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Post by garychildress on Oct 9, 2015 17:41:55 GMT -6
I have a few questions about ship design and more seem to come up periodically, so instead of posting a hundred different threads on different specific questions regarding ship design I will post my questions here. Others are welcome to post questions pertaining to ship design here as well.
1. What does "Colonial Service" do other than add weight to the ship? According to the manual CS makes a ship more "useful" on foreign stations. What does that mean and how does it play out in the game if I check the CS box? Are there advantages or disadvantages?
2. Tertiary guns: I've been limiting tertiary armament a bit in favor of saving weight. Will that come back to bite me ITR later during combat? Is it advisable to eliminate tertiary armament altogether (which I would like to do)?
3. How much ammo is "enough"? I often seem to end up using the ammo button to toggle the weight of a ship so I don't go over or use up any extra.
4. I saw somewhere mention of saving a little weight on your ship designs so that it is easier to upgrade or refit ships in the future. About how much unused weight should I set aside in a ship design for the purpose of future refit?
Many thanks.  |
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Post by trenton59 on Oct 9, 2015 17:59:54 GMT -6
In order:
1: If I remember correctly, it is a 10% boost to the ship's tonnage for determining tonnage on foreign stations, and I believe the only other change is the tonnage needed.
2: It depends, if a ship has a secondary battery of over 6-7" then I will add a 3-4" tertiary battery, otherwise it is rather unimportant due to it's lack of fire control.
3: I use at least 150 rounds per gun, this allows for a ship to still have ammunition after a 3-4 hour battle in most circumstances. More than this is usually a good thing of course.
4: I usually leave ~20-50 tons for fire control upgrades, less than this can result in needing a more extensive refit to fit a new fire control without going overweight.
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Post by tmp on Oct 9, 2015 18:51:04 GMT -6
In order: 1: If I remember correctly, it is a 10% boost to the ship's tonnage for determining tonnage on foreign stations, and I believe the only other change is the tonnage needed. It's 25% bonus, according to the manual. So e.g. a 10k tons ship will count as 12.5k tons when it's in foreign region. |
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Post by JagdFlanker on Oct 10, 2015 4:27:00 GMT -6
2: not worded eloquently, but guns 6" and under are 'DD defense' batteries (they auto-fire against nearby enemy DDs or something to that effect) so if your secondaries are above 6" you want to throw on tertiary 6" or smaller to fill that role. the AI goes that route, but i personally stick with large main batteries and 4-6" secondaries. if your main guns are already 6" or less then you don't even really need secondaries if you don't want
3: i personally try to go close to max ammo since sometimes you have to chase the enemy and only your front batteries will fire most of the batttle, and in that case (admittedly very rarely) i ran out of ammo (mostly with smaller caliber batteries since they don't do a lot of damage and fire faster). in any case you'd likely be safe with 200 ammo, less for bigger main batteries
4: depends on how much refitting you want to do - if you replace the machinery you reduce the ship tonnage by a LOT, but then the refit becomes stupidly expensive. if you want to only upgrade the fire control and your guns (keeping the same caliber but upgrading the barrel) it seems 10t might be enough
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Post by garychildress on Oct 10, 2015 8:39:20 GMT -6
2: not worded eloquently, but...
Sorry, wording changed in OP.
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Post by garychildress on Oct 10, 2015 10:02:15 GMT -6
Question, is it worth it to modernize older ships or is it better to put the funding into building new ones. It seems at first glance like a little bit of a waste to modernize in the game, at least in terms of prestige from falling behind in the race for raw number superiority. Or maybe I'm modernizing too soon to keep older ships up to date. Perhaps I should wait longer between modernization.
My tactic so far has been to design my pre-1900 ships with the most armor and main armament as I'm able while skimping on propulsion and ammo stowage, in hopes that down the road I'll be able to upgrade as technology improves.
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Post by tmp on Oct 10, 2015 10:13:19 GMT -6
Unhelpful answer would be: it depends. Obvious cases where modernizing makes sense would be upgrades to fire control systems, adding secondary directors, extra elevation, swapping turrets with upgraded model you've researched since.
Other than that, I found it may make sense to upgrade (light) cruisers after 10-15 years or so. By then replacing the machinery can allow them to move (nearly) as fast as new designs, meaning you can get a few (again) useful cruisers for a price of single new one, and in shorter time. They can also take advantage of new weapons (above waterline torpedo launchers, mines) that typically wouldn't be available when these ships were first built.
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Post by kirk23 on Oct 10, 2015 10:28:15 GMT -6
Colonial Service
Ships fitted for colonial service are more useful on foreign stations. This costs 60 tons displacement, which simulates increased marine contingent, storage spaces and other facilities useful for extended service on foreign stations.
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Post by JagdFlanker on Oct 10, 2015 16:04:46 GMT -6
2: not worded eloquently, but...
Sorry, wording changed in OP.
sorry no, *my* response wasn't worded eloquently because it was 6am, i had just woken up, and i couldn't think of the right words to phrase 'DD defense battery' properly haha. but i think how it works is your main batteries will go after larger ships, while your secondaries will go after DDs if they are close enough and/or out of range of the primary batteries. i never read the manual (i'd rather just spend that time playing the game) so i got this info from older forum posts but as far as modernizing ships, like i mentioned in my previous response it's pretty expensive to replace machinery (3mil+/month) so full modernizations might not be worth it, but replacing the fire control and upgrading calibre barrel quality only costs maybe $1.2mil/month for 8-ish months which is more reasonable. i would do that after 8-9 years after the ship was commissioned since i *think* a ship become obsolete after 10 years or so and (again i *think*) refurbishing a ship puts off that ship getting obsolete for another 10 years after the refurbishing |
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Post by cwemyss on Oct 10, 2015 18:01:59 GMT -6
Sorry, wording changed in OP.
sorry no, *my* response wasn't worded eloquently because it was 6am, i had just woken up, and i couldn't think of the right words to phrase 'DD defense battery' properly haha. but i think how it works is your main batteries will go after larger ships, while your secondaries will go after DDs if they are close enough and/or out of range of the primary batteries. i never read the manual (i'd rather just spend that time playing the game) so i got this info from older forum posts but as far as modernizing ships, like i mentioned in my previous response it's pretty expensive to replace machinery (3mil+/month) so full modernizations might not be worth it, but replacing the fire control and upgrading calibre barrel quality only costs maybe $1.2mil/month for 8-ish months which is more reasonable. i would do that after 8-9 years after the ship was commissioned since i *think* a ship become obsolete after 10 years or so and (again i *think*) refurbishing a ship puts off that ship getting obsolete for another 10 years after the refurbishing I almost never retire cruisers. Build a fast enough ship with early coal engines, and with two full rebuilds (including engines) you can keep its speed useful while upgrading fire control and occasionally weapons for 25 years. Rebuilds are cheaper, and much faster into the fleet (10 months vs 20+) than equivalent capability new builds. |
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Post by garychildress on Oct 10, 2015 21:47:17 GMT -6
Thanks for the answers and advice everyone. Sorry I misunderstood you JagdFlanker. I had my first *major* victory in sea battle this evening against an opposing force almost equal to mine except the enemy BC only had 4 x 12inch guns and my BC had 6 x 12 inch guns, plus I had a CA and 3 DDs against his 3 DDs. Definitely noticed the difference when our two BCs met in battle. Totally outgunned the enemy on that one. Definitely realistic results I think. Starting to get the hang of this game a little more and the gameplay is addictive. |
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