The Budget, I don't understand it at all

[duzzit]

So, I'm currently playing in the latest patch, with, I believe the 3rd highest fleet size setting. It's 1931, and I'm in a war against the Soviets (Who don't have any possessions outside their core territories) and I just...how does the AI just have so much more -stuff- than I do?


(Ignore I'd set research to zero, was trying to save a bit of cash for a few months)



The French and the Italians and the Russians have smaller budgets than I do, but somehow their fleets just possess so many more heavy units and I legitimately don't understand how I'm meant to compete with this sometimes. I've won the wars I've entered, but for me the loss of a single capital ship always feels harsh, and the AI seems to just possess endless amounts of them.




Basically, my main question is, how the hell do I budget better? Build smaller ships? What do I skip costs for? Is the AI just plainly cheating? Am I underestimating some costs?

[oldpop2000]

Dec 27, 2020 13:03:03 GMT -6 duzzit said:

So, I'm currently playing in the latest patch, with, I believe the 3rd highest fleet size setting. It's 1931, and I'm in a war against the Soviets (Who don't have any possessions outside their core territories) and I just...how does the AI just have so much more -stuff- than I do?


(Ignore I'd set research to zero, was trying to save a bit of cash for a few months)



The French and the Italians and the Russians have smaller budgets than I do, but somehow their fleets just possess so many more heavy units and I legitimately don't understand how I'm meant to compete with this sometimes. I've won the wars I've entered, but for me the loss of a single capital ship always feels harsh, and the AI seems to just possess endless amounts of them.




Basically, my main question is, how the hell do I budget better? Build smaller ships? What do I skip costs for? Is the AI just plainly cheating? Am I underestimating some costs?

Well, the first suggestion is to halt all construction and training. Believe me, war time operations will provide enough training, and more money is needed for maintenance and operations than new ships. In the US Navy it is called O&MN or operation and maintenance navy. Scrap the airships, they only make great targets. Those are my suggestions. Remember you are playing Japan and it does not, did not and still does not have a big national budget for the military.

[dorn]

You have 70 more submarines, it is quite expensive for maintenance. 
How many ship are mothballed or in reserve between wars in your fleet?

AI is excellent at that.

[duzzit]

Dec 27, 2020 13:36:40 GMT -6 dorn said:

You have 70 more submarines, it is quite expensive for maintenance. 
How many ship are mothballed or in reserve between wars in your fleet?

AI is excellent at that.

Dec 27, 2020 19:26:34 GMT oldpop2000 said:

Well, the first suggestion is to halt all construction and training. Believe me, war time operations will provide enough training, and more money is needed for maintenance and operations than new ships. In the US Navy it is called O&MN or operation and maintenance navy. Scrap the airships, they only make great targets. Those are my suggestions. Remember you are playing Japan and it does not, did not and still does not have a big national budget for the military.



888


I don't really put fleets into MB, since my fleet always feels so small I'm scared to put people in reserve, cause doesn't that basically make them useless for months. I'll scrap the airships. Doesn't the extra training still provide substantial aid to my ships in terms of accuracy?

Also, shouldn't I do more construction at war given the increase in budget? I only have 1 operational BB atm.

[oldpop2000]

Dec 27, 2020 15:38:08 GMT -6 duzzit said:

Dec 27, 2020 13:36:40 GMT -6 dorn said:

You have 70 more submarines, it is quite expensive for maintenance. 
How many ship are mothballed or in reserve between wars in your fleet?

AI is excellent at that.

Dec 27, 2020 19:26:34 GMT oldpop2000 said:

Well, the first suggestion is to halt all construction and training. Believe me, war time operations will provide enough training, and more money is needed for maintenance and operations than new ships. In the US Navy it is called O&MN or operation and maintenance navy. Scrap the airships, they only make great targets. Those are my suggestions. Remember you are playing Japan and it does not, did not and still does not have a big national budget for the military.



888


I don't really put fleets into MB, since my fleet always feels so small I'm scared to put people in reserve, cause doesn't that basically make them useless for months. I'll scrap the airships. Doesn't the extra training still provide substantial aid to my ships in terms of accuracy?

Also, shouldn't I do more construction at war given the increase in budget? I only have 1 operational BB atm.

After the wars, I put my corvettes, older destroyers and other ships not on colonial overseas assignments on reserve or mothball depending on the situation. I agree that with a small fleet you need all your ships, but reserve does not hurt that much. Sometimes, you can put some  on reserve, then pull them out, and move others in. Extra training in war can be helpful, but not when budget's are tight. You can try just putting the fleet on gunnery only and save funds that way.

