Wrong and Missing Ships: How to correct them ALL

[Paul.Ketcham]

The key problem here is that whether or not the Farragut was as good as the Mahan isn't substantially-represented by the hull tech; what is represented is instead its range, and its speed. The advantages the Mahan had over the Clemson were mostly slight, and realistically the pre-Sims destroyers weren't all that amazing to begin with; they all, however, managed to exceed the terribly-short range of smaller ships.

I've already posted some of the signs that the Clemson was not a good ship at all, and if we disagree on its comparison versus the Farragut (since you probably would argue that the better gun and engine make up the difference) then that distinction is left alone. The problem is that you end up making the ships shorter-ranged than they should be by a significant margin, and you're basing the hull off the original design date rather than when they were actually produced. I will, however, point out that for whatever complaints you have about the Farragut, the whole class only added up to 8 ships and yet served in multiple Pacific surface battles, whereas the Clemsons were deliberately kept out of almost all of them (minus the Asiatic fleet ships that fought with the ABDA, and did almost nothing due to the ridiculously-poor odds and terrible fleet coordination).

I'd prefer that the ships were somehow downgraded compared to their superior successor ships, but cutting their speed and range doesn't really make any sense. Nothing between the Farragut and Benson had significant differences in range, and they were all close in speed (plus or minus about a knot). The Porters in particular literally-can't be represented by the older hull type either, since it can only mount 1 gun turret.

This is what the Naval Rework II mod is for: those incremental improvements that weren't just flat-out better firepower or major jumps in speed.

 

[Snagletooth]

The key problem here is that whether or not the Farragut was as good as the Mahan isn't substantially-represented by the hull tech; what is represented is instead its range, and its speed. The advantages the Mahan had over the Clemson were mostly slight, and realistically the pre-Sims destroyers weren't all that amazing to begin with; they all, however, managed to exceed the terribly-short range of smaller ships.

I've already posted some of the signs that the Clemson was not a good ship at all, and if we disagree on its comparison versus the Farragut (since you probably would argue that the better gun and engine make up the difference) then that distinction is left alone. The problem is that you end up making the ships shorter-ranged than they should be by a significant margin, and you're basing the hull off the original design date rather than when they were actually produced. I will, however, point out that for whatever complaints you have about the Farragut, the whole class only added up to 8 ships and yet served in multiple Pacific surface battles, whereas the Clemsons were deliberately kept out of almost all of them (minus the Asiatic fleet ships that fought with the ABDA, and did almost nothing due to the ridiculously-poor odds and terrible fleet coordination).

I'd prefer that the ships were somehow downgraded compared to their superior successor ships, but cutting their speed and range doesn't really make any sense. Nothing between the Farragut and Benson had significant differences in range, and they were all close in speed (plus or minus about a knot). The Porters in particular literally-can't be represented by the older hull type either, since it can only mount 1 gun turret.

This is what the Naval Rework II mod is for: those incremental improvements that weren't just flat-out better firepower or major jumps in speed.

I would argue that most of stats were on paper stats and that didn't materialize in reality.

It was heavily modified and upgraded/updated Clemson. Many of it's ideas that were used on the later ships were good ideas (although they had limitations, which is why they went to the flush deck with the Fletchers), they were add hoc conversion on the Farrguts.

In such, it was 13tons. this made it very top heavy. the stats on speed never materialized because it didn't sail well under such speed. the turn radius never materialized because it was to heavy to turn that tight at speed.

Moving from 4 inch to 5 inch isn't a huge step for what a DD normally engages in, adding the 5th turret was certainty a big boost to firepower, as so was the increase in secondaries.

Clemson's saw the brunt of the war in the North Atlantic. It's derivatives, the APD's, saw just as much action around the Solomons as the Farraguts.

After Pearl Harbor the Farraguts spent most of their time running convoys to pPearl from the west coast. They only got pulled to the front during the Solomans campaign. They then got sent to the North Pacific where, except for some unexpected action in ther Aluetions, spent the rest of war running convoys.

The Clemson APD's in the Pacific remained on the front lines throughout the war, as did most of the ones in the Atlantic.

So like most stepping stones introduced several ideas that were incorporated successfully into later ships, the attempt to shoehorn those ideas onto a Clemson made for ship that on paper was vastly superior, but in actuality was only marginally better. In some ways, was even worse.

The Porter didn't have more turrets (in fact it had less). it just twin mounts in the turrets (more guns). I'm not sure if the ship designer has twin turrets available for DD's or not. Other then that, it's only real difference is an extra 400 miles in range.

