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Post by vonfriedman on Oct 11, 2022 13:16:50 GMT -6
When a new fire control system appears, any ship under construction can be equipped with it, with a small delay in entering service.
However, if an improved type of cannon appears (eg -1 to 0 etc), it is not possible to do something about it during construction.
In my opinion, if there are many months (say 12 months or more) to complete the ship it should be possible to choose the new guns instead of continuing to install the old ones.
I wonder if there are historical precedents in this regard, which could support my thesis.
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Post by zederfflinger on Oct 11, 2022 13:22:00 GMT -6
Not sure about this one, I've heard that guns are major lead items, but I'm not sure what exactly that means. I'd like to see guns really fleshed out in the future, but who knows if that will ever happen.
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Post by vonfriedman on Oct 11, 2022 13:50:12 GMT -6
If I am not mistaken with the current rules you can replace the guns of a ship with those of a new type in 4-6 months with a relatively limited expense.
The long development period of any new gun type should be, in essence, the one it takes research to pass, say from -1 to 0 etc.
Having defined the type, the actual construction of a set of new big guns should take - in my opinion - a year or so. 18 months? 24? Any one is fine with me, in order not to find myself, during a war, with a brand new ship and very old guns.
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Post by golingarf on Oct 12, 2022 9:03:19 GMT -6
Really you should be able to do "open design for rebuild" at any point during construction, and change to the rebuilt type. This would affect basically everything except hull and armor (and also machinery unless you do a machinery rebuild). Estimating a reasonable additional cost and time is hard, but perhaps something simple like:
Let X and T be the cost and time for a rebuild of the completed design, respectively, and let C be the fraction by which the ship under construction is completed (i.e. number of months under construction divided by construction time required.) Then time added to construction = min(1,C*T) (in months) and total cost added is C*X. (Edit: plus increased chance of "unexplained delays" perhaps.)
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Post by golingarf on Oct 12, 2022 9:11:07 GMT -6
Only problem I can think of with the above is that it can be exploited to make purpose-built carriers before you have the tech. But that's easy to fix, and anyway carrier rebuilds are already highly exploitable. (Maybe until you get purpose-built CV they should require you to use a ship at least X years old?)
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Post by wlbjork on Oct 12, 2022 21:38:16 GMT -6
When a new fire control system appears, any ship under construction can be equipped with it, with a small delay in entering service. However, if an improved type of cannon appears (eg -1 to 0 etc), it is not possible to do something about it during construction. In my opinion, if there are many months (say 12 months or more) to complete the ship it should be possible to choose the new guns instead of continuing to install the old ones. I wonder if there are historical precedents in this regard, which could support my thesis. Closest I can think of was the 1939 King George V battleships and their US equivalents (South Dakotas?). During the KGV's design phase there were options for 14", 15" and 16" main armament, whilst the Naval Treaties in place capped main armament at 14". Eventually, the RN conceded that they could no longer wait to invoke the armament escalator clause as it would impose an 18-month delay on construction which they couldn't afford. The US could afford the delay and so waited. Edit: This was, of course, a change of calibre and not merely a better gun of the same type. However, wasn't there a German pre-dreadnought that had longer guns on the outer turrets and shorter guns on the centre turret due to such an event? |
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Post by jwsmith26 on Oct 15, 2022 9:44:51 GMT -6
Edit: This was, of course, a change of calibre and not merely a better gun of the same type. However, wasn't there a German pre-dreadnought that had longer guns on the outer turrets and shorter guns on the centre turret due to such an event? That ship was the SMS Brandenburg. |
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Post by beastro on Oct 17, 2022 22:10:51 GMT -6
When a new fire control system appears, any ship under construction can be equipped with it, with a small delay in entering service. However, if an improved type of cannon appears (eg -1 to 0 etc), it is not possible to do something about it during construction. In my opinion, if there are many months (say 12 months or more) to complete the ship it should be possible to choose the new guns instead of continuing to install the old ones. I wonder if there are historical precedents in this regard, which could support my thesis. Unless a turret and barbette are designed for a gun it requires a good amount of work to fit a new gun, even of the same type. Replacing guns isn't like slapping a new radar and fire control array that is little different than the rest of the outfitting that a ship receives before becoming operational.
The handling system and other things have to be modified at best, and at worst, they could be completely incompatible and a massive rebuild was in order.
Look at what happened to the Iowa's. They were originally going to reuse the 16in 50cal guns of the original South Dakota class, but once it was revealed that their barbettes would not fit the turret another bureau had designed, the new lighter version 16in 50cal that they would up having had to be rush developed to fit the new design limitations. Had they not done that then the barbettes would have had to be ripped out and that would have greatly extended their design time given how integrally buried they are in the hull.
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