WesWorld

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2.2.2.5 Level 4: Partial Reconstruction (cost = 50%, except ships of 2,999 t light or less --> 25%)
-Changes to bunkerage (type or quantity): P
-Replacement of superstructure: P
-Changes to internal belt armor: P (upper), D (ends, main)
-Changes to deck armor: P
-Alterations to guns of 66mm-195mm involving barbette alterations: P
-Replacement of secondary barbettes with powerplant machinery: D
-Alterations to guns 196mm and larger not involving barbette alterations: P
-Change to powerplant (type and output): D
-Change to bow form: D
-Change to trim of ship: D
-Change to torpedo bulkheads: D

As I have breed over the simulation of the refit of my battlecruiser, some questions come in my mind after i have read our rules.

a) Changes to bunkerage (type or quantity).

A change in the type (Coal <=> Oil or diesel) I would also understand as "Partial Reconstruction", but a general change in the bunker size is in my eyes not proberly placed here. With an increase of the range I'd still agree, but a reduction in the range should be calculated in my eyes with 25%. After all, additional space is obtained, which can be used elsewhere for modernization.

b) Alterations to guns 196mm and larger not involving barbette alterations

Is this subject also the change of the magazin size ? Again, in my opinion, a change of the magazine size (modifying shells per main gun) may not meet a "Partial Reconstruction". Perhaps we should distinguish here between increasing and decreasing.

I tend to agree, "reduction" would to me reduce the cost of a refit. When we reduce the number of shells carried in a magazine it can be as simple as stocking 5 less shells per gun and it does reduce weight but there is nothing to prevent that shell capacity from being increased back to the designed capacity. In that case I would think we would have to pay the difference somehow but the problem is tracking those sort of modifications. Its hard enough tracking how players spend their tonnage in quarterly reports!

Perhaps you could elaborate on what it is you plan to do with your battle cruisers so we can assess the overall effect/cost of the planned refit.

I don't agree. If you're increasing bunkerage, you're removing compartments and adding a fuel tank in its place. If you're decreasing bunkerage, you're removing fuel tanks and adding normal compartments in its place. Same general principle for reducing the magazines. Since both items are large percentages of the weights on board a warship, changing these items could affect buoyancy and trim.

If it were simply a matter of un-bolting one component and taking it off the ship, then I'd probably concur; but that doesn't seem to be the case here, particularly since something would need to be put back in the place of removed components.

Changing the mass of the bunkers and the weight of the magazine will have knock-on effects - potentially to trim, to metacentric height, to stability, and/or to seaworthiness. I believe that the level of effort to re-balance those parameters are what drives the "partial reconstruction".

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If you're decreasing bunkerage, you're removing fuel tanks and adding normal compartments in its place.

Is that what they really do? I would think that they would just seal it off and turn it into a water tight compartment or so rather than going through all the hassle of removing it, unless that space the fuel tank takes up is actually needed for something (which seems unlikely if you were, for example, adding lots of radars or a plane and a catapult and a crane or a helicopter with landing pad).

Granted, it might be best to keep it simple and apply it to both increases and decreases, but in reality I am not so sure if both are actually as difficult as the other.


Regarding changing the magazine, I would assume that that it depends on which gun caliber being increased and the 50% is only applied to 196mm and larger so if I were to increase the number of main gun shells, but I keep the actual number of shells for the main gun the same (in order to sim the increased number of shells for the smaller caliber guns which you know I apply to my most recent vessels), the major refit for guns 66mm-195mm or minor refit for guns 65mm and smaller would apply instead.

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Changing the mass of the bunkers and the weight of the magazine will have knock-on effects - potentially to trim, to metacentric height, to stability, and/or to seaworthiness. I believe that the level of effort to re-balance those parameters are what drives the "partial reconstruction".

I don't quite agree. Of the things you mention, trim is the only thing that can be 'added' or 'removed' from a ship in the sim. The other three are just natural aspects of the hull with all the stuff in it and on it and as long as you do not touch the trim (which is what you change to re-balance those parameters), a "partial reconstruction" would not apply to changes in magazine/bunker if re-balance those parameters was the only reason for it to be applied.

