SDN World 3 Commentary Thread III

[Lonestar]

Lascaris, how can you start building four liners when every single one of your slipways is filled with capital ships? Liners still take slipways, even if they only cost a third of an equivalent tonnage Navy ship.

Honestly, I think the whole "passenger ships don't exist unless you build them" rule is asinine. I operate under the assumption that there are a bunch of liners in the 20,000 range in use by civilian Dominion lines, and that there is a normal life cycle changeover for them. Gi-normous Vaterlands and whatnot are a different matter, as there are only so many drydocks that can accomadate their construction and maintenance in the country of origin. If somehow they are built without occupying yard space allocated to naval capital vessels, than there can't be that many. Even 4 might be too many.

[loomer]

Yeah, I do the same. Just because Afghanistan has one naval vessel (that converted fishing sloop with the cannon on top) doesn't mean I'm not having them ship goods in small freighters over the Chinese Inland Sea.

[Thanas]

Lascaris, how can you start building four liners when every single one of your slipways is filled with capital ships? Liners still take slipways, even if they only cost a third of an equivalent tonnage Navy ship.

Honestly, I think the whole "passenger ships don't exist unless you build them" rule is asinine. I operate under the assumption that there are a bunch of liners in the 20,000 range in use by civilian Dominion lines, and that there is a normal life cycle changeover for them.

I got no problem with the standard passenger liners (around 20kt, around 15 knot) and quite expect every nation who has a NF of above 2/3 to have a number of them.

However, Lascaris is planning to built four ocean liners (not passenger ships, but ocean liners with a cruise speed of over 25 knots) that each will displace 60-80kt tons. And he expects to do so while occupying every slipway at the same time for military construction. .

There is no way that is not going to fly. Heck, I am paying for any additional large ocean liner I am constructing. So he should be doing so as well as using his max slipway capacity for that.

First ocean liners were often enough built by civilian yards that had nothing to do with large scale military construction. Frex the 3 Olympics each of over 45,000 tons were build by Harland & Wolff which was not involved at capital ship construction.

Apparently, HMS Courageous does not count. Nor does HMS Formidable or HMS Audacious. Nor HMS Unicorn, HMS Bulwark, HMS Centaur, HMS Warrior, HMCS Magnificent HMCS Bonaventure. So the construction of three large fleet carriers and six light carriers = "not involved at capital ship construction". Right.

However, to even more demolish your argument, here are two more things:

All large liners were built in slipways that were at the forefront at capital ship construction:
- Lusitania: John Brown
- Mauretania: Swan Hunter
- Aquitania: John Brown
- Queen Mary: John Brown
- Queen Elizabeth: John Brown
- Mauretania II: Cammell Laird (which also built the largest vessel in RN existence in the OTL, the Ark Royal)

So it is not as if Harland&Wolf did not build any capital ships, it is more that their business was first and foremost based on the exclusive contract they had with White Star. And they did built a lot of capital ships, as said above. They did not built capital ships before the late 1930s because Britain did not built a lot of capital ships in the interwar period, not because they were not capable of doing so.

Thus, there is no reason why their slipways should not fall under the limit of available slipways assigned to your nation.

Second the slip sizes are completely out of sync with the size of the new ocean liners coming up in the 30s. The two Queens were well over 80,000 tons. Normandie was of the same size and the follow up to it Bretagne would amount to a mere 97,000 tons. I short of doubt it is holds any logic to claim France cannot build Normandie or that Normandie (or worse Bretagne ) sized ships are not technically feasible when they very clearly were.

You are mistaken. You are using gross tonnage here. However, what we are using in slip size is standard tonnage. Thus, the Normandie, while having 80+ kt tons in gross tonnage, had only 70000 standard tons. Second, these ships will not start to appear until the mid thirties. A period from which we are still quite removed.

Also, I note that the overall dimensions of the Normandie are not unlike many proposed ships of the Navies in service already.

Third the shipbuilding capacity listed is what a country can use on military naval construction. I expect that there isn't any serious doubt that any of the main industrial powers can produce merchant ships in quantities far and well in excess of that. If you want to use your slipways and shipbuilding to produce yet more civilian ships it's I suppose your prerrogative. To claim though that you can build large civilian ships only in military yards... no.

