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Post by cplrumrunner on Jun 25, 2019 15:01:47 GMT -6
So there's a problem/exploit I noticed in RtW1 in my Austria-Hungary game and I'm seeing it again in my current RtW2 Japan game; there honestly is no good reason NOT to do 90% of your shipbuilding in foreign yards if you are a low-tech country. I can design a ship, any ship, but especially big capital ships to be built locally, and then start flipping through the various other nations yards till I find the person who can build it better. Only when there's the rare case of me having a unique tech at some point that they lack do I have a good reason to build local. I can go to Great Britain and build the same ship and have it be more advanced, lighter, and oddly enough, CHEAPER.
That's the kicker; I totally agree that a nation like Japan should have to do a lot of foreign building, especially initially, but why does it cost me LESS to build in a foreign yard? There should be some kind of surcharge/tax/profit-margin added on to the final price because otherwise I feel no reason to build local. Also, foreign construction has the benefit of possibly unlocking tech, one more reason not to build local.
Yes, I know there's the chance of losing a ship under construction due to rising tensions, but any decent player can make nice with their foreign builder of choice and keep that from happening.
One thing that could be added would be the option to license build a ship, like Japan did with the Kongos. They had Great Britain build the Kongo but sent a small army of engineers to oversee the construction at Vickers and then bought the rights and tech and had the British even help them setup the factories in Japan so that Japan could build her three sister ships locally.
Another cool feature would be to order specific parts, like guns and engines, from a foreign power to equip your locally built ship, thus you save a lot of money over building the who thing overseas and you get to cherry pick the best options for your ship. This was historically done by the Greeks with Georgios Averof. She had Italian engines, French boilers, British artillery, and German generators. For simplicity I'd say just have the options for machinery and guns.
In summary, this needs to be addressed somehow, because right now I'm in 1919 and still ordering almost every ship from either GB or USA. I feel like I'm gaming the system but other than for role-playing purposes what reason do I have not to do this?
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Post by rugnir on Jul 11, 2019 7:03:51 GMT -6
One penalty for building foreign is that it takes longer. I agree though, for smaller nations it makes a ton of sense, both getting good tech (and dock size) early and also giving a nice tech bonus for almost every ship completed.
With like-for-like technology, it usually does actually work out more expensive - it's just that the bonuses in machinery and armour costs etc that you get from building in a higher tech nation usually offset this fact quite quickly depending on how far you are behind.
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Post by tmp on Jul 11, 2019 13:35:09 GMT -6
One penalty for building foreign is that it takes longer. That's definitely not the case in my experience; quite the opposite in fact -- when playing country like Japan building abroad allows you to get your ship noticeably (a few months in case of heavier units) faster. So yeah, there's currently not many reasons for building your ships at home.
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Post by aeson on Jul 11, 2019 14:52:51 GMT -6
Construction time is dependent on the type and characteristics (size matters, at least at a couple breakpoints; I don't recall if anything else does) of the ship and the construction time modifier of the building nation (Efficient Shipbuilding Industry gives -10%, Poor Education gives +10%, Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry gives +10%; these stack additively with one another if more than one is present, and powers that have the Undeveloped Shipbuilding Industry trait cannot build ships for other powers), but is not otherwise affected by your choice of building nation.
For example, as France in January 1920 on the 1920 start with no treaties in effect: - 32 months to build the battleship Example if ordered from shipyards in France, Germany, Japan, or the USA, which have no national characteristics modifying construction time. - 29 months to build the battleship Example if ordered from shipyards in Britain, which has an Efficient Shipbuilding Industry (-10% construction time) - 35 months to build the battleship Example if ordered from shipyards in Italy, which suffers from Poor Education (+10% construction time) If I were to recreate that design while playing as the other powers, I'd see the same set of results.
(I don't know why Germany's cost and weight differ slightly from everyone else's; probably something got reset when I changed shipyards and I didn't notice.)
