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Is it just me, or there won't be efficiency increase in producing ships?
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. In HoI3, they had a strategic resource for faster ship-building - maybe something like that for the US, or a national spirit? I'll definitely be looking closely at shipbuilding times for the naval mod I'm hoping to put together, and have a think about what is or isn't possible. The US built a lot of ships, and fast, once war broke out.
I was thinking of something along those lines, or maybe if you fulfill a few requirements, such as being on a war economy for X amount of time, keeping your civilian population relatively happy, and building Y amount of ships in a given time, maybe get a "Veteran shipbuilders" spirit or something along those lines. Like how in EU4 you could do the "Britannia rules the waves" thing if you had 50 light and 50 heavy ships(I actually feel like I saw a Britannia rules the waves trait on Johan's WWW screen).
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Problems with new ships are represented with naval experience as you may not wan't to build 0-0-0-0 ships.
I wouldn't think you need something specific for America just because of the historic reality. A small efficiency bonus should be achievable for any nation building several vessels of the same class in the same shipyard. The Germans and their U-boats (which actually is historical) or if the UK or USSR decides to go heavy Navy to challenge the USA in a non-historical game.
Also, to go more into why I think there should be a small efficiency bonus, historically the US chose to keep building the initial post treaty designs like the Cleveland and Baltimore despite them having some flaws (the Cleveland was top heavy and had stability problems) or having better designs coming on line like the Des Moines with it's auto-loaded 8" guns because they could get more hulls in the water faster by continuing to build the older designs than if they shifted to building the new designs. If there is no efficiency bonus for shipbuilding then there is no reason not to switch to the more modern design immediately. No different than tanks and aircraft really.
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That solution would just create the same problems as the pratical system in HOI3 created.
I don't think the US needs a special boost.
Just give her an appropriate number of shipyards and be done with it. Since shipyards are an abstraction anyway...
Just give her an appropriate number of shipyards and be done with it. Since shipyards are an abstraction anyway...
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USA start with "only" about 25 dockyards so you will have to build many dockyards if you wan't to have similar ship production as historical USA.
Also some technologies exist that increase the output of all your factories which will mean faster ship production in the later parts of the game.
Also some technologies exist that increase the output of all your factories which will mean faster ship production in the later parts of the game.
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Well, since the US starts with a decent number of civilian factories, that shouldn't be a problem.
No special bonuses needed. Just let the economy do its thing.
I'm happy with a small efficiency bonus, but I wouldn't mind something more concrete than the evidence provided for it at this stage. So far, it's mostly assertions - don't get me wrong, @bcoop1701, I appreciate your wealth of knowledge, but I think if we're going to have some kind of bonus, we need to have an idea how large it is, and how quickly it appreciates, and how many vessels are involved. We definitely don't want something (well, from a historical plausibility perspective - could be fun if we want mega-navies
) like the HoI3 practical bonuses, which had CAs pumped out in less than 12 months.Anyways, I had a gander at some production times in a bit more detail, and I'd say there's some evidence for a small production bonus for large classes of ships:
- Looking at the Type VIIC, I took 10 boats constructed shortly after the outbreak of the war, and 10 boats constructed in 1942-43. The average construction time for the earlier run was 358.7 days, and the average time for the second run was 355.3 days (and this was excluding one 700-day U-boat that clearly had some kind of disruption during its construction), but by 1942-43, it's likely that allied action was proving disruptive to u-boat production, so just taking an average isn't necessarily the best measure, as the second run had a four vessels produced quicker than the quickest vessel in the first run. Looking at medians, we get a median time of 353 for the early run and 330.5 for the second run, which is a six per cent advantage. That probably understates things a bit, but it'd be nigh impossible to disentangle the various impacts of supply chain disruptions, direct attacks on production facilities and what-have-you.
- Looking at Essex class carriers, the six ships finished in 1943 had an average completion time of 559 days, while the seven ships finished in 1944 had an average completion time of 495 days, a difference of 11.5 per cent (I left out the one ship finished in 1942, as it was laid down in April 1941, and so may not have been subject to the same urgency as the carriers built almost entirely during wartime - it took 50 more days to complete than the 1943 completion Essexes).
Along those lines, I'd say a 10% cap on efficiency (as per the suggestion by @GermanPower ), but that it'd take a certain amount of vessels and a certain amount of time before it kicked in. Maybe five vessels for capital ships and ten for smaller vessels, and the time being around half the production time of the vessel? Just throwing ideas around, and no idea how easy it'd be to mod in.
