Wrong and Missing Ships: How to correct them ALL

[Snagletooth]

But the main difference is that Öland had 20% longer range, which matters quite a lot for which tin can nails the other first.

Wasn't aware of that, but that would definitely be an advantage....assuming the accuracy was there. I've seen many debates on Yamato vs Iowa where it generally boils down to, that while the Yamato had a bigger punch and could easily out-range the Iowa, the Yamato was reportedly lost it's accuracy well below the range that the Iowa could engage with deadly accuracy.

Essentially, if the Iowa could maintain 15-16K distance while being able avoiding a critical hit (luck is damnest thing that superior agility just can't compensate for), it could over time overwhelm the Yamato...but then the debate rolls into whether the Iowa could even carry enough munitions to take advantage of that and the likelihood that the Yamato would even stay engaged that long if it was clearly taking more damage then it was dishing out and unable to close the accuracy gap., lol.

Range is only an advantage if the accuracy is there.

 

[lonewolf371]

For anyone interested, I started trying to make a few of these modifications in a "Light Historical Naval Mod", trying to preserve the vanilla experience but with more accurate stats (mostly speed). You can see it on GitHub here:

https://github.com/lonewolf371/Light-Historical-Naval-Mod

Would appreciate any help if anyone is interested. I've made battleships, battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, and light cruisers a bit more accurate for the main naval powers (USA, Britain, France, Italy, Japan). Still need to work on submarines and destroyers. In particular heavy cruisers are a lot faster with a smaller profile - trying to make them useful for patrol groups and maybe they'll dodge battleship attacks enough to allow carriers to kill fleets.

I also tweaked carriers to have a more frequent naval attack. I may nerf NAV agility and try to tweak reliability ratings for a few different types of ships.

The updates to engines required a few nerfs to battlecruiser armor to keep things reasonable.

A few heavy attack modifications are done to try to scale to the broadside weights listed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_broadsides_of_major_World_War_II_ships

My basic idea is that piercing should go with gun caliber while heavy attack should go with broadside weight times firing rate. At the very least this makes treaty battleships seem to come out around 30 knots with good attack power with two batteries. The Americans with their firepower craziness get a slight speed hit that nearly matches historically when you add a third battery.

For future work I think destroyers and submarines need to be balanced. I'm thinking generally something like a 1:4:16 for IC cost for battleships:cruisers:destroyers (submarines being similar to or maybe a bit cheaper than destroyers). And a bump to dockyard production overall. Another future task is to nerf or maybe remove visibility reductions across the board, which are really overpowered.

I may try to play a round as Italy with the mod. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

For the ships under construction it may be good to add a completion percentage, otherwise it may be unclear to the developer what to do exactly. (Especially in the '39 scenario)

For France, we can add that the first Dunkerque class ship should be practically finished in 1936 (launched October 1935, into service May 1937), while in the game it is barely started.

For whatever reason (and not one I agree with, this is just what I've heard, and is generally consistent with the start-of-game builds, although I think more inconsistencies were introduced with MtG), the current design only puts ships into the production only after they're launched, so the 20 per cent completion reflections the portion of the time between Oct 1935 and May 1937. I agree it should be more like 69 per cent complete, but to make the OOB's consistent, making this change would require significant changes to pretty much all the OOBs of major naval nations (which is what I did in my pre-MtG naval mod, and fate permitting will again in the distant, darkest future).

While several people have noted this, we couldn't agree internally on what exactly construction represents IRL.
We shoul ask the community what's Your opinion? Hopefully this will allow us to reach a consensus.
Currently it seems to be based on launch date (ships in construction are the ones already launched.)
However, from being laid down to bein launched a ship consumes resources and worktime. we think this should be represented as under construciton.
But should it be added when laid down or when ordered?
A ship in-game can be added to queue without any progress bein made. This could represent a ship that was ordered but not laid down yet.
And what readiness should it have when launched?

reference:

Most ships launched without armament, and often a bunch of other key systems - the time spent fitting out (post-launch, pre-completion) was often as long as the time spent pre-launch.

