Shipbuilding issues

[Axe99]

I was mainly responding to people who think for some reason you could churn out a large fleet in a short amount of time, a small handful (3 to 4ish) of capital ships before the war is fine but people who think they can build large fleet which I take as meaning 10+/15+/20+ capital ships each year (Or whatever large number they have in mind) would need to devote a large amount of their resources to just that to get all of those made each year. Such a thing will most likely cripple you elsewhere.

3 or 4 BBs is a lot though - even the US only built 10 BBs in the period, the UK 5, Germany 4, Italy 3 and Japan and France 2 apiece (although Japan's 2 were on the larger side!) If someone can pump out three of four BBs quickly, and isn't the US or UK, they should be able to materially shift the balance of naval power in the first half of the game.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

I was mainly responding to people who think for some reason you could churn out a large fleet in a short amount of time, a small handful (3 to 4ish) of capital ships before the war is fine but people who think they can build large fleet which I take as meaning 10+/15+/20+ capital ships each year (Or whatever large number they have in mind) would need to devote a large amount of their resources to just that to get all of those made each year. Such a thing will most likely cripple you elsewhere.



If you choose to sink the majority of your resources into trying to amass this large fleet in the short term you are wasting resources since you'll suffer in the army equipment and army size area later on when you need to help in Europe or elsewhere. Plus the USA early game is dealing with the Great Depression so it doesn't start with those resources to do this yet making it more pointless to attempt. Even for the USSR it is pointless it was better for them to focus historically on Army and Airforce not Navy.

About 10 capital ships/year is not unresonable expectation for geared up post fall of France US, since that's about as much they historically did through '41-'45, counting Independence and Alaska classes.

And yeah, it was enormous investment. Doing some quick calculations of weight (=~steel consumption) and financial cost, I'd be surprised if American AFV production's (100000+ vehicles) cost came to more than 1/10th of total American shipping production.

 

[Alex_brunius]

About 10 capital ships/year is not unresonable expectation for geared up post fall of France US, since that's about as much they historically did through '41-'45, counting Independence and Alaska classes.

I don't think you can include Independence class at just 11000 ton as Capital ships...
( They were based on the Cleveland class of Light cruisers which had a maximum displacement of 14000 ton ).

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

I don't think you can include Independence class at just 11000 ton as Capital ships...

In terms of the game, which seems to lump light and full sized carriers together as single type, it seems logical to do so. You could even account the CVEs as fleet carrier equivalents, since they lack their own unit. E.g. Essex class carrier cost about 5.6 times as much as Commencement Bay class.

 

[Guaro90]

small proposal: one of the major issue about building larger ships was about the facility itself, italy for example couldn't build something bigger than littorio class because they didn't have the shipyard big enough! so maybe we can have 2 different shipyards model, small one, for screen ships, where you can have efficiency and can be stacked like normal industries, and a grand shipyard model for capital ships, so you can simulate the gaining practical experience for smaller ships, like the U-boat prefabricated part for germany or liberty convoy for US and you restrict the building of capital ships to those grand shipyards. what do you think?

 

[Alex_brunius]

In terms of the game, which seems to lump light and full sized carriers together as single type, it seems logical to do so. You could even account the CVEs as fleet carrier equivalents, since they lack their own unit. E.g. Essex class carrier cost about 5.6 times as much as Commencement Bay class.

Did you take this into account in your counting? ( Divide amount of Independence in 3 since an Essex is 33k ton), so that it in total adds 1 ship per year just.

USA completed 10 Battleships and 15 CVs during 4 years of war (most of them started before the war btw) which in my math ends up being 6.25 per year ( 7 if you add 3 from CVL independence ).

Source:
http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm

If you include the fact that most were started as early as 2 years before the war it instead becomes 4 per year.




CVEs could not be counted as capital ships either way since they never shared the same role even. CVEs were focused on ASW, Convoy Escorting, Shipping planes and supporting invasions/islands, unlike Fleet Carriers which had the main role of Striking at the enemy fleet.

small proposal: one of the major issue about building larger ships was about the facility itself, italy for example couldn't build something bigger than littorio class because they didn't have the shipyard big enough! so maybe we can have 2 different shipyards model, small one, for screen ships, where you can have efficiency and can be stacked like normal industries, and a grand shipyard model for capital ships, so you can simulate the gaining practical experience for smaller ships, like the U-boat prefabricated part for germany or liberty convoy for US and you restrict the building of capital ships to those grand shipyards. what do you think?

Sounds nice in theory, but not sure it works so well in practice. Germany for example suspended all Capital ship construction after starting the war to focus on submarines instead.

I would prefer to have a system where you can use the same shipyards for both, but only build capital ships in provinces or areas with enough shipyards focused.

