WesWorld

Historically all navies lost ships in non-combat incidents, either as a result of technical failure, human error or mother nature striking back. The Honda Point incident where the US Navy lost 7 DDs in 1923 is a good example. However, those incidents are very rare in WesWorld.

How do you handle peacetime losses?

I sense that players who deliberately give away ships that way fall behind to those that do not and take on costs they can never really compensate (same for wartime losses, but there it is obvious losses do happen and whoever agrees to script a war should be aware of it). Is this an issue that needs to be adressed?

Bharat's had a few peacetime losses - and plenty of wartime losses.

Our budget system doesn't encourage such realistic behaviour. Our economies collectively continue to reflect WW1 era capital ship construction regardless of post-war industrial growth or contraction, peacetime losses, and such. On that basis, it's easy for somebody to feel they need to hunker down and protect every hull they've laid down, because they are essentially irreplaceable.

Peacetime losses are, in my eyes, part of the roleplay. So it lay in the hand of every player, which ships will be lost.

Given the constraints of the budget and build-time constraints of the sim, no player is encouraged take the luxury of peacetime losses, no matter how realistic such may be. I do not see any reason for change our rules and develop a system to force players to do so. Moreover, the incidents of such losses were, historically, relatively few in the period in which we are playing. The Honda Point Disaster is considered such due to the unusual nature of the loss.

When I was playing the US the first time I used the structural failure and loss of a destroyer as a catalyst for a new building program, finally pushing it through Congress after years of foot dragging. And then, of course, you had the Philippines. BOOM!

I lost MN France on the historical date.

Then I had a BB and a DE damaged by PRS Palawan's explosion.

So my losses have either been actual historical events, or part of a story line.

I've lost a late WW1 era cruiser to a pirate ship and had a Battleship collide with a destroyer sheering off its bow but no outright ship losses in peacetime.

I caused the above pile-up that also included Invincible, Hood, Repulse, Renown, and some other Lantean ships, in one Fleet Problem.

I also swamped a bunch of Irish and other ships. by sending a Hurricane through another Fleet Problem.

Quoted

Originally posted by ShinRa_Inc
I also swamped a bunch of Irish and other ships. by sending a Hurricane through another Fleet Problem.

Yes - that one damaged all five of Ireland's major surface combatants. None sunk, but all requiring repairs...

A few years ago I had two Bulgarian torpedo boats collide and burn, and one of the Bulgarian cruisers (one of the old ones) suffered an engine fire.

I've not had any accidents happen to Chilean or French ships that I recall, but the Chileans have lost a few ships to war - including that one incident where a Chilean destroyer tried to sink Peru by ramming...

Hmmm, "tried to sink Peru by ramming..." is that Captain getting the WW Darwin award?

Quoted

Originally posted by Vukovlad
Hmmm, "tried to sink Peru by ramming..." is that Captain getting the WW Darwin award?

Capitan Aurez would have had to gotten himself killed by a particularly stupid act in order to qualify. As he neither got himself killed (or anyone else) and was not doing anything particularly stupid at the time, he doesn't qualify.

The Chilean destroyer captain who had fired torpedoes at Aurez's ship, however, got a boot to the backside, right out of the Armada.

Well the way you wrote it he tried to sink a country by ramming

Thought about it, but haven't had any peacetime losses.

A target battleship got holed below the waterline and got repaired, but that was storyline pretext for the Dutch exploring the "diving" shells and going the IJN route. It's just a pretext that cost me tonnage. However, my refits and rebuilds of the experimental ships are for the same reasons.

The Belgians just hauled a cruiser in for a rebuild, as the original design was deliberately bow heavy and overstressed, as a young navy tried to stuff to much into a vessel.

Edit : Remembered I did a refit on CV(x)Hund as a storyline matter, saying the original elevators and other arrangements on the Dutch 1st try at a carrier needed updating now that they had a better idea of what they were doing.

I also have a bunch of "experimental" vessels which have been refitted once or twice to reflect installation of new gear for sea testing.

Quoted

Originally posted by Vukovlad
Well the way you wrote it he tried to sink a country by ramming

It was presented that way for humorous effect, yes.