Reducing magazine capacity

[rimbecano]

I just noticed that a simple reduction of magazine capacity of five rounds to free up tonnage in a refit extends the refit time from 4 to 12 months. Now, the tonnage freed up seems to be about double the weight of the actual ordnance (based on taking the combined weight of shell and powder for a gun of the same caliber), so I assume the extended refit time has to do with adding/removing shelving and other ammunition storage equipment, and I definitely understand where *adding* ammunition would extend a refit, but really, this particular refit only needed the tonnage that would be freed up by the bare weight of the ammunition (about half the tonnage actually freed up by a 5 RPG reduction). Therefore, while I definitely agree with increases in ammunition capacity needing extra time, it would be nice if it were possible to reduce weight by under-loading ammunition (and thus not needing an extended refit)

There are two ways I can see this being done: One would just be to abstract it away and have reductions not extend refit time, and just handwave it as the unuesed equipment being removed bit by bit after the refit is complete. The other way would be to have separate dials for ammunition capacity and actual load in the ship design screen, and have capacity changes take more time, but provide further weight reductions beyond simply reducing load.

[ramjb]

Reducing the size of a magazine means you're saving and freeing space and tonnage for other things: the "new" magazine is smaller, the armored walls needed to protected will also be smaller. You're cutting the existing magazine armored walls and putting them up again to cover the "new" magazine space only. Not a particularily easy or quick task.

To do that you also need to cut open the hull to reach those places first so you can properly work on them. Neither thing was either a cheap nor speedy process.

[rimbecano]

It would still be nice to have some way of recovering the ~1/2 of the magazine weight made up by the contents of the magazine, excluding its structure. With 6x18" guns, you can shave off about 60 tons just by taking 5 fewer RPG aboard, without making any modifications to the ship.

[dorn]

May 29, 2019 1:27:56 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

It would still be nice to have some way of recovering the ~1/2 of the magazine weight made up by the contents of the magazine, excluding its structure. With 6x18" guns, you can shave off about 60 tons just by taking 5 fewer RPG aboard, without making any modifications to the ship.

I usually slightly overweight ships, it is nothing dangerous. And it was done in real history quite often in WW2 adding AA guns.