So far the only real difference people want to try and cling on to is range, but in the game, since MTG, that has become far less of an issue. the actual range on most of the ships arent even close to what they were to begin with, and they don't add up to anything in the game. 1000 miles difference is almost nothing. 400 miles wouldn't even register a tile. It's not an open board where incremental range differences matter, it's a hexagon with nice layer where you need significant changes in ranges only to gain maybe a tile or two without any consideration as to whether that actually is 400 miles difference or a 1000 mile difference.

Ships on mission can go anywhere, no matter what their range.

So in things that actually can be transferred to game. in DPS the Farragut has good leg up. On speed, it loses, because the Farraguts were too top heavy for it's size to run at at top speeds. It got even worse as they tried adding more equipment to it later on. On Agility, same issue. on HP/reliability. maybe on reliability being newer and with a better boiler, but that gets evened out by the fact much of the rest of the power plant wasn't change from Clemsons. On HP as whole, the castle design was weaker hull then the flush decks, although drier. With the Farraguts being a modified hull and not a designed bottom up, it loses on HP.

So yea, it only gets improved based on DPS, reliability and range. The latter of which is meaningless. I don't see why that would require a new hull from the Clemsons.

The rest of the ships, while still suffering from some top heaviness, were much bigger ships, and were just overall better designed. they handled it better and could actually realize their potential in speed and agility and even better HP then a hack job.

So, until range has meaning in the game again, using that is useless.

 

[valisk]

From my perspective we have a few Eras to look at in HOI4, to grossly simplify (and even this will be controversial):

1887, Pre dreadnought era
1906, Dreadnoughts, destroyers becoming fully separated from Torpedo boat destroyer concept
1912, Super Dreadnought Era, Orion Class (halfbreed) KGV & QE Class full bloods.
1916-19, Post Jutland Design thinking & Carrier conversion Experimentation, HMS Hood
1920, Post war rearmament early Super Battleships, G3 Super Battlecruiser/fast battleship designs.
1922-30, post Treaty designs ( G3 rework Nelson the chopped down sibling class belongs here) & early purpose built carriers, early ship reconstruction plans in the later part, Almirante Latorre being a prime example
1931-36, Improved designs based on experimentation and some even more restricted Treaty Designs ( later scuppered by Japan leaving the LoN and making it obvious it would not agree to further restrictions in the 1935/36 London Conference) Fleet carrier concepts, and major reconstruction ideas as per HMS Warspite which after 1937 was a significantly improved ship by every measure than it's unimproved sisters.
1936-39, Post Escalator Designs & early Post Treaty
1941-42, Improved war experience influenced designs
1944-46, Late/post war designs

Squeezing all this into 4 levels of tech where everything pre 36 is just lumped together is always going to result in a debate about something like the Farragut and it's place in the ingame world.

 

[JBerg2021]

When I was doing my own review of the naval classes and looking at how to normalize for actual historical values, it occurred to me that you can mix different battery generations (aka a mark I and mark II) to simulate the capabilities of some early heavy guns. The main one I'm thinking of is the Queen Elizabeth (or even the US Standard-Class BBs), which didn't quite live up to the early 16" gun performance or war-era 15" guns (which I would consider Hvy II), but was certainly better than the early era 12" guns (which I would consider Hvy I). Doing one of each gets to a better piercing value. [If I recall correctly, piercing is averaged among all guns]

Also, I'm surprised to see the Scharnhorst and Bismarck classes excluded from your list. In my opinion, both are overpowered in their main guns, though I think the Scharnhorst should have better armor. The Scharnhorst should downgrade its main guns to Hvy I (since they were 11" guns) and upgrade armor to Hvy II (since they had 13" of armor), while the Bismarck should downgrade its main guns to Hvy II.

Finally, I've also thought that certain design specifications ought to be applied to starting ship designs. The most obvious cases are the Japanese and American carrier designs and in service ships at the start of either scenario, which ought to have the Pacific Fleet Designer stat adjustments applied.

 

[valisk]

When I was doing my own review of the naval classes and looking at how to normalize for actual historical values, it occurred to me that you can mix different battery generations (aka a mark I and mark II) to simulate the capabilities of some early heavy guns. The main one I'm thinking of is the Queen Elizabeth (or even the US Standard-Class BBs), which didn't quite live up to the early 16" gun performance or war-era 15" guns (which I would consider Hvy II), but was certainly better than the early era 12" guns (which I would consider Hvy I). Doing one of each gets to a better piercing value. [If I recall correctly, piercing is averaged among all guns]

Also, I'm surprised to see the Scharnhorst and Bismarck classes excluded from your list. In my opinion, both are overpowered in their main guns, though I think the Scharnhorst should have better armor. The Scharnhorst should downgrade its main guns to Hvy I (since they were 11" guns) and upgrade armor to Hvy II (since they had 13" of armor), while the Bismarck should downgrade its main guns to Hvy II.

