Those darn naval lawyers...

[garrisonchisholm]

bcoopactual , I can't find the thread where you recently mentioned this, but I am sure you will empathize.

I had just laid down, at government request, a class of 10 light cruisers (circa 1913) armed with 11 6" guns each.  Most of them are on hold, so it will take 4 or 5 years to procure the lot I'd guess.  But what happens 2 months after work is started?  We develop a 6"q1 gun.  Great!  But when I called down to the quartermaster's office?  "No Admiral, I'm sorry- you see, we signed a contract for 66 q0 guns, and we can't break or amend that agreement." 

Sigh.

[fredsanford]

Damn shame. IMO, one of the best developments you can get is 5" or 6" Q1 guns, since there's so many of them in the fleet. Late game 1500 ton DD's with 6 or 8 5" Q1's are awesome.

FWIW, I think it would be worth it to refit those CL's as soon as they come in with the Q1 guns.

[aeson]

Dec 10, 2017 17:26:38 GMT -6 fredsanford said:

FWIW, I think it would be worth it to refit those CL's as soon as they come in with the Q1 guns.

If he wants the cruisers to carry the Q1 instead of the Q0 6" guns and has only put 1-2 months of work into most of the ships of the class, cancelling the lot of them and laying down a new class developed from the old which carries the new guns is probably not going to cost much, if any, more than taking the ships he's already laid down in for re-gunning immediately upon completion, nor will it significantly delay their entry into service.

Assuming he chooses to re-gun the existing ships and doesn't have secondary directors by the time they complete, I'd also be inclined to wait for secondary directors before re-gunning the ships. 6"/Q0 guns are adequate, secondary directors are nominally a 1914 technology, and taking the ships out of service for four months to re-gun them and then again for three months to improve their fire control systems shortly thereafter when you could instead live with the 6"/Q0 guns for a little while and then get both improved fire control and 6"/Q1 guns with a single four-month refit seems ill-advised to me.

[garrisonchisholm]

I doubt I will re-fit them, the way I use my cruisers the extra range and penetration would not be decisive. Also, I am at a very weird place where I have 5+ centerline but not twin turrets, so these 10 CLs have 5 centerline singles and 3 on each beam. They can only make 27 knots too, but on the plus side cost just over a mil/month each. I will use them as fleet scouts, and the ones that are still floating when I can make a proper County class equivalent will be sent to distant stations, decommissioned when they become a hazard to their crews.

I just wish the armaments folks could have said, "Say, you might want to hold off a month or two, we think we're on to something..." ...however, they probably just thought "Thank Goodness; a sucker to clear out this old inventory before they become obsolete."

[bcoopactual]

Yeah, it's a little disappointing that you can't upgrade guns like you can fire control before a ship is commissioned. Particularly both because the game makes the assumption that all gun qualities weigh the same for simplification purposes and because if I understand the way ships were/are constructed, the guns were one of the last things shipped onboard during the fitting out process after the ship was launched.  

It's possible the programming of trying to track all of the gun combinations on a ship was prohibitively complex for what it's worth.  I hope that isn't the case and they can address this in RTW2 assuming the game uses a similar system.  

I've actually experimented with modifying the save game and ship files to change the quality of the guns and add to the cost of the refit to new construction costs but it was way too much work and it's a cheat since I can't do the same for the AI.  

In your case, I would follow aeson 's advice.  If they've only had a couple of turns of construction you might be better served by scrapping these and starting over with the redesign.  You wouldn't do that in real life of course but it works within the game's mechanics.  Or you can wait till you get secondary directors and then upgrade both in the same refit.  The only concern with waiting for secondary directors is there is a small chance that the tech would be skipped.  

[Edit - garrisonchisholm , I didn't see your post while I was typing this and playing the game so I see you already have a plan.  Cheerfully disregard the above.]

[oaktree]

Dec 10, 2017 20:23:17 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

Yeah, it's a little disappointing that you can't upgrade guns like you can fire control before a ship is commissioned. Particularly both because the game makes the assumption that all gun qualities weigh the same for simplification purposes and because if I understand the way ships were/are constructed, the guns were one of the last things shipped onboard during the fitting out process after the ship was launched.  

It's possible the programming of trying to track all of the gun combinations on a ship was prohibitively complex for what it's worth.  I hope that isn't the case and they can address this in RTW2 assuming the game uses a similar system.  

I've actually experimented with modifying the save game and ship files to change the quality of the guns and add to the cost of the refit to new construction costs but it was way too much work and it's a cheat since I can't do the same for the AI.  

In your case, I would follow aeson 's advice.  If they've only had a couple of turns of construction you might be better served by scrapping these and starting over with the redesign.  You wouldn't do that in real life of course but it works within the game's mechanics.  Or you can wait till you get secondary directors and then upgrade both in the same refit.  The only concern with waiting for secondary directors is there is a small chance that the tech would be skipped.  

[Edit - garrisonchisholm , I didn't see your post while I was typing this and playing the game so I see you already have a plan.  Cheerfully disregard the above.]