[w2c]

Unfortunately when you said the loss of every ship hurts you more was a very astute point. As the AI can't go to war with themselves, they'll only ever suffer losses when at war with you. This means as a whole that they spend less replacing losses than you will, unless all of your wars are consistently against the same enemies.

As for the suggestion regarding MB and RS, I have to echo the sentiment. Yes, there are efficiency issues if you have to fight with them but the amount of money you can save and thus allow you to build and maintain many more ships is essential. It's important to manage tension and activate your most essential ships when war seems to be approaching to give them time to get up to snuff again but the majority of your fleet should be standing down almost right up to the outbreak of war. The cost savings leading to additional hulls makes up for the less efficient crews. Typically I keep as much tonnage, especially of my more expensive ships, MB'd for as long as I can. There are limits to how much you can keep in that state though so I focus on a few of my best to keep as only reserved and again activate first when war starts to loom. But the rest of my big expensive ones stay mothballed for as long as I can justify keeping them that way. Nearly the entirety of the rest of my fleets stay reserved again until looming war prevents me from continuing that policy. Doing this effectively can nearly double the tonnage you can field.

[oldpop2000]

Here is information from my current 1913 Japanese game.

1913 Japan.pdf (41.33 KB)

[dorn]

Dec 27, 2020 15:38:08 GMT -6 duzzit said:

Dec 27, 2020 13:36:40 GMT -6 dorn said:

You have 70 more submarines, it is quite expensive for maintenance. 
How many ship are mothballed or in reserve between wars in your fleet?

AI is excellent at that.

Dec 27, 2020 19:26:34 GMT oldpop2000 said:

Well, the first suggestion is to halt all construction and training. Believe me, war time operations will provide enough training, and more money is needed for maintenance and operations than new ships. In the US Navy it is called O&MN or operation and maintenance navy. Scrap the airships, they only make great targets. Those are my suggestions. Remember you are playing Japan and it does not, did not and still does not have a big national budget for the military.



888


I don't really put fleets into MB, since my fleet always feels so small I'm scared to put people in reserve, cause doesn't that basically make them useless for months. I'll scrap the airships. Doesn't the extra training still provide substantial aid to my ships in terms of accuracy?

Also, shouldn't I do more construction at war given the increase in budget? I only have 1 operational BB atm.

If you do not put your fleet into MB or reserve, there is big difference between you and AI handling budget as AI does it in very efficient way. It means that AI has probably better free budget for construction than you even if AI has much larger fleet. 

Right now AI is building 2 battleships compared to 4 battleships of yours. So in war maintenance is certainly larger for AI but probably not in ratio compared your and AI fleets as Russia has less aircraft and certainly less submarines.


In peace time having mothballed ships means only 20 % of maintenance costs, reserve means 50 % so the difference is really huge especially if peace takes years and in peace time your maintenance costs takes a lot of money from your peace time budget. To tell you more, I would need to see situation (same 3 screenshots) in peace time. 

[emcie]

I think the biggest difference between you and Russia is what you're building. Looking at their total tonnage their BB's and BC's only have a tonnage of around 30k while the one you have is 42k and the ones you're building are around 52k by the looks of it. I'm in the same situation against Russia as Germany in my current game and have been mopping up waves of squishy underpowered BB's with just a handfull of big modern BB's I just completed. The problem's gonna be the next war when they have a completely brand new rebuilt fleet...

[hawkeye]

Looking at those numbers, I have to ask: Where on Earth do those 12.5k maintenance cost come from?
I mean, we are talking about a single BB, two CV, four CVL and a couple of CL with about three dozen DDs. Yes, there are 80 subs, but even then, the maint costs seem to be out of all proportions

In an older Germany game in 1937 I have:
10 BB - 400,000 tons
6 BC   - 236,000 tons
7 CVL - 105,000 tons
6 CA   - 104,000 tons
174 DD - 158,000 tons
99 KE - 103,000 tons
1 SS  

I am at war, so everything is on active duty (and I am paying wartime maintenance costs) and yet, my total maint amounts to 31k
So with more than 1 MILLION tons of ships, my maintenance cost - during war no less - is little more than 2.5 times that of  duzzit for his roughly 250,000 tons?
Now granted, a ton is not a ton as far as maintenance is concerned, but that definitely doesn't look right.

Oh, I also checked my coastal batteries and I have 73 of those (2 x 4", 55 x 6", 12 x 9" 2 x 11" and 2 x 12") and 26 airbases (60) (only 6 active though, as my war is with Japan, so I only activated those in North- and Southeast Asia)

Edit: What kind of subs are those?
Coastal subs are 30 maint/month (at least during war) but I don't know what a medium sub costs as I don't build more than a single one like, ever.

