Short range and rebuilding of the ship

[vonfriedman]

Starting with a legacy fleet, it often happens that you find yourself with a number of strategically important warships (e.g. battlecruisers) with short range.
Apparently (unless you intervene on the game ship files) it is not possible to restore the range, if you want, from "short" to "medium", even during a very extensive, prolonged and expensive rebuilding.
Frankly, I don't understand the reason of this. With new boilers and engines, presumably smaller than the original ones (or deliberately designed smaller for this very purpose), it shouldn't be impossible to create additional fuel tanks.

[nimrod]

No argument, think it is coding limitations.

Its fairly common knowledge that ships that went from coal firing to coal & oil or straight oil firing generally increased their max operational range... Coal is very heavy per BTU compared to oil and oil can also be compressed to an extent (tanks filled with CO2 or other non-flamable gas for fire / explosion mitigation) - the exact BTU per lbs difference depends on the grades.

Just for reference on the coal & oil firing - www.world-war.co.uk/cavendish/cavendish_class.php "The boilers were arranged initially for dual firing, 4 coal and 6 oil, to increase their sphere of action."

The non-coding issue would be the amenities for the crew - medical facilities, food storage, better bunks, sufficient electrical supply, etc. - short range is intended to represent limited amenities wile long / extreme range include more stuff to keep the crew functioning while away from a port (why their is a cramped option with short range, and I think the extra amenities are built into the long and extreme range tonnages as well)... One could also argue that the "range setting" would impact the strength of the hull - ability to withstand weather damage... (Japanese fourth fleet incident comes to mind.)