I think in the real world an improvement in quality probably was a lot more complex then switching in a new barrel.  Additional range implies higher muzzle velocity, and therefore the gun mounts would have had to handle increased recoil, the powder charge was possibly larger (and thus handling and storage modifications required?), and a longer or heavier barrel would require additional work with trunions/mounts, counterweights, etc.  That the game keeps the weight the same as a simplification is probably a nice favor.

[garrisonchisholm]

Dec 10, 2017 20:23:17 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

[Edit - garrisonchisholm , I didn't see your post while I was typing this and playing the game so I see you already have a plan.  Cheerfully disregard the above.]

I will cheerfully acknowledge it *and* cheerfully disregard it. 

oaktree , no doubt you're quite right, but one would think on a 20 month project that we would not be *so* far along in month two that the guns could be exchanged for alternates.  :]

[bcoopactual]

oaktree you make good points and the bigger the gun we are talking about the better those points get.  I'm trying to think of a historical example of where one gun was swapped out for a same caliber gun of better quality.  The only example I can think of off the top of my head is the 5 inch/25's that were replaced with 5 inch/38's by the US Navy on some of their pre-WW2 ships that didn't include the 5 in/38 as original construction.  That's a smaller caliber though.  I'm guessing but I wouldn't think in most cases it would be physically impossible but more the economic cost.  The North Carolina's 16 in/45 Mark 6 guns weigh less than the Mark 5's on the Colorado's for example.  But to replace the shell handling equipment to allow for the superheavy shell you would have to change the entire turret structure.  As long as you didn't have to modify the width of the Barbette or the depth that turret extended down into the ship I don't think it would be physically impossible.  It would be very costly though. 

I would think that would be more economically feasible while the ship is under construction, particularly early in construction, and possibly before the turret complex is built in the first place. 

So I don't see a reason why it would be unrealistic to be able to do it in-game before the ship is commissioned.

It is nice that the weights are all the same but I wouldn't have a problem if there was a difference.  It would just require additional reserve buoyancy be incorporated into the design which is what most designers did anyway. 

It would be one more thing to get the AI to be able to work right though so I could understand keeping the system more simplified in-game. 

I would still like to be able to do it while the ship is under construction.  Treat it like the rebuild system.  You select a 'modify design' choice and it brings up the rebuild screen.  You do the rebuild as you normally would and the earlier you make the changes prior to commission the more of a discount on the time and cost added to the building of the ship.  If you do it a year in advance it would be cheaper and require less rework (time added to the construction) than if you did the redesign one turn before commissioning where the ship would essentially already be completed.  Then you would pay the full cost or near the full cost in money and time for the rebuild.   

Easy for me to say of course since I'm not the one who would have to make it happen. 

[Fredrik W]

I acknowledge the point of the thread. Some guns could probably be rather easily changed during construction, like single guns on CL. Guns in turrets would probably be much more complicated and require turret redesign. To avoid overcomplicating things, I will not delve into this for RTW2. The guns can be changed once completed, that should be enough. I should probably make it much more expensive and time consuming to exchange heavy guns for more powerful models in a rebuild. I don't know any case where guns heavier than 6 in have been exchanged for new models on a ship.

[aeson]

Dec 11, 2017 13:59:29 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

I don't know any case where guns heavier than 6 in have been exchanged for new models on a ship.

The modifications made to USN battleship main battery guns in the 1930s modernizations might count.

[imperialist]

Reboring of Conte de Cavour/Guilio Cesare class from 305mm --> 320mm guns. Although not too sure if that's a little bit different than something along the lines of 12" Q0 --> 12" Q1.

[oaktree]

And from a meta-game standpoint it's just part of RTW to be able to swear when you research that new gun right after starting construction on new cap ships.

[oaktree]

The main upgunning example is probably the Japanese converting 6" cruisers to 8" turrets after leaving the Washington Naval treaties in the 1930s. But they also had that in mind when they designed them.

The Mikasa was also regunned in 1906-07 to carry a 12" 45-cal instead of a 12" 40-cal. But sort of the exception that proves the rule since the Mikasa was being extensively rebuilt after a magazine explosion sank her at her mooring in September of 1905.

[bcoopactual]

Dec 11, 2017 13:59:29 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

I acknowledge the point of the thread. Some guns could probably be rather easily changed during construction, like single guns on CL. Guns in turrets would probably be much more complicated and require turret redesign. To avoid overcomplicating things, I will not delve into this for RTW2. The guns can be changed once completed, that should be enough. I should probably make it much more expensive and time consuming to exchange heavy guns for more powerful models in a rebuild. I don't know any case where guns heavier than 6 in have been exchanged for new models on a ship.

Thank you for the response Fredrik.  I think we've kind of proven your point for you since all of the examples except for the Mogami's (which, as was pointed out was a special case) involve ships being modified after commissioning. 

[boomboomf22]

Interesting factoid I discovered a while ago: 6"ish guns can be changed from single to double turrets in a refit if main battery and turret armor is 2" or less. Great way to improve CLs made before double turrets become available