Quirky Detail About Computer Prompted Fire Control Rebuilds

[bcoopactual]

In my current game I have a four ship 16,000 ton pre-dreadnought battleship class (Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas) and a four ship 14,400 ton armored cruiser class (Memphis, Seattle, Charlotte and Missoula) building.  Both designs were finalized before Central Firing was researched.  So as everyone is probably aware once ACR or larger ships get to within about 3 months of completion the computer will ask if you automatically want to upgrade the fire control during initial construction if an improved version is available.   

I had already clicked YES for the first three battleships and for Memphis so the computer had created a Mississippi (R 1904) ship file and a Memphis (R 1905) ship file when the question popped into my head about the price of refitting the ship during construction vs. refitting the ship following commissioning.  So for Arkansas and the three remaining armored cruisers, I clicked NO and waited for them to be commissioned in their original configurations.  

For the Mississippi-class, I had the option to rebuild Arkansas using the Mississippi (R 1904) design for 3 months at $ 439,333/month.  If I used the normal rebuild process and made my own rebuild file with just changing the fire control [Mississippi (R 1905)] the cost was $438,000 for 4 months.  

For Seattle and Charlotte I rebuilt one using the Memphis (R 1905) file and made a scratch rebuild Memphis (R 1905a) for the other.  (R 1905) was $425,000 x 3 months and (R 1905a) was $438,750 x 4 months

So if I had known all of that in advance I would have three options:

1. Upgrade all four ships while under construction adding one turn to the cost and one/two turns to construction time*.
2. Upgrade the first ship in the class while under construction as above, wait for the three remaining ships to commission and then spend three months rebuilding each using the computer generated rebuild file.
3. Wait for all four ships to commission and use the normal rebuild process to spend 4 months rebuilding each ship. 


For a four ship class the options would cost the following:
Mississippi-class
1.  $7,672,548
2.  $5,872,134
3.  $7,008,000

Memphis-class
1.  $9,078,000
2.  $6,094,500
3.  $7,020,000

So it would seem that if you need the ships faster (for instance if you are at war or soon to be in one) then option 1 will get the ships on the line two months faster than option 2 and an additional month faster than option 3 but if money is the primary concern then option 2 would be the way to go.

There is one catch.  All three options end up with different monthly maintenance costs.  Even though two of the options (1 and 2) use the same rebuild file.  I've summarized in the screenshot below but for the battleships option 1 costs an additional $48,000/turn (total for four ships) compared to option 3 which has the lowest maintenance costs.  Option 2 costs an additional $54,000/turn compared to option 3.  The four armored cruisers would cost an additional $44,000/turn for option 1 or $53,000/turn for option 2 compared to option 3.  

For both classes it would take less than two years for the additional maintenance costs to make up the difference for the initial costs between options 2 and 3.


So in conclusion, it would seem there are two "right" choices depending on what your priority is.  If you need the ships sooner and your budget isn't currently an issue then you are better off with option one which is to add the improved fire control during initial building.  If you want to save on total costs and can wait an additional 2-3 months for the ships to be available then option three is the better deal which is to wait until the ships are commissioned and use the normal manual rebuild process. 


Anyway, nothing revolutionary in this post, I guess I had never really given the costs of the different rebuild paths much thought before and decided to share what I found out.  For four ships you are saving a little over $1 million every two years over the lifetime of the ships.  Not a lot if you are playing a larger budget nation but it's not insignificant either and it might be important for smaller nations like Italy.  If anyone tries to verify these numbers or the overall concept and gets significantly different data let me know so I can figure out what I did wrong and then go hide in shame.  I checked the computer generated and the player generated rebuild files in the ship designer and I can't find any differences although you don't see maintenance costs in the design screen.

