Effect of old ship status?

[gurudennis]

Apologies if this is already explained somewhere, but I couldn't find the answer in the manual or with a forum search, so here we go.

I observe that there are two kinds of "old ships":

1. Hasn't received a refit in 10 years or so, and therefore shows (O) in the "Class" column.
2. Received a recent refit, but the "Year" column still shows (O) because the original design is 20 or so years old. Minesweepers appear to be immune to this kind of old age.

The only obvious practical effect of the (O) status is that the #1 variety above results in a percentage chance of being auto-scrapped for minesweepers, but other than this the impact of this status is obscure to me. TortugaPower suggested on YouTube that the #1 variety causes lower performance, but he didn't explain to what extent, and whether it also applied to the #2 variety.

What is the exact effect of the old (O) ship status?
Is it different for type #1 and type #2 above?

Thanks in advance.

[bcoopactual]

Welcome to the forum.

I've only ever seen the (O) in the year column meaning the ship is past its refit date.  I even took a early game with legacy ships and changed the date to 1925 and didn't see the second type you describe.  That could be because I manipulated the savegame file's data and missed something instead of actually playing through 20 years while keeping a legacy ship commissioned which I never do so I'm not saying you are wrong just that I couldn't reproduce it.  

The only thing I could find mentioned by Fredrik was that ships with the (O) are less effective in the CP/ASW role.

I fought some battles with that modified save game and couldn't see any obvious effects on crew quality or accuracy during the battles (i.e., there was no negative modifier in accuracy for the obsolete ship and the crew quality value was what I expected it to be for a "good" crew).

The (O) also doesn't seem to modify the maintenance costs since it was the same for those ships as ones I refitted to clear the (O).  

So, as far as I can tell with a little experimentation there is no other obvious effect on having the (O) that I am aware of.  Doesn't mean they are not there, just that I didn't find them in a half-hour of playing around.  Frankly I would be surprised if there weren't some other negative effects and there is always something going on beneath the hood in this game.  

For future reference, search the forum for the word "tidbits".  There is a thread called Fredrik's Tidbits that has various responses that Fredrik has made on the forum about question with the game.  Lots of valuable information there.  I believe galagagalaxian put the original word file together and then JagdFlanker posted the tidbits in a more recent thread so you didn't have to download a seperate file to read them.  

Actually, duh.  I went looking for it to make sure the wordsearch worked so I might as well post the link.  nws-online.proboards.com/thread/1221/fredricks-tidbits-clarifications-extra-info

[boomboomf22]

To my knowledge and experience a ship going obsolete (first O type) is much more likely to suffer engineering failures in battle. In my experience ships that are past refit often suffer the bearings overheating event.

[aeson]

(O) status also, I believe, affects the likelihood of strategic-level mechanical failure events on the interturn in wartime, in addition to increasing the likelihood of the mid-engagement breakdown events that cost speed that boomboomf22 mentioned.

I've only ever seen the (O) in the year column meaning the ship is past its refit date.

Same, and I've occasionally had legacy cruisers ships in service for thirty or more years, or in very rare cases until the 1950 end date, and often keep early DDs around until they sink for ASW/CP work. Additionally, ships built from about the mid-1910s onwards tend to be fit to remain in service indefinitely (though it varies a bit depending on how your technology is doing and how you design your ships), so whenever I play to the 1950 end date I'll often have a few battleships and battlecruisers and somewhat more light cruisers that have been in service for about thirty years.

Part of the ships list from my last USA game, which ended in 1950. The Indiana-class battleships, originally commissioned in 1913 and never given an extensive reconstruction, lack the (O) tag. The Montana-class battleships do have the (O) tag, but are overdue for a refit and my past experience says that the (O) tag will go away when refitted. Lest we get an argument about capital ships being special, note that the three Baltimore-class cruisers commissioned 1910-1911, the three San Diego-class cruisers commissioned 1916, and the 17 visible Birmingham-class cruisers commissioned 1917 are all free of the (O) tag, as are the 23 surviving Decatur-class torpedo boats built for the legacy fleet (1899 commissioning date, so roughly 51 years in service) and the two visible of 22 surviving Perkins-class torpedo boats which all commissioned in 1902.

(There would've been three c.1915 14" battlecruisers in the list, but I accidentally scrapped them in the early-mid 1930s while replacing my 12" battlecruisers. Don't mind much, though; I didn't really need them, and I might've replaced them after the 12" battlecruisers were gone anyways, even if I hadn't accidentally scrapped the three of them in place of the last three 12" battlecruisers. Still, I'm sure some electronic paper-pushers got into hot water that day, scrapping of three 31,400t 14" battlecruisers instead of three 28,000t 12" battlecruisers about seven years older than the 14" battlecruisers.)

1. Hasn't received a refit in 10 years or so, and therefore shows (O) in the "Class" column.

I believe the exact rule is ten years after commissioning or ~eight years after last refit, but I could be mistaken.

[bcoopactual]

Oct 19, 2018 14:25:01 GMT -6 aeson said:

I believe the exact rule is ten years after commissioning or ~eight years after last refit, but I could be mistaken.

Yes, from looking at the obsolete dates in my current game, all legacy ships start with an obsolete date of 3,000 days. which is roughly March 20, 1908.  So they should get the (O) tag in March or April of that year depending on how the game rounds.  (From the game save file, all turns are the on the 1st of that month)

New construction ships get an obsolete date 3,652 days (10 years rounding down leap year days) from the 1st of the month they were commissioned and refits gets 3,000 days (just under 8 years, 3 months roughly same as legacy ships) from the 1st of the month they completed their refit.

Seems to apply to all ships regardless of class. 

Summary - 

Legacy ships in commission - 8 years, 3 months from start of game

New construction - 10 years from commissioning turn.