Civilian ships only? Oh no, that is not what I am claiming. I am talking about large Ocean liners. Which were all launched only with some kind of state assistance - and in shipyards used usually for military construction.

[Lascaris]

However, Lascaris is planning to built four ocean liners (not passenger ships, but ocean liners with a cruise speed of over 25 knots) that each will displace 60-80kt tons. And he expects to do so while occupying every slipway at the same time for military construction. .

Quite so I am. British interests start construction of 3 80,000t ships in real life Oceanic, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. Britain in the game is in a much stronger economic and industrial position particularly since along with Byzantium was the only big European powers not to be involved in large scale war or revolution in the 1910s.

There is no way that is not going to fly. Heck, I am paying for any additional large ocean liner I am constructing. So he should be doing so as well as using his max slipway capacity for that.

Suure. How many German submarines and aircraft were built by French yards in WW2 again?

Apparently, HMS Courageous does not count. Nor does HMS Formidable or HMS Audacious. Nor HMS Unicorn, HMS Bulwark, HMS Centaur, HMS Warrior, HMCS Magnificent HMCS Bonaventure. So the construction of three large fleet carriers and six light carriers = "not involved at capital ship construction". Right.

Most definitely so. None intended Courageous as a capital ship to stand in the line of battle. As for the carriers their tonnage speaks by itself. Formidable was 23,000 tons standard. Unicorn 14,750, Warrior 13,350, Magnificent 14,000 and the two Centaurs 18310t. Note a pattern there? As in how none of these is over 25,000 tons to rate capital ship in game terms? One can add a further comparison in the Baltimore class being 14,472t and Des Moines 17,725t. Capital ships indeed, smaller than contemporary heavy cruisers. Unless we want to declare cruisers as capital ships too.

However, to even more demolish your argument, here are two more things:

All large liners were built in slipways that were at the forefront at capital ship construction:
- Lusitania: John Brown
- Mauretania: Swan Hunter
- Aquitania: John Brown
- Queen Mary: John Brown
- Queen Elizabeth: John Brown
- Mauretania II: Cammell Laird (which also built the largest vessel in RN existence in the OTL, the Ark Royal)

Oh puhleaz. Titanic, Olympic, Britannic. And the rest were built by companies that were also into military construction. Also into military construction and "each Ocean Liner was a battleship less" are entirely different

So it is not as if Harland&Wolf did not build any capital ships, it is more that their business was first and foremost based on the exclusive contract they had with White Star. And they did built a lot of capital ships, as said above. They did not built capital ships before the late 1930s because Britain did not built a lot of capital ships in the interwar period, not because they were not capable of doing so.

And they did not build a lot of capital ships as shown above. They did build a lot of military ships, which is the reason we have these mobilization rules around.

Second the slip sizes are completely out of sync with the size of the new ocean liners coming up in the 30s. The two Queens were well over 80,000 tons. Normandie was of the same size and the follow up to it Bretagne would amount to a mere 97,000 tons. I short of doubt it is holds any logic to claim France cannot build Normandie or that Normandie (or worse Bretagne ) sized ships are not technically feasible when they very clearly were.

You are mistaken. You are using gross tonnage here. However, what we are using in slip size is standard tonnage. Thus, the Normandie, while having 80+ kt tons in gross tonnage, had only 70000 standard tons. Second, these ships will not start to appear until the mid thirties. A period from which we are still quite removed.

Also, I note that the overall dimensions of the Normandie are not unlike many proposed ships of the Navies in service already.

While a convenient argument the ships had a normal displacement well over 80,000 tons. Since we are not going to get into 70+ slips... it doesn't work out.

Third the shipbuilding capacity listed is what a country can use on military naval construction. I expect that there isn't any serious doubt that any of the main industrial powers can produce merchant ships in quantities far and well in excess of that. If you want to use your slipways and shipbuilding to produce yet more civilian ships it's I suppose your prerrogative. To claim though that you can build large civilian ships only in military yards... no.

Civilian ships only? Oh no, that is not what I am claiming. I am talking about large Ocean liners. Which were all launched only with some kind of state assistance - and in shipyards used usually for military construction.