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

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If you're decreasing bunkerage, you're removing fuel tanks and adding normal compartments in its place.

Is that what they really do? I would think that they would just seal it off and turn it into a water tight compartment or so rather than going through all the hassle of removing it, unless that space the fuel tank takes up is actually needed for something (which seems unlikely if you were, for example, adding lots of radars or a plane and a catapult and a crane or a helicopter with landing pad).

Since the space is internal, something needs to be done with it, even if it's just turning it into an empty watertight compartment. That still involves a degree of work in order to achieve, since you'd need to rebuild the bunker wall and any heating, cooling, or ventilation components around it - and then build a watertight compartment where the larger tank used to be. That presumes all structural members remain intact and don't need to be re-sited.

Since none of us are shipyard foremen or estimators, I'd strongly prefer simplicity principle in this case.

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

...so if I were to increase the number of main gun shells, but I keep the actual number of shells for the main gun the same (in order to sim the increased number of shells for the smaller caliber guns which you know I apply to my most recent vessels), the major refit for guns 66mm-195mm or minor refit for guns 65mm and smaller would apply instead.

That sounds like a situation that would be solved better by allocating a bit of miscellaneous weight.

I don't like the idea of trying to sim changes to a piece of armament by changing some other piece of armament, and I'd advise against it, since it could affect the ability of other players to re-sim a given design. If that's what you're doing with ship rebuilds, then it needs to be clearly marked in the notes so that the other players understand what happened and why.

But yes, you apply the correct level of refit for the armament that you're actually changing.

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since you'd need to rebuild the bunker wall and any heating, cooling, or ventilation components around it

This to me reads that you consider the bunker to be one huge tank holding all the fuel for the ship. I'm pretty sure that a ship has numerous smaller tanks of which you can easily seal off one without touching any bunker walls, heating, cooling, or ventilation components.

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and then build a watertight compartment where the larger tank used to be

This to me reads that you consider the tank to be a leaky, non-watertight thing in the ship. If it is not watertight and thus definitely not airtight, would you not have all kind of potentially dangerous fuel vapors floating around your ship?

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Since none of us are shipyard foremen or estimators, I'd strongly prefer simplicity principle in this case.

I already indicated that, regardless of what real world things are being done inside a ship to achieve it. I think that even if every one of us was either a shipyard foreman or an estimator, we should still keep it simple.

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That sounds like a situation that would be solved better by allocating a bit of miscellaneous weight.

That depends on how you want to apply that. In my opinion if you want to use miscellaneous weights, you should add it when you add the additional rounds. If you are going to allocate existing miscellaneous weights, one could then use the argument that it was there for future increase of the magazines and then use a simple refit for adding main gun shells for guns >196mm. Also most likely in the real world you would be adding stuff on a ship with something like that rather than replacing something with additional ammunition. I am pretty sure that stuff was added to ships and the ships end up lying slightly deeper in the water.

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I don't like the idea of trying to sim changes to a piece of armament by changing some other piece of armament, and I'd advise against it, since it could affect the ability of other players to re-sim a given design. If that's what you're doing with ship rebuilds, then it needs to be clearly marked in the notes so that the other players understand what happened and why.

We are working with SS2 and not SS3. With SS3 we can set the rounds per gun individually for each weapon we sim. With SS2 you can only set the rounds per gun for the main gun and SS2 automatically adds about 17% additional rounds to the other weapons (so with 150 rounds for the main gun, you have 175 rounds for all the other weapons which is an amount you will have spent it all in a very short amount of time with automatic guns and especially with machine guns and AA guns). You either solve that by adding miscellaneous weights or increase the total magazine weight. Now I don't like SS2's miscellaneous weights as SS2 assumes it to be "floating" a dozen feet or so above deck and potentially cause stability issues instead of somewhere deep inside the ship where it should be (SS2's miscellaneous weights is also what has pushed me to start using subsim instead for my submarines and I am pretty sure it is what caused others to start using bunker to sim cargo on merchant ships). Because of that I start using the increased magazine weight to sim additional rounds for the smaller caliber weapons.