Finally, I've also thought that certain design specifications ought to be applied to starting ship designs. The most obvious cases are the Japanese and American carrier designs and in service ships at the start of either scenario, which ought to have the Pacific Fleet Designer stat adjustments applied.

The guns issue is a fair one to look at.

As Paradox chose not to band the guns in different sizes and have turret systems as the main upgrades, you have T1 representing a wide variety of sizes and calibers that just don't make sense.

The QE class guns are a very good example, the mid-late 30's turret rebuild to BL 15 Mk. 1 (N) is simply a huge upgrade in performance vs the unimproved version of the same for a number of reasons*, so much so that there was a lot of debate in the 30s over if increasing the elevation of guns was even actually allowed under the Aegis of the treaty.
Marrying these guns with the Admiralty Mk. VII FCT & later radar directors made them competitive with anything afloat at the time, and saw the admittedly excellent gunners of Warspite able to indulge in some impressive feats of long range gunnery. The early 16"s like Nelson and Rodney, had 40 degree elevation and so could deliver a longer range and more plunging fire, though their aiming systems were not as advanced and tracking speed was slower**.

I've suggested before that In both cases, the rifles should be separated out with one or two tiers to represent better metallurgy (lighter) and increased reliability maybe, in 11"& 12", 13" & 14", 15", 16",18" varieties, and the turret, fire control and directors become the major focus of improvements in accuracy, range (if only) and damage. As I don't believe Iowa would have been noticeably worse off if she had Mounted the 16"/50 Mk. II Gun than the later Mk. VII and neither did the USN.

Improved QEs should have a T2 gun, but it should be a T2 15" gun, T1 being those on Royal Oak and Co. T3 being war improved varieties, arguably like Vanguard had. Each is a clear step ahead of the other in performance.

*30 degree elevation, improvements in stability and speed (due to every Gremlin being evicted and told to move into the new BL 14" guns), and ability to take a slightly larger charge though not as large as that used in the further improved turrets by Vanguard which could hit out almost to the same range as Nelson and Rodney despite not having the higher elevation.
**Gremlins escaped eviction from the 16" turrets, so they also had reliability issues

 

[McMantis]

We agree with you, but unfortunately the tier I engine is the slowest the USS Ranger can have and she's still too fast. There is just no way to make her slower (29 knots IRL).
Her overall wing size was slightly smaller than the Lexington and Yorktown classes(both have far too small wings in the game) The problem was that until the 1941 refit she was unable to carry Torpedo bombers. As in the game any carrier plane can be used on any CV, this can't be depicted without a larger overhaul.

Would it be possible to add a designer to starting classes? That, along with making majors' designers unique could help with making existing classes more historical.
What was the reason she couldn't carry torpedo planes? I never knew that was a thing

If not, that could be a reason to have a module slot for designers. It could be automatically added when the hull is researched and prohibitively expensive to change.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

@Snagletooth
It seems you have confused a few steps of ship design. According to the source @Paul.Ketcham provided the 1916 authorization did NOT specify the ship design. It was a decision on the total number of ships, ordering the navy to build 24 new DD. Half of these ships were actualy build in time (the last 12 Clemson class DD). Between 1916 and 1931 there were many various ideas what design the remaining 12 ships should have, some were much larger than others (up to 2200t). Ultimately 8 of them were build as the Farragut class (Design process finished on March 27 1931) and 4 as the first Porter class (Design finished in May 1932). Not that the remaining 4 Porter class ships were authorized in 1934.

They didnt scrap it and start over. Thats why it was only 13 tons. It was flush deck design that got revised with a hastily added castle, a better boiler (although most of the rest of the machinery was still the same), and 5 inch guns instead of 4 inch. If they started over it and designed if from the ground up it would have been 15 tons like the rest of the ships designed in the same time.

It wasn't a good ship. It was only 13 tons. most of it's numbers on paper never truly played out in reality. The Clemsons spent more time on the frontline in WWII then Farraguts did. It was only marginally better because it was half breed. it was a 1916 flush deck design revised as a 1930 castle, and badly.

But they were NOT designed as 1300t. They were designed as 1500 tonners but turned out underweight (Like the Bagley class with a light displacement of 1,407 tons)
Anyway, even their standard displacement (1365t) was more than the full displacement of the Clemson class (1308 tons)
A hull in MtG does not represent displacement but the ship's general capabilities.

Farraguts are not Mahans, but they aren't Clemsons. They were a stepping stone. It's those stepping stone ships that are hard to place, because it's 12 of one, half dozen of the other.

