WesWorld

A few thoughts on the infrastructure rules...

* Is it necessary to use materials to construct "new-build" coast defenses (as opposed to guns removed from a ship)? Admiral K. is doing that for his latest installations; I was wondering if that's "how it's supposed to be done" for everyone. If so, do you just spend for the guns, or the guns + armour? In a coastal installation there's no need for a barbette...


* IMHO we need a section of the Infrastructure Rules for "mothballing" ships (a/k/a "ordinary"). It's not really a major concern, at least until the Treaty expires, but smaller ships - and larger ones, for non-Treaty powers, could be affected in the meantime.

My suggestions are:

Any ship can be mothballed at any time. Cost to place a ship in mothballs is 1/2 of the tonnage required to refit a ship (i.e., 1/8 of total light tonnage).

A ship can remain in mothballs indefinitly, however after a 20-year period the ship will require an "inspection", which will cost the same amount as when it was placed in mothballs (1/8 light tonnage).

(--and now for the stick--)

To remove a ship from mothballs, the ship will require a Rebuild (1/2 of light tonnage) regardless of how long the ship was mothballed.

Mothballed ships still count against a country's Cleito Treaty tonnage limits.


Any thoughts?

Time to complete the rebuild from mothballs? We have a small fleet parked not ten miles away (including Battleship Iowa) in mothballs. They say it would take 90 days to get the ships operational. I'm not sure if it is true, but that is what I hear. overcourse I've also heard six months.

Quoted

Time to complete the rebuild from mothballs?

I was thinking the normal rebuild time (1/2 of the time to build from scratch).

I don't know Swamphen, a rebuild to get a ship out of mothballs seems a little steep to me. Not that my vote counts, or that I have a comprehensive understanding of Wesworld rules.

But for reactivation, the ship isn't being structurally or materially changed, but refitted out for service. Is there any rule for refits or regular maintenance of ships? Maybe that would be a better guage...

My thoughts,

Big Rich

Well, I don't think we'd want people mothballing their ships to get out of having to do a rebuild...

Perhaps it could be a refit (1/4 of light displacement, 1/4 of build time) to get out of mothballs, unless the ship is scheduled for a rebuild (30 years)?

A mothballed ship is sealed and locked down, so that the vessel is not under wear nor are its internal components exposed to the sea. The idea is to preserve the vessel as is, to that once it is needed, it can be used in the minimum amount of time. The engines will need to be serviced and all the watertight doors and portholes unsealed and the ship cleaned a bit, reloaded, and recrewed, but unless the ship was in a sorry state of repair when she entered mothballs, or the mothballed ship was not maintianed at all, the vessel should be almost as good as the day it entered mothballs after being reactivated.

Swamphen,

Is there a rule governing the frequency of refits. I. e., a capital ship should be refit every 5 years? Or some penalty associated therewith, each year beyond a the date the refit is due its machinery becomes more difficult to maintain, looses a 1/2 a knot of speed, etc?

And what, if any, is the cost of operating ships?

There has to some advantage to mothballing a ship, and I think 'game wise', it's the ability to redirect the resources elsewhere. The Philippines or whomever wants to spend more resource points on infrastructure, but is hampered by the number of ships in service. Mothballing means those ships won't have to be refit, won't have operating costs, etc.


My additional thoughts,

Big Rich

Also a manpower and fuel saver for when one is not at war, but has a large fleet.

Well, you can find all the gory details here:

http://wesworld.jk-clan.de/thread.php?threadid=153&boardid=4


But the basics are, you need to do a refit (cost = 1/4 of light displacement) after 15 years' service, and a rebuild (1/2 lt.disp.) after 30 years. There are no "yearly maintance" costs (that's something we'll need for WesWorld2...).

If you don't do the refit, you have a "5% penalty to its combat performance" (whatever that means, since we have no combat rules yet) per year that the refit is "overdue". Skip a rebuild, and you get a "5% penalty to all aspects of her operation (combat, speed, damage control, etc) as parts simply wear out".

There's also a "reconstruction" option (cost = 3/4 lt.disp.) for carrier conversions, etc.


My suggestions re: "mothball rules" stem from the concerns, started by Hooman (and which I partially share) that some fleets might be "too big for their britches", i.e. too many ships and not enough men. Mothball rules would allow you to "stash" these ships, for reactivation in event of war, instead of scrapping them.

In addition, this would allow you to "reserve" ships in need of repair, or refits/rebuilds, until you had the "funds" to repair/refit them, without having them sitting around rotting.

Basically, here's how I see "mothball rules", the latest version:

---

2.5 Mothballing ("Ordinary")

Ships may be "mothballed" ("placed in ordinary") at a player's discretion.

