Help deciding whether to upgrade my BC's :3

[snwh]

So It's 1927, I've been fighting on and off with france for years now, and war is looming once again. They seem to have a penchant for BC's, and are cosntantly churning them out, and whats more, they're generally better than mine. (maybe its because I keep blowing them up?)

Anyway, I estimate I have about a year, at most two, before they're knocking on my doorstep again. And most of my BC fleet is rather obsolete.

First we have the Chiaki class

Commissioned in 1916, It wasn't the first battlecruiser in the world, but it was a fairly decent specimin. This was right before large caliber guns became commonplace, and so she ruled the waves for quite a period.

She's had basic refits over the years, the last being a full five years ago, but still runs on what is probably a 1913 coal fired engine.

Here's the proposed refit


The pros are that 18" guns are still well over what anyone uses. Most ships I encounter are still 15" or 16", and I think the range advantage will be critical. The torp protection is important too, seeing as the ship didn't have any originally. Speed is much better too. I'm not sure if the bulge will lower the speed or not? (originally it said -2kts) but either way, 28 or 31 is enough to keep up with modern French battlecruisers whereas the original 25 is very sluggish. (it was designed for 26). Also! the design adds three floatplanes, very useful.



The cons are, well, six guns on such a large, expensive ship is not ideal. It's also going to cost a ton of money (but is a lot more likely to make it in time for the next war) almost 6k for 21 months.
Personally I'm leaning towards this one. Although, I may try a different design, where I keep the fourth turret, probably by losing both speed and the additional deck armor, as well as ammo.

The second class is a bit of an ugly duckling. After making the Chiaki, I realized that france was making a LOT of BC's, and I needed an answer, quickly. So I made two ships of a smaller class, immediately after designing the first chiaki.

Perhaps thankfully, I've only had these ships in combat one. it was... questionable. I'm really not even thinking of converting this one, but I thought I would show it anyway.If I do do something with them, I will probably convert them into CV's, although, somehow I skipped over that tech straight to purpose built CV's.


Finally, Just to show off, I thought I would show the aging flagship of my fleet.


With nine 18" guns, this ship has ripped through more than a couple french battlecruisers. It was made as a mini-yamato, and certainly did the job. Biggest and most expensive thing I could possibly make at the time. It was laid down sometime around 1916, and finished in 1919. I don't know if I want to rework it for a higher top speed or not. It's certainly slower than most BC's these days, and its gotten a bit fragile. On the other hand, it has a lot more modern engine than the others, and I likely couldn't save enough space to up the deck armor or something like that.


By the by, Here's what I'm thinking of using to replace them


That, or something a bit smaller :3

Also! The almanac for context!

[faennion]

I'd just put a new engine in there,increase the speed as much as you can and not touch anything else.The firepower is pretty good and it will allow you to slow down a French battlecruiser or two before it can get away.

[luna]

First one is serviceable, the refit isn't. Just replace machinery so it goes faster. The ship itself is obsolete, there is no meaning to investing that much into it. That's like a new ship cost. Even machinery replacement is economically questionable, but there is a valid argument to improving speed. 26 knots is nowhere near enough. It can barely outrun battleships. The guns are adequate. The armour and speed aren't. You can't improve armour, but you can improve speed. Actually, I guess you could improve turret armour as well, but I'm not sure how economically feasible that is. I've never done that in RTW2 only original RTW. I think it's probably quite expensive.

[deeznuts]

Yeah I would either refit as is(probably this considering how tiny your capital ship fleet is) or scrap altogether, that refit is way too expensive and a 6 gun 18 inch(-1) broadside is too weak(just generally it’s not worth replacing guns if they are 14 inch or bigger in the first place since those guns will still be very capable into late game)

Considering your clear intention to go carrier heavy I would suggest making some 30 knots well armed and armoured fast Battleships now so you have funding in the future for the carriers they will escort

[aeson]

If you are not prohibited by treaty from building new ships but still want to rebuild this one due to time considerations, I personally would look for a minimally acceptable rebuild to keep the ship competitive rather than going for the qualitatively best rebuild I could possibly give the ship, and I'd put what I saved on reconstruction costs into new construction. I expect that a bulged ship with a 31kn plant will make 28kn in service, so you might want to compare the cost of the 31kn bulged rebuild with the cost of a 28kn non-bulged rebuild and considering whether you save enough money or can do enough more with the tonnage you save on the engines to make the 28kn non-bulged rebuild acceptable despite the ship's vulnerability to torpedo attack. If you're going to re-gun or up-gun the turrets, I would also look into up-armoring the turrets at the same time, because it's better to have adequately-armored turrets than inadequately-armored turrets even on a ship that's stuck with inadequate belt/deck armor - it'll at least help keep the guns in action and reduce the risk of losing the ship to flashfires even if it cannot save the ship from deck or belt hits, and as long as you're already replacing the turrets anyways up-armoring them at the same time probably won't be prohibitively expensive.

[griffin01]

Refits are generally of questionable value, unless you are bound by a treaty. A new coat of paint, fire control and potentially bulges/machinery would be as far as I would go. Exchanging guns would probably cost you nearly as much as a new ship.

[snwh]

Thanks for the suggestions ^^ I eventually decided that It's going to get a more minimal refit and phased out. I just don't have the budget right now. In fact I'm having a very hard time remaining competitive at all, so I'm probably going to be looking into another stopgap BC, maybe downgunned to 16 inch q0.

On the bright side I can start building a fleet carrier that can hold 72 planes for about the price of a CA right now, so that should help get me back in the game.

I really need to track down where all my budget is going to.

[faennion]

May 19, 2019 15:27:31 GMT -6 snwh said:

I really need to track down where all my budget is going to.

