Removal of the 12 Ship Build Limit

[rayleo02]

Having a limit of only being able to order the construction of 12 ships at once is a bit restrictive especially for mass produced ships like Destroyers and escort ships and the like.

[seawolf]

Jun 4, 2021 14:37:54 GMT -6 rayleo02 said:

Having a limit of only being able to order the construction of 12 ships at once is a bit restrictive especially for mass produced ships like Destroyers and escort ships and the like.

To add to this, a more detailed system of bonuses for mass production would be nice.  Building 100 destroyers at the same time should give some pretty big cost bonuses

[dorn]

Or may it can be opposite as shipyards would have a lot of work so taking other orders can be even more expensive.

[akosjaccik]

"Building 100 destroyers at the same time should give some pretty big cost bonuses" - Would it, though? It's not like you are stamping sheet metal parts and you can just give a bulk cost reduction. You have X amount of slipways, welders and other skilled labour, your supply chain has a given cross section for throughput, if you cause some shortage, raw material prices will go up and so on. And then there is the issue that okay, you swamp your industry by ordering 100 destroyers, then after that's done, what happens? Where will X thousand workers go? So it's not like making small arms (or even a/c to a degree), where you basically just run the factory for longer with the already available tooling. So I don't see why you would get "pretty big bonuses".

[fredsanford]

OP is asking an interface question I believe. You can order more than 12 ships in a turn, you just have to do it is 12-ship max steps. And to answer what I think is OP's question: beats me.

[mobeer]

There's two things here:

1) UI limits the number of ships to 12 at a time - that seems like an easy change but also very minor advantage over just ordering ships more often, like a few each month.

2) Game lacks a detailed model of shipyards and industry. I particularly note this with submarines, where the player can never build a sub until say 1940 and then build large numbers of reliable submarines, starting an industry from scratch.

[nimrod]

Jun 4, 2021 16:09:07 GMT -6 dorn said:

Or may it can be opposite as shipyards would have a lot of work so taking other orders can be even more expensive.

Good point. I would argue that was mostly seen though when a new naval technology (as opposed to construction technology) was introduced and the required skilled labor was in very short supply. This I believe can be best seen with the rapid expansion of early nuclear submarine construction in the USSR, but it was also a major issue when going from coal to oil for a number of nations as well. New weapons be it guns or missiles / armor schemes also played havoc with some construction programs, as the suppliers of the weapons / plating ran into production or QC issues.

In normal mass ship building programs, the yards were heavily incentivized to get the ships out ASAP to an established design that was adopted due to its suitability for mass production. Financial incentives included the yard being paid in full when the ship left the dry-dock rather than at her commissioning / after the shake-down cruise once problems had been seen and rectified. Likewise governments generally allocated sufficient raw materials so as to not hold up construction - problems did affect nearly all countries in WWII in regards to battleship grade armor plating and concessions were usually made. The Iowa's for example had variations in the Type B turret armor. The Flower and Eagle classes are great examples of a ship design being adopted due to its ease of construction / number of yards able to build it.

As such, the yards when spurred with large wartime orders would adopt new technologies / methods of construction to ease raw material shortages or skilled labor shortages... Ease of construction was the driving force for the switch from rivets to welds; and welds had a lot of early issues such as cracking in rough or very cold seas. Later QC checks on the welds, and having to re-do the welds slowed construction times down but times were still shorter than with rivets and the reduction in skilled labor certainly allowed for reduced construction costs; even as some work had to be redone. 

The rivet to weld industry change can be quickly read at: careertrend.com/the-difference-between-a-welded-vessel-a-riveted-vessel-13653850.html.