I also do not see how it could cause issues for others to re-sim a given design. You're not changing the range of a ship either when part of the bunker is used for something else than the fuel of the ship. The same is true for the rounds per gun. There is no need to mess around with the given rounds per gun value to see if the rest of the sim is correct, unless you want to know if the breakdown of all the rounds per gun given is correct (and it is not much different if miscellaneous weights is being used). Now I could be wrong, but if I am not mistaken, the breakdown of the rounds per gun for each weapon on my recent ships is one of the first things I list below the sim of a ship which I do because I consider it to be an important aspect that needs to be 'explained' about the sim (more so than the breakdown of the miscellaneous weights).

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But yes, you apply the correct level of refit for the armament that you're actually changing.

I should have added "Under 'normal' conditions". There are of course certain factors that could prevent that (available hull strength or internal main belt coverage for example).

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

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since you'd need to rebuild the bunker wall and any heating, cooling, or ventilation components around it

This to me reads that you consider the bunker to be one huge tank holding all the fuel for the ship. I'm pretty sure that a ship has numerous smaller tanks of which you can easily seal off one without touching any bunker walls, heating, cooling, or ventilation components.

Parador's original post implied that he wanted to reduce range or ammunition capacity in order to free up hull strength, presumably to use for other purposes.

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After all, additional space is obtained, which can be used elsewhere for modernization.

That implies to me that some manner of reconstruction is being undertaken, both to remove components deemed unnecessary and install new ones to take advantage of space gained.

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

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That sounds like a situation that would be solved better by allocating a bit of miscellaneous weight.

That depends on how you want to apply that. In my opinion if you want to use miscellaneous weights, you should add it when you add the additional rounds. If you are going to allocate existing miscellaneous weights, one could then use the argument that it was there for future increase of the magazines and then use a simple refit for adding main gun shells for guns >196mm. Also most likely in the real world you would be adding stuff on a ship with something like that rather than replacing something with additional ammunition. I am pretty sure that stuff was added to ships and the ships end up lying slightly deeper in the water.

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I don't like the idea of trying to sim changes to a piece of armament by changing some other piece of armament, and I'd advise against it, since it could affect the ability of other players to re-sim a given design. If that's what you're doing with ship rebuilds, then it needs to be clearly marked in the notes so that the other players understand what happened and why.

We are working with SS2 and not SS3. With SS3 we can set the rounds per gun individually for each weapon we sim. With SS2 you can only set the rounds per gun for the main gun and SS2 automatically adds about 17% additional rounds to the other weapons (so with 150 rounds for the main gun, you have 175 rounds for all the other weapons which is an amount you will have spent it all in a very short amount of time with automatic guns and especially with machine guns and AA guns). You either solve that by adding miscellaneous weights or increase the total magazine weight. Now I don't like SS2's miscellaneous weights as SS2 assumes it to be "floating" a dozen feet or so above deck and potentially cause stability issues instead of somewhere deep inside the ship where it should be (SS2's miscellaneous weights is also what has pushed me to start using subsim instead for my submarines and I am pretty sure it is what caused others to start using bunker to sim cargo on merchant ships). Because of that I start using the increased magazine weight to sim additional rounds for the smaller caliber weapons.

As I said, so long as you make sufficiently adequate notes that would allow another player to re-create the sim, that's fine.

My directive comes because, at numerous times in the past, we've had players depart, leaving un-simmable (or very awkward) ship designs to the players who follow them.

Ergo, if you want to do things that way, I'm not going to stop you, so long as there's always enough information to replicate the sim.

I agree with Brock and Bruce on this issue, it should remain as a 50% cost job.
There would be a lot of work to do in any case with removing plumbing etc.