Here is what I think is going on with the maintenance costs.  You have the original 1902 design that has its maintenance costs set at whatever.  When you start construction of a new ship, the maintenance costs are one of the data items that are actually transferred to the gamesave file listing for that ship.  When the computer asks if you want to refit the new fire control while the ship is under construction it generates a new ship design file to incorporate the new fire control and changes the class listed for the ship (in the gamesavefile listing) so that the proper version of the ship is generated in a battle scenario but doesn't change the original maintenance costs in the gamesave file.  However if I rebuild the ship manually using the same file (or I build a new ship from scratch using the rebuild design) it does update the gamesave file entry with the new maintenance costs (which are higher because of the additional expense of the improved fire control with everything else staying the same).  Now if I make my own rebuild file it's going to have a more modern build year and the game assumes that there are constant small improvements in design and reliability for components and gear so that something designed in 1905 will cost less to operate and maintain than something that was designed in 1902.  So therefore the manual rebuild file has lower maintenance costs (since it is a 1905 build year design for my example of the Mississippi-class) than either the original Mississippi design or the computer generated rebuild file which both have 1902 listed as the build year in the file.  Put another way the computer generated rebuild (R 1904) assumes you are literally only changing the fire control while the manual rebuild (R 1905) assumes that in addition to the fire control a number of minor improvements and upgrades are made throughout the ship to reflect three years worth of component design enhancements which you pay for up front but come with lower operating costs over the life of the ship.  While not updating to the new maintenance costs when refitting fire control during new construction might be a slight oversight, on the whole the entire concept demonstrates pretty thoughtful game design really.  Assuming I'm not just full of it and seeing things that aren't really there.    


     

[aeson]

For the cost of the refit while under construction, did you just go with the listed construction cost, or did you check how much that last turn of work actually cost? I have the impression that you're not billed at full rate for the last turn of work, as on the occasions where I've paid it much heed it has seemed to me as though I had more funds the turn the ship commissioned than I had expected to have on that turn. I as yet have never bothered to keep sufficiently close track of the budget to check whether or not that is the case, though.

[bcoopactual]

Sept 5, 2018 21:33:57 GMT -6 aeson said:

For the cost of the refit while under construction, did you just go with the listed construction cost, or did you check how much that last turn of work actually cost? I have the impression that you're not billed at full rate for the last turn of work, as on the occasions where I've paid it much heed it has seemed to me as though I had more funds the turn the ship commissioned than I had expected to have on that turn. I as yet have never bothered to keep sufficiently close track of the budget to check whether or not that is the case, though.

I just assumed one full turn of additional construction cost.  Are you talking about the turn where it says 0 turns left?  If so I agree with you.  I always thought that turn was close to free because there wouldn't be many build points left but I went back to my recent save and played forward to get to a 0 turn build for Arkansas with the computer generated refit.  It had 959,065 build points left which almost exactly half of the normal monthly build cost.  I'm assuming that the 0 turn will charge me money equal to those 959,065 points.  I see a similar thing on turns where a ship had its construction delayed by wartime shortages or strike or whatever.  I don't think the player is charged for the build cost of that ship if construction is delayed.  I always seem to have more money than I thought I was going to on those turns although it would be hard to prove. 

  

When my next armored cruiser reaches the point where the game offers to upgrade the fire control I'll look in the files and see if I can tell exactly what is happening to push back the completion date because I know the total cost of the ship isn't being changed.  The above total cost for Arkansas is the same as it was when it was laid down.  

[aeson]

Are you talking about the turn where it says 0 turns left?

Yes.

[dorn]

Thanks for information, it is quite interesting.


Relating to maintenance costs, I have already studied it. If 1st refit is blank or it is just fire control upgrade it always decreases your maintenance costs, 2nd and other refits usually increase it. However even if the decrease looks high (could be around 4 % in case of cruisers) the total amount is not worth do make a specific blank refit. 

Nevertheless it is strange you launch new ship, gaining new FC, upgrading ship which is practically same and your maintenance costs decreases.



I have another question which I do not study. When I do refits I did not go to red numbers about displacement. Is it possible that if you allow small red numbers that the ship get some negative trait when reconstructed? If so than doing automatically refits has another benefit.



Appendix about refits:
I look at my logs of refits which I have from some times in past. I will give you some examples (note: I have some strange examples from past but I will not post it as I have only partially information on it)

1. pre-dreadnought from 1900, costs 42M
   - maintenance costs 186k
   - after 1st refit 175k (remove of 16x2" guns, installment of central firing, increase from 65 shells for 13" guns to 100 shells)
   - after 2nd refit 177k (director FC)

2. pre-dreadnought from 1900, costs 46M
   - maintenance costs 205k
   - after 1st refit 195k (central firing)
   - after 2nd refit 198k (director FC)

3. semi-dreadnought designed in 1902, costs 56M
   - maintenance costs as designed 252k
   - as built 255k (central firing installment during construction)
   - 1st refit 241k (director FC, remove of 2 submerged torpedo tubes)
   note: this seems interesting as if you compare 255k (as built) vs. 241k (1st refit), it is difference 14k per month, 168k per year, 1.68M per 10 years of maintenance costs as result of doing installation of new FC during construction and doing it as refit (some simplification as in reality 1st refit was with director FC). 