Here's a picture of Bismarck launching - the keen eye may spot one or two things missing that would substantially reduce her combat effectiveness

so please help us to improve the guide, what precentage should the ships under construction have and should ships that were ordered but not laid down be included?

 

[=XIII=Wedge]

so please help us to improve the guide, what precentage should the ships under construction have and should ships that were ordered but not laid down be included?

I’ve looked at this a few times in my modding and came to the conclusion that the date a ship comes off the production queue should be the commissioned date.

There just aren’t the depth of mechanics for orders, laid down, launched, commissioned.

I think training is like work up, but would really like another mechanic in game to train a pool of sailors in shore establishments, but I guess that’s for the future.

Variables that affect the date they leave the production queue involve IC from dockyards, dockyards assigned and progress.

If it’s possible to add a single dockyard for a ship and that would complete before the ships commissioned date then I don’t put them in the starting production queue.

I also don’t change the amount of starting dockyards and assume that no new dockyards are going to be completed for a certain amount of time.

The further from the start the harder it gets, so I don’t try for much after ‘37.

Still experimenting at the moment.

 

[valisk]

While several people have noted this, we couldn't agree internally on what exactly construction represents IRL.
We shoul ask the community what's Your opinion? Hopefully this will allow us to reach a consensus.
Currently it seems to be based on launch date (ships in construction are the ones already launched.)
However, from being laid down to bein launched a ship consumes resources and worktime. we think this should be represented as under construciton.
But should it be added when laid down or when ordered?
A ship in-game can be added to queue without any progress bein made. This could represent a ship that was ordered but not laid down yet.
And what readiness should it have when launched?

reference:


so please help us to improve the guide, what precentage should the ships under construction have and should ships that were ordered but not laid down be included?

Ships not laid down will still have had a fair bit of work carried out, orders will be placed for structural steel, armour plating will begin production and various things like turrets and fire control equipment, drydocks will be reserved etc. Between order to Laying down big ships was somewhere around 15% of the total build time from an RN perspective.

Then once the body of the ship is complete and will float it is launched, freeing up the slipway/drydock, and moved to a quayside berth to be fitted out, where it's interior components are fitted, turrets, smoke stack, masts and towers etc.

This can take as long or as short a time as the nation is willing to pay for. Jackie Fisher had HMS Dreadnought built in just over a year due to extensive preproduction work, in other words he cheated, it really took ~18 months and in itself that was bloody fast (in Hoi Terms he used 10 shipyards, maybe even turning it up to 11 the cheating old devil).

HMS Lion and Temeraire of the proposed 6 ship Lion Class are good examples. The orders were placed in February '39, the two ships laid down in June and July, and then partly* suspended in October '39, in November work was allowed to continue when spare labour was available, until May 1940 when work was fully suspended and the unused Steel from Lion was taken to be used on Vanguard. After several years of redesigns and proposed conversions to carriers, what was built of both ships were scrapped. Despite not existing in Hoi terms, they were hogging valuable drydocks for several years.

A launched ship has around 2/3 to 3/4 of the work done, and somewhere between 30 - 70% of the fittings ready to be fitted depending on which years budget a canny politician has hidden the funds. Iowa was fitted out in what 8 months? KGV in 19.

HOI doesn't have a multi stage build process for Ships, nor should it at its level of abstraction. Though it would be interesting if it did, it would inevitably be quite fiddly and probably not add much for the average gamer.

So my personal point of view is this, if we can't in some way differentiate between order stage, laying down, floating, fitting out and sea trials, then from the games own level of abstraction this is all one process where Steel and Chromium go in and a complete ship with all its internals, armour and guns comes out.

Therefore any ship ordered in the period is being worked on from this perspective and should be in the build queue in each scenario.

I'd suggest that as a baseline 3 shipyards should be enough to construct a Battleship or Carrier in a period of around 3-4 years (tech tier dependant), allowing for rush ordering with 4 or 5 shipyards. And to be fair I think the devs have this close enough right now. I'm really not sure with Cruisers, destroyers and subs and won't offer an opinion other than to me they appear to be set up in such a way as to encourage a player to hog shipyards to slow down Capital construction.

