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I personally never did ship refits since it was intrduced with Man the Guns. Because I think 1 old ship and 1 new ship, in summary 2 ships are better than 1 old refitted ship. I build task forces with current ships of the same ship variant and one task force with old ships.
With Arms Against Tyranny Ship MIOs have been introduced and now you have a lot more different ship variants due to MIO upgrades. Especially MIO speed upgrades are tricky, because task forces move at the speed of their slowest ship.
So I wonder if it now makes sense to refit all ships of a task force to the same ship variant or if it is still better not to waste dockyards for refitting and use the dockyards for building new ships.
I play about half my games as the UK and I make extensive use of refitting (usually more than half my dockyards). I have lots of ships delivers a lot of benefit, much more quickly than new builds. I usually start with turning the old destroyers into ASW escorts with sonar+depth charges, add minelaying to older subs, and then upgrade modern screens around the start of the war (AA+radar+control for fleet screens, DP+radar for patrols). I am still getting the hang of MIOs.
This is in SP so you can roleplay like this and still win. I don't know whether this would work in MP.
What do you mean by "output", please? I don't think you can mean "build", because building a slow capital ship and then refitting it is just absolutely bad gameplay. In both the game and real life, engine refits are slow and expensive. If your ship really needs Engine III or IV, then you should delay construction altogether.
- Filling out empty slots later is rather cheap and a good way to keep you ships competitive
- For replacing existing modules it depends: AA and "support" ones are a good deal, Guns are fairly expensive but still situationally worth
- my iron rule is: don't touch engine&armour, though I won't rule out edge cases here (lack of resources, not enough time/dockyards for a new ship)
- two stage building of ships is great...my prime candidate are the SHBBs here: Get the hull early and build it with a minimum of modules, then while construction goes on research the cool stuff
- Naval Refit Yards is a good choice, as most other spirits for the Spirit of the Navy only or mainly help you when researching or designing ships. I'm usually running Integrated Designers most of them time, when researching modules, sprinkle in the ones giving research boni to hulls when going for those and then switch to NRY when research is done
I often tend to refit old battleships/cruisers as carriers (particularly for USA) and will often upgrade destroyers/light cruisers with AA/DP, radar and sonar and depth charges, and heavier ships sometimes with AA/DP and radar.
I tend not to so much as germany as after the ships that are already in the construction queue are finished (the ones with reasonable already built status) I switch to subs, though do often refit old subs with minelaying gear for coast defence work and annoying the british
What do you mean by "output", please? I don't think you can mean "build", because building a slow capital ship and then refitting it is just absolutely bad gameplay.
ins't about bad gameplay, but is easy forget to check the speed of these initial ships under construction, mistakes happen. Forgeting about speed is a easy noob trap.
ins't about bad gameplay, but is easy forget to check the speed of these initial ships under construction, mistakes happen. Forgeting about speed is a easy noob trap.
Replacing an engine is almost as costly as building a new ship as far as I understand, so the answer is not overlook the engine. If you started a ship and discovered that early on, it is better to just delete that ship and start again.
Replacing an engine is almost as costly as building a new ship as far as I understand, so the answer is not overlook the engine. If you started a ship and discovered that early on, it is better to just delete that ship and start again.
Yeah, if I feel like the engine is that much of a problem I'll just scrap the ship, or find a way to use it as is. Generally not worth it. Main batteries/armor as well. Torps can be a gray area.
If I'm actually converting from a cruiser to a carrier; i.e. actually have a cruiser to change from, I make sure to match the armor and engine on the design. Makes a difference.
Having said that, though, refits have been 'eased' compared to it was a couple expansions ago. There's a 'base fixed cost minimum' as part of refitting, which iirc is a % of the hull cost, and that has been lowered, if I'm not mistaken.
i.e. putting a radar and fire control update to a BB is not nearly as expensive as it once was.
There's simply not much to get. HoI4 has the strongest anti-naval bias ever imaginable for a WW2 game.
