I have some other things.
As I play game not from the beginning and now I am much more aware of the aspects of it I find it that there could be several small improvements which could be probably easily implemented and could add smoother experience.
May be some of them has been already implemented on RT2.
- in overal view of ships in possessions (left of map): adding class with actual refit in parentheses (if you are playing large nations with very large fleets, this could help a lot easy transfers between areas as you do not remember all of your ships, especially cruisers and destroyers)
- merge repairs and refits - you can refit ship and if the ships is in yard with damage, merge it and adding small time to refit time could be interesting (this was quite common that ships in repairs get some refit as it was time effective)
- colonial status refit - right now if ship is designed for colonial service, it costs weight and money, however when it is done through refit, it costs nothing on top actual costs of refit
- increase elevation refit - it is free refit - again strange
- CL - usually weight calculation is a little strange close to minimum 2100 tons. You can get better design on 2100 tons (more "free" weight available) than on 2500 tons
- refits - no matter where a ship is when you order to refit her, she appeared in home area after refit. Is it possible to split refits to "smaller" and "large" (eg. costs or time spent) that ships with smaller refit are reappeared in same location and in case of large refit in they reappeared in Home area however increasing time of refit as taking into consideration time to get ship home. It could add realistic and decrease micromanagement to order ships back to foreign station in case of fire controls refits which are the most common.
- construction in foreign shipyards - it was common at start of 20th century however for all the main powers it was usually done only by Russia and Japan to catch by organisation and technology in designs and construction till they were able to build it themselves to help their industry. Later it was built in local shipyards and I think RTW could reflect this as doing foreign design more expensive simulating fact that ships built in home helps economy and prestige. Otherwise it has no reason for less developed naval powers rises to build ships at home where you can buy them foreign with superior technology (except risk by tension and losing the ships by takeover by constructing country but in RTW it is manageable with quite low risk). Main point is eliminating large gains ordering overseas with minimal risk.
This is something my overal picture of one part of game which I find a little behind on overall superb design of the game.
Issue of cruisers (CL)
Cruisers are the most important ships in RTW at least from view of player as there are in almost all combats and most of the combats there are the "center" of combat meaning that the type of mission where cruisers are main workforce is the most common and with large gap before any other type of ships that are larger.
And still there is something I find a little strange on RTW but it is more complex issue. As all type of ships cruisers involved through the time, increasing their speed, using heavily armament, using on type of main armament, using central turrets, using double turrets, better armor scheme and all small issues as increasing efficiency of layout (bridge, mast, bow etc.) having effect on combat capabilities.
However on cruisers design main points in design efficiency in RTW are:
1. technology efficiency (armor, hull, machinery) saving weight thus displacement thus costs
2. speed - as better machinery is allowed this is transferred to speed race of cruiser design
3. armor - better armor schemes from protected cruiser scheme however for cruisers it is not as important as for large ships (this is due to the fact that penetration of 6" guns, later 5" guns become so high making armor less effective in point of costs spent)
4. guns - transfer from 2 centerline turrets to more centerline turrets, later for double/triple/quadruple turrets
6. torpedo - going from submerge to swivel torpedo tubes
note: torpedo protection is usually not used as ships are fast and costs of torpedo protection on cruiser design is too high
This is quite less than battleships design and there I can see a little problem.
Your starting cruisers are not effective. As technology progress you hunt for speed and later with centerline guns possible to more efficiency design with all centerline guns. Another point in advance is double/triple/quadruple turrets substantially increasing firepower. The advance of torpedoes to swivel torpedo tubes is another one.
So if I sum it up there are a lot of small increase in efficiency but only small large leap of technology (guns (centerline, turrets), torpedo (swivel mounts) and may be armor but it is questionable for cruisers).
What happened all the time between this leaps of technology. We are getting better technology which saving displacement thus costs of ship making them smaller (it was not historical) or using the saving displacement to other things. And there is the issue I can see. For what do we use this spare free tonnage?
- speed
- better armored ship or guns mount but this is issue as in late 10s the armor is small value for the costs
- more guns - it is not likely as weight of guns compared to armor is minimal for cruisers
So I will try to get to the point. Issue for the cruisers I see and was not in history is that cruiser going absolute by steps similar to pre-dreadnought to dreadnoughts and by speed. In reality cruisers involve slowly all the time between large leaps of technology.
In game if you design first cruiser with centerline turrets around 1915 (not for UK as it is even early) and than several years later you design another cruiser before ability to build turrets these 2 cruisers would be not so different and certainly not in capabilities. The both ships will be fast enough, both ships would have similar firepower, both ships could have similar armor which are not so efficient. The main difference could be the small efficiency difference that the newer design could be still capable of the older but smaller or 1 knot faster or have a little better armor (usually useless).
In reality this the difference was there as all smaller issue which is not modelled in RTW has impacts making usual newer classes more efficient (see Town or C class subclasses, how they involve and sometimes the differences between subclasses are not possible to design in RTW however increase capabilities of the ships)
Is there a way doing it in RTW?
I have some thoughts to add some variable that is behind all technical data that overal technology has impact on ship performance similar to crew so 1920 cruiser with similar design as 1913 would be more efficient in combat. Something that reassembles increase efficiency of all the small things in historical designs.
