General Social/Chatter Thread

[The Rock Doctor]

Alright, so I've nailed down a seaplane carrier design for 1920, and it's cute.

[TacCovert4]

I wish I had known in advance.   I'd have purchased all 12 BP in a bespoke battleship.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Heck I'm curious to see what I can manage in 1919.0,
I don't have budgets worked out in advance.

I have an excess of ship designs...
which is how I have an idea of which guns to research....but not budgets.

Though Rocky's looking to rebuild his dreadnaught did cause me to
take a look at my Gilgamesh.
That class would have been very well suited for the Battle of the Caicos,
but that wasn't my war.

Still, the ships are robust enough to be upgraded.  I will probably replace the guns.
Which means I need to start researching the replacements.

[Jefgte]

In 1919 Byzantium laid down its 4 seaplane carriers (5550t) and continued its ships currently in shipyards.
The new 1500t destroyers (D10 class) are for 1920.
Once the "Imperators" are completed in 1920-21, it is necessary to build cruisers (C7 class) and new TBs.
New cruisers with 3xT2 or 2xT3, ala Panzerschiff, are coming later.

I'm always a Panzerschiff Fan  ;)

[The Rock Doctor]

Haven't figured how many seaplane carriers I'm building, or of how many classes.  The one I did last night is kind of niche. 

1920's going to allow me to play with the 1915 carrier tech, diesels, and next-gen submarines, so I have lots to choose from.

2/1919 might be a good time to scale up some drydocks here and there...

[Kaiser Kirk]

Parthia will explore both carriers and seaplane carriers, probably by conversion of old ships in 1919.0
With the 1915 sub tech, both new subs and new ASW measures become available, and some of each will be built to evaluate.
By 1920.0 there will be some limited operational experience to design forward on.
Also, the 1915 subs are getting effective enough that Parthia will likely start building them on a regular basis.

I've been mainly building new drydocks, so damaged ships 'out yonder' have places to go get patched up.
I'll try to fit in a wave of dock expansion, simply bumping out existing docks by ~25m would do wonders.

[TacCovert4]

That's the interesting bit for me.  With 2 exceptions, the Scimitars and the Toucans, ALL of my pre-1910 ships were lost in the Caicos War.  So my fleet is the 'newest', of course it's also one of the smallest by tonnage.

[The Rock Doctor]

I suppose I'm not going to find a use for the six sets of 1905 vintage turbine machinery I yanked off some cruisers a few years back.  That's almost 6,000 t of metal I should maybe think about converting to scrap.

Unless one of you has a use for all that.

That's the interesting bit for me.  With 2 exceptions, the Scimitars and the Toucans, ALL of my pre-1910 ships were lost in the Caicos War.  So my fleet is the 'newest', of course it's also one of the smallest by tonnage.

That's certainly one way to cut down on refit costs.

[TacCovert4]

Well, and I keep reviewing the Toucans and SC-1s.  Without a major rebuild there's just not much of a way to make them viable units.  Primarily their guns are just wholly insufficient, and they're too small to make good conversions even to seaplane carriers.  I need to look at a mid-20s refit to see if I might be able to cram 130s on them somehow and make them passably functional ships for patrol purposes into the late 30s or so.

[The Rock Doctor]

Relevant for those of us contemplating refurbs and reconstructions:  The utility of replacing machinery gets pretty low with anything built after 1910 or so.

Edit:  Filled in the gaps in the chart...

[Kaiser Kirk]

Kinda cool to see that graphed.
I knew the gains dropped off, but I didn't know when-ish.

I was tinkering with my 1919.0 budget, and it looks like
I have 7 BP to put towards rebuilding ships.
I presume I will have 7 more BP next HY...
BP is really the limiter, I have the $ for rebuilds, 
so I can do something quasi-useful.

My ancient SC-1 class is in the same boat as the Toucans, but much slower.
I am unsure if I can get much of value from them, or if I should scrap them.

Fast mine layer, slow sentry cruiser.  Depot ship etc.
One possibility is to replace the engine with a newer/lighter one,
but keep the speed low....and so the engine wt low and BP cost cheap.
Then soak up the saved engine wt with Misc wt, basically making
a mil-built aux for odd jobs.

[The Rock Doctor]

Interesting glitch just now - designing the little seaplane carrier, set the stern overhang to 1 metre.  Finished the design out.

Sketched it in Paint, thought maybe I'd like more stern overhang for greater deck space.

Came back to the SS and increased the overhang to 3.0 metres.  BOOM.  Hull strength goes from 1.00 to 0.80.  All other choices, ranging from no overhang to the original 1.0 metres, changed that.  So it's like the initial selection spoofed the program somehow.

[The Rock Doctor]

Happened to be viewing "Who's Online" yesterday and noticed a guest was signing up for an account.  Is that a process that still needs somebody to verify it?

[TacCovert4]

Interesting glitch just now - designing the little seaplane carrier, set the stern overhang to 1 metre.  Finished the design out.

Sketched it in Paint, thought maybe I'd like more stern overhang for greater deck space.

Came back to the SS and increased the overhang to 3.0 metres.  BOOM.  Hull strength goes from 1.00 to 0.80.  All other choices, ranging from no overhang to the original 1.0 metres, changed that.  So it's like the initial selection spoofed the program somehow.

I run into that a bit.   I don't think its spoofing as much as the program gets confused with the very high freeboard when we do length changes.   I could change draft snd width on a carrier concept. But even a 5m length change totally screwed up the strength. 

[snip]

Happened to be viewing "Who's Online" yesterday and noticed a guest was signing up for an account.  Is that a process that still needs somebody to verify it?

Yes