Merchant Marine Fleet

[JagdFlanker]

Feb 3, 2022 7:21:50 GMT -4 vonfriedman said:
I hope the handling of both subs and AMCs has improved in the new DLC. In particular, the AMCs should not be designed at will, as they had to be drawn from a pre-existing merchant fleet, which in the period considered consisted mostly of slow steamships. For example, in WW1 Italy managed to have a dozen AMCs, mostly different from each other and with speeds around 15 knots, to the detriment of the merchandise and passenger traffic between the islands and the mainland. None of those ships could be considered suitable for carrying out long raids on the oceans.

(got inspired from the I've never built an AMC. Show me the er' of my ways... thread, and of course it turned into a book so might as well stick it in 'Suggestions' lol)

if AMCs had to be drawn from a pre-existing merchant fleets this could be an interesting mechanic to be added to the game

on the main screen you would have an info box that shows your country's Merchant Marine Fleet size

it would just be a simple number showing the amount of cargo hauling civilian ships based from your country

the Merchant Marine Fleet could contribute a % of their income to the naval budget (the Navy's 'cut' of the economic benefit) just to give more incentive to protect your sea trade

this income could represent a % of the entire naval budget - for land-based economic countries like Russia, Germany, A-H, etc the Merchant Marine Fleet might contribute a tiny part of the naval budget, while sea-based economies like Japan/UK/USA would receive a (much?) larger part of their budget from the Merchant Marine Fleet making it's protection a much higher priority

you could have a separate button/window (like doctrine/research/etc) which lets you set a % of budget to go towards building new merchant ships to allow you to boost/maintain(/ignore) the Merchant Marine Fleet at any given time - boosting should take time to take effect though so you can't just slam the % up to max and get a pile of merchants next turn

however raising this % reduces your available dock size to make room for building new merchant ships so you might have to balance your warship building needs with your merchant building needs

this window may also show the current amount and proposed amount of new merchant ships launched per month with the currently selected % so you can plan out how to fill out your merchant fleet

none of this comes out of your naval budget, but it's cost to you is the loss of dock size, and in exchange for losing the dock size you will gain a tiny bit of naval budget as more merchants are built


if you are a land-based economic country you could probably ignore this entire mechanic and leave everything at default/minimum since investing in a Merchant Marine Fleet wouldn't likely be worth the returns or the effort to protect it outside of maintaining minimum TP requirements (unless they need coal/oil, explained later)



during war your merchant fleet would take losses according to raider/sub activity,

if you are being blockaded your merchant fleet does not make any income

if you wanted to build AMCs you would draw from the pool of your merchant fleet to do so - however AMCs create no income so you would be losing the income from converted ships

however if you are being blockaded and your merchant fleet isn't making any income anyways this might be a way you make your merchant ships more useful (although merchants don't(?) take losses sitting in port, active AMCs WILL take losses)

AMCs would no longer be in the Ships In Service tab, they would also be a number in the Merchant Marine Fleet info box, and would operate automatically like ships on FS/TP

during war perhaps you could also choose to convert some of your merchants to Q-Ships - Q-Ships have their income reduced 50% but are more survivable and (perhaps) are able to (have a chance of?) break through blockades

you would not control Q-ships, they are just another number in the Merchant Marine Fleet info box alongside regular merchants and AMCs

Q-ships could be another % selection, the (small) cost of conversion would be taken from your budget since you are supplying the weapons for the merchants of course, and again it would take some of your dock size away

all Q-ships are automatically converted back to regular merchants at the end of the war at no cost (it's just basically removing guns?)

AMCs can be converted back to regular merchants but will cost you (a small amount?) to do so - it could be an end of war option to convert x AMCs back to civilian merchants, and/or scrap the rest

a possible problem with this system is replacing losses after wars - wars are more common in this game compared to history so you might end up losing a massive amount of merchants, and balancing merchant losses with replacements over a whole game might require a ton of tweaking to make it reasonable and reduce possible micro

also if you are reliant on the Merchant Marine Fleet for your economy and your merchants got decimated in the last war your economy might get really messed up and hurt your fleet building/maintenance for a while afterwards which may be messy and possibly frustrating

also a land-based economic country could decide to ignore maintaining a Merchant Marine Fleet (there would still be a Merchant Marine Fleet, but it would be 'basic sized' according to the game's Fleet Size) and instead that country may choose to take the (small) income hit in exchange for having full control over their dock size and not having to bother committing more than the minimum required warships on TP.   blockading a country like this would have little effect on it since it's much more self-sufficient (again unless they need coal/oil)

of course after 1920 ALL countries (with oil-fired ships) need oil, and if you don't have oil available on your own home territory you will need to protect from blockade to prevent oil shortages

something that could be added to flesh this out a little more is coal deposits - keep it simple like oil, some territories have coal, and if you have to import your coal then you are susceptible to blockade and coal shortages.   so perhaps until A-H gets oil-firing they need a Merchant Marine Fleet to maintain their coal supplies, but once they ditch all the coal-fired ships perhaps the Merchant Marine Fleet takes a much lower priority for the rest of the game

[akd]

I would like to see an option (doctrine? event?) during peacetime to provide government subsidies to private industry for the construction of ships ready for conversion to AMCs that would then make these immediately available at the start of a war with little or no delay.