I like the idea to have efficiency like assemblylines for convoys, submarines and destroyers though.

 

[Guaro90]

they can make the grand_shipyards able to builds all the type of ships and for the smaller one they work like 2 small shipyards ( IRL, the some facilities if big enough could have been used for more than 1 ships at a time), and the normal only smaller ships let's say till CL, in the grandshipyard you can have also an option to increse the input of resources when building capital ships, you can have i don't know, 200% resources input and have a reduction time of construction of about 30 or 50 % percent so the more resources you put inside the less cost efficient it gets, to simultate the bottleneck of the costruction. so you can't start building 5 or 6 bb at one time as italy , you don't have the facilities but you can prioritize some huge ships, like the japan did with the yamato ( they used like 20% of annual budget ) and rush them at a resource cost. what do you think? too elaborate?
OT.: ships have training? like ground unites? we need those becouse U-boat crews where literally killed in training, germany lost a shit load of subs in the baltic sea during traning session, but they got out the best submarine crew of the war! betasom on the other side had good subs but had terrible training and got nothing in the atlantic,

 

[Alwar]

I would like to know what do you, the ones against changing the current system, really want.

It's clear beyond doubts there are multiple issues (building time, size of shipyards, resource capability). Those who want to change it we are in for balancing the game with the aim to make it fun and avoid stagnation problems or cheap tactics or even exploits while simulating real life strategy a bit better. I think we do not want multiplayer games with "NO CAPITAL SHIPS" or "NO USA WITH NAVY ALLOWED" everywhere, am I wrong?

So, tell me, what do you want? You have better proposals THAT fixes those problems apart from 1 yard = 1 line + 2 sizes of shipyards?

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Did you take this into account in your counting? ( Divide amount of Independence in 3 since an Essex is 33k ton), so that it in total adds 1 ship per year just.

USA completed 10 Battleships and 15 CVs during 4 years of war (most of them started before the war btw) which in my math ends up being 6.25 per year ( 7 if you add 3 from CVL independence ).

The fact that number of the ships completed were started before the period is balanced out by the fact that many ships started were only completed after it (or cancelled). Hence I did not consider it too significant.

That being said I did make a clear error there since I counted everything completed between start of '41 and end of '45 which was 43 ships (used Conway's 22-46). The error being that I divided it by 4 and not 5. I have no excuse.

On the other hand a point of US being able to build 10+ capital ships a year without diverting resources from non-naval construction still stands I think, since they could have diverted resources from CVE or even cruiser construction to focus more on fleet carriers. This would probably not have precluded either a balanced fleet or largest aircraft/AFV inventory.

Or lets put it this way: If US is capable of operating, say, 200-300 naval factories in the game from '41 onwards (historically prompted particularly due to fall of France) with ample steel/chromium/oil, what's stopping them from building 10 capital ships per year?

 

[Super Izumo]

I would like to know what do you, the ones against changing the current system, really want.

It's clear beyond doubts there are multiple issues (building time, size of shipyards, resource capability). Those who want to change it we are in for balancing the game with the aim to make it fun and avoid stagnation problems or cheap tactics or even exploits while simulating real life strategy a bit better. I think we do not want multiplayer games with "NO CAPITAL SHIPS" or "NO USA WITH NAVY ALLOWED" everywhere, am I wrong?

So, tell me, what do you want? You have better proposals THAT fixes those problems apart from 1 yard = 1 line + 2 sizes of shipyards?

Two ideas come to my mind that are much simpler for them to implement into the game without changing the system too much.

1. Increase the build times. A simple fix so even with a full 15 Dockyards the build time maybe comes to under 2 years or around that mark.
or.
2. Increase the resources needed to build them, thus reducing the likelihood large nations can do this without using cheat codes.

Even these would still lead to problems because we are trying to assign a Global Value to ship production when different Nations had different capabilities. Regardless of what is done it's either going to be too good for some nations or too bad for others.

If you could still assign 15 dockyards to build one ship and that build time was around the 2 year mark would it still be a problem for anyone? (Since realistically you could do that under the right conditions.)

 

[Axe99]

small proposal: one of the major issue about building larger ships was about the facility itself, italy for example couldn't build something bigger than littorio class because they didn't have the shipyard big enough! so maybe we can have 2 different shipyards model, small one, for screen ships, where you can have efficiency and can be stacked like normal industries, and a grand shipyard model for capital ships, so you can simulate the gaining practical experience for smaller ships, like the U-boat prefabricated part for germany or liberty convoy for US and you restrict the building of capital ships to those grand shipyards. what do you think?

Aye, I'd be a fan of different-sized dockyards. In fact, now that you mention it, I really should be thinking about that from the perspective of the naval mod I'm thinking about (as many of the smaller ships were designed specifically for smaller dockyards, so they wouldn't get in the way of the larger ships being built in the larger dockyards). Thanks for the thought .