*I say partly because work on the turrets and guns continued for another year before also being suspended regardless of work on the ships themselves.

Ed. The more cynical part of me feels that the Devs decided not to put in game a lot of the in build ships because by implication certain countries, like the UK & USA, would then need to have quite a few more shipyards at the start of the scenarios to accurately model their actual historic ship building potential, and would consequently have a truly unassailable advantage vs Axis ship building maniacs. Not to mention the absurdly long Naval Treaty restrictions further rubbing it in and letting the Axis powers catch up a little more.

Which of course is a design decision and fine, if only they'd admit it ;P

 

[=XIII=Wedge]

Therefore any ship ordered in the period is being worked on from this perspective and should be in the build queue in each scenario.

Would you consider a ships keel being laid down as the start?

Ordered could be in the queue with no dockyards allocated.

 

[valisk]

Would you consider a ships keel being laid down as the start?

Ordered could be in the queue with no dockyards allocated.

It could, but ordered means money is changing hands, sub-orders being placed with the various subcontractors, and the build process will be starting on things like turrets, structural steel, armour plates, and boilers within days. The shipwrights will be examining their copy of the plans and getting the various build teams allocated with the unions as well as arranging the drydocks and hard standing space for the arriving material so that when enough arrives work can begin at a reasonable pace.

If HOI did something like allocate a mil & civ for the first 10-15% of the build time then swapped to using shipyards it would be a sort of accurate representation, but that's what I mean by fiddly as it would mess with military factory dependent build queues for no obvious benefit to the gamer.

From the way the build process plays out and the time it takes in game we either assume that there is no order lead time and no factories are working on the component parts of the ship it is abstracted into us finally pushing the button to lay it down, in which case ship build times should maybe be shorter than they are now, or it is calculated into the overall build process and just uses purely dockyards to avoid giving players micromanagement nightmares.

If they wanted to make it a little more interesting without driving everyone totally nuts they could add Capital ship yards and tech or something like the Spy system, using a bunch of civs for few months to 'expand' them, allowing building bigger vessels, but that's a whole 'nother argument, and again, if accurately modeled, would result in the UK and USA being effectively untouchable if they double down on Naval production from the start of the '36 scenario.

 

[Axe99]

However, from being laid down to bein launched a ship consumes resources and worktime. we think this should be represented as under construciton.
But should it be added when laid down or when ordered?
A ship in-game can be added to queue without any progress bein made. This could represent a ship that was ordered but not laid down yet.
And what readiness should it have when launched?

My angle is that the date between laid down and completion/commissioning (depending on what data are readily available) is the best to use for HoI4. Valisk makes some good points about ordering, but I'll address those below .

so please help us to improve the guide, what precentage should the ships under construction have and should ships that were ordered but not laid down be included?

I've added the unit files from my basic naval mod, which included calculations of the proportion for each ship (at least I think, been a while since I looked at it) in HoI4's scope pre-MtG. Note I've included all in the zip (I have a bit I need to do today, and going through them all would take more capacity than I have), but all didn't have ships building.

Ships not laid down will still have had a fair bit of work carried out, orders will be placed for structural steel, armour plating will begin production and various things like turrets and fire control equipment, drydocks will be reserved etc. Between order to Laying down big ships was somewhere around 15% of the total build time from an RN perspective.

Therefore any ship ordered in the period is being worked on from this perspective and should be in the build queue in each scenario.

There's a good argument for using "ordered" (which you've already made ), but in the case of HoI4 I'd suggest sticking with "laid down" because:

• Laid down and completion dates are readily available for each ship, whereas ordered dates can be very difficult to find. I've got a stack of books on WW2-era ships on my shelf (at least 29 read, but I'm still trying to slowly add them to Goodreads so I've got a place I can look all of them up in) and I wouldn't have the "ordered" dates for more than a fraction of them.
• The relationship between the amount of activity and the amount of time between ordered and laid down could vary substantially. This isn't the strongest argument, as the same can be said between laid down and launched, and launched and completed, but the impression I got was that ordered could be more variable than the other two stages - so even if we could get the data, there'd be more "wobbly" (ie, subject to things other than just the time of construction) than laid down through completion. Were we talking Liberty ships, of course, then the situation might be different

 

[valisk]

My angle is that the date between laid down and completion/commissioning (depending on what data are readily available) is the best to use for HoI4. Valisk makes some good points about ordering, but I'll address those below .