I.e. destroying an armour division on land will grant you like 100 points of warscore. Doing the same in sea is virtually impossible (the division replenishes its convoys on route each time any dies), but even decimating it to 1% strength will still count as sinking empty convoys, granting 1-2 points in total at best.
Another example is Railway Guns. I've seen people here at forums seriously questioning their usefulness. The truth is, for its cost (effectively 8k IC) you can build a single 4k IC cruiser - and good luck using this cruiser to exert an influence even remotely comparable to what a railway gun gonna have.
I will give a diferent answer for once: I like refits for Japan and Italy.
Both of them have quite good CAs that can be used as oatrols if they have recon planes. I add order to engage at low risk and they will engage and destroy any 10-12 ship AI patrol with easy. Removing torps from CA is also an amazing idea.
I think this is probably a good reflection of the experience of anyone in single player as long as they play a reasonably land locked country. Submarines are the cost effective way to attack anybody's trade, naval bombers will ultimately slaughter the AI fleets and the only use for naval power is being able to invade places. It only really becomes different if you play a naval power like the UK or Japan. In that case you need a bit more but the AI isn't really a challenge. Your experience is quite normal.
Yeah, I just... haven't ever played Japan or the UK, because I can't be bothered to play a naval game. I know the theoreticals for building a competent navy, but why bother when with just air and subs, I can walk all over the AI anyways? It just doesn't appeal to me, especially when, again, I can just spam sub 4 with shnorkels, set them to always engage, and literally sink the entire Royal Navy in a bit over a year. What's the point of spending over a year building a carrier when I can make like 10 subs with that same amount of NIC, that not only will sink said carrier, but also a dozen other ships each, and several hundred convoys as well?
There's simply not much to get. HoI4 has the strongest anti-naval bias ever imaginable for a WW2 game.
I.e. destroying an armour division on land will grant you like 100 points of warscore. Doing the same in sea is virtually impossible (the division replenishes its convoys on route each time any dies), but even decimating it to 1% strength will still count as sinking empty convoys, granting 1-2 points in total at best.
Another example is Railway Guns. I've seen people here at forums seriously questioning their usefulness. The truth is, for its cost (effectively 8k IC) you can build a single 4k IC cruiser - and good luck using this cruiser to exert an influence even remotely comparable to what a railway gun gonna have.
Yeah, war on land takes an infinitely higher priority than naval combat, which you can honestly ignore as any country that's not the UK or Japan until the late game when you have so much IC conquered that you can just outproduce the AI anyways.
I also very seriously wonder how the heck people question railway guns. I maybe get the argument that you could build X amount of tanks or guns in the time it takes to make one, but they're like a 20% penalty to any enemy divisions in range, can affect multiple battles at once, and can be moved to anywhere you can even slap a single level 1 railway, affecting battles over the course of an entire war, including across oceans. When close enough to a costal railway, they can even help you out on naval invasions (Cyprus if invading from Turkey is a good example), and that stacks with shore bombardment. How much is the equivalent cost to a RRG in NIC (which like you said, is like a single cruiser) going to help your war effort by comparison? Especially as Finland, which has a focus that makes their Railway Guns 25% cheaper for only a moderate effectiveness penalty, which you can pretty much negate with a spirit of the army? Said railway gun let me take and hold Lenningrad while I got my industry and army geared up for a full offensive. Another 5 helped me roll the Soviets like playdough for a full year before Barb even started. What the hell was 6 crusiers (which I wouldn't even be able to make, because they would require WAY too much IC spent building dockyards that could instead be spent on infrastructure, mils, railways, supply hubs, and a couple forts on difficult to defend tiles) along with desperately needed manpower going to do for me instead?
I also very seriously wonder how the heck people question railway guns. I maybe get the argument that you could build X amount of tanks or guns in the time it takes to make one, but they're like a 20% penalty to any enemy divisions in range, can affect multiple battles at once, and can be moved to anywhere you can even slap a single level 1 railway
Opportunity cost (+research) was the reasoning, yes. I guess poor(er) countries might indeed struggle to pick the right moment for them. For the navy, however, the right moment doesn't even exist, as you say.