There are basically three problems with building overseas within the game: you risk losing the ship if tensions spike for some reason (usually avoidable), your ships might be affected by some of their national characteristics (e.g. ships built in Italy may be more likely to suffer negative trials events because Italy has the Poor Education trait), and you don't actually know how good a lot of their technology is. Granted, you can infer it for things like machinery, armor, and hull weight, and for things like gun quality and integral torpedo protection it's obvious, but things like subdivision, fire suppression systems, and armor quality are not directly visible within the designer and can only be inferred to a very limited degree (e.g. someone offering TP4 probably has most or all of the subdivision and damage control techs prior to that) or maybe read out of the Almanac, and a lot of that is the kind of thing that works best if you build it into the ship rather than trying to add it in later.
Personally, I don't find building overseas very appealing unless there is a significant, readily-apparent advantage to ordering a ship from a foreign yard instead of domestically; a few tons or on big ships even a few tens of tons one way or the other doesn't make much of a difference to the quality or longevity of most designs. I will also say that my impression is that the Undeveloped Shipbuilding modifier goes away faster the more ships you build domestically.
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Post by dorn on Jul 12, 2019 2:07:40 GMT -6
There is one advantage building ships overseas which make it most appealing. You usually build overseas when they have better technology. And after construction is finished you get some transfer of technology to you. I think that ther should be some prestige hit if you are bulding ships overseas and you do not have trait undeveloped shipbuilding industry.
Right now it seems to me that as tension is easily handled if needed the advantages of building overseas are much higher than disadvantages.
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Post by cplrumrunner on Jul 13, 2019 14:51:32 GMT -6
There is one advantage building ships overseas which make it most appealing. You usually build overseas when they have better technology. And after construction is finished you get some transfer of technology to you. I think that ther should be some prestige hit if you are bulding ships overseas and you do not have trait undeveloped shipbuilding industry.
Right now it seems to me that as tension is easily handled if needed the advantages of building overseas are much higher than disadvantages.
I agree. There should be a prestige hit if you go over some percentage of your ships built overseas. Currently I'm in 1925 as Japan and something like 90% of my ships have been built in Great Britain, with absolutely NO penalties or reasons to do otherwise. I can design a ship, say a 13,000 ton heavy cruiser, and the difference between building locally vs overseas is by building overseas I save several thousand on the cost, I get about 300-500 extra tons of displacement to play with, its built a month faster, it has better rangefinders, and all the other tech is better. So please tell me WHY I shouldn't be building overseas? It's almost game-breaking. Plus I have a treaty with them so I don't have to worry about tensions, and every ship I get from them gets me extra tech. So yeah, there really needs to be like a big 10% profit margin tax stuck on every ship you build in a foreign yard, because in real life the foreign yard would be making a profit. It should cost you more and if you do it too much you should start taking prestige hits. That seems to be the best way to fix this exploit.
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Post by aeson on Jul 13, 2019 16:31:00 GMT -6
So yeah, there really needs to be like a big 10% profit margin tax stuck on every ship you build in a foreign yard, because in real life the foreign yard would be making a profit. Domestic yards presumably represent both private and national shipyards - most of the dock expansion is state-funded, yes, but there are also events stating that private shipyards are expanding their docks and thereby increasing your dock size limit, which wouldn't happen if the domestic shipyards were exclusively national naval yards, and historically many of the major powers - including the US and Britain - built warships in both national and private domestic shipyards rather than exclusively building warships in national naval yards. Since both domestic and foreign yards are competing for the same contract and since contracts are often enough awarded to the lowest bidder to offer an adequate product rather than to the bidder who offers the best product, it's very unlikely that bids from foreign yards would be significantly higher than bids from domestic shipyards.
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Post by merkavaiv on Jul 13, 2019 16:50:06 GMT -6
I feel there should be a hard date cutoff for building in foreign yards. For example, historically Britain stopped building Capital ships for other countries after WWI started, and didn't build ships for non-commonwealth nations after 1940 (some corvette and frigate classes being exceptions, can you say Flower-class?). Most of the capital ships they did build were ordered and completed before the Great War, and those that were built for Central Powers nations (I am looking at you Ottoman Empire) were commandeered during the war, and withheld after as war reparations. In the dreadnought era, only the Kongo-class and the South American Dreadnoughts were built and delivered before WWI.
There should be a moment in the game where building in foreign ports just stops being an option. Construction can continue on in process builds (for contractual reasons) but it should end at or before 1920.