[duzzit]

Medium Subs are 60/month, should I only make Coastals(or not do any at all?) I've also got about 10 minelaying ones, at 75/mth

emcie : I'm so far keeping a standardized Battleship of 42,000, given AI seems to build 28-32ish k.


Only training I've got on atm is gunnery, it feels the most worthwhile one to have.

What does elite pilot training do btw?

My fundamental issue isn't a fear of me losing the war, because I win most battles, but I always worry as to how little I have sitting in reserve if 'something unexpected occurs'.

Edit: Also, what does putting an airbase in reserve do?

[hawkeye]

Airbases on reserve cost a less maintenance. (my Airbase(60)s cost 36/month on reserve and 130/month when active It does _not_ change the maintenance for planes, as far as I know, just for the base.

Also, wow, those subs are expensive.
Those 80 Subs would be close to 5k per month. That's half as much as my ~1000 single engine and ~200 twin engine planes or enough to support 4 of my 52k BB and/or 45k BC.

Personally, I don't use subs, because 1. I find them boring (there is literally _no_ interaction from my side, the game does everything) and 2. used in larger numbers, they are totally game-breaking.

[duzzit]

Alright, some quick updates, I got rid of my airships, half my sub force, and really went aggressive with mothballing and reserve fleeting, and its now 1941...and I have a lot more ships to use and do stuff with. I never really considered just how much staying full active all the time was harming me.

[oldpop2000]

Dec 29, 2020 5:44:57 GMT -6 duzzit said:

Alright, some quick updates, I got rid of my airships, half my sub force, and really went aggressive with mothballing and reserve fleeting, and its now 1941...and I have a lot more ships to use and do stuff with. I never really considered just how much staying full active all the time was harming me.

Good, glad we could all help. The US Navy mothballed a lot of ships, I used to pass by the mothball fleet at 32nd street Naval Base for years. Eventually they were scrapped. You can try rotating ships in and out of reserve/mothballing and using them overseas, especially for the British.

[jwsmith26]

Putting an airbase into reserve does more than just reduce its own maintenance costs; it will also put any squadrons based there into reserve. This reduces the size of the squadron to about 2/3rds its normal size (thus reducing the squadron maintenance costs) but also reduces squadron experience. If you don't want these squadron effects you should move the squadron to an active base. The same thing happens to any squadron moved into the Reserve. Following a war I tend to collect my experienced squadrons into a few large airbases that I keep active and put as many empty airbases as possible into reserve. I prefer NAS for this purpose because squadrons gain experience faster when in the homeland. However, this does require a lot of micromanagement. Experience is pretty important in the effectiveness of aircraft squadrons, so I am willing to pay to keep my best squadrons active during peacetime.

Regarding airship bases, I generally demolish all airship bases immediately after a war concludes. Airship squadrons do not have an experience rating, so they do not gain experience during peacetime (or wartime), which means there is really no need to keep them around between wars. When I feel that a war is about to start I will build new airship bases in the areas where battles are likely to occur. Airship bases take 4 turns to build in a foreign possession but just 2 months if the base is in the homeland, so it is possible to build them just a short time before a war starts or even wait until the war starts before building homeland airship bases.

Let's look at the figures. Assuming 36 months of peace between wars, an airship base in reserve (at 15/month) will cost you 540 RTW2-bucks for 3 years, but you also have to pay the cost of maintenance for the 8 airships stationed there (doing absolutely nothing during peacetime). There are no savings for an airship in reserve, so at 20 R-bucks per airship per month, the cost for 3 years is a whopping 5760 in airship maintenance, for a total cost of 6,300 R-bucks per airship base over those 3 years. Compare that to the 700 R-bucks cost to build a airship base at the beginning of a war. (I always build airship bases prior to a war. I find that airships actually are quite useful for search purposes, regardless of the year. They move at a slower pace than planes so they act as a second wave of searching aircraft, and the consequences of losing one or two is almost nil.)
 
Concerning mothballing, if my fleet is substantially stronger than the enemy's I will often mothball capital ships while at war, saving even more money than mothballing during peacetime. (Drifting off the subject now.) However, saving money is not my main motivation for this practice; the primary reason I mothball ships during a war is to coax a weaker enemy to engage with my stronger fleet. I have found that the enemy is much more willing to come out and fight if my active navy is roughly equal to theirs. I will mothball older BBs and BCs to bring my active capital ship strength down to within one or two ships of the enemy's strength and find that the enemy is much more willing to fight. I have also found that excessive land-based air will prevent the enemy fleet from accepting battles. By moving aircraft out of the area where I hope to fight I have found that the enemy is much more willing to do battle.