4. superdreadnought designed in 1916, costs 127M
   - maintenance costs 582k
   - after 1st refit 554k (improved director FC, director FC for secondary guns, increase of elevation of main guns)

5. battlecruiser designed in 1905, costs 64M
   - maintenance costs 315k
   - after 1st refit 302k (director FC)
   - after 2nd refit 310k (improved director FC, director FC for secondary guns, increase of elevation of main guns, replacement of 12x5" in casemates to 6x3x5" guns)
      - note to refit: costs 5.8 M, new ship built with that design would costs 62.7M

6. armored cruiser from 1900, costs 32M
   - maintenance costs 157k
   - after 1st refit 150k  (central firing DC)
   - after 2nd refit 151k (director FC, remove of 2 submerged torpedo tubes)
   - after 3rd refit 176k (replacement of engines with new coal powered, speed increase from 21 knots to 25 knots, removal tertiary of 8x3" guns in casemates) - note to refit: new ship would cost 33.9M

7. armored cruiser designed in 1901, costs 50M
   - maintenance costs 252k as designed
   - as built 255k (refitted during construction with central firing)
   - after 1st refit 243k (director FC, remove of 2 torpedo tubes)
   - after 2A refit 224k (replace engines with reliable ones and increase speed from 23 to 25 knots) - rebuilt costs 15.6M, costs for new ship 45.3M
   - after 2B refit 323k (replace engines to achieve 28 knots) - rebuilt costs 47.2M, costs for new ship 59.5M

8. protected cruiser from 1900, costs 30M
   - maintenance costs 160k
   - after 1st refit 154k (central firing FC)
   - after 2nd refit 162k (replacement of engines to increase speed from 23 to 26 knots, upgrade 4x1x6" guns turrets from 3.5" to 6" armor, replacement of secondary guns 8x4" with 1" shields to 12x5" without shields, remove of 2x3" guns, replace of 1 position of central rangefinder to 2 positions of central firing) - rebuilt costs 22M, costs for new ship would be 30M
   - after 3rd refit 166k (removing secondary guns 12x5", installment of additional 10x6" guns on broadside and X turret.

9. protected cruiser (scout cruiser) from 1905, costs 7.8M
   - maintenance costs 42k
   - after 1st refit 44k (director FC, replace engine to increase speed from 27 to 28 knots) - rebuilt costs 4.4M, new ship would costs 8M

10. protected cruiser designed in 1905, costs 24M
   - maintenance costs 130k
   - after 1st refit 126k (director FC, replace 12x1x6" guns with better quality)

11. destroyer designed in 1904, costs 2.1M
   - maintenance costs 13k
   - after 1st refit 12k (replacement of 5x3" guns to 4x4" guns, replacement of 2 single torpedo mounts to double mount) - cots of rebuilt 0.64M, costs of new ship would be 2M

12. protected cruiser designed in 1907
   - maintenance costs 61.2k (as built)
   - after 1st refit 49k (I have no information of the refit) - the decrease is quite large I will try to find old save and verify the reason (Q: Japan built, refit in foreign country?)

13. dreadnought designed in 1907, costs 72.5M
   - maintenance costs 333k
   - after 1st refit 313k (removal of 18x1x3" tertiary guns, director FC)

14. dreadnought designed in 1912, costs 91M (4x3x12" Gangut type, speed 24 knots)
   - maintenance costs 428k
   - after 1st refit 413k (improved FC, replaces 4x3x12" guns with 8" face and 2.5" top armor to 4x2x15" guns with increase elevation with 9" face and 4" top armor, replaced 16x5" guns in casemates with 5.5" armor to 8x2x5" with 2" turret armor) - costs of refit 30.7M, new ship would cost 87M

15. armored cruiser designed in 1905, costs 60M (proto BC with 5x2x10" with dreadnought layout)
  - maintenance costs 297k
  - after 1st refit 284k (director FC)
  - after 2nd refit 301k (improved director FC, FC for secondary guns, replaced engines to oil fired and tuned for speed to achieve 29 knots from original 25 knots, replaced 14x4" secondary guns for better model and increase their armor to 8")

16. semi-dreadnought designed in 1901, costs 56M
   - maintenance costs 249k as designed
   - maintenance costs 251k as built (with central fire FC)
   - after 1st refit 239k (director FC)

17. battlecruiser designed in 1914, costs 103M
   - maintenance costs 503k
   - after 1st refit 483k (improved director FC, director FC for secondary guns)

18. armored cruiser from 1900, costs 29M
   - maintenance costs 139k 
   - after 1st refit 133k (central firing FC)
   - after 2nd refit 130k (director FC, replacement of 10x7" with 4" armor secondary guns to 10x6" with 5" armor)