Are you really saying that the Farragut class was more similar to the Clemsons than to the Mahan class? Pretty much every source states otherwise.
According to all sources we have (links provided in previous posts), the Mahan class was designed as an incrementally improved Farragut (and the Gridley class was an incrementally improved Mahan etc.). The changes between the various 1930s classes were mainly related to armament, engines, Fire control etc. All these things are represented by modules, not hull type. Obviously the Farraguts were inferior to late 30s designs, but these differences should be represented by different modules on the hull.
Hull tiers should be when a significant step up in design happened. Something that was NOT incremental development.

Based on all sources, It seems to us that such a step up happened between the Clemson (Tier I) and the Farragut class (Tier II). Other posters (@Axe99, @Paul.Ketcham ) agree on that.
Another happened between the Benson/Gleaves class and Fletcher. (either From T2 to T3 OR from T3 to T4)
We have discussed internally if such a step happened between Benham and Sims OR Sims and Benson but decided that they all should be Tier II.

It was heavily modified and upgraded/updated Clemson. Many of it's ideas that were used on the later ships were good ideas (although they had limitations, which is why they went to the flush deck with the Fletchers), they were add hoc conversion on the Farrguts.

In such, it was 13tons. this made it very top heavy. the stats on speed never materialized because it didn't sail well under such speed. the turn radius never materialized because it was to heavy to turn that tight at speed.

Moving from 4 inch to 5 inch isn't a huge step for what a DD normally engages in, adding the 5th turret was certainty a big boost to firepower, as so was the increase in secondaries.

By that logic, Mahan to Benham and arguably even Sims were heavily modified and upgraded/updated Clemson. That would mean in both scenarios the US navy would start with ONLY Tier I DD.

The ship was a piece of crap. The only thing anyone like about it was the crews had more space. Other then that, it was total piece of junk that didn't live up to half it's stats. Land was a salesman. He oversold it on purpose because the navy need the ships. The Navy pull them things off the frontline as soon as they could when war started.

That's vastly exaggerated. Farraguts were at Pearl Harbor to be used as Battleship screens. They have screened CV at Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal and Eastern Solomones. They were reassigned to North Pacific in 1943 when Fletcher class replaced them in the South. Until then they were used as first-rate ships. We completely agree that they were inferior to Sims or Benson classes, but in the game this should be repreented by modules, not hull tier.

I'm not going to say any more on the issue - short of forking out for a definitive source, that's all I've got - but I personally argue that all of the information points towards the capabilities of the Farraguts being far more similar to that of the Mahans and Gridleys (same main armament and directors, but the later ships effectively had (at least) one more torpedo module) than the Clemsons, and that the Tier 1 hull would not allow the Farraguts to reflect all the capabilities they had (while a Tier 1 hull is comfortably enough to represent the more modest Clemsons).

It seems useful to copy from our current proposal in the guide.

Change current classes:

- Farragut class DD: upgrade hull to light hull II.

- Sims class DD: upgrade Fire control 0 to Fire control I

- Benson & Gleaves class DD: downgrade hull to light hull II. Change name to Benson/Gleaves class. Upgrade Fire control 0 to Fire control I

add new:

- Porter class DD: light ship hull II. Modules: engine II, 2xlight battery II, AA I, fire control 0, sonar I, torpedo II, 1x Depth Charges)

- Mahan class DD: light ship hull II. Modules: engine II, light battery II, AA I, fire control 0, sonar I, torpedo II AND Torpedo I, 1x Depth Charges.

- Gridley/Bagley/Benham class DD: light ship hull II. Modules: engine II, double purpose light battery, AA I, fire control 0, sonar I, torpedo II AND Torpedo I, 1x Depth Charges

- Somers class DD: light ship hull II. Modules: engine II, 2xdouble-purpose light battery, AA I, fire control 0, sonar I, torpedo II, 1x Depth Charges

That's what our current proposal looks like (based on earlier discussions in this thread).

Tambors are in the same satiation. Better then the Porposie/Salmon/Sargo, but not a Gato. A stepping stone where it defiently needs to be better and seperate from the Porpoise/Slamon?Sargo, but was it really good enough for it's own hull? Is it really good enough where the gato is relegated to a mere variant of the Tambor? Gato deserves it's own hull, the Tambor doesn't.

We think the changes from Sargo to Tambor (redesign of the bow torpedo room to six TT and torpedo storage) are what a step upward in hull tier represents, and the Gato was an improved Tambor/Gar (same hull but with better engines). But please provide more detailed arguments why you think the step should be Tambor to Gato.

While too advanced for the 1939 starting techs here are the layouts we would curreently envision:
- Tambor/Gar class: Tier III hull with tier II engine and 2xTier II torpedo.

