WesWorld

Here's another idea on this subject: (All numbers subject to change, so don't obsess on them yet.)

First - Factories produce 2000 tons of resources.

Second - Ships in commission or reserve pay maintenance.

There are 4 levels of commission:
Reserve (minimal maintenance crew, no sailing, no training operations)
Conscript (cadre of trained sailors, some sailing and operations)
Regular (plenty of trained sailors, normal amount of sailing and training operations)
Veteran (mostly trained sailors, large amount of sailing and training operations)

Levels of commission cost per quarter (in terms of ships light tons):
Reserve - 1%
Conscript - 2%
Regular - 2.5%
Veteran - 3%
(Carriers, because of their large manning requirements, cost 150% of normal.)


The idea here is to allow the owner to choose the level of training and operations his ships are capable of, and to limit the number of ships that a country can have. The current numbers allow a country to have 10 years of production in service at Regular level and still have their current amount of material available for building new ships to replace the old ones. Reducing the amount of tonnage a factory produces will reduce the number of years production can be in service before the amount of material available for new construction starts to fall. For example, reducing the number of tons a factory produces to 1500 means that a country could only have 5 years production in service before the amount it can build starts getting cut into to pay for maintenance on it's ships if they're all maintained at Regular status.

Calculating the costs shouldn't be too difficult: total the tons of all ships of a given commission level and multiply by the commission level cost. If you want it even easier, have all ships in the fleet be of the same level, then it's just a matter of keeping up with the tons of ships in the fleet.

Well, similar proposals had been made in the past too. Using training level to calculate costs looks interesting at first flance. However, players would be forced to keep track of each individual unit and carefully plan every ships single cruise. That´s quite a workload and at least I will not lift that....

Second every rule that touches existing infrastructure rules includes the seed to be shot down. We need an add-on, not a completely new set of rules where factory output etc. needs to be recalculated, complex spreadsheets build up or existing documents modified. Again that´s too much workload. But again my point of view of course.

So yes, the math behind your idea works and might bring us the restrictions necessary but keeping track of individual units or even squadrons for a large navy is a job for dozands of staff people, not a single hobby player....

Again: My personal opinion only.

I have to say I think you're vastly exaggerating how complicated this is. After all, you have, or had, lists of how many of each ship class you have, and how many tons they are. Back in the days of the CT, you included where the RSAN was relative to it's CT commitments in your posts now and again. So, do a similar calculation with light tonnage, multiply by 2.5% (for regulars) and you have the total maintenance cost for your fleet. Done. You don't have to "carefully plan every ships single cruise", all normal cruising for a given level is already included. You don't have to have different ships at different levels, the entire fleet can be at the same level if the country wants.


Frankly, the only internally consistent way we're going to come up with a system that restricts how many ships a country can have operational is some sort of maintenance system. Whether its this or some other one, that's what restricts things in the real world. An external way to restrict things is another Treaty, but those countries who were not advantaged by the old system aren't likely to be eager to create a new one, and the countries that were advantaged aren't likely to revise it so much that they are no longer advantaged.

Hrolf, why did you double the output of the factories? Is it neccessary for the scheme to work?

I like the idea myself that ships and crews differ in experience but I'm not sure how this affects sailing times. Does an experienced crew put to sea more than a rookie crew, I'd have thought the other way around myself! Also what about training ships which have low skilled crew but spends most of its time at sea using more fuel etc than most battleships in a year.

Still seems a good idea to me, maybe merged with my tender idea in a modified way we could get somewhere.

The reason for doubling the output of factories is that if you don't do that, with the current numbers, a fleet that has built at full rate for 10 years cannot build anything, all it's funds are going to maintenance. If that's what's desired, that's fine, but it will have a pretty drastic impact on the sim (a bunch of nations will be scrambling for funds).

The commission levels were costed in part on sea time: higher costs equal more sea time. For simplicity, I was trying to avoid separating crew quality from sea time, so training vessels would be odd.

Could we have a working example of this proposal? I think it could have merit, but I would like to see what the results look like before a theoretical investment in time on the matter.