[/quote]

Which were all launched by private interests, usually by the large shipbuilding industries and were always well in excess of the largest contemporary warships.

[Thanas]

Quite so I am. British interests start construction of 3 80,000t ships in real life Oceanic, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. Britain in the game is in a much stronger economic and industrial position particularly since along with Byzantium was the only big European powers not to be involved in large scale war or revolution in the 1910s.

Which has no impact at all on the relative strength of our nations right now.

As I said, you just pulling those ships out of your arse is not going to fly. The rule was that
a) Ocean liners use slipways
b) Ocean liners cost 1/3 of their tonnage

I see you are not following any of the rules.

Suure. How many German submarines and aircraft were built by French yards in WW2 again?

How is this relevant?

Most definitely so. None intended Courageous as a capital ship to stand in the line of battle. As for the carriers their tonnage speaks by itself. Formidable was 23,000 tons standard. Unicorn 14,750, Warrior 13,350, Magnificent 14,000 and the two Centaurs 18310t. Note a pattern there? As in how none of these is over 25,000 tons to rate capital ship in game terms? One can add a further comparison in the Baltimore class being 14,472t and Des Moines 17,725t. Capital ships indeed, smaller than contemporary heavy cruisers. Unless we want to declare cruisers as capital ships too.

You are evading. Fact is, in the OTL They built capital ships. Unless you want to argue that the carriers were not capital ships. As for the sizes, how nice of you to neglect the 38000 HMS Audacious. Dishonest debating anyone? Fact is, from the 9 british large carriers in WWII, they built 2. So yeah, they were involved in capital ship construction.

However, to even more demolish your argument, here are two more things:

All large liners were built in slipways that were at the forefront at capital ship construction:
- Lusitania: John Brown
- Mauretania: Swan Hunter
- Aquitania: John Brown
- Queen Mary: John Brown
- Queen Elizabeth: John Brown
- Mauretania II: Cammell Laird (which also built the largest vessel in RN existence in the OTL, the Ark Royal)

Oh puhleaz. Titanic, Olympic, Britannic. And the rest were built by companies that were also into military construction. Also into military construction and "each Ocean Liner was a battleship less" are entirely different

No, each ocean liner occupied a slipway that could otherwise be used for capship construction. The mere fact that you just tried to claim "oh hey, rules say I got x slipways, but guess what, actually I have several more that can be used for the same thing."

And they did not build a lot of capital ships as shown above. They did build a lot of military ships, which is the reason we have these mobilization rules around.

They built 22% of all british fleet carriers.

While a convenient argument the ships had a normal displacement well over 80,000 tons. Since we are not going to get into 70+ slips... it doesn't work out.

Are you too stupid to register the difference between a displacement at full load and the standard tonnage which is the level for this game?

Which were all launched by private interests, usually by the large shipbuilding industries and were always well in excess of the largest contemporary warships.

Yeah...no. They were launched only with government help. Without government help, Cunard would never have managed to launch the Queen Mary. Nor would the NDL have launched the Bremen.

[Steve]

Yes, building ocean liners does require one third IBP cost (that is, 15 IBPs for a 45,000T standard tonnage ship) and takes up a slipway (or, if below 25,000T, shipyard capacity), as the slipways were to reflect the nation's actual shipyard base.

[CmdrWilkens]

Yes, building ocean liners does require one third IBP cost (that is, 15 IBPs for a 45,000T standard tonnage ship) and takes up a slipway (or, if below 25,000T, shipyard capacity), as the slipways were to reflect the nation's actual shipyard base.

Steve on a related subject which Thanas referenced as an assumption I've also been making but: Are we free to assume that civilian only and civilian-primary contractors continue to produce for our nations ships in the <20kt range for civilian only service which might (in the event of a long war) be commandeered?

Granting that as a valid assumption I've also assumed (as I posted about last page) that commandeering such vessels would take the process of several months even after they were physically seized.

[Steve]

That sounds reasonable. For what it's worth, it's why I defined shipyard capacities for ships below 25,000T standard as a tonnage capacity, not actual slipways and docks; there should be lots of little boatbuilders and shipyards constructing boats of a few hundred or even a few thousand tons for civilian use that can be brought into the military.