Placing a ship in mothballs costs nothing. While in mothballs, the ship "decays" at a rate 1/2 of that which it would wear if it were in service.

To retreive a ship from mothballs, the following must be performed:

If the ship is due for a rebuild, it must be rebuilt before returning to service, using the rebuild rules (2.2.3) (i.e., putting a ship in mothballs is not a way around rebuilding it).

If the ship is not due for a rebuild, it must be refit using the refit rules (2.2.2), regardless of how long the ship has been in mothballs.

Ships requiring repair do not "repair themselves" while in mothballs.

Note: Ships in mothballs do count against any and all of a country's treaty restrictions.

---

Folks, I'd appreciate additional input on this...

Sounds pretty good to me.

Gory indeed!!! Long thread there...

That's a mighty generous maintenance schedule. For example, Hood commissioned in 1920, was in refit from Nov 1925-Jan 1926, than refit again from Jun 1929-May 1931, and her last was in the first 6 months of 1939.

During AND between those refits, a number of alterations were made to the ship, includind bridge fit, searchlights, HA control, Medium AA (octuple pom-pom), light AA (quad Vickers .50cal), heavy AA (4" singles initially then replaced by twins), topedo tubes, and secondaries and fuel stowage.

I think a 30 year lifespan for a warship is a little long for this era. Most were expected to last 20 before replacement. I'm not saying 30 is impossible, but without a major reconstruction, I doubt most vessels would make it that long in the steam era. Pennsylvania and Arizona for example, entered service in 1916, and both were re-engined (new boilers and turbines) from 1929-1931.

Back to mothballs. I'm assuming when a ship comes out of mothballs it returns exaclty as when it went in, unless rebuilt, correct?

Regards,

Big Rich

One thing that lacks in Wesworld is the old sailor joke that it's not the outlay for the ship/woman - it's the upkeep.

I'm starting to look at ship age as a +/- to combat values- ie old ship -old fire control, old equipment, old design etc.

You should have to put a fixed amount into maintaining active ships just as you do with building them or factories/docks etc. What that should be I don't know yet but given the old joke - should it be the cost of the ship again over it's lifetime? As the CT stipulates overage then this would be a starting point so to keep a 40,000ton ship in service for 20 years costs 2000tons a year. To save this cost you can lay the ship up but it should cost you a year to reactivate it.

Sound reasonable?

Cheers,

I've not calculated that out, but that would likely mean that none of us can build anything every again.

Seems too high to me too. WIth 14 capital ships in service or building with an average displacement of 30kts this would mean to spend 21000ts per year to keep those ships in service.

The SAE has 26 factories for a total of 104000ts per year so to maintain the BB fleet about 20% of the infrastructure has to be dedicated to said fleet. Now add cruisers and stuff and I´ll doubt there´ll be much material left that could be used for refits, rebuilds or a new build warship.

Upkeep is definitly something to work on for the next sim.

I don't know, HoOmAn. It might be a little high, but I think it also illustrates the disparity between major and medium/minor powers. Or maybe there should be more infrastructure across the board to maintain as well as build a navy?

alt naval,

A year to get a ship out of mothballs sounds long. If a refit were thrown in, I'd agree. Maybe a refit needs to be part of reactivation? Not that my vote counts, remember?

Quoted

Maybe a refit needs to be part of reactivation?

Which is exactly what I'm suggesting. ^_^

That would be if you want to refit the vessel. What if it was only a few years old (or even brand new) when it went into mothballs....such as several United States ships after World War Two. For the Korean War, these ships were brought out of mothballs without refits in many cases. Just get the ship ready enough to serve, refit it later when we have time. Mothballs are generally suppose to be a kind of emergency reserve.

Quoted

I've not calculated that out, but that would likely mean that none of us can build anything every again.

Hurts don't it - but that's the real world...

To run a navy you should have to make a choice. Small but technically leading edge - Sweden, Netherlands, a bit bigger but not leading edge - Spain or just really big but nothing else - Soviet Union (I'm talking pre WW2).

You can save a lot by putting ships into reserve and to bring a 40k ship out of reserve could be 1000 tons per month - 2 months and then a work up period.

The problems with expanding a navy are not the ships, but crews. The IJN never had enough officers and there was a tendency for them to go down with the ship.

Cheers,

Quoted

The problems with expanding a navy are not the ships, but crews. The IJN never had enough officers and there was a tendency for them to go down with the ship.

Which is one of the reasons Chile was replace ships instead of actually expanding the Navy very much. But over the course of 15 years, perhaps the officer and manpower pool will allow for more expansion.

It also makes you need to build factories, even if they won't pay for themselves in twenty years, to sustain a larger navy you need the factories.