- Gato class: increase engine to Tier III. Rest like Tambor/Gar class

1887, Pre dreadnought era
1906, Dreadnoughts, destroyers becoming fully separated from Torpedo boat destroyer concept
1912, Super Dreadnought Era, Orion Class (halfbreed) KGV & QE Class full bloods.
1916-19, Post Jutland Design thinking & Carrier conversion Experimentation, HMS Hood
1920, Post war rearmament early Super Battleships, G3 Super Battlecruiser/fast battleship designs.
1922-30, post Treaty designs ( G3 rework Nelson the chopped down sibling class belongs here) & early purpose built carriers, early ship reconstruction plans in the later part, Almirante Latorre being a prime example
1931-36, Improved designs based on experimentation and some even more restricted Treaty Designs ( later scuppered by Japan leaving the LoN and making it obvious it would not agree to further restrictions in the 1935/36 London Conference) Fleet carrier concepts, and major reconstruction ideas as per HMS Warspite which after 1937 was a significantly improved ship by every measure than it's unimproved sisters.
1936-39, Post Escalator Designs & early Post Treaty
1941-42, Improved war experience influenced designs
1944-46, Late/post war designs

Squeezing all this into 4 levels of tech where everything pre 36 is just lumped together is always going to result in a debate about something like the Farragut and it's place in the ingame world.

Well, there are pre-dreadnought BB and coastal defence CA hulls for the pre-dreadnought ships, and Dreadnoughts can be represented as having a smaller number of Tier I modules than Super-dreadnoughts.
But a heavy medium module for 10 to 13 inch guns that can be fitted on heavy hulls would help a lot. higher Tiers would represent the Scharhorst and Dunkerque armament better.
Other changes can be represented with using better armor and engines.

Also, I'm surprised to see the Scharnhorst and Bismarck classes excluded from your list. In my opinion, both are overpowered in their main guns, though I think the Scharnhorst should have better armor. The Scharnhorst should downgrade its main guns to Hvy I (since they were 11" guns) and upgrade armor to Hvy II (since they had 13" of armor), while the Bismarck should downgrade its main guns to Hvy II.

What do you mean the Scharhorst is excluded?

- Scharnhorst class BB: replace Battleship armor Tier I with Battlercruiser armor Tier II.
downgrade both heavy battery modules from Tier II to Tier I. Add catapult to empty slot.

As far as the Bismarck is concerned, we agree with @Federkiel

Regarding the Bismarck-Class discussion concerning the insufficient speed which have been ongoing for years (you can search for a multitude of threads dedicated to this topic), i finally was able to reverse-engineer it for proof. I had instinctively made the following suggestion in the past and now can sefely say that it really works. For those interested to reproduce and check it - i used the 1939 setup for nationalist Spain. They belong to the few nations that have the raiding designer and don't have BB hull tier II already researched.

This being said, the solution itself is pretty easy:

If BB hull II had been researched using the raiding designer for GER (and every other nation going that road), the equipped ship template would exactly feature the speed the Bismarck-Class ships had in reality!

Apart from the (in reality even faster) sisters of the Scharnhorst-Class, no other ships would be affected. General game balance would not suffer from that as far as i can see since GER is strictly limited in regards of it's shipyards and an expanded use of BBs for her is questionable in the game.

With this being implemented, all problems would finally be solved. No more necessity to ponder on using SHBB hull or even BB hull tier III (1940) to reflect the ship's historical properties especially when it comes to speed. The other approaches have their own deficiencies when it comes to historical accuracy.

To do the implementation it would only be necessary to make GER's BB hull tier II being researched with the raiding designer already. Such customisation is not unheard of since the UK for example does have heavy engine tier II being used for some of their ship templates although UK does not even have the tech at game start (we also remember floatplane tier II being installed on the Littorio-Class, although until last update ITA did not have the tech at game start).

Above i suggested the raiding designer having been used. To keep ingame balance and to avoid GER gaining a general advatage at game start (PP), it can be made so that the raiding designer itself is not included on the political board of ministers / designers / ideas.

To put things as short as possible:
Have BB hull tier II of GER being researched by Blohm&Voss (Raiding Designer).

But this brings up the next problemm you've adressed, that all starting techs have been researched without designer.

 

[Denkt]

How do you decide if a had the Tech for a certain hull, maybe US in 1940 already had researched the 1944 hulls, as I mentioned Before there is a good case that Sweden already had researched the last light crusier gun in 1940 for example. A Flecther class for example was quite powerful for a destroyer so maybe a 1944 hull that started production in 1942.

Fletcher class would probably be 1944 hull with 5 Tech 2 destroyer guns, 2 torpedoes, 1 depth charge and the rest AA, AA going from Tech 2 at the start to Tech 4 in 1944.

Allen M. Summer is 1944 destroyer hull with the best destroyer guns, in fact all destroyer guns should have AA I think, they are pretty underpowered right now for their cost. Difference from Fletcher would be removing one or two guns and replacing the rest of the guns with highest Tech and the empty slots with AA.