Mothball and Reserve Fleet are your money saving friends.

[griffin01]

May 19, 2019 15:32:46 GMT -6 faennion said:

May 19, 2019 15:27:31 GMT -6 snwh said:

I really need to track down where all my budget is going to.

Mothball and Reserve Fleet are your money saving friends.

Frankly, unless you are really short on ships, ships that are to be mothballed are better scrapped instead.

[luna]

As Japan you probably are very short on ships because your budget is incredibly low. I usually mothball most of my fleet as Japan except the most modern equipment.

[aeson]

May 19, 2019 15:32:46 GMT -6 faennion said:

Mothball and Reserve Fleet are your money saving friends.

Mothball and Reserve Fleet are only really good in terms of lifetime costs, and then mostly just if you're keeping ships in service for a relatively long period of time. Upkeep simply isn't high enough for you to save much in the short term by putting ships into the Reserve Fleet or even into Mothballs unless you're doing it to a relatively large number of relatively expensive ships. I would further expect the more valuable ships of a given category would be kept in higher states of readiness than the less valuable ships, which means that the savings you get from keeping ships around in reduced states of readiness are coming from the group of ships in each category that correlates most strongly with the least expensive ships in that category - meaning that you're not saving all that much on the upkeep of all the ships in that category - as well as with the group of ships that you can most readily do without - which would save you even more money than keeping the ships around in reduced readiness. Additionally, keeping ships around in reduced readiness creates a couple of problems when you want to reactivate ships for a war. The most obvious, of course, is that the crew quality of RF and especially MB ships is typically worse than the crew quality of ships which were in an active status (AF or FS in peacetime, also TP and R in wartime), though at least for RF-status ships this tends to be corrected rapidly and usually isn't too serious of a disadvantage. Still, these are probably among the worst ships of your fleet, at least in their category, and even Fair vs Good crew quality can make a big difference in a ship's combat effectiveness. Perhaps less obvious, though, is that reactivating a large number of ships in wartime is expensive - wartime active-status (AF, FS, TP, or R) upkeep is 50% higher than nominal peacetime (AF in home waters) upkeep while RF is 50% and MB is 80% less than nominal peacetime upkeep regardless of whether or not you're at war, which means that upkeep triples when you reactivate a ship from RF and increases by a factor of 7.5 when you reactivate a ship from MB in wartime. Even with wartime budget increases, reactivating a large number of ships - especially midsize or larger cruisers and capital ships - for a war can seriously strain your budget.

It's certainly not wrong to use RF or MB status to cut costs, but in the short term putting ships into reduced readiness is only going to cover relatively small deficits, and before you decide to keep ships around in reduced readiness for long periods of time you really ought to think about whether or not you'll actually want to have them in your fleet two or five or ten years down the line.

[ramjb]

That first conversion got my eyes popping out of the sockets, given how seriously you were considering it. Look at how much your brand new design costs, and look how much the cost of rebuilding your BC is...just by NOT rebuilding that ship you have 60% of a new one paid and you still own a 12x15'' platform.

It's self explanatory, really .

I do think rebuilds have a place and that they're worthwhile, but kept to a reasonable cost so you get your worth out of them. outside of a treaty handcuffing you from new construction however, there's no sense on trying to keep your old crates "top of the line" because a) it's going to cost a fortune and b) they're still not going to be top of the line anyway.

If you're going to have to operate a ship that's not top notch anwyay at least let it be for cheap. I wouldn't scrap it, 12x15'' is a huge punch; for secondary theaters it's useful, it's still going to be a monster against raiders, in cruiser battles it's going to get enemy cruisers running screaming scared shitless, and if tugged into a fleet engagement it may be flimsy but those are still twelve 15 inch rifles - talk about packing a wallop.

If it was me,I'd reengine it for 28 knots after bulging tops (30k-ish top speed plus bulges should give you that), leave the main battery alone, drastically cut down that secondary battery (honestly, if 16x5'' don't already do the job of a secondary battery, 24x5'' won't either XD), use any spare weight to uparmor the main turrets and increase main battery ammo storage, and be done with it.


The second one...depends on wether you want the hull around or not. I'd consider a conversion but even then it's not big enough for a proper CV and that belt is going to hurt. As it stands even heavy cruisers can have a go at her, and there's no way you're improving that belt so...yeah. Conversion (if viable and worthwhile)...or the torch.

[klavohunter]

BC refits are a pain in RTW2, if you don't keep up with whatever the modern benchmark speed is, your ship ends up becoming a BB.

It makes for some interesting decision-making, whether you just let it sit obsolete, install new engines, turn it into a CV...

[jma286]

The increased importance of armor in this game makes BCs a major risk in the mid and especially late game. Glass cannon late BCs worked well in RTW1 since more heavily armored BBs couldn't resist their guns and the BCs also had a big speed advantage if things didn't work out. Now faced with BBs that can actually shrug off a few hits from their guns, later BCs are considerably less valuable. I wouldn't lay down any BCs after 1925, maybe 1930 at the very latest. Give me a 26-27 knot BB that can absorb some shells over a 30-31 knot BC with the same firepower (and price tag) that's doomed with one or two unlucky hits.

That being said, I think there absolutely is a place in the game for a mid-late game cruiser-killer style quasi-BC, albeit one with a CA designation.

[Tabac Iberez]

At this point your best theoretical refit is to put in a new oil fired engine, add some bulging, and increase the deck armor. 12x15" as a main battery armament isn't awesome as far as main gun suites go, but it'll still get the job done and plunging fire is going to bite you in the ass soon. Old BCs have an incredibly short shelf life; once they're done it's KAPUT and out they go on raider mode.