If you could still assign 15 dockyards to build one ship and that build time was around the 2 year mark would it still be a problem for anyone? (Since realistically you could do that under the right conditions.)

Aye, I'd be happy with this personally. My main concern is the strategic impact of ship production on speed.

 

[Alwar]

Two ideas come to my mind that are much simpler for them to implement into the game without changing the system too much.

1. Increase the build times. A simple fix so even with a full 15 Dockyards the build time maybe comes to under 2 years or around that mark.
or.
2. Increase the resources needed to build them, thus reducing the likelihood large nations can do this without using cheat codes.

Even these would still lead to problems because we are trying to assign a Global Value to ship production when different Nations had different capabilities. Regardless of what is done it's either going to be too good for some nations or too bad for others.

If you could still assign 15 dockyards to build one ship and that build time was around the 2 year mark would it still be a problem for anyone? (Since realistically you could do that under the right conditions.)

It would unbalance it even more because now you have to dedicate 15 factory slots to build one ship at the historical rate. Everyone but USSR and USA is screwed.

Also, the resources are also unbalanced because even if capital ships required a lot of resources, that shouldn't mean that are forced to build less ships than you could irl. Ofc these capital ships must be expensive, but not so much you can only build 1/4 your nation could irl if you have taken the same choices. Resources should come after production times are set.

The only ones trying to give global values to ship production are you. I've said repeatedly that the construction time of capital ships should orbitate from 1,5 to 6 years using one ( and being limited to one) shipyard, depending of technologies, national focuses, events, singular bonuses and efficiency. Worse nations with lower tech would need 6 years for example and USA with all the focus on naval production sacrificing every else, 1,5 years. Maybe a bit less. Obviously this can't be a lineal distribution, but a disminishing returns distribution and a easy way to do it is with multiplying percentage increments.

Tell me what cons have all I said? Improves gameplay, negates possible exploits from big nations, give smaller nations a chance, easily relates tech and focus with naval productivity, separates even more the shipyards from industries by literally increasing the value of each shipyard relative to those, using two kind of shipyards simulates the biggest strategical point on ww2 naval warfare, capital ship production of everyone but USA... It fixes everything

 

[Super Izumo]

Using two different kinds of shipyards makes no sense though from a realistic standpoint, because even big shipyards in the world at that time that would fall under the "Capital Ship Shipyard" were still used to build smaller ships because of how big they were. So adding the option to build a large shipyard but only being able to build Capital ships in it makes no sense because it could still be used to make smaller ones.

I didn't have time to change my suggestion earlier because I was leaving for work but I thought of a way that is historical and is realistic.

Currently the system is you start a production line for a ship and pick the location it is built at (as seen in WWW) and then you pick from your universal pool of dockyards.

So, why not make it so that the province you choose to build the ship at limits the number of dockyards you can assign to the amount in that province.

IE Province A has 8 dockyards in it so any production line or lines set to build there can only pull from that province's pool of dockyards instead of your grand total.

Leave the build times and such as they are but make it so it works like that. That would fix the issue because how many provinces at the start of '36 would be capable of doing this? Not that many and if you decide to build up provinces through National Focuses and Techs to get to that point (15 Dockyards) you are taking away from that Province's max number of Factories/Dockyards that can be built period. And not all Provinces would ever get to that point, it would be very hard to achieve.

It also serves to simulate your nation building your own large shipyards somewhere capable of taking on these build projects (IE like the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard which built a good number of ships during the war).

Would that system be fine for everyone? Tie ship production capability to the specific province it is being built in instead of relying on a global pool of Dockyards affecting every province?

That would fix the problems, you would really have to dedicate an entire province in the hopes of getting that kind of production speed and you would only get that speed in that province not elsewhere meaning that province becomes a target (in MP) for attack. Since the current system doesn't really put as much risk/reward in attacking/building dockyards.


TLDR: Limit the number of dockyards you can assign to a ship's production line to the number of dockyards in the province you choose to have the ship built at.

 

[griffor]

i think we can't really judge how balanced or not it is or isn't till we see a www from japan us

 

[fastfreddie77]

I'll wait and see how this turns out but I don't like the idea of turning out a battleship in less than a year. It wasn't practical or possible even for a country like the US with what seemed like unlimited resources. Perhaps battleships/CVs should require 3-5 slots to build them and a more realistic time frame 3-4 years. Bonus system for the more you complete the faster the next one of that class can be completed. Say you start with 40 dockyards ... you can build 8-12 BB/CVs in a few years which should require an enormous amount of resources but there won't be any destroyers or cruisers to protect them. If your playing as German you can decide if you want to roll out with 200 u-boats like some naval officers wanted or build a mixed fleet like historic Germany had. I really want capital ships to be valued items not throw away toys for countries like the US. Would light or heavy cruisers role be diminished in the current setup because a big reason to build them was time/resources? If the US wants to just throw up a big boy fleet of CV/BB and a destroyer escort why even build a cruiser?

