Refit - is worth the cost?

[dorn]

I would like to discuss if the refit is worth the cost. I can see a lot of people doing refits, especially for amored cruisers so I put an easy question. Is the refit economical?

I started with armored cruiser designed in 1904 and how much it will costs in different variants. I have 4 variants:

1. original ship designed in 1904
2. refitted ship with new machinery in 1920. The new speed is used for higher speed. No refit of guns (save money). The ship was refitted in 1914 with directors, so there is no cost to this change
3. blank new ship with same specification as 2 in 1920
4. new ship in 1920, ideally design to fill the role - CL killer meaning same speed as others CL, better firepower, better armor.

Variant 1:


Variant 2:


Variant 3:


Variant 4:




So what is the costs for variant 2-4.
Variant 2: 29,001k
Variant 3: 41,907k
Variant 4: 28,306k

And what we can see for maintenance monthly costs:
Variant 1: 226k
Variant 2: 257k
Variant 3: 211k
Variant 4: 150k

The conclusion
I cannot see how the large refit (machinery and speed increase) could be economical as if we compare variant 2 (refit) and variant 4 (new ship), we find out that the costs as almost equal however we get much more economal ship with more than 1M less costs per year. So the only reason to have original Roon class ship is if enemy has armored cruiser. As soon as the enemy scrapped them their is no reason to have this ship in the fleet. And I must noted that there is only machinery refit, in case of gun refit is needed the refit is even more costly.
In case of emergency I understand that refit could be wise as to refit the ships is much quicker than build new ship from scratch.

My question remain. When do you do refits more than blank refit or refit for firing control and you know that this refit is costs efficient?

[boomboomf22]

From a cost effectiveness standpoint, the only good candidates are Multi turret ACs (ie AC with at least 6 centerline guns) for raider purposes, or BCs and BBs because of the ammount that a full refit can improve them. Even then it is often a bit dubious.

[bcoopactual]

As far as version 3, well, there is no good reason to build a new ship in 1920 with only 4 main guns, it doesn't take advantage of the primary director fire control so it can be safely discarded.  As far as version 2 vs version 4, it really depends on how soon you need it.  The re-engine is expensive but it gives you a fast, powerful ship in 12 months.  New construction is going to take roughly twice that. so if tensions are high and you are critically short of cruisers you might do version 2 rebuilds on your existing ships.

I've come to the conclusion that in general it is better to just build new ships rather than replace machinery in older ones.  Newer ships are always more capable due to the rapidly advancing technology of the period and older ships don't get as much benefit from the damage control techs so they are more likely to sink than a modern ship is from the same amount of damage.  

I will upgrade guns if the design is fairly modern or if it is on my battleships because they use the same speed regardless of age but for cruisers, speed is life and I'm more likely to replace an older class of CL with a newer one under construction so I won't spend the money to upgrade the older class.

This is on a 100% research rate game which I always play. If you play with 30-50% research rates, which seems to be a pretty popular option on the forum, then older ships will be relevant for a longer period of game time and my thinking might change. Especially about re-gunning ships.

One note about the version 4 design.

I noticed that you have 0 Belt Extended and 0 Deck Extended armor but still have the Sloped Deck armor scheme selected.  That means you aren't getting the benefit of the All-or-Nothing "armored raft" concept.  Having zero armor in the BE and DE areas but no AoN will make that ship very vulnerable to flooding from the bow and stern of the ship.  It probably should have either the Flat Deck on top of Belt scheme, in which case you will see the bold AoN next to the symbol meaning the ship is built using the All-or-Nothing armor concept or you need to armor the Belt Extended and Deck Extended regions.  I'm assuming you have researched AoN.  If you haven't then you definitely need to put some armor on at least the Belt Extended region. 

[rimbecano]

A refit may be worthwhile, because of new design costs, if you don't plan on building more than one of a new CA class.

Otherwise, the only ships that I tend to perform heavy refits on are destroyers. In my current current game, I actually scrapped a bunch of my old destroyers instead of modernizing them (or even just doing a blank refit), and came to regret it: a war with Germany and Russia combined left me with most of my remaining destroyers tied up in coastal patrol and only a few available for fleet duties. Keeping the older ones around would have taken a lot of pressure off.

