Post by bcoopactual on Feb 2, 2017 10:19:50 GMT -6
I'm a big fan of the development cost discount for ships that are closely derived from a previous class. If this system is continued into RTW 2 I would like to see it tweaked a bit. Right now it seems that the discount goes away entirely if you exceed whichever comes first between a 10% increase in tonnage or a 1,000 ton increase in tonnage. I think that works well for the smaller ships but not for the larger ships. a 1,000 ton difference in a 20-40K ton battleship just isn't a significantly large enough difference in my mind to remove the discount entirely. Perhaps for ships over 10,000 tons, the discount can be a gradually reducing percentage up to 10% of the previous tonnage and remove the 1,000 ton limit altogether. That way, assuming you meet the other requirements, you would get some level of a discount within 2,000 tons of a previous 20,000 ton design; 3,000 tons of a previous 30,000 ton design; etc.
I haven't looked at historical examples so maybe I'm wrong here and the "eye test" in what seems like a significant difference in tonnage is lying to me. Just something to consider.
[Edit - I wrote all that and then decided to go look at the US battleship line for examples. Going from the Dreadnought line through the Standards there were the following differences between the previous classes starting with the South Carolina's to the Delaware's: +4,380 tons; + 1,420 tons; +5,400 tons; + 0 tons; +300 tons; +3,900 tons, +600 tons; +0 tons; +600 tons; and finally +10,600 tons from the Colorado to the first South Dakota class.
So that actually looks like the current game rule fits the history pretty well (multiple classes with small increments and the occasional larger jump) and I might be wrong. Maybe it's just that to me, I'm used to seeing bigger jumps both from my own designs and from the AI's in game. After all, the game doesn't have a world war with huge land armies sucking up the Governments' budgets and also decent chances of never getting an arms limitation treaty. I haven't in my latest game.
Here is the AI's battleship classes for Great Britain in my latest game. Understand that these numbers could be slightly off due the almanac feeding me bad intelligence but it should serve for this purpose.
It looks like they had only one class that would have gotten a discount based on tonnage alone (I'm not looking at the other requirements such as gun caliber increases for this discussion).
It's possible that the AI's jumps in displacement are a response to mine, after all the AI doesn't build their ships in a vacuum but it might help both the player and the AI if we could go to a graduated discount up to a 10% increase in tonnage for larger ships and eliminate the 1,000 ton limit for those ships.]
I haven't looked at historical examples so maybe I'm wrong here and the "eye test" in what seems like a significant difference in tonnage is lying to me. Just something to consider.
[Edit - I wrote all that and then decided to go look at the US battleship line for examples. Going from the Dreadnought line through the Standards there were the following differences between the previous classes starting with the South Carolina's to the Delaware's: +4,380 tons; + 1,420 tons; +5,400 tons; + 0 tons; +300 tons; +3,900 tons, +600 tons; +0 tons; +600 tons; and finally +10,600 tons from the Colorado to the first South Dakota class.
So that actually looks like the current game rule fits the history pretty well (multiple classes with small increments and the occasional larger jump) and I might be wrong. Maybe it's just that to me, I'm used to seeing bigger jumps both from my own designs and from the AI's in game. After all, the game doesn't have a world war with huge land armies sucking up the Governments' budgets and also decent chances of never getting an arms limitation treaty. I haven't in my latest game.
Here is the AI's battleship classes for Great Britain in my latest game. Understand that these numbers could be slightly off due the almanac feeding me bad intelligence but it should serve for this purpose.
It looks like they had only one class that would have gotten a discount based on tonnage alone (I'm not looking at the other requirements such as gun caliber increases for this discussion).
It's possible that the AI's jumps in displacement are a response to mine, after all the AI doesn't build their ships in a vacuum but it might help both the player and the AI if we could go to a graduated discount up to a 10% increase in tonnage for larger ships and eliminate the 1,000 ton limit for those ships.]
. I haven't paid attention to the thresholds as closely as I could, but I have noticed that they seem to cut off in what felt to be a bit arbitrary fashion. Not criticising the feature, mind - it was a post-release add-on and a great one - but like the idea of refining it 