The issue is that even the 1944 destroyer hull have simply too few slots and the destroyers get really expensive due to how expensive the Components are compared to the hull. I think Components should cost based on hull so stuff like radar and fire Control should be much cheaper for destroyers than for battleships. Also destroyers should get an slot for depth charge/mines/mine removal as the destroyers don't get all their bottom slots, also they should probably get 1 or 2 more top slots, 4 slots at 1944 is pretty few as other ship classes get 5. There is not enough slots to even make the Fletcher class, the Allen M. Sumner only had 3 turrets but 6 barrels since they are double turrets which is why it have Tech 4 instead of Tech 3 that Fletcher class have.

Here is information about the Fletcher class, including information about each of the 175 ships armament at each month: http://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/armament/ The main change is the medium AA armament which went from pretty lackluster to really good between 1942 to 1945.

In terms of cost the destroyers are simply way too expensive, maybe for game balance reasons, but if a Fletcher class cost 2k IC an Iowa would maybe cost 40k IC or something like that which is just enormous.

Spoiler: Fletcher Class

Spoiler: Allen M. Sumner-class

Suggested Changes to light hulls:

• Reduce most Component cost as they are very expensive compared to the hull cost, paying the same price for a radar as Heavy hull is a much bigger burden.
• Give all destroyers a slot for depth charges or for mines, it seems quite strange that destroyers don't have a specific slot for that right now.
• Add an extra top slot to all light hulls, so that 1944 hull have 5 slots which is similar to other hulls in the same Tech area
• Reduce research cost of light hull to cost to be the same as cruiser and Heavy hull.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

There is not enough slots to even make the Fletcher class, the Allen M. Sumner only had 3 turrets but 6 barrels since they are double turrets which is why it have Tech 4 instead of Tech 3 that Fletcher class have.

One module is NOT one turret (despite what the sketch shows).
But this is what many people think and what we thought for months after MtG released. They build ships with way too many gun modules that are massively overweight.

The visual part of the designer needs an overhaul.

Spoiler: Fletcher Class

Spoiler: Allen M. Sumner-class

The ships are too fast (Fletcher class on paper had 38 knots and Sumner 36.5 knots, but both was slightly slower in practice). Both are significantly overgunned (2x Tier III for Fletcher and 2xTier IV for Sumner seems better.

Suggested Changes to light hulls:

• Reduce most Component cost as they are very expensive compared to the hull cost, paying the same price for a radar as Heavy hull is a much bigger burden.
• Give all destroyers a slot for depth charges or for mines, it seems quite strange that destroyers don't have a specific slot for that right now.
• Add an extra top slot to all light hulls, so that 1944 hull have 5 slots which is similar to other hulls in the same Tech area
• Reduce research cost of light hull to cost to be the same as cruiser and Heavy hull.

Excellent suggestions, but they go beyond the scope of the suggestions we collect here (and will be lost to casual readers, being on page 15). Please make a new thred in the suggestions subforum!

 

[Denkt]

Excellent suggestions, but they go beyond the scope of the suggestions we collect here (and will be lost to casual readers, being on page 15). Please make a new thred in the suggestions subforum!

I don't post suggestions anymore. In fact I wont post anything anymore since I will Ask them to delete my account since the paradox forums are simply too addicting and take up too much of my time.

 

[Axe99]

That's what our current proposal looks like (based on earlier discussions in this thread).

Sorry Ketchup, I should have looked! Got my head lost chasing up everything Farragut on my bookshelf Thanks for including the info in your post

 

[JBerg2021]

What do you mean the Scharhorst is excluded?

I was simply stating that I hadn't seen any changes listed for the Scharnhorst or Bismarck classes in the initial post in this thread. I admit I may have missed them - and I didn't read through the entirety of the thread before posting.

 

[KubiG37]

A question come to my mind:
What modules do you think Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleship would have? This battleship was being built in SU before Germany attacked, but was then scrapped.

I used:
modules = {
fixed_ship_battery_slot = ship_super_heavy_battery_1
fixed_ship_anti_air_slot = ship_anti_air_2
fixed_ship_fire_control_system_slot = ship_fire_control_system_0
fixed_ship_radar_slot = empty
fixed_ship_engine_slot = heavy_ship_engine_2
fixed_ship_secondaries_slot = ship_secondaries_2
fixed_ship_armor_slot = ship_armor_shbb
front_1_custom_slot = ship_super_heavy_battery_1
front_2_custom_slot = ship_anti_air_1
mid_1_custom_slot = empty
mid_2_custom_slot = empty
mid_3_custom_slot = empty
rear_1_custom_slot = ship_super_heavy_battery_1
rear_2_custom_slot = ship_airplane_launcher_1
}

I've added its template into 1939 bookmark, but it's way too slow (I used 3 heavy turrets though, probably should have just 2 in the game), also I have no idea about its secondaires and AAs, were they good? Were they bad? I don't know other battleships in such detail, and using Paradox ships as reference is probably a bad idea.