I've added the unit files from my basic naval mod, which included calculations of the proportion for each ship (at least I think, been a while since I looked at it) in HoI4's scope pre-MtG. Note I've included all in the zip (I have a bit I need to do today, and going through them all would take more capacity than I have), but all didn't have ship's building.





There's a good argument for using "ordered" (which you've already made ), but in the case of HoI4 I'd suggest sticking with "laid down" because:

• Laid down and completion dates are readily available for each ship, whereas ordered dates can be very difficult to find. I've got a stack of books on WW2-era ships on my shelf (at least 29 read, but I'm still trying to slowly add them to Goodreads so I've got a place I can look all of them up in) and I wouldn't have the "ordered" dates for more than a fraction of them.
• The relationship between the amount of activity and the amount of time between ordered and laid down could vary substantially. This isn't the strongest argument, as the same can be said between laid down and launched, and launched and completed, but the impression I got was that ordered could be more variable than the other two stages - so even if we could get the data, there'd be more "wobbly" (ie, subject to things other than just the time of construction) than laid down through completion. Were we talking Liberty ships, of course, then the situation might be different

Ah now that my friend is a ‘Capital’ counter argument, one that hadn’t occurred to my beer addled brain, but you are quite right, so much documentation has been lost over the years, Consider me converted.

 

[Axe99]

Ah now that my friend is a ‘Capital’ counter argument, one that hadn’t occurred to my beer addled brain, but you are quite right, so much documentation has been lost over the years, Consider me converted.

Don't get me wrong - in a perfect world where the data were available I'd be much more in favour of the idea - it's a good thought, it's just hampered by the available data

 

[Ketchup & friends]

I’ve looked at this a few times in my modding and came to the conclusion that the date a ship comes off the production queue should be the commissioned date.

That's the unanimous opinon of my group. We can't agree on what exatly the start of construction represents.

If it’s possible to add a single dockyard for a ship and that would complete before the ships commissioned date then I don’t put them in the starting production queue.

Adding more dockyards speeds up production. While almost all ships in the queues have a single dockyard and are scheduled to finish much later than in reality, the few that have a second dockyard finish faster. For example the USS Wichita in the 1936 scenario has two dockyards and is to be completed on 24 March 1938 instead of 16 February 1939.

Therefore any ship ordered in the period is being worked on from this perspective and should be in the build queue in each scenario.

A problem is that IRL designs were often improved and updated while a ship was under construction. In the game a ship has to be ordered with a design (or the design changed mid-production which delays construction)
Our guide suggests almost all ships that were laid down and some that were ordered, but a few are left out intentionally (Mogador class in 1936, South Dacota class in 1939) because the nations lack techs needed to represent these classes properly.
Adjusting your suggestion, we would add all ships that were ordered IF the nation has the techs needed to build them. (and there are no special circumstances for them. Or focuses that add them)

Ed. The more cynical part of me feels that the Devs decided not to put in game a lot of the in build ships because by implication certain countries, like the UK & USA, would then need to have quite a few more shipyards at the start of the scenarios to accurately model their actual historic ship building potential, and would consequently have a truly unassailable advantage vs Axis ship building maniacs. Not to mention the absurdly long Naval Treaty restrictions further rubbing it in and letting the Axis powers catch up a little more.

Which of course is a design decision and fine, if only they'd admit it ;P

Axis ships in the starting queues also scheduled to finish later than IRL. Some of us have the impression that Germany can't build the historical amount of U-boots.

