WesWorld

Whats Wrong With Wesworld -> Costs

Been reading 'Cost of Seapower' by Pugh and I've looked at how we cost and build things here. Basically our model for costs only applies to Battleships. While springstyle does give a cost it doesn't seem to fix it for date or currency conversion but it doesn't do too bad for relative costs. ie. The most expensive part of a ship is armament, then machinery, then armour, then hull. Springstyle seems to account for this.

Looking at some real world ships,

A G-H Class DD 1937 - £400,000 (£211 per ton)
A Almirante Brown Class CA 1929 - £1,225,000 (£136 per ton)
A Mod-Leander Class CL 1934 - £1,450,000 (£161 per ton)
A La Argentine Class Training Cruiser 1937 - £1,750,000 (£233 per ton)

All tons calculated for full load displacement (this is how it was outlined in the book)

The Training cruiser was probably expensive because she was specialised. Destroyers are expensive because they are 50% machinery.

We obviously understate the cost of destroyers between 2 and 5 times. Our 2000 ton leader will cost twice as much as our 1300 ton workhorse.

The reason for smaller ships being more expensive in proportion is complexity. Creating a tight design also increases cost disproportionately. More demanding specs in a smaller or limited hull. This is why the Iowas and South Dakotas were much more expensive than say the KGVs. Other designs were also more expensive than the trend, the Deutschlands and the Nelsons were also 'limited' or constrained that pushed up cost.

Guess which battleships were 135% (you could buy 2 off the shelf for 1 of these and have change left over) more expensive than their contempories?

I'll keep looking into this further to see if it could be made workable.


Cheers,

Quoted

Originally posted by alt_naval
Guess which battleships were 135% (you could buy 2 off the shelf for 1 of these and have change left over) more expensive than their contempories?

Germans because of their generally overly complex layout and machinery which also increases crew size etc.?

I've wondered whether we were picking the right sort of displacement to base our costs on. It seemed a bit odd that a 52,000 t FL ship and a 42,000 t FL ship might cost the same because their light displacements were similar.

I would not be surprised if Indian battleships were relatively expensive, given the amount of shoe-horning that went on there.

I'd concluded that Springstyle costing didn't work after comparing my own costs and finding no pattern amongst various ship types.

Quoted

I'd concluded that Springstyle costing didn't work after comparing my own costs and finding no pattern amongst various ship types.

They actually do work in a relative sence (armor:machinery:hull etc.) I think they used the Iowa$ as part of the baseline at one end and Dreadnought at the other. This has introduced a bias to make them more expensive as time goes on as the Iowas were compact demanding complex ships and were disproportionatly expensive.

Hoo, you need to look a little earlier, the ships in question are not after Dreadnought and they are not German.

Cheers,

Powerful and Terrible?

Well;

KGV – 28.8mln$+11m? = $39m????
Iowa - 97 mln $;
SD - 77mln $;
NC - 76.9mln$;
Alaska - 74mln$

And what is more frightening;

Gneisenau - 58.4 mln $
Prinz Eugen 42mln$

Quoted

KGV – 28.8mln$+11m? = $39m????
Iowa - 97 mln $;
SD - 77mln $;
NC - 76.9mln$;
Alaska - 74mln$

If those are right, the KGVs were a screamin' deal. Other than that, for all the grace of the Alaskas they would have been better off finishing Kentucky with that money (and even better off with Montanas IMHO but that's another story).

Quoted

And what is more frightening;

Gneisenau - 58.4 mln $
Prinz Eugen 42mln$

Yech. One wonders how much more could have been done with another two Scharnhorsts as opposed to the Hippers. And perhaps another four S+G type instead of Bismarck and Tirpitz...

(Wonder how much was added to PE's cost with the modifications to make her silhouette like Bismarck's (as opposed to the cost of Hipper)?)

Powerfull and Terrible were victims of bad intelligence just as the Alaskas were.

The two ships were the Chilian pre-dreadnoughts Libertad and Constitution that became Triumph and Swiftsure. Ton for ton they were more than double the cost of a Majestic. They were overgunned and squeezed to fit existing Chilean Docks.

With the costs for German ships you wonder what their Destroyers were costing them.

US and GB battleships were comparable in cost upto the Collorados then US ships were disproportionately more expensive.

Cheers,

Well Chile is getting their money's worth out of them as they are still in service in 1929 as oppose to being retired in about 1919 (or sunk during the war).

Just an idea.....but is there any chance to use crew size to limit a navy´s size?

Our continuesly growing fleets need more and more men. Shouldn´t there be a limit to this natural resource?

Greets,

HoOmAn

That would mean that China and India could have huge fleets...
Sure there are limits to a nation's manpower but where are those limits? What is the percentage of the population between 18 and 50 of a certain nation? How much of that 'adult' population can be used for the military? 5 percent? 50 percent? The maximum you can use when hard-pressed is the whole 18-50 group of adults and when you are truly desparate you can change that to 15-75 or so. Naturally quality of those 'troops' are well below the category of the 'poor performing regular soldier/sailor'.

Quoted

Just an idea.....but is there any chance to use crew size to limit a navy´s size?

Our continuesly growing fleets need more and more men. Shouldn´t there be a limit to this natural resource?

Quoted

That would mean that China and India could have huge fleets...
Sure there are limits to a nation's manpower but where are those limits?

Those are both good points, but I would say that a given nation's naval tradition is also a factor. The opposite of Walter's statement is also true; countries like Greece or sparsely populated place like Australia would have to have very small fleets if population were a factor, without considering 'naval tradition.'

Historically, Japan for example fielded a much larger fleet for most of the 20th century than the much more populous China. On a per capita basis, think about the age-of-sail Royal Navy, Royal Netherlands Navy and the Danish Fleet with respect to their home populations....

Regards all. I hope everyone is enjoying the New Year.

Big Rich

Manpower is but one factor, you also have industrial capacity and economic power. India's navy in real life, for example, is limited by its economy and its industrial output dispite having a huge manpower reserve..

Manpower is worth nothing without money. The crews of several battleships equal one Infantry Division but a battlefleet carries more power. You still have to pay conscripts. I think Population is the least of our problems.

Cheers,

Agreed.

As I've said before You would have to come up with a system that revolves around a set GDP level, national population and some sort of non-naval infrastructure level.

I have a distinct feeling that if we implimented this we would find nations like Greece and Turkey waaaay overperforming in their ability's.

Chile is also overperforming at this point, but I've set my own limits in terms of numbers and such. I figure the nation can't handle as much as twice the size of the 1924 fleet (historical plus wesworld additions) and more or less I'm working on keeping the fleet roughly the same size in terms of numbers of ships, though not necessarily type or size of those same ships.

Chile currently does not produce a naval weapon in its own factories larger than 150mm. (though I've considered attempting to produce something like the 7 inch guns off the Triumphs). While is has the ability to maintain the larger naval weapons, it as of yet does not reproduce them. However, Chile is working to rectify that situation, so they do not have to rely on foreign aid in a world that potentally could become either hostile or even more restictive (treaty-wise).