The US did build their ships very quickly (I haven't crunched the numbers, I've done enough of that this morning already - happy to if you want more than something based on a vague hunch - which is not the strongest thing to base anything on!), and a bonus to construction speed is a bit different to more dockyards, but I'm not dogmatic about this or anything, just throwing ideas around. The US did have arguably the best production methods in the world at the time, and without some way of approximating this via tech, something else (like the strategic resources in HoI3, which gave the US a boost in ship-building, IIRC) could cover for it. It's no biggy either way.
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Don't get me wrong, @bcoop1701, I appreciate your wealth of knowledge, but I think if we're going to have some kind of bonus, we need to have an idea how large it is, and how quickly it appreciates, and how many vessels are involved. We definitely don't want something (well, from a historical plausibility perspective - could be fun if we want mega-navies
That's fine. I liked @GermanPower recommendation of 10% max bonus as well. You can always tweak it later if it doesn't work. By the way, your Conway's 1922-1946 doesn't give specific data of construction dates but on page 88 (98 in the PDF) and in some of the individual entries on ships like Cleveland it talks specifically about older designs being repeated rather than switching to new designs to increase production.
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I'm so sorry, I completely garbled my argument above, confusing the Cleveland CLs with Baltimore CAs - for a start, it's irrelevant when the first Baltimore's popped up, and it is true that the next generation of US CLs weren't laid down until 1945. I'll edit the post appropriately after this one. Sorry, I've got a bug atm, and had it in my head (for whatever reason - none sensible I'm sure!) Cleveland's were CAs.
On the issue of why they decided to go with existing deisgns, the impression the concern is over the time taken to develop the new vessels, rather than an economies-of-scale issue - from that page:
"By this time it was apparent that war was approaching, and that speed in construction would be very important; the Secretary of the Navy began to require that new ships duplicate existing prototypes wherever possbile."
I'm just going from that page though - I haven't done anything more than what I've presented above, and given I'm getting my CAs and CLs confused, think I might limit myself to simple posts for the rest of the day!
But is that because of efficiency gains from serial building or because the older designs just naturally took a little less effort, as either case would allow more ships to be produced in the same amount of time? Just curious, the answer would be interesting either way
I agree with the OP, the assembly line in a dockyard should give bonusses! Serial production always gives bonusses, which should be relfected in the game as well
Do house builders get quicker and quicker at building houses? The individual workers who work on them might speed up through familiarity with the plumbing design, electrical layout etc. But when you get long engineering projects one issue is that it's not often you have the same team working on it throughout.
Yes, there would be an advantage from producing the same model twice, because the second time any problems have been ironed out, in theory. But I've worked enough places to know that what happens in practice is someone takes over a job halfway through and gets the plans, takes ages understanding them because the original architect/designer who drew them up has gone on to some other project, then they decide that the way it was done first time was wrong, or someone has developed some new tech and the customer (ie. the navy in this case) wants that included.
The long time for the first one in a class is represented by the research plus build time. Subsequent ones take the same build time, unless you:
- add more capacity (naval dockyards in this case) and/or
- improve overall efficiency by some new technique
- add more resources, if you had been short before
And disruption to build times comes if you decide to use a variant during the build, you lose alot of time.
Yes, there would be an advantage from producing the same model twice, because the second time any problems have been ironed out, in theory. But I've worked enough places to know that what happens in practice is someone takes over a job halfway through and gets the plans, takes ages understanding them because the original architect/designer who drew them up has gone on to some other project, then they decide that the way it was done first time was wrong, or someone has developed some new tech and the customer (ie. the navy in this case) wants that included.
The long time for the first one in a class is represented by the research plus build time. Subsequent ones take the same build time, unless you:
- add more capacity (naval dockyards in this case) and/or
- improve overall efficiency by some new technique
- add more resources, if you had been short before
And disruption to build times comes if you decide to use a variant during the build, you lose alot of time.
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I think efficiency represent the need for differen't machine tools and such. You can probably use the same tools then you build differen't types of ships, and the long build time would probably give enough time to get any new tool needed for producing the ship.
But swaping from producing infantry weapons to tanks would require major equipment changes in the factory which would take time and given the short production time of tanks, the equipment change would effect the productivity.
But swaping from producing infantry weapons to tanks would require major equipment changes in the factory which would take time and given the short production time of tanks, the equipment change would effect the productivity.
