets and how big they are). My focus is more on protection of my convois. Enemy fleets I engage mostly with nav-bombers and subs.

 

[SophieX]

Look I understand if you replace the engines or the guns its gonna take awhile but you cant seriously tell me upgrading a much smaller ship takes as much time as building a SUPER BATTLESHIP.

I don't think that anyone will "tell you that"

 

[Pzt_Kami]

In real world reffiting can be reasonable beacuse of cost (plus less material) ,however as there is no money in the game (as well as no stockpile of resource & materials) so only way to make reffiting still useful and sound is to reduce its cost to at least half the current one

 

[Feeblezak]

refitting engines and/or armour essentially means a complete rebuild of the ship. An incredibly expensive and time consuming process that was almost the same as building a totally new battleship. This was done IRL of course so should be possible in game.

I think the game represents that fairly well.

 

[Rashie]

with five shipyards....

Number of shipyards working on a ship is mostly an abstraction for the amount of resources a state pours into shipbuilding.

It's not like the same ship can be built or refitted in 5 different shipyards simultaneously.

 

[porta80]

Yeah its costly, just looked up some ingame numbers for Japan 39 tech lvl.
Upgrading a lvl 1 destroyer including engines to a reasonable desing costs betwen 12 and 22 days belonging on the existing variant, without engine 6-16 days building a new lvl 2 destroyer with same modules takes around 36 days .
i am not sure if its not better to leave the engine as it is and for the saved time build more lvl 2 destroyers.
Japan starts with ~100 destroyer 1 including those finished in the existing production area.
to refit them all with engine 1 in comparison i can build ~17 additional destroyers 2 with the same firepower and 40 additional HP for the meatshield pool.
I guess its ok to have 17% more firepower and around 27% more HP on the battlefield compared to a ~10% increase in speed.

 

[thedarkendstar]

In real world reffiting can be reasonable beacuse of cost (plus less material) ,however as there is no money in the game (as well as no stockpile of resource & materials) so only way to make reffiting still useful and sound is to reduce its cost to at least half the current one

Fair enough but would it seriously take as long as building a super heavy battleship. Giving a tier 1 battleship better engines?

 

[Gefallener_Held]

Number of shipyards working on a ship is mostly an abstraction for the amount of resources a state pours into shipbuilding.

It's not like the same ship can be built or refitted in 5 different shipyards simultaneously.

Yeah I know, just not sure why upfitting a battleship with radar should take that much....

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

Fair enough but would it seriously take as long as building a super heavy battleship. Giving a tier 1 battleship better engines?

Something about this feels really off, since normally refitting a battleship with upgraded engines should cost less than a new 1936 hull; depending on the refit, somewhere between 50% and 80% of the cost of a 12,000 IC battleship to make. Super-heavy battleships, on the other hand, should almost always cost well over 12,000 IC to make (a treaty-compliant SHBB is maxed at 14,000 IC with escalator clause and treaty-cheating, but can't fit 2 main guns).

Are you sure there isn't some other key change? Does the hull have its main batteries in different slots, or different armor?

 

[thedarkendstar]

Something about this feels really off, since normally refitting a battleship with upgraded engines should cost less than a new 1936 hull; depending on the refit, somewhere between 50% and 80% of the cost of a 12,000 IC battleship to make. Super-heavy battleships, on the other hand, should almost always cost well over 12,000 IC to make (a treaty-compliant SHBB is maxed at 14,000 IC with escalator clause and treaty-cheating, but can't fit 2 main guns).

Are you sure there isn't some other key change? Does the hull have its main batteries in different slots, or different armor?

Aye the engines and hull were upgraded but the armor I actually changed to battle cruiser armor to be faster basically.
At the same time even if you change everything on the ship I still feel like it wouldn’t take nearly as long or and here my recommendation if it does take that long their should be some benefit to doing it maybe refitting ships only take one or two dockyards that way you are incentivized to keep upgrading ships instead of just building new ones cause it’s kinda hard to do both.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

Aye the engines and hull were upgraded but the armor I actually changed to battle cruiser armor to be faster basically.
At the same time even if you change everything on the ship I still feel like it wouldn’t take nearly as long or and here my recommendation if it does take that long their should be some benefit to doing it maybe refitting ships only take one or two dockyards that way you are incentivized to keep upgrading ships instead of just building new ones cause it’s kinda hard to do both.

I'm a bit mixed on this one. Battlecruiser-armor basically means you're rebuilding the hull of the ship to some degree, since you can't exactly just cut off a few inches of battleship-grade armor; the only realistic way to get the BC speed bonus is to actually lengthen the hull (since the former is entirely-impractical), which wouldn't cost as much as a 70,000 ton battleship, but would cost a disproportionately-high amount as you are necessitating a massive change to the ship's structure (which I can't think of a real-life comparison for, since even rebuilds tended to be more conventional). I'm pretty sure lengthening the ship like that would also require cutting off considerable seconds of the fore and aft to make the change even possible (otherwise you end up with an armored bow inside the new bow of the ship), and extra work also needs to be done to maintain stability in the ship (if all the new weight goes on the front, the balance is going to be completely fubar).

That said, even a total rebuild of the ships, a-la the Conte di Cavour-class (which admittedly didn't lengthen the hull, but did massively rework most other aspects), shouldn't cost more than a full battleship in the first place. Its not exactly an efficient use of resources (you'd be better off sticking a 1940 engine in there than trying to refit both the engine and armor layout). However, downgrading the armor isn't really something that is effectively-represented at all in-game, which seems to assume you'd only want to increase the armor.