 

[=XIII=Wedge]

Doing this I am able to lay down the KGVs in 37/38 2nd refitting for the QEs in 39, 1st Refit for pair of big gunned Oil Tankers in '39, 1st Refit on Hood in '39 and just around when the war start refits to put Radar on the R's and BC R's as time and capability allows.

Brilliant work! Can I ask if you refit all 5 QE’s or just QE, Warspite and Valiant.

 

[Coach Bud Kilmer]

This is an awesome thread and hopefully Ketchup's and others' work will find its way into the official game in some form eventually.

I don't know if it's been addressed in 15 pages of thread yet, but beware that having two ship classes with the same modules will create numerous problems. I haven't modded this in a while but I'm pretty sure that having a heavy and a light cruiser of the same tier with the same base modules will lead to weird hybrids. The same is true of battlecruisers and battleships. I recall that after MtG was released I was messing with redoing the Kongos and Italian cruisers and this issue surfaced. Again, maybe this has already been brought up but certainly needs checking before an official update.

 

[valisk]

Would it be possible to add a designer to starting classes? That, along with making majors' designers unique could help with making existing classes more historical.
What was the reason she couldn't carry torpedo planes? I never knew that was a thing

If not, that could be a reason to have a module slot for designers. It could be automatically added when the hull is researched and prohibitively expensive to change.

Perhaps we could prevail on Paradox to allow us to research the same hull type multiple times, if we really want to, it would cost both time and PP to swap the design agency so wouldn't be horribly imbalanced given the sacrifice it would be necessary to make.
Existing designs would be left as is, and new designs could be made on the modified hulls.

I don't post suggestions anymore. In fact I wont post anything anymore since I will Ask them to delete my account since the paradox forums are simply too addicting and take up too much of my time.

Instead of that why not limit yourself to 5 posts a day, & maximum of 1hr spent on the forums?

Well, there are pre-dreadnought BB and coastal defence CA hulls for the pre-dreadnought ships, and Dreadnoughts can be represented as having a smaller number of Tier I modules than Super-dreadnoughts.
But a heavy medium module for 10 to 13 inch guns that can be fitted on heavy hulls would help a lot. higher Tiers would represent the Scharhorst and Dunkerque armament better.
Other changes can be represented with using better armor and engines.

I do wonder if we could prevail again on Paradox's good graces to have a couple of extra hull and engine types & turrets available after unlocking each heavy tier. For the first tier of early stuff something like pre-dred we already have, add dreadnought can have 2x heavy batteries, and the usual early heavy one representing the rest of the super dreadnoughts. This way certain old scrap heaps can be modified to their correctish potential.

Add an Intermediate Battery in multiple tiers to represent those 10-13" guns, fitable to heavy hulls giving something like 60% the damage and 80% the penetration of a heavy battery of the same tier with only 1/4 the loss of speed or similar.

Perhaps also Mixed battery, representing pre-dreadnought guns, and have that hull only able to mount such. (as it seems rather incongruous for a pre-dreadnought hull to mount the T4 turrets tbqh)

having 2 selections of engines per hull on each tier would also be appropriate.
A regular low speed economy model, and a high speed one with a large cost involved due to the extra armour & length of ship + increased range. Something that would generally take a ship over the 12k max limit from the treaty representing what would be fitted in something like Hood and Iowa.

It's something I am mulling over for my next terrible suggestions post

Brilliant work! Can I ask if you refit all 5 QE’s or just QE, Warspite and Valiant.

Why thank you

Depends on my mood at the start of a run, I can do all 5 of them (I should build more carriers really yet I'm one of those dreadful Battleship Adherents) but I usually won't have all 5 finished on their second refit by the time of the big kickoff. Malaya or Barham and always QE (her crew need more time in training) are usually the laggards if I go to do all 5, as I will always lose some NIC due to training accidents requiring repairs, but its no big deal at that point as they are generally all ready by the time Italy wants to join the fun. (and of course it depends as well on if I feel like Iron Duke has to be present in Scapa on any given run )

It also gives me the option to skip KGV & Co for Lion a little later if I want, and/or do a series of pre-war refits on my destroyers, cruisers and submarines.

In fact I'd honestly say that I was surprised myself at how much I managed to get done once I really focused on optimizing and splitting the build into two stages.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

A question come to my mind:
What modules do you think Sovetsky Soyuz-class battleship would have? This battleship was being built in SU before Germany attacked, but was then scrapped.