Additionally, there should be technology limits imposed by the building powers. England might have 15 inch gun tech in 1905, but they aren't just going to let you have it. That would be a strategic conflict of interest. Real life example is Mikasa; When she was commissioned into the IJN, British built Mikasa was the most advanced battleship in the world, but her British builders had ships under construction for their own fleet that would upon completion eclipse it in capability. That should be a consideration.
Finally, Costs should be markedly higher building in foreign ports, and I am talking cash and prestige. The (insert leader title here) and Naval League aren't going to protest you going out and buying your first BB from the Americans because you don't have the capability to build it as well, but after you've built your first two designs or so, they are going to take affront to you not utilizing your native ship building industry. After all, you've gleaned tech from the ships you have acquired, you should be building domestically, there are jobs at stake after all. So penalties should compound as you continue to use foreign construction.
So I would like to see a 10-15% initial surcharge for foreign builds (We have what you want and you will pay for it) with a prestige hit and cost increases after the first couple designs. I would also implement making each design a "one off". You couldn't build classes of ships at foreign yards. Each ship would incur its own design cost (and the time associated with it). So you are paying a significant premium if you build foreign. You could also factor it license fees and foreign yard maintenance costs (for rebuilds) if you wanted to.
Another way around it would be to only be able to build ships at foreign ports that are based on that building nation's existing designs (as most ships built in foreign yards actually were). Case and point would be the Kasuga-class Armored Cruisers built by Italy for the IJN. They were based on a slightly modified design of the existing Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi-class Armored Cruisers. So maybe limit them to a 10% design change.
All of this is just food for thought obviously.
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Post by noshurviverse on Jul 13, 2019 16:54:08 GMT -6
it's very unlikely that bids from foreign yards would be significantly higher than bids from domestic shipyards. But if a foreign yard had the capability to produce a design that domestic shipyards could not, would you also not expect them to capitalize on that fact and demand a higher price? Maybe some modifier such as "For each tech utilized in design that is not owned by ordering nation, price increases X%", and then further modify X by how many other nations have the tech also? So if Great Britain is the first nation to figure out 14" guns, you can bet they're gonna be charging out the nose for them. But once a couple other nations develop their own versions, the price naturally falls to represent the need to remain competitive.
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Post by aeson on Jul 13, 2019 19:15:52 GMT -6
But if a foreign yard had the capability to produce a design that domestic shipyards could not, would you also not expect them to capitalize on that fact and demand a higher price? Maybe some modifier such as "For each tech utilized in design that is not owned by ordering nation, price increases X%", and then further modify X by how many other nations have the tech also? So if Great Britain is the first nation to figure out 14" guns, you can bet they're gonna be charging out the nose for them. But once a couple other nations develop their own versions, the price naturally falls to represent the need to remain competitive. Private shipyards want to turn a profit, certainly, but they also want to sell you a ship, and if they're "charging through the nose" for something that offers uncertain superiority over something for which you'd be paying closer to cost, it's going to make it that much harder for them to sell you a ship. Eight 14" guns are probably better than eight 12" guns. Are they enough better than eight 12" guns to justify paying 20% more or sacrificing 25% of your armor protection for them and then adding a surcharge because the foreign shipyard is "charging through the nose" for them because nobody else can offer 14" guns? If I can get 10 12" guns onto a design that has the same armor protection as but costs ~5% less than the equivalent 14" design even before adding a surcharge to the 14" design, how does that change things? In the game, I create the designs and I'm also the only person I need to convince that a design is worth paying for. Historically, that would not have been the case - if I'm the shipyard, I need to convince whoever's reviewing the bids that my design is worth paying for despite being 25% more expensive than Bob's design, probably without knowing specifics about Bob's bid. If I'm the guy who reviews the bids and I decide that this bid that's 25% higher than Bob's and comes from overseas really is the best, I need to be able to convince the guy who holds the purse-strings that I haven't lost my mind or been paid off and that this really is something worth paying for, and both I and the guy who's holding the purse strings might have to defend this decision to somebody else further up the line, for example the US Congress when the Navy goes to ask for its budget.