Armed Merchant Cruisers

Some preparations had been made before the war to convert selected liners into Armed Merchant Cruisers (AMC).56 In most cases these consisted merely of selecting positions for guns, magazines etc and preparing an outline of the work which would be needed, but the two biggest Cunard liners had had gun supports installed whilst building as a condition of the subsidy they received. Most of these preparations were of little value, however, as it was soon found that big, fast Atlantic liners were too short on endurance and were too large a target to be useful AMC, whilst they were much more valuable as transports.

However, by August 1914 thirteen liners were being given a very basic conversion to cruisers. Typically, the conversion took 8 days; for example, in that time Otranto had received eight elderly 4.7in guns which required supports and necessitated cutting away some structure to improve arcs of fire. Magazines, a sick bay, and simple signalling arrangements were added, while much flammable material such as furniture and partitions was removed. A small amount of ½in plate and coal was arranged to give some protection and 200 tons of ballast was installed.

Brown, The Grand Fleet

[navalperson]

May I also suggest maybe an ocean liner option and merchant marine ships to be converted to CV’s or CVL’s I think would be another good idea when you need carriers but the build time for a new one is just too long.

[wlbjork]

Feb 3, 2022 17:46:01 GMT -6 navalperson said:

May I also suggest maybe an ocean liner option and merchant marine ships to be converted to CV’s or CVL’s I think would be another good idea when you need carriers but the build time for a new one is just too long.

This was added a couple of updates ago.

You need to build as an AMC first, then you can convert to a carrier.

[attemptingsuccess]

Feb 3, 2022 17:46:01 GMT -6 navalperson said:

May I also suggest maybe an ocean liner option and merchant marine ships to be converted to CV’s or CVL’s I think would be another good idea when you need carriers but the build time for a new one is just too long.

That was what the Langley and Argus were. Could definitely be cool to allow them to be converted in the CVs/AVs. I'm more inclined to have something like this option because AMCs can currently only be constructed in wartime, so a peacetime conversion should be allowed.

[wlbjork]

Feb 4, 2022 12:18:54 GMT -6 attemptingsuccess said:

Feb 3, 2022 17:46:01 GMT -6 navalperson said:

May I also suggest maybe an ocean liner option and merchant marine ships to be converted to CV’s or CVL’s I think would be another good idea when you need carriers but the build time for a new one is just too long.

That was what the Langley and Argus were. Could definitely be cool to allow them to be converted in the CVs/AVs. I'm more inclined to have something like this option because AMCs can currently only be constructed in wartime, so a peacetime conversion should be allowed.

Build a large AMC in wartime, then immediately on completion refit it with a flight deck and aircraft. Not tried this myself but construction should continue even in peacetime, without the ship being scrapped.

[attemptingsuccess]

I know, but you might not be in wartime when you want to construct a carrier based of an AMC

[navalperson]

Feb 4, 2022 14:39:26 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Feb 4, 2022 12:18:54 GMT -6 attemptingsuccess said:

That was what the Langley and Argus were. Could definitely be cool to allow them to be converted in the CVs/AVs. I'm more inclined to have something like this option because AMCs can currently only be constructed in wartime, so a peacetime conversion should be allowed.

Build a large AMC in wartime, then immediately on completion refit it with a flight deck and aircraft. Not tried this myself but construction should continue even in peacetime, without the ship being scrapped.

Yeah what I was more trying to refer to is that you should be able to do it without going through the process of launching a amc and then converting it after launch you should be able to build a carrier based on a merchant ship hull, one under construction or an existing merchant ship in the fleet like the US escort carrier program.

[rob06waves2018]

Feb 7, 2022 16:04:17 GMT -6 navalperson said:

Feb 4, 2022 14:39:26 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Build a large AMC in wartime, then immediately on completion refit it with a flight deck and aircraft. Not tried this myself but construction should continue even in peacetime, without the ship being scrapped.

Yeah what I was more trying to refer to is that you should be able to do it without going through the process of launching a amc and then converting it after launch you should be able to build a carrier based on a merchant ship hull, one under construction or an existing merchant ship in the fleet like the US escort carrier program.

Historically this has only really been done during wartime, or in the case of a couple of Japanese ships, with an eye on impending war. I'd maybe allow for the building of a couple of AMCs when tensions are high, which cannot be converted until war is declared. Even when this was specially prepared, conversions still took many months. Now, I can see the historical merits of including quick-build wartime escort carriers (6-10 month builds) but they must be treated as AMCs when the war is over i.e. scrapped. The benefits to gameplay would be, like AMCs and <600t KEs, marginal at best, ignored at worst.