If you have 9,000nm miles and its too much, well simply don't fill the bunkers to full capacity. SS I assume calculates hull strength on the basis of a full bunker but in reality most of the time the bunkers are not full. I don't know what structure weight SS assigns per ton of fuel, but I'm guessing the majority of the hull strength used is fuel rather than the actual compartment structure and pumping equipment (SS probably isn't even that nuanced to think in terms that specific). By reducing the fuel load I think you're simply substituting oil/coal for air but the structure weight would remain the same and the former bunker is just another watertight void or small storage space.
You're not really freeing space but reducing fuel weight in SS and buying extra hull strength.

Magazine space is tricky, I can see Walter's point. Even if you refit from 6in to 5in guns the magazine weight and size changes. Now when I resim gun changes I try to keep the main magazine at the same weight as it was originally to keep the same space (assuming SS has a constant weight/space ratio calculation).

Bottom line for me is simplicity, we don't need to start making alterations more complicated just to fit a more elaborate description of what's being done to a magazine or fuel bunkers. Perhaps all we need to do is create a few more levels of refit in between the ones we already have such as 35% and 60% refits.

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That implies to me that some manner of reconstruction is being undertaken, both to remove components deemed unnecessary and install new ones to take advantage of space gained.

True. I could see that one would remove a tank and use that space to store additional ammunition. Maybe something like closing it off from the oil system, thoroughly cleaning it and use it to store avaiation fuel when you add floatplanes to your ship or helicopters.

But what if you use the gained hull strength on something above deck (radio, radar, cranes) or on external belt armor? There would be no need to remove anything. You only need to seal off the fuel tank so no more oil gets in there.

Now don't get me wrong. We should keep it simple, but in reality it is only difficult if you need the space that the tank takes up and you have to rebuild that compartment. But that does not always have to be the case.

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As I said, so long as you make sufficiently adequate notes that would allow another player to re-create the sim, that's fine.

My directive comes because, at numerous times in the past, we've had players depart, leaving un-simmable (or very awkward) ship designs to the players who follow them.

Ergo, if you want to do things that way, I'm not going to stop you, so long as there's always enough information to replicate the sim.

That is understandable. That is why I leave the sim part as is and put the notes below it. That to me is the proper way to do it just as it is proper to increase the total magazine weight or add miscellaneous weights to get more shells for the smaller guns than SS gives you.

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There would be a lot of work to do in any case with removing plumbing etc.

I think that time would be considered money and the plumbing would just be capped instead of removed. They might do it today, but not so sure about early/mid 20th century.

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SS I assume calculates hull strength on the basis of a full bunker but in reality most of the time the bunkers are not full.

I could be wrong, but I believe everything with SS is based on normal displacement. So the hull strength should be based off the bunker at normal displacement which is, looking quickly at one of my sims, roughly half the bunker at maximum displacement.

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By reducing the fuel load I think you're simply substituting oil/coal for air but the structure weight would remain the same and the former bunker is just another watertight void or small storage space.

To me, if you want to make it watertight, you would need to close the tank off from the rest of the oil system (which is simple) but if you want to turn it into a storage space, you would have to remove it to make it useful (which is a bit more difficult).

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(assuming SS has a constant weight/space ratio calculation).

Well, doing a quick test with one of the variants of the Myoko I have with 4x3 8" and I change that to 4x4 6" and increase the magazine to the same weight, I require less coverage for the main belt. Looking into that a bit more, that is actually caused by the guns. Trying the match armament weight of the 4x3 8" guns with 4x7 6" guns gives me similar coverage for the main belt.

But then that brings up another problem. If you only replace the triple 8" turrets with quad 6" turrets, shouldn't you still require the same coverage as before? After all, you are not making any other changes internally.

Maybe I should just shut my mouth instead of bringing up new problems...

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Perhaps all we need to do is create a few more levels of refit in between the ones we already have such as 35% and 60% refits.

Wouldn't that go against simplicity. You would need to deal with two more levels and we would then have to figure out what would be considered to be 35% and what would be 60%. I think it is better to keep the levels as they are now.