19. protected cruiser designed in 1908, costs 14M
   - maintenance costs 73k
   - after 1st refit 72k (replacement of all guns: 2x6" with shield 2" of armor, 10x4" with 2" armored shield to 8x6" with shield 1" of armor, installment of 2 torpedo tubes, installment of supplies for colonial support, director FC)

20. destroyer from 1900, costs 1.4M
   - maintenance costs 9k
   - after 1st blank refit 8k
   - after 2nd refit 9k (installation of 1 position for central rangefinders)

Interesting part to notice:
- As you can see decrease of maintenance costs is after 1st refit and installation during construction (change of FC) is not considered as refit for this case (see example 7).
- Strange example of 2A refit as maintenance costs decrease further - I will check it as I will able to get to my old save as it is quite strange
- Interesting 3rd refit in case of example 8. As original turrets were 1,2,3,4 with no centerline turret, even refit on old protected cruisers allow to add 2 additional centerline turrets. With this type of refit you can achieve having 6 turrets with 4 turret broadside but! with 3 turrets able to fire forward or aft without even double turrets. This could be quite interesting on raiders as even small raiders could achieve firing 3 turrets aft which is much more AI is able to do on even large cruisers till double turrets
- 1st refit decrease maintenance costs around 3-4%, additional ones just slightly increase maintenance costs

[JagdFlanker]

interesting!

i often do a blank refit of a new build anyways so any other new tech i researched since i designed it will be added, and i won't put the ship on active fleet until my crew quality to go up to fair so it's no loss of time for my purposes

[bcoopactual]

dorn , thank you for sharing your data.  I'm concerned about your examples where the fire control was updated during construction increased the maintenance cost to reflect the new fire control where what I saw did not.  I'll show you what I'm talking about:



The three highlighted armored cruisers were all updated to the same capabilities (Central fire control was added) three different ways with three different maintenance costs afterward.  Memphis had fire control added during construction, Seattle had fire control added after commissioning by using the same rebuild file as the computer used for Memphis (R 1905) and Charlotte was rebuilt using the normal method with a scratch rebuild file (R 1905a).  And you can see, the control ship Missoula below them was completed in the original configuration and its maintenance costs are the same as the "added during construction method".  

Sept 6, 2018 2:08:02 GMT -6 dorn said:

I have another question which I do not study. When I do refits I did not go to red numbers about displacement. Is it possible that if you allow small red numbers that the ship get some negative trait when reconstructed? If so than doing automatically refits has another benefit.

I didn't know because for the most part I rarely take my refits into the red tonnage either. I decided to make a test game where I made each ship its own class. 12 B, 8 CA, 16 CL were built as part of the legacy fleet and under construction at the game start and 20 DD laid down in 1900-1901. I clicked turn to fast forward the game to 1906. I then made refits for every ship upgrading the fire control and alternating between slightly overweight, overweight and considerably overweight and also rotated the type of equipment I added to make the ships overweight, i.e. slightly overweight with added weapons, overweight with armor, considerably overweight with propulsion and then the next would be slightly overweight with propulsion, overweight with weapons and then considerably overweight with armor, etc, etc.



I made a copy of the gamesave folder and then ran through turns until all of the refits were complete. 56 ship classes, all of them had varying numbers of negative float points due to being overweight but there were zero negative events like overweight or underspeed. I recopied the gamesave folder and repeated those steps four times for a total of 224 ship upgrades of various classes and severity of being overweight. Zero negative events.

So it looks like those kinds of events (at least for RTW1) are reserved for new construction ships only.

[dorn]

Sept 6, 2018 5:49:34 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

dorn , thank you for sharing your data.  I'm concerned about your examples where the fire control was updated during construction increased the maintenance cost to reflect the new fire control where what I saw did not.  I'll show you what I'm talking about:



The three highlighted armored cruisers were all updated to the same capabilities (Central fire control was added) three different ways with three different maintenance costs afterward.  Memphis had fire control added during construction, Seattle had fire control added after commissioning by using the same rebuild file as the computer used for Memphis (R 1905) and Charlotte was rebuilt using the normal method with a scratch rebuild file (R 1905a).  And you can see, the control ship Missoula below them was completed in the original configuration and its maintenance costs are the same as the "added during construction method".  

Yes, it is a little strange. 
I think that all methods should have same maintenance costs. And that implementing different fire control during construction should cost a little less than doing it after launch of the ship. Blank new ship with such a design should be less expensive.