Quoted

Second every rule that touches existing infrastructure rules includes the seed to be shot down. We need an add-on, not a completely new set of rules where factory output etc. needs to be recalculated, complex spreadsheets build up or existing documents modified. Again that´s too much workload. But again my point of view of course.

Stephen et al: I think the only way to avoid additional math/rules of some kind is a new treaty. That creates a problem because then you're asking a treaty to accomplish two very different things: satisfy "out-of-character" realism/capacity concerns and "in-character" geo-political considerations.

Cleito worked because, starting fresh, we didn't have much to consider in the second part - there was just a hazy quasi-WW1 background. That isn't the case now.

Sure. Here's a partial example, based on a portion of the KM of Jan 1, 1935.

The U-boat force at the beginning of 1935 is composed of 14 U-boats, each displacing 424 light tons for a total tonnage of 5936 tons.

If all those boats were put into reserve, the maintenance cost would be 59.36 tons per quarter.

If all those boats were operating at the conscript level, the maintenance cost would be 118.72 tons.

If all those boats were operating at the regular level, the maintenance cost would be 148.4 tons.

If all those boats were operating at the veteran level, the maintenance cost would be 237.44 tons.

Quoted

Originally posted by The Rock Doctor
Stephen et al: I think the only way to avoid additional math/rules of some kind is a new treaty. That creates a problem because then you're asking a treaty to accomplish two very different things: satisfy "out-of-character" realism/capacity concerns and "in-character" geo-political considerations.

Cleito worked because, starting fresh, we didn't have much to consider in the second part - there was just a hazy quasi-WW1 background. That isn't the case now.

Exactly, I totally agree. And getting to that treaty would be very difficult, as shown by San Francisco, which didn't even really try to deal with the OOC realism/capacity concerns.

Let us take a look to determine what we need.

A ship needs to be operational:

fuel
Inventories for the crew
ammunition
other parts

This "goods" must be manufactured and distributed, e.g. we need both, supply ships as well as factories producing the goods if a fleet didn't stay at a port the whole time.

What do you think of them:

Each ship, depending on its class, needs a certain number of supply points.

Each port produces a certain number of supply points. The tender can save these points and distribute to the respective vessels. If a fleet mainly anchored in the port, it can be supplied directly from the port, is the fleet more often on the Sea the fleet requires the tender to keep operational.

Roger proposed a similar system once upon a moon. I thought it was rather effective, as every nation had its infrastructuer established (as opposed to its economy or population). However, it did not gain universal acceptance.

One thing that I've thought of: when doing maintenance calculations, maybe we should use normal, rather than light or standard, displacement. That would at least show a bit of cost for ships with high cruise speeds.

I have to agree with Hoo, I like things to be very easy, some of us have lots and lots of time to calculate everything under the sun, but others don't or simply HATE math. I tend to be both of the latter.
Some here have too much real life to deal with. We need rules that everyone can use with minimal fuss and minimal time.

If we can come up with something simple then I'll support it but if I have to calculate every ship's maintenance costs every sim year and not all are being maintained at the same level thats geting a wee bit complicated.

I have a large fleet, but many of those ships do need reasonable refits to replace obsolete weapons and enhance their capability's in new roles. To me that speaks volumes about my own maintenance levels.

Newer Atlantean ships have green crews but effective weapons while older ships have experienced crews and obsolete weapons. Therefore their overall level of effectiveness should be roughly the same.

Perhaps a simple "value" rating is needed for ships. Say a 40,000 ton Battleship is rated as 40 IP's and thus costs 2,000 tons per year to maintain (5%), just an example.

Then as a modification to a previous suggestion we simply assign an additional 1,000 tons to each factory just for maintenance. If it isn't used its either banked for wartime or lost, whichever is more realistic.

One thing: this proposal, as written, DOES allow the current Dutch navy, though it would be mostly operating at conscript level, without eating into the production budget. But that will soon change, if the Dutch keep producing more ships without retiring others.


Again, just because the system allows a person who wants to to have the option to have different ships at different maintenance/training levels doesn't mean everyone has to use those things. Just take the ship's tonnage, multiply by 2% or 2.5% and you're done for that ship for as long as it exists, you know how much it costs in maintenance. If you have 30 copies of this ship, then multiply by 30 and you know how much they all cost in maintenance.