Laid down and completion dates are readily available for each ship, whereas ordered dates can be very difficult to find. I've got a stack of books on WW2-era ships on my shelf (at least 29 read, but I'm still trying to slowly add them to Goodreads so I've got a place I can look all of them up in) and I wouldn't have the "ordered" dates for more than a fraction of them.

Fortunately, we don't need all dates, only knowing which ships were ordered as of New Year's day 1936 and August 15 1939 respectively is enough.

 

[McMantis]

Going off a few people's comments about applying designers to techs and making more "historical" ships, what if you took out the equipment bonus from the designers and make each major's designers unique. You could then add a slot in the ship designer for a "designer slot". That way you could (eg) make two destroyer minesweepers with the same modules, one that could still fight with the main fleet and one with a "minesweeper" design that could clear faster.
Edit: this is what I've done in my mod

 

[valisk]

Adding more dockyards speeds up production. While almost all ships in the queues have a single dockyard and are scheduled to finish much later than in reality, the few that have a second dockyard finish faster. For example the USS Wichita in the 1936 scenario has two dockyards and is to be completed on 24 March 1938 instead of 16 February 1939.

In the '36 Scenario the UK has Ark Royal building and requires 3 shipyards to finish roughly in its historic timeframe, at our start date it had only been laid down for 3 months.
As an aside, its inclusion is anomalous if the Devs are only including ships that have launched by scenario start dates,

A problem is that IRL designs were often improved and updated while a ship was under construction. In the game a ship has to be ordered with a design (or the design changed mid-production which delays construction)

Agreed, in fact this type of tinkering was probably the rule rather than the exception. An outlier in how far it could sometimes go maybe, but just look at all the fiddling that went on with Vanguard.

Also is it actually possible in game to change the design whilst a ship production is in progress and not have to restart the build from scratch? I've tried this once or twice and just tested with Ark Royal, but it wants to rebuild from scratch.

Axis ships in the starting queues also scheduled to finish later than IRL. Some of us have the impression that Germany can't build the historical amount of U-boots.

They are quite probably correct, but giving them the capacity to do so also gives them the capacity to produce more capital ships as differences in drydock sizes are not taken into account.
In the UK's case I can at least rationalise it when I start a program of increasing my shipyards, as mothballed facilities returning to production and taking back ones that switched to civilian shipbuilding as military shipbuilding collapsed post '21

Going off a few people's comments about applying designers to techs and making more "historical" ships, what if you took out the equipment bonus from the designers and make each major's designers unique. You could then add a slot in the ship designer for a "designer slot". That way you could (eg) make two destroyer minesweepers with the same modules, one that could still fight with the main fleet and one with a "minesweeper" design that could clear faster.
Edit: this is what I've done in my mod

Given how the choices have upsides and downsides and you can swap out the designers if you really want to, I think we'd find it quite hard to persuade the Devs to change it, as it is clearly implemented to keep a lid on min-maxxing tendencies.

 

[McMantis]

Given how the choices have upsides and downsides and you can swap out the designers if you really want to, I think we'd find it quite hard to persuade the Devs to change it, as it is clearly implemented to keep a lid on min-maxxing tendencies.

I was doing it more for a historical/making different nations unique reason. I would think this would do the opposite, making more builds viable. It seems that the min/maxing is too prevalent anyway. For example, just a few pages back, it's said that guns on DDs are pointless and you should just stuff as many torpedo launchers as possible. Or the fact that nobody should build CAs. It would seem to me that having more options would be better

 

[Ketchup & friends]

In the '36 Scenario the UK has Ark Royal building and requires 3 shipyards to finish roughly in its historic timeframe, at our start date it had only been laid down for 3 months.
As an aside, its inclusion is anomalous if the Devs are only including ships that have launched by scenario start dates,

The devs are inconsistant. Most ships are already launched, but some of the launched ones are missing as well.