I used:
modules = {
fixed_ship_battery_slot = ship_super_heavy_battery_1
fixed_ship_anti_air_slot = ship_anti_air_2
fixed_ship_fire_control_system_slot = ship_fire_control_system_0
fixed_ship_radar_slot = empty
fixed_ship_engine_slot = heavy_ship_engine_2
fixed_ship_secondaries_slot = ship_secondaries_2
fixed_ship_armor_slot = ship_armor_shbb
front_1_custom_slot = ship_super_heavy_battery_1
front_2_custom_slot = ship_anti_air_1
mid_1_custom_slot = empty
mid_2_custom_slot = empty
mid_3_custom_slot = empty
rear_1_custom_slot = ship_super_heavy_battery_1
rear_2_custom_slot = ship_airplane_launcher_1
}
View attachment 564436

I've added its template into 1939 bookmark, but it's way too slow (I used 3 heavy turrets though, probably should have just 2 in the game), also I have no idea about its secondaires and AAs, were they good? Were they bad? I don't know other battleships in such detail, and using Paradox ships as reference is probably a bad idea.

First things first, the heavy gun module in-game typically-represents 4-6 heavy guns, so for the 9 16-inch guns of the Sovetsky Soyuz that's better represented as 2 heavy guns.

As far as the design goes, there's one big question with the ships: their feasibility. The Soviets had never tried to make something so heavily-armored before, and one of the hulls (Sovetskaya Belorusiya) ended up scrapped due to massive defects in the armor. Basically, the Soviets had never made quality steel plate thicker than 9 inches, and although Japan faced a similar problem and overcame it they were both further ahead in armor construction (up to 12 inches) and had an extra decade of work in ship design while the USSR had basically abandoned large-scale ship design (cruiser and up) during the 1920s.

Considering this, you have 2 options (retaining the other modules you picked):
1.) SHBB with only 2 heavy guns. This is better-armed and armored than in reality, but approaches the HP and size more accurately.
2.) 1936 BB with 2 1940 heavy guns and 1940 armor. Technically better-tech armor than it should have, but it's the thickest available for regular BBs and makes up for the lost HP.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

Sorry Ketchup, I should have looked! Got my head lost chasing up everything Farragut on my bookshelf Thanks for including the info in your post

What do you think abou the proposals? Would You change anything?

I was simply stating that I hadn't seen any changes listed for the Scharnhorst or Bismarck classes in the initial post in this thread. I admit I may have missed them - and I didn't read through the entirety of the thread before posting.

Good to know. The initial post didn't mention them, but the are in the finalized version in the improvement Guide (I've added a disclamer to the initial post)

Add an Intermediate Battery in multiple tiers to represent those 10-13" guns, fitable to heavy hulls giving something like 60% the damage and 80% the penetration of a heavy battery of the same tier with only 1/4 the loss of speed or similar.

That could work just like the armour techs (unlock both BB and BC armor). This wouldn't even need any new techs!

Perhaps also Mixed battery, representing pre-dreadnought guns, and have that hull only able to mount such. (as it seems rather incongruous for a pre-dreadnought hull to mount the T4 turrets tbqh)

Why? These would be for ships like Satsuma or Lord Nelson They all were scrapped according the WNT. (Obviously a WW1 mod could use them)

 

[valisk]

That could work just like the armour techs (unlock both BB and BC armor). This wouldn't even need any new techs!

Exactly what I was thinking, as I feel if we are going to propose extra modules and such we need to be careful about not proposing lots of extra research. A small change like this gets us the potential for a little more accuracy and flavour, hopefully without introducing a headache for the devs.

I'd still like to see anti-torpedo armour modules and compartmentalization too but that's another story I feel.

Why? These would be for ships like Satsuma or Lord Nelson They all were scrapped according the WNT. (Obviously a WW1 mod could use them)

Germany starts with a handful, not sure how many other are salted around in various other naval oobs. Naturally for entirely legitimate reasons of arms control I'd prefer they aren't be to be retro fitted with 18"/40 or 16"/50 batteries

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

A few pre-dreadnoughts are still in service, but the last active ones (Germany) were modernized and had their secondaries stripped off. Greece, France, and the US had a handful as well, but only the Greek Kilkis was anywhere near combat condition; not sure what it was armed with while it was in reserve, though.

Mixed battery guns like pre-dreadnought armaments shouldn't exist in a WWII game though, considering that not only did no ships end up built with them after WWI (excluding mixing 6-inch guns with dual-purpose secondaries), but they had been obsolete since 1906. They caused major problems with fire control due to the confusion of which shell splashes were from what gun (exponenially-worse with multiple ships), and the low number of each main gun type made their individual zeroing harder on top of that.