Refits - 8 years, 3 months from return to service month.

Note - Seems from testing that a new construction ship that is immediately refitted will lose the difference between the 10 year new construction date and the 8 years, 3 months refit obsolete date.  So the date resets to the closer post refit obsolete date.  Just a quirk to be aware of.  I'll do an additional test to verify.  [Edit - Confirmed, I had a battleship go from 7,335 to 6,805 for an obsolete date after a refit immediately following commissioning.] 

 

[gurudennis]

Thank you guys, this is really helpful.

Having checked back on my save file backups where I _thought_ that I saw the other kind of (O) in the Class column, I'm pretty sure it was a figment of my imagination.

With regards to the effects listed so far, is this a fair summary?

1. Old MS get randomly scrapped
2. Old ASW/CP ships are less effective at it
3. Old ships suffer an increased chance of engine failure in battle

Normally, I refit all ships to prevent the (O) status, but now I'm wondering if in certain cases it's OK to give it a pass. As an example, in my current UK run, I went through an awful lot of micro to slowly rotate the colonial 4800 ton CLs out for refits with the sole purpose of losing the (O) status. It seems that leaving them on station would be acceptable considering that a well-designed colonial cruiser can deal with most local threats and therefore speed (or engine overheating) isn't much of an issue, and they clearly don't do ASW/CP.

Do you often let your ships go (O) ?

[aeson]

Oct 20, 2018 0:57:01 GMT -6 gurudennis said:

With regards to the effects listed so far, is this a fair summary?

1. Old MS get randomly scrapped
2. Old ASW/CP ships are less effective at it
3. Old ships suffer an increased chance of engine failure in battle

- My impression is that old minesweepers get scrapped the turn after they gain the (O) status, though I'm not positive about that.

- I believe that ships with the (O) tag are more likely to suffer mechanical failure events (e.g. condenser breakdown) at the strategic level, costing you the ship for a turn or two while it gets its condensers patched up or whatever, or in the case of a raider or other ship operating in an area without adequate base capacity costing you the ship for the duration of the war or sometimes permanently.

- A ship is worth significantly fewer victory points while it has the (O) status.

Normally, I refit all ships to prevent the (O) status, but now I'm wondering if in certain cases it's OK to give it a pass. As an example, in my current UK run, I went through an awful lot of micro to slowly rotate the colonial 4800 ton CLs out for refits with the sole purpose of losing the (O) status. It seems that leaving them on station would be acceptable considering that a well-designed colonial cruiser can deal with most local threats and therefore speed (or engine overheating) isn't much of an issue, and they clearly don't do ASW/CP.

I do not believe that it would be unreasonable to do so. That said, I believe that ships with the (O) status are more likely to suffer strategic-level mechanical failures and so be out of service for a turn or two than ships without that status, so you might want to have a few more spare ships on colonial stations than you would otherwise have.

It is also probably not unreasonable to leave older or lower-value units with the (O) status, especially if you intend to remove them from service in the near future or if the older or lower-value units are particularly obsolete. There's not really much point in taking an old predreadnought out of service for a few months in the mid-1910s if you're just going to scrap it six months or a year after it returns from its refit, and more or less historical early-game CAs probably won't do much better against late-game CAs and decent battlecruisers for lack of the (O) tag than they would with it. Arguably, a sufficiently-obsolete ship might be better with the reduced VP value from (O) status than not, despite the increased incidence of mechanical failures due to having (O) status.

Do you often let your ships go (O) ?

Not intentionally, though I am not always as good about keeping on top of my ships' refits as I would like to be.

[director]

I've had (o) minesweepers hang on for several turns before being scrapped. I thought it was a random chance of occurring, not a hard limit.

[gurudennis]

Oct 20, 2018 2:29:41 GMT -6 aeson said:

- A ship is worth significantly fewer victory points while it has the (O) status.

Do you happen to know by how much? If the difference is significant, this could be a serious, game changing advantage. Consider that the benefit of keeping severely obsolete BC/BB/B around for the purpose of blockading or taking colonies is normally balanced by the fear of losing too much score if these vulnerable old ships are sunk. Being able to mitigate this risk is a big deal, especially for someone like me who tries to gainfully employ outdated ships just a bit longer than may be advisable.

Oct 20, 2018 14:12:51 GMT -6 director said:

I've had (o) minesweepers hang on for several turns before being scrapped. I thought it was a random chance of occurring, not a hard limit.

Same here. I've had it happen to me and most minesweepers survived with the (O) tag for at least a few months.

[Airy W]

A minimal refit of a battleship will remove the (O) status and probably save you more then it costs.

[aeson]

Oct 20, 2018 16:37:57 GMT -6 gurudennis said:

Do you happen to know by how much? If the difference is significant, this could be a serious, game changing advantage. Consider that the benefit of keeping severely obsolete BC/BB/B around for the purpose of blockading or taking colonies is normally balanced by the fear of losing too much score if these vulnerable old ships are sunk. Being able to mitigate this risk is a big deal, especially for someone like me who tries to gainfully employ outdated ships just a bit longer than may be advisable.

I want to say that (O) ships' VP value is reduced by something like 25% to 50%, but I don't know for sure and I don't currently have a convenient way to check.

[gurudennis]

Oct 20, 2018 19:23:31 GMT -6 Airy W said:

A minimal refit of a battleship will remove the (O) status and probably save you more then it costs.

Undoubtedly so, assuming the ship is still fit for active service. For older ships however, given the reduced VP cost of old ships that aeson brought up, it appears that one may deliberately want the (O) tag to be present in case they are sunk while performing purely strategic duties.

As a corollary, I wonder if the (O) tag has any influence on a ship's likelihood of showing up in a battle when newer designs are present in the same sea zone.