You can also transport railway guns by sea. In one piece. It simply rolls into a steamer and sails off right away, like one's Ford Focus on a ferry ride.
There's a thread over here asking why don't we have more islands between Greece and Turkey. It's almost a pity we seemingly won't get any, for we miss an ideal environment to show how a single railway gun stationed somewhere in the alleged archipelago can outmatch the entire Royal Navy in its impact. Quite a nice feat for a ~WW1 dead-end technology it would have been.
It is not a waste of dockyards, but it is certainly a waste of my game time!
I wish the process could be more automated. Managing US or UK naval refitting is such an extremely tedious and click intensive task that I just don’t bother. AI is so bad at naval gameplay anyway that it is irrelevant what ships you use against it.
When playing the USA, you get about 95 outdated (interwar hull i think) Clemson class destroyers that would pretty much be useless as escorts to capital ships, too slow and too weak.
In about 10 days (per ship), you can refit them for anti-sub and escort groups by adding sonar and swapping in another depth charge.
Works great in single play, not sure if it would carry over to multi.
Upgrading AA/secondaries on capital ships is always worth it. But overall it depends on the number of your dockyards. Once major naval war happens, most will be occupied by repairs and not by producing ships. Most countries do not have capacity for major ship building and repairs at the same time, and the most likely replacements are DDs or SUBs.
I always try to refit BBs, even BB1s so I can use them, I refit LC/CA for spotting, I never upgrade DDs though.
Ive always been interested if someone would do a test on this. Ie you take the French fleet and pit it against an identical French fleet, only difference being one had refit battleships vs that IC being spent on more destroyers. Sadly I suspect that the latter would win with how naval combat works, but I could be entirely wrong. Could be kind of a pain to set up the scenario I guess
With MIOs, there might be a bit of a difference now. For example, one MIO upgrade gives you +15% armor, which can bump some Battleship armor over the piercing of tier 2 heavy guns, which theoretically could make them very strong for a relatively cheap refit (ie just changing out targeting or upgrading secondary cannons). But it might not work out to be that meaningful in practice. Im not sure.
As a side note, the auto fleet balance button is kind of terrible. Because the entire fleet travels at the speed of the slowest ship, and the auto fleet doesnt seem to take this into account, all your fleets end up incredibly slow. Sure you can do it manually via stuff like ship designations, but its such a messy process…the auto fleet button should let you specify ship speeds and other parameters.
I do. The most important stat is speed. Losing a ship is bad since they are all worth a ton of xp to leaders and navy points for doctrines. (a nasty death spiral)
So I will refit all the extra guns and stuff off them. Just the bottom roll on Ship Designer is where I put stuff. But I leave the top row empty. Especially if you are Japan, Italy and the USA. Your ship speed is way too slow and get pinned and destroyed too easily with fast torpedo ships. The British have the best access to buffing ship speed to the fastest in-game. So high-speed torpedo destroyers will just smash everything. Have your gun a dual-purpose AA. Other ships cant tough them and navy bombers will be killed in a high ratio to one Destroyer
Upgrading AA/secondaries on capital ships is always worth it. But overall it depends on the number of your dockyards. Once major naval war happens, most will be occupied by repairs and not by producing ships. Most countries do not have capacity for major ship building and repairs at the same time, and the most likely replacements are DDs or SUBs.
I always try to refit BBs, even BB1s so I can use them, I refit LC/CA for spotting, I never upgrade DDs though.
Just some tips. You don't need more than a single airplane catapult. Now, we can use aircrafts in Naval Patrol to improve spotting. The second thing, is that you can use old LC/CA, as Surface Raiders. They normal have their guns lvl 1, which aren't good in battle, but are enough to destroy enemy convoys and get out unscathed.