I never had a problem with Sealion before or after attacking the USSR in any of the other versions of HOI with realistic build times. Build Naval bombers with CV/CA/CL/DD and it was quite easy. It would make sense to require a certain amount of slots for different type ships. Destroyers, subs, light cruisers=1 slot. Heavy Cruiser=2 slot. BB/CV 3--4 slots with the ability to add an extra slot for a slight increase in productivity. I've played HOI since the beginning and I'd hate to see the series lose the requirement for long term planning in research/production. It was one of the things that compelled you to restart and play the same nation right away when your plan went to crap because you didn't build the right things. You shouldn't be able to lay down your first four carriers in 1943 so you can invade Britain in 6-9 months.

 

[Chromos]

It is abstracted:
Shipyards ingame are more a capability to produce ships, and to assign more effort to some of them.
Historically laid down to first real usage was around 4 to 5 years in average.
US was a bit quicker as they also gave shipyards more focus and assign more ressources to them.
(Steel assigned for the tank production programm was redirected for new ships etc..)
So that could be ingame a National Focus.

Thats ingame build times are too fast is maybe a balancing and fun point.
So if you wait too long for your shiny new BB/CV, many might find that boring.
Personally, I agree that a more historical time needed for building ships would be a good thing though.

An own system for building ships, that would reflect the historcical situation better, would be nice though.
Big dockyards needed to build bigger ships at all etc..
There was once a suggestion about this in the Hoi3 part:

Just an idea, how a new production system, especially seperation of army, airforce and navy production could look like.
It is bound to number and level of harbours.

It's not perfect, but a first try......

Thats maybe a bit too much for each harbour. But as overall system, it would be nice.
So you have only x amount of docks needed for y sized ships.
Smaller could allways be build in bigger ones.
That way ships like the Yamato would not be easily been build by anyone, as you would need super-dy for it.
Even US did not have that big dy in '41 and would need to build one first.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Thats maybe a bit too much for each harbour. But as overall system, it would be nice.
So you have only x amount of docks needed for y sized ships.

...

That way ships like the Yamato would not be easily been build by anyone, as you would need super-dy for it.

I'm not convinced tying it into port slots would be the best idea either. Because large size 10 ports ( at least in previous HoI games ), exists all over the world. From Shanghai to Amsterdam to Alexandria, Gibraltar and Singapore.

None of these large Cargo ports could come anywhere near building something like the Yamato.

To get an accurate model we need both large cargo ports that can bring in much supply, but can't build capital ships, and large drydocks which can build capital ships but can't bring in alot of supplies.

 

[Chromos]

And thats why I wrote

Thats maybe a bit too much for each harbour. But as overall system, it would be nice..

So you have a system "like research slots" for ship building. Just some slost for bigger ones, and some more for smaller ones.
The dockyard would be "seperated" form the current production like in the picture above for the whole country..
Or you get an indicator at each ship production of the free dockyards in the current production system.

And we have already dy and naval base as building in the game. So all we need at hand.
So big dy and nb = big production and civil supply port.
Only big nb = only civil, only dy = only military.
The amount of lvl 10 dy in regions would allow for amount of yamato size ships.
Lvl 9 dy allow for usual BB/CV and so on..
3 regions with lvl 9 dy = 3 BB "slots", 3 BB size ships allowed at the same time.
Modifier for smaller ships would round that system up.
So for each lvl 9 dy you could also build 1,5x the size below, and another 1,5x the size below that and so on.
That way you could still build more smaller ships with the limitation of dy in regions and not provinces anymore.
?

 

[jpd]

It's more like 4+ years for a battleship.
Bismarck: Laid down: 1936, Comissioned: 1940 Four years
Tirpitz: Laid down 1936, Comissioned 1941 Five years
King George V: Laid down 1937 Jan, Comissioned 1940 dec. Four years
Littorio: Laid down: 1934, Comissioned 1940: 6 years
Yamato: 1937-1942, 5 years

If we go with the realistic build times the Allies would be unbeatable in sea.

USS Iowa: Laid down 27 June 1940, launched 27 August 1942, Commissioned 22 February 1943. Two and a half years

 

[Zaku]

USS Iowa: Laid down 27 June 1940, launched 27 August 1942, Commissioned 22 February 1943. Two and a half years

Yes and that just reinforces my point, that if you allocate more resources to shipbuilding it will finish faster.