As for DE and BE, I tend to leave them off light forces (including late-game CAs), as well as any but my earliest BCs. B/BBs tend to keep them the longest, but even then, I abandon then long before I actually have AoN.

[ddg]

The best use for (extensive) refits is the historical one: modernizing old ships that cannot be replaced due to treaty restrictions.

[aeson]

My question remain. When do you do refits more than blank refit or refit for firing control and you know that this refit is costs efficient?

When I need to improve the fleet quickly, when a treaty prevents you from building new ships of similar capability (e.g. I might rebuild an old 25,000t 8x12" 25kn battlecruiser in 1930 to reach 27 or 28 knots and improve the armament if a treaty restricts new construction to something less than I'd consider acceptable for replacing my older heavy ships), or occasionally when I can significantly improve the quality of a fairly new ship's armament (e.g. going from 14" Q-1 to 14" Q+1 guns on a relatively new battleship or battlecruiser; I don't usually bother going from Q+0 to Q+1 guns, however). I also have a tendency to rearrange the guns when I rebuild older light cruisers to put them into a better configuration (e.g. ADE => 12C or 12C => 12B), enable cross-deck fire (e.g. FGJK => FHIK), or free up tonnage for mines or above-water torpedo tubes (e.g. DE => C) when those things become available. Moving 6" turrets around on light or protected cruisers usually isn't too expensive, and it can make an older cruiser that isn't quite obsolete enough to be written off a bit more effective. Otherwise, I don't bother with extensive reconstruction of existing ships; if I can afford to do an extensive reconstruction of a ship, I can usually afford to build a modern ship of the same general type (and role, if I need it, but past the early stages of the game I think it's better to shift older fleet cruisers to cover foreign station requirements than to build new colonial cruisers, medium range submarines make surface raiders obsolete in almost every way, and the way the game selects what ships you have for each battle makes general-purpose fleet cruisers a better bet than specialized scout cruisers, patrol cruisers, and cruiser hunters).

One note about the version 4 design.

I noticed that you have 0 Belt Extended and 0 Deck Extended armor but still have the Sloped Deck armor scheme selected. That means you aren't getting the benefit of the All-or-Nothing "armored raft" concept. Having zero armor in the BE and DE areas but no AoN will make that ship very vulnerable to flooding from the bow and stern of the ship. It probably should have either the Flat Deck on top of Belt scheme, in which case you will see the bold AoN next to the symbol meaning the ship is built using the All-or-Nothing armor concept or you need to armor the Belt Extended and Deck Extended regions. I'm assuming you have researched AoN. If you haven't then you definitely need to put some armor on at least the Belt Extended region.

I'd also be a bit worried about building something like the version 4 design because it's really not that much better than the CLs that you'd be able to build a couple years down the road, by which point you'd be able to make a CL which was identical in every way except belt armor thickness, which means that it probably won't be able to fight other CAs effectively and might have issues if it ran into a large 4x3 or 5x3 6" CL. 4x2 or 3x3 7" or 8" on a somewhat increased displacement would be a much safer bet.

[oaktree]

Most rebuilds that I do are for improving fire control and improving guns.  The latter are expensive for capital ships, but a qualitative improvement can extend the useful life of a ship.  And I like upgrading my light cruisers and capital ships to have the +1 quality 6" guns.  I usually do not do much to my armored cruisers beyond one or maybe two fire control improvements.  

I very rarely do machinery upgrades due to the massive expensive in exchange for a very mild performance improvement.  

I will rebuild my older "large"* light cruisers to make them auxiliary cruisers; add mine rails once they are available and possibly colonial service if I have an extensive number of possessions that need to be patrolled.  Old destroyers are not rebuilt, but kept to supplement the mine sweepers as coastal patrol/ASW ships.

* - I initially build a ~3800t "raider" with 23 knot speed and 4" guns and a ~6000t "escort" with 22 knot speed and 8-10 6" guns.  The latter evolve from protected cruisers to sloped armor to AON armor and keep roughly the same armor scheme and armament while increasing their base speed and torpedo armament as the technology improves.  The older ones may be slow, but they carry mines, can mess with some raiders, and can still give an enemy light cruiser a licking in a 1-on-1 duel with a little luck.