Beyond that, realistically speaking, there isn't just one private shipyard or just one armaments manufacturer in a power like Britain, the USA, Germany, or Italy. Maybe I'm Blohm und Voss and I'm offering a battleship with Krupp 15" guns, but one of my competitors is Germaniawerft and they could be offering a battleship with comparable Rheinmetall 15" guns. Do I risk asking a premium for my design when Germaniawerft might not? Additionally, if I'm trying to sell you your first 15" gun, I not only have to convince you that my design is worth paying extra for but I also have to convince you that it's worth paying the additional costs to set up a supply chain for 15" ammunition and probably also to procure some spare guns, or at least spare liners for the guns, whereas if you stick with guns that you already have in service you can keep using an existing supply chain, and if you really want to cut costs or shorten the construction time a bit you might be able to use some spare guns that the Navy already has on hand rather than building new guns for the new ships. These are not things that you need to worry about within the game, but they're things that would have been issues historically.
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Post by noshurviverse on Jul 14, 2019 1:26:51 GMT -6
Private shipyards want to turn a profit, certainly, but they also want to sell you a ship, and if they're "charging through the nose" for something that offers uncertain superiority over something for which you'd be paying closer to cost, it's going to make it that much harder for them to sell you a ship. Eight 14" guns are probably better than eight 12" guns. Are they enough better than eight 12" guns to justify paying 20% more or sacrificing 25% of your armor protection for them and then adding a surcharge because the foreign shipyard is "charging through the nose" for them because nobody else can offer 14" guns? If I can get 10 12" guns onto a design that has the same armor protection as but costs ~5% less than the equivalent 14" design even before adding a surcharge to the 14" design, how does that change things? I'm a bit confused, because everything you're saying here is the exact thing that advocates for this system are asking for. You're forced to answer the question "Is jumping to the head of the technological line worth the extra cost?". If you're happy equipping your ships with 12" guns by all means continue, but I see future-proofing as an absolute necessity in capital ship design. For that reason, I absolutely will pay out extra if it means I get not only a short-term advantage (having the latest and most powerful guns now) and a long-term advantage (a ship that's still competitive even after 10-15 years). We disagree with whether this cost is worth it, and I'd say that's fine. RtW is a game where you can have a debate over almost every single aspect of design. I also feel obligated that I was envisioning something along the lines of a 5% cost increase for each major tech not researched, reduced by 1% for each other nation that also holds that tech. By "major tech" I'm thinking gun calibre, TDS levels, triple/quad turrets and the like. Yes, except that as you said yourself: So what exactly is the argument here? Everything you said above holds true for domestic shipbuilding in reality, but not in game. Why do these real-world concerns only apply for ordering ships from foreign yards? Again, that's a real world issue that's not represented in-game. And also again, this would apply to domestic shipyards just as much as foreign ones. So...what you're saying is that there should be a downside to using foreign yards to build ships with technology not yet researched at home? Because that's entirely what this thread is asking for.
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Post by dorn on Jul 14, 2019 1:34:07 GMT -6
There is not only one foreign shipyard, they are competitive to each other, not only in nation but also between nations. At start of century there were British, French, Italian shipyards which all offer to build ships for other nations. Their possibility increasing price was limited. In real history it was not about how many tons are free within same design. They have different philosophies in ship design.
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Post by aeson on Jul 14, 2019 10:12:42 GMT -6
So...what you're saying is that there should be a downside to using foreign yards to build ships with technology not yet researched at home? Because that's entirely what this thread is asking for. I'd need to pay the costs to set up a supply chain for 15" ammunition whether I purchased my first 15" gun domestically or overseas. Nobody's going to be making 15" ammunition in any significant quantities if there isn't a market for it, and even if there's an overseas market for it it's not very likely that my domestic arms manufacturers have much of a share in it.
What you appear not to realize is that of all the costs and trade-offs to using 14" instead of 12" guns that I mentioned in the paragraph you respond to here...
... only the surcharge that you're asking for does not already exist within the game. Exact magnitudes of the costs and trade-offs vary according to what technologies you have and what you've actually designed, of course. Who said the arguments only applied to foreign shipyards? I certainly didn't.
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Post by BathTubAdmiral on Jul 14, 2019 11:21:16 GMT -6
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Post by merkavaiv on Jul 20, 2019 18:54:47 GMT -6
The point here is, there needs to be something to make a disadvantage to foreign construction. And currently there isn't one, and that's not right. All the debate beyond this is nice, but in the end, you shouldn't be able to build your entire navy at a foreign yard from 1900 to 1955.
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