I think that formula for maintenance cost for new built ships are based on costs of the ship. However doing it through refit or during construction it adds only maintenance costs modifier based on cost spent. This creates 3 numbers of maintenance costs based of different way of installment. However it would be better if maintenance costs are based on design only. 

[bcoopactual]

Well at three months before commissioning the ship is essentially physically complete. There might be some minor equipment like tertiary guns or searchlights still being shipped on board but mostly the crew is testing equipment and ordering repairs for things that fail, bringing bedding and personal effects on board if they haven't already moved on-board ship, bringing on the remaining operational paperwork like manuals and office and pay records, etc. And cleaning. Lots and lots of cleaning around shipyard workers so the ship looks pretty when all of the high muckety-mucks arrive for the commissioning ceremony. Believe me, when you see pictures of commissioning ceremonies with a perfectly brand-spanking new ship looking ship, the crew did most of that work outside of probably the painting, not the shipyard. Been there, new commissioned the USS New Hampshire (SSN 778).

Tangent aside, the point is I don't think it would be much less work or cost installing the new fire control a few months before commissioning rather than right after because the ship is mostly complete by the point prior to commissioning anyway.  And picking a single time three months before commissioning to check for available fire control upgrades simplifies writing the game code.  One of those things that is accepted as a necessary simplification because it is ultimately a game and the developers have a limit to their manpower and budget.  

While I think that the maintenance cost following either replacing the FC before commissioning or using the same, computer created ship file probably ought to be the same I do actually like the fact that after manual refits, at least the first one, you see some savings due to assumed design improvements.  I can also rationalize further refits not seeing the same benefit because as a ship ages, it reaches a point where it becomes increasing difficult and expensive to maintain it so just making some minor upgrades probably wouldn't make much dent in the increased upkeep costs.    

[bcoopactual]

Okay sorry for the double post.  

After aeson got me to look at the last turn costs of ship construction I thought my initial assumption that when you add fire control during construction you are essentially paying for a full turn of new construction to add the fire control was wrong because I was seeing more money in the funds after completion than I thought there should be (like 75% or more of the cost of a turn's construction more).  Turns out I was right but my entire understanding of ship costs and the budget seemed to be off so it appears that my initial assumption was correct just not for the reasons I thought.  

In the Nuclear training pipeline we called that "answer by accident" and the student received little credit.  

Part of the problem was I had made a half-a**ed effort at data taking because I thought I already knew the answer and was just looking to confirm.  Big no-no and shame on me.

So I went back to a previous save (tangent - I got in the habit early on playing the game to save the entire gamesave# file every January turn so if I got half-way through and wanted to try a different ship concept I didn't have to replay all of the beginning turns.  It's turned out to be handy even though I rarely go back for the original reason) before war started with Germany because I wanted more stable economics that don't rise and fall with each win or loss.

I fixed the tension with Germany and added some funds so I wouldn't have to interrupt construction and then went back through the final year or so of construction for the eight Mississippi and Memphis-class ships.  Here is the full file of data I collected:

Fire Control Added During Construction.xls (29.5 KB)

Here is a sample that I can use to explain what I Think I'm looking at but feel free to do your own analysis to make sure I'm not screwing up again.  



In July and August 1904 when Mississippi and Louisiana are authorized to add the new fire control, the game seems to charge the full cost of construction even though only half of the build points are added.  The difference in Funds I believe can be accounted for by the completion of the shore batteries in July and the increase in overall budget in August.  But in October and November 1904, most of the cost was not applied (even though full build points were gained which was more than needed to finish construction) as each months had 1,500,000 more in the Funds than expected.  Those two months are nice because there were really no other changes or events, I can't see that the extra money is coming anywhere but from the completion of the two ships.  So I finished the other ships and saw the same information.

Next I needed to know if that was a function of having less than half-a-turn's build points to finish or if it happened during normal construction also so I then created two new battleships and sped up their construction to the last 4 turns or so and then didn't equipment them with the new fire control as part of their initial construction.  They didn't have the extra zero turn but their final turns (the "1 turn left"), even with still requiring almost a full turns worth of build points, again ended up with significantly more funds than expected (which you can see below) which tells me that the final turn "Discount" is just a function of the order of events in the turn progress.  Ship construction must take effect before the actual final monthly balance is calculated and then added to funds for the beginning of the next turn.  



So it looks like it does effectively cost about a full turns' construction to add fire control during initial building so I believe the conclusions of my first post stand.  Anybody want to double check my reasoning here I would appreciate it.