[Airy W]

Refitting engines but not guns is pennywise pound foolish.

If you do replace engines keep the speed low because you are paying by the ton. Adding a couple knots to a ship is viable. Adding four is not.

[JagdFlanker]

never - since tech level rockets up so fast i'd rather build a new ship based on that old design but with all the newest bells and whistles. just having the newest damage control tech built in is huge, plus there will likely be a decent speed jump with all the weight savings gained elsewhere

[Airy W]

Damage control doesn't improve???

[bcoopactual]

Aug 11, 2017 20:51:57 GMT -6 Airy W said:

Damage control doesn't improve???

It does but Fredrik stated in a post that older ships don't benefit as much from improved damage control techs as newer, modern ships.  I'll try to find the exact post and quote it here.

Edit- Here it is.

Mar 6, 2017 13:15:14 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

Just FYI regardless of rebuilds there is an age factor in ship damage control, so that an older ship has a slight disadvantage in stopping flooding and putting out fires.

From this thread.

[dorn]

Aug 11, 2017 12:27:36 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

As far as version 3, well, there is no good reason to build a new ship in 1920 with only 4 main guns, it doesn't take advantage of the primary director fire control so it can be safely discarded.  As far as version 2 vs version 4, it really depends on how soon you need it.  The re-engine is expensive but it gives you a fast, powerful ship in 12 months.  New construction is going to take roughly twice that. so if tensions are high and you are critically short of cruisers you might do version 2 rebuilds on your existing ships.

I've come to the conclusion that in general it is better to just build new ships rather than replace machinery in older ones.  Newer ships are always more capable due to the rapidly advancing technology of the period and older ships don't get as much benefit from the damage control techs so they are more likely to sink than a modern ship is from the same amount of damage.  

I will upgrade guns if the design is fairly modern or if it is on my battleships because they use the same speed regardless of age but for cruisers, speed is life and I'm more likely to replace an older class of CL with a newer one under construction so I won't spend the money to upgrade the older class.

This is on a 100% research rate game which I always play. If you play with 30-50% research rates, which seems to be a pretty popular option on the forum, then older ships will be relevant for a longer period of game time and my thinking might change. Especially about re-gunning ships.

One note about the version 4 design.

I noticed that you have 0 Belt Extended and 0 Deck Extended armor but still have the Sloped Deck armor scheme selected.  That means you aren't getting the benefit of the All-or-Nothing "armored raft" concept.  Having zero armor in the BE and DE areas but no AoN will make that ship very vulnerable to flooding from the bow and stern of the ship.  It probably should have either the Flat Deck on top of Belt scheme, in which case you will see the bold AoN next to the symbol meaning the ship is built using the All-or-Nothing armor concept or you need to armor the Belt Extended and Deck Extended regions.  I'm assuming you have researched AoN.  If you haven't then you definitely need to put some armor on at least the Belt Extended region. 

As version 3 - off course there is no reason build this ship in 1920. It is here just for comparison.
As I wrote I discard the advantage of time as it is obvious that this is advantage of refit
You are right on version 4 - there was some mistake, I choose AoN but for whatever reason it is not on the picture. The AoN version is practically the same. The point here is to show how much ship would cost if it is build for purpose CL killer.

[garrisonchisholm]

One of the virtues of RTW is that with intelligently fought battles you can make virtually any strategy work. Scrap everything 10 years old, or refit everything all the time. The player's only obligation is to have enough ships in the water at any given time to enable him to *not lose* their next war. The larger the nation the greater the largess you can afford, so long as you successfully convert this equation frequently enough;

Time + Cash = Tonnage

[Airy W]

Aug 11, 2017 21:09:29 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

Edit- Here it is.

Mar 6, 2017 13:15:14 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

Just FYI regardless of rebuilds there is an age factor in ship damage control, so that an older ship has a slight disadvantage in stopping flooding and putting out fires.

From this thread.

Thank you.  It seems to me that phrasing doesn't imply a penalty to technology, it seems to say a completely different age penalty.

[bcoopactual]

Aug 12, 2017 6:29:35 GMT -6 Airy W said:

Thank you.  It seems to me that phrasing doesn't imply a penalty to technology, it seems to say a completely different age penalty.

Not a problem.  I'm not sure what you mean with the last though?