Unable to order ships from Russia and Spain

[beastro]

Playing a game with the Netherlands where I brought in Spain and Sweden. Tension between France and Russia are high, but they have almost no BBs yet (Russia has one and one building, France only 1 building) and wanted to give them a boost like I sometimes do by lowing tension in the RTWGame file, ordering some ships and then setting it back for them to seize when war breaks out.

Went fine with France, but I'm unable to order any from Russia nor Spain as well, but am able to order from Sweden.

Is there an option in the files to turn on ordering from foreign nations under their part of the RTWGame file elsewhere? I've peeked around but I can't see anything that stands out that has worked.

[aeson]

If Russia and Spain have the Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry modifier, you cannot order ships from them. It'll be listed in the nation page of the Almanac if they have it, and if you want to do so you can remove it in the save file. Change UndevelopedShipbuildingIndustry=1 to UndevelopedShipbuildingIndustry=0 to turn it off in the save file.

Powers which start the game with undeveloped shipbuilding industries - Russia, Japan, Spain, and the CSA in the base game, and probably some modded powers also have it - can also naturally lose the modifier at some point in the game; Japan, for example, usually loses it sometime in the mid-1910s to early-1920s, though Russia tends to lose it a bit later. Also, I will just say that Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry is not an entirely-negative modifier; while it makes your ships take 10% longer to build, it also spreads their construction cost over 10% more time, which eases pressure on the budget somewhat.

[beastro]

Ahhh, k.

Tested that with Spain and got nothing, but works for Russia. Spain still isn't working, hmmm.

[beastro]

I left Spain's tension with me untouched, durr.

Works, thanks!

[generalvikus]

Jan 1, 2019 22:56:24 GMT -6 aeson said:

If Russia and Spain have the Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry modifier, you cannot order ships from them. It'll be listed in the nation page of the Almanac if they have it, and if you want to do so you can remove it in the save file. Change UndevelopedShipbuildingIndustry=1 to UndevelopedShipbuildingIndustry=0 to turn it off in the save file.

Powers which start the game with undeveloped shipbuilding industries - Russia, Japan, Spain, and the CSA in the base game, and probably some modded powers also have it - can also naturally lose the modifier at some point in the game; Japan, for example, usually loses it sometime in the mid-1910s to early-1920s, though Russia tends to lose it a bit later. Also, I will just say that Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry is not an entirely-negative modifier; while it makes your ships take 10% longer to build, it also spreads their construction cost over 10% more time, which eases pressure on the budget somewhat.

How does the effect of slower construction compare to simply pausing construction for one month out of every ten, since you still have to pay a certain cost for ships whose construction is halted (I think it's the maintenance cost?) Presumably the underdeveloped industry modifier also increases the chance of negative random events during construction, such as delays or not meeting the design speed? 

[aeson]

Jan 16, 2019 19:47:46 GMT -6 generalvikus said:

How does the effect of slower construction compare to simply pausing construction for one month out of every ten, since you still have to pay a certain cost for ships whose construction is halted (I think it's the maintenance cost?) Presumably the underdeveloped industry modifier also increases the chance of negative random events during construction, such as delays or not meeting the design speed? 

Nominal total construction cost is a constant regardless of the construction time modifier - a battleship built in British yards in 27 months has exactly the same estimated total construction cost as an identical battleship built in Japanese (+10% construction time for undeveloped shipbuilding industry) or Italian (+10% construction time for poor education) yards in 33 months or in Russian yards in 36 months (+10% construction time for undeveloped shipbuilding industry and a further +10% construction time for poor education). You pay one half the nominal in-service upkeep cost for a ship whose construction is suspended; for a capital ship, this works out to roughly one-fifteenth the nominal monthly construction cost with no construction speed modifiers, or about one four hundred and fiftieth of the nominal construction cost. Assuming no other delays, then, suspending construction for one month in every ten would increase the total construction cost of the ship by about one part in one hundred and fifty - roughly 0.7% - compared to building an identical ship in a yard with a 10% construction time penalty, all else being equal.

As to construction delay events, my opinion is that the probability of a construction delay event is not high enough for three months more or less to significantly affect the expected number of construction delay events encountered while building the ship, though the six months extra time taken to build Russian capital ships domestically might be. I do not, however, know the probability of construction delay events and so cannot state this with complete certainty, nor do I know if the probability of construction delay events is independent of the national characteristics modifying construction times.

As to the likelihood of negative events such as failure to meet design speed or the design exceeding design weight, the manual indicates that ships built by powers with the Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry national characteristic "are more prone to have unexpected faults, like not reaching their design speed." No similar statement is made for Poor Education, though I would not be surprised to learn that such problems were more likely with Poor Education. How much more likely, I cannot say.

I will also say that, at least insofar as I am aware, planning to suspend construction for one month in every ten is not something that the game is programmed to allow the computer to consider when it budgets its construction programs. Rather, I strongly suspect that what the computer does is that it comes up with a ship that it wants to build and then asks each turn "can I afford this given my current budget and reserve funds" until it has either laid down as many ships of that type as it wants or decides to design a new ship. I the player can say "I need a bit more money for this construction program that I want, so I'm going to deliberately add a couple extra months into the construction times of my ships to get a couple extra months of funding to pay for the program," but the computer, so far as I am aware, will not do the same.