They are quite probably correct, but giving them the capacity to do so also gives them the capacity to produce more capital ships as differences in drydock sizes are not taken into account.
In the UK's case I can at least rationalise it when I start a program of increasing my shipyards, as mothballed facilities returning to production and taking back ones that switched to civilian shipbuilding as military shipbuilding collapsed post '21

It seems the number of shipyards is supposed to simulate this. otherwise the game would need at least 2 type of dockyards, one for small ships like screens and subs and another one for capital ships and cariers.
But the finish dates for almost all ships in the initial queue seems too late.

 

[Axe99]

Fortunately, we don't need all dates, only knowing which ships were ordered as of New Year's day 1936 and August 15 1939 respectively is enough.

I suspect you'll still have great difficulty getting all of these (at least without forking out a lot of money on books, not knowing for sure whether the book in question has the info you want). If you do find them all, I'd be very interested in them .

There are still issues though - Scharnhorst is a ship that really exemplifies them (noting it's not the norm) - it was laid down twice after it was originally ordered, and had all sorts of malarkey going on. Taking it's second laying-down date as the start of construction gives a reasonable figure, while taking it's ordering date makes it look like the naval version of Duke Nukem' Forever *.

* Although, had Lion been completed, she'd have taken this prize, and I'm sure there are some other examples that are more out there - I'm just going from memory, so available data are limited .

Some of us have the impression that Germany can't build the historical amount of U-boots.

Over the course of the war, GER can do it easily (I've tested it in the past), but this requires at least building a bunch of new NIC. There are issues for all navies when it comes to building their pre-war fleets on time, because of the difference between the way HoI4 manages the ramp-up of military production, versus how it actually ramped up historically (which was generally far more sudden, but involved more transfer of capacity between production rather than the snowballing mechanics in-game).

 

[Snagletooth]

It didn't end with commissioning. After commissioning you had speed trails, then drydock. Then shakedown cruise, then drydock again, then often a short training/gunnery period..then sometimes another drydock after that.
In peacetime it could take up to a year before a commissioned ship finally joined it's division. Wartime version in most navies had it down to around 6-8 months.

As for another discusiion, the US had a multitude of DD and SS classes at the beginning of the war as they had been experimenting in earnest in the pre-war years.
It's just, how different were they? In most cases the improvements were incremental and not signification in any way that could reasonably be usefull in the game.

The Farraguts, while made in the early thirties were built on a design from the early 1920's that they sat on for over a decade and were simply an improved version the Clemsons. It was nice when Paradox used the Clemson hull and gave the Farraguts a 3+ buff all around and made it a separate class. That was about right for what it was. From there on though, once DD construction restarted in the 1930's, the new classes were designed differently. they were different ships. They weren't even flush deckers. Porter, Mahan, Gridley, Bagley, Somers, Benham. The question becomes, what about Sims? Sims is is kinda hwre the type took leap forward, but remained a the same basic type. But it was actually more related to the Benson the to the previous ships.

The Bensons, while still a prewar ships and technically a treaty 15 tonner,was actually pushing that line and were 16 tons. they were significantly improved from the previous ships. Benson's are strange, because they have two official sub classes (Benson and Gleaves), and some break it into even 4 subclasses (Benson, Gleaves, Livermore and Bristol) There were differences, but nothing significant, especially in game terms.

So you have the T1 Clemsons, the 36 T2 Sims, 40 T3 Fletcher, and the 44 T4 Allen M Sumner. Thats doesn't really fit well. The T3 would be the Benson's, because you can easily start having them drop from the docks in 41 before the war even starts...which was just when the Benson's starting dropping in real life. Fletcher's didnt make it to the front line until very late in 42..but they weren't Benson's They returned to the flush deck design and so were much larger, faster and longer range.

Benson's were not Mahan internally (But were more or less externally, being a castle ship and not a flush deck), but they weren't Fletcher's either. Using a 36 hull is fine, but you would have to spend a lot of naval points really make it stand out like it should. Or use the 40 hull, which would fit the time line, but then you put it on par with the Fletchers, which they were not.