That doesn't make sense at all on a project that takes years and has many 1,000s (10,000s?) of unique parts. Shipyards are not mass production factories. Every man working on the ship on any particular day are doing a different job.
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That's an excellent question. I think, and this is just an opinion, that both are true. Building an older, smaller and slower design requires less raw materials and possibly less high tech manufactured components like large reduction gears or turbines. A component like that that is difficult to manufacture can become a bottleneck in production. I believe that kind of issue would be covered in the cost. I'm assuming a 1944 BB is more expensive in game terms than a 1940 design. So you could build more 1940 BB's than 1944 BB's in a period of time just based on materials needed. Also, anytime you build a new design for the first time there are teething issues, like the vibration problems on the North Carolina, that negatively impact being made ready for service.
So it's certainly possible and maybe even probable that considerations like that were involved in the decisions we were discussing.
@potski I do have anecdotal evidence from personal experience that serial building reduces the time to build the same class of ship. There is a caveat I want to acknowledge first though and that is I realize that 21st century, peacetime shipbuilding experience may not transfer to 1940's wartime shipbuilding experience.
I was stationed on PCU New Hampshire SSN-778 as part of the initial manning during her construction. New Hampshire was the fifth Virginia class submarine built and the third at the Electric Boat shipyard. The Shipyard and the crew both benefited from the experience gained from building Virginia and Hawaii. From little things like the shipyard being divided into shops so that the guys doing a job on one boat could end up doing the same job on the followup boat or things like saving jigs or rigs that had to be manufactured the first time for Virginia and could be reused for Hawaii and New Hampshire and follow-on boats. There were process improvements in the testing and acceptance procedures so they tended to take less time. (it's also true that Virginia, as the lead boat had to do a lot of extra testing.) And then there were some significant process changes such as constructing New Hampshire in four major sections instead of ten before they were brought together. The net effect was the shipyard was able to deliver New Hampshire ahead of schedule and under budget for the first time in the class' short history. Not really relevant but we were also the first Virginia class boat ready to be deployed overseas (it's outside the scope of the game's construction mechanic but there were some significant teething problems for the earlier boats especially the ones built at Newport News because they didn't have the experience that EB did in submarine building and the navy also tried a different type of electrical power module in the NN boats that didn't work out so they ended up being replaced by the style that were originally installed on the EB boats.)
So like I said, I can't say for sure that my experience on New Hampshire would translate to the 1940's but I think it's reasonable to assume that a shipyard would get more efficient at serial building the same class so that construction times would drop over the first few ships until it stabilized after some number of ships. Not from an assembly line setup but from experience and lessons learned and making improvements in the process to avoid or minimize previous problems and bottlenecks.
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This is basically what was happening with those Soviet battleships that were under construction in 1940.
The stories of their construction were horrible. Armor plates messed up at the manufacturing plant, improper riveting on ship components, boilers, turbines, and propellers that simply did not work. The Soviets simply had no real experience building these things (not just lack of engineering expertise, but problems with guys on the job). In HOI3, that is represented by really low practicals (40% increase to build times, I think). I'm sure you would agree that if the people working on the ships can't even rivet stuff properly, the ship isn't going to be finished on time, regardless of engineering specs.
The flip side is that once you get those problems solved, there is not much more improvement to be had. HOI3 took it too far in the direction of "You continue to get efficient at building ships" while it looks like HOI4 is just "Nope, no efficiency for you."
Assuming the US has decent industrial technology and enough shipyards, it should all be fine. But I could see a call for better implementation of the whole "We really suck at shipbuilding, yet there is no efficiency to shipyards, so let's spam Soviet battleships" problem.
I'd personally be okay with a production penalty to the first ship of any class built, and then be done with it.
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The Soviet problem will come due to a lack of naval experience so you can not design good variants. To get naval experience you need to find I way to fight naval battles, USA could maybe lend lease old ships in the early war and get massive experience for its 1940 and 1944 tech ships.
But I still will be able to churn out ships without the historical problems in my shipyards.
It's not a huge problem, but it does illustrate issues with this particular way the mechanics work. Keep in mind that if I could build a Soviet navy of considerable size in HOI3 (even with the really poor starting practicals), there may be nothing to stop me from doing it in HOI4. Especially if industrial efficiency (from tech) applies to shipyards the same way it applies to other factories.
We'll see. It may not matter except in MP scenarios where the Soviets and Germans ally.
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