You can use the T1 hulls for the pre-Sim ships, but to really make them shine against the Clemsons (these were the workhorse ships of the navy for most of the war)
You need to put in a massive amounts of points to bring them up to standard that they should be above the Clemson's and Farraguts, but considering those ships were of a totally different design concept both mechanically and hull wise (They uses the tiered upper deck instead of a fush deck...much better seaworthiness, but limited their range even with superior engine designs)

South Dakota's weren't significantly different then the proceeding North Carolina class. Skimped a bit on the armor and shortened the hull for more speed (something like a whole 3 knots..oooh), and a larger castle to act as Flag (eliminating a couple of 5' DP's), but otherwise a very similar ship. Both classes were a compromise between the Fast Battleship design of the Iowa's and the slow but heavily armored "Shotgun to the face" bruisers that were the Colorado's.

Tambor's were significant improvement on the preceding Porpoise/Salmon/Sargo classes (which were all pretty much the same, and frankly were more subclasses of the Porpoise. Nothing signifignat enough that would matter in the game). Tambors though are a 1940 hull. Timeline wise that's about right., You can easily knock them out before the war starts. But they weren't massive improvements. That came with the Gato's, which were just starting to come off the docks when the war started and so should also be the 1940 hull. But the Gato's were very much different then the Tambor's. Tambor's finally hit on the the long sought combo the navy needed for a Fleet sub, even though in itself not achieved it. That makes it a different ship then the Porpoises, but most definitely not in the same class as the Gato's. Gato's were a much bigger design then Tambors to fully integrate what they discovered with the Tambor, that the Tambor couldn't make full advantage of because it was basically an improve Porpoise hull (in game terms..a bit oversimplified in reality, lol). Tambor and Gato should not using the same hull. Tambors should be using the Porpoise hull with lots of point jammed into it.

But then you have the Ranger. Man that ship triggers my OCD so bad. Lexington's are T1's but the Ranger is a T2? Really? Sure the Lexington's are older and built on converted hulls, but the Ranger was such a small ship, so slow and a smaller air group it was restricted from the Pacific Fleet. So much that Nimitz would rather engage the entire Japanese navy in '42 with one CV in a wheel chair in a 6 on 1 fight then bring over the Ranger. Why the hell is that a T2 ship?

 

[Axe99]

The Farraguts, while made in the early thirties were built on a design from the early 1920's that they sat on for over a decade and were simply an improved version the Clemsons.

The Farraguts had a different hull form (transom stern, forecastle), different weapons, different weapon layout, and more advanced machinery (as one would hope). They were in many ways closer to the British V/Ws than they were the Clemsons (they had a similar weapon layout and more similar hull form). I'd need to hit the books to be sure, but I'd wager the Farragut's had more in common with the Bensons than the Clemsons (I'm quite sure they do in hull form, and 100% confident they do in armament, but as I'm fairly sure the Bensons were after the revolution in US DD machinery so their machinery may have more in common with the Clemsons).

Also keep in mind the Porters and Somers classes were a bit of an off-shoot to the main US DD "family line".

It didn't end with commissioning. After commissioning you had speed trails, then drydock. Then shakedown cruise, then drydock again, then often a short training/gunnery period..then sometimes another drydock after that.
In peacetime it could take up to a year before a commissioned ship finally joined it's division. Wartime version in most navies had it down to around 6-8 months.

Agree, but as others in the thread have mentioned, some of this can be represented by a training phase after it's left the build queue (ie, when a ship joined its division, it would be considered "trained" in a HoI4 sense). I'd argue trying to include the post-launching, pre-active service period in the build queue would confuse players and lead to some odd results (and reduces player choice, as it would mean all ships should appear on the map "trained").

 

[valisk]

I was doing it more for a historical/making different nations unique reason. I would think this would do the opposite, making more builds viable. It seems that the min/maxing is too prevalent anyway. For example, just a few pages back, it's said that guns on DDs are pointless and you should just stuff as many torpedo launchers as possible. Or the fact that nobody should build CAs. It would seem to me that having more options would be better

I don't disagree, if this were a fully single player game it would of course allow the sort of changes we'd all want to see as who wouldn't make classes of ships optimized for their operational environment if they could.

But in any Multiplayer game we hit the issue of Balance, ie every buff has a reciprocal nerf, If I choose an Atlantic Fleet designer, I have to pay to switch to a screens designer, and cannot have that tier of hull with a Screens designer, Pacific designer or Coastal designer. To get my benefit in the Multiplayer Chess game, I am locking myself into a particular way of thinking for a while, one that my opponent might counter by a different choice.

So I think we are stuck, in vanilla at least, with expensive to swap (in pp) designers and hulls that cannot be changed once the basic design template is created with a particular designers stamp.

 

[Snagletooth]

The Farraguts had a different hull form (transom stern, forecastle), different weapons, different weapon layout, and more advanced machinery (as one would hope). They were in many ways closer to the British V/Ws than they were the Clemsons (they had a similar weapon layout and more similar hull form). I'd need to hit the books to be sure, but I'd wager the Farragut's had more in common with the Bensons than the Clemsons (I'm quite sure they do in hull form, and 100% confident they do in armament, but as I'm fairly sure the Bensons were after the revolution in US DD machinery so their machinery may have more in common with the Clemsons).

Also keep in mind the Porters and Somers classes were a bit of an off-shoot to the main US DD "family line".



Agree, but as others in the thread have mentioned, some of this can be represented by a training phase after it's left the build queue (ie, when a ship joined its division, it would be considered "trained" in a HoI4 sense). I'd argue trying to include the post-launching, pre-active service period in the build queue would confuse players and lead to some odd results (and reduces player choice, as it would mean all ships should appear on the map "trained").

Farraguts were designed and allocated before back in WWI, but weren't actually built until the 1930's. While considerd part of the post war 15tonners, they were actually pre war 13 tonners. Clemsons being 1200 tons.

By the time they were actually laid down the class did make use of several technological improvements, but most of it was rather unsubstantial. It's only real improvement was adding a fifth turret (which was later removed making it even less of meaningful difference).

It was only 1.5 to 3 knots faster them a Clemson (depending on source).
It was only 150 tons heavier then a Clemson.
It was only 27ft longer then Clemson.
Engine wise it's main improvement was from using superheaters, although the boilers were also capable of better pressure. That, combined with the castle design gave it a 1000 mile extra cruise range, but overall the boiler was essentially the same, just improved.But even then, those engine improvements weren't state of the art in the early 30's, having been developed and used in commercial maritime and on railroads since the 1920's. It was essentially a retrofit of what it was already designed with. Mahans and beyond were using cutting edge engine/boiler designs.

I did double check and you are right, it is a castle DD and not a flushdecker. Castle vs flush deck is an issue that the navy went back and forth on as they both had significant advantages and disadvantages.

Porter and Somers were designed as Destroyer Leaders (Porters were actually Flotilla Leaders, but Omaha's were also supposed to the Porters successor until the Navy Brass pulled a Bradley on them and bloated them up to cruisers). As such they needed more room for the Flag, hence their longer hulls. Otherwise no real difference over the other standard classes built alongside them. Porter is kinda on the border. It was also designed alongside the Farraguts and as such are just longer versions of it. The Mahan was the first true post war Treaty era designed ships that the starts the 15 tonner line (despite several classes actually going well over that).

Being a DL, it's kinda hard to place it. Technically was designed pre-war with the Farraguts, but it's larger hull gave it 400 more cruise miles (not really meaningful in game terms, though), but the extra Flag quarters it lost a main turret. But being a DL is the only reason the Porters were 18 tons. otherwise they'd also be 13 tonners like the Farraguts.

With the exception of being called up for the Coral Sea/Solomon campaign, the Farrraguts were not considered frontline ships by the US Navy and were kept mostly in the rear and escorting convoys..essentially paired up with the Omaha's and what was left of the Clemson fleet.

In any metric that can be actually projected in the game, you can not in any way put the Farraguts on the same plane as the 15 tonners (ei the 1936 T2's, which very much remained the frontline workhouse throughout the war, even after the Fletchers started appearing in numbers). They weren't even 15 tonners. They were improved Clemson's.