That said, I'll reserve the right to make rulings on how many vessels this permits you to have as "commandeered" in wartime.

[CmdrWilkens]

That sounds reasonable. For what it's worth, it's why I defined shipyard capacities for ships below 25,000T standard as a tonnage capacity, not actual slipways and docks; there should be lots of little boatbuilders and shipyards constructing boats of a few hundred or even a few thousand tons for civilian use that can be brought into the military.

That said, I'll reserve the right to make rulings on how many vessels this permits you to have as "commandeered" in wartime.

For what its worth that was exactly what I used for the Darien Gap raid, lots of little packet steamers and shallow draft river boats, nothing over 1 kt in size.

[Zor]

After much thought, i have decided to honorably back out of playing the game and put the Empire of Japan up as either an NPC power or for someone to take over, any willing volunteers?

Zor

[loomer]

Afghanistan embarks on a plan fuelled by pure mad science. Land battleships of the Kandahari. It'll either be a horrific failure if we want to keep things at all realistic, or...

If we want to deviate slightly, does anyone mind if Tesla takes up residence in Afghanistan?

[CmdrWilkens]

Q2 rolls around and I am now 100% Motorized...hells frickin yeah. Time to start upgrading my armored units to more current stuff and finally get around to building a carrier.

[Thanas]

Q2 rolls around and I am now 100% Motorized...hells frickin yeah. Time to start upgrading my armored units to more current stuff and finally get around to building a carrier.

Congratulations, with 1.1 million motorized men you might just have the most advanced army (in number of motorized units) around right now.



In other news, I'll wrap up Q1 tomorrow (hopefully time will permit me so).

[Thanas]

...and Sänger is on his way to Britain.

Lascaris can take over from there.

[Lascaris]

Quite so I am. British interests start construction of 3 80,000t ships in real life Oceanic, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. Britain in the game is in a much stronger economic and industrial position particularly since along with Byzantium was the only big European powers not to be involved in large scale war or revolution in the 1910s.

Which has no impact at all on the relative strength of our nations right now.

As I said, you just pulling those ships out of your arse is not going to fly. The rule was that
a) Ocean liners use slipways
b) Ocean liners cost 1/3 of their tonnage

I see you are not following any of the rules.

The rule was not, as in it's nowhere written in the Wiki. Now Steve says it is. Whatever.

Suure. How many German submarines and aircraft were built by French yards in WW2 again?

How is this relevant?

Self-evident...

You are evading. Fact is, in the OTL They built capital ships. Unless you want to argue that the carriers were not capital ships. As for the sizes, how nice of you to neglect the 38000 HMS Audacious. Dishonest debating anyone? Fact is, from the 9 british large carriers in WWII, they built 2. So yeah, they were involved in capital ship construction.

By current reckoning any kind of carrier would be a capital ship. By WW2 terms the light carriers would not count. The Illustrius cass as of 1940 maybe though I very much doubt it was considered till much later in the war anywhere as important as on of the KGVs laid down at about the same time. As for Audacious one might note when it was completed. Namely 1952. (And yes if needed it could had been completed quite earlier than this bot not within WW2's timeframe one suspects)

No, each ocean liner occupied a slipway that could otherwise be used for capship construction. The mere fact that you just tried to claim "oh hey, rules say I got x slipways, but guess what, actually I have several more that can be used for the same thing."

Steve said what he said and that's about it. I still consider the logic completely wrong but there isn't much that can be done about it at the moment.

While a convenient argument the ships had a normal displacement well over 80,000 tons. Since we are not going to get into 70+ slips... it doesn't work out.

Are you too stupid to register the difference between a displacement at full load and the standard tonnage which is the level for this game?

The cynic would note that I spoke of normal displacement. Which differs from standard displacement yes but usually not to the degree to get an 83,000 ton ship within the slipway limits. Not that it really matters. 100,000 tonners were already being planned. Let's see how you springsharp these within the 70,000 ton limit or otherwise how you explain why they should not be feasible.

Which were all launched by private interests, usually by the large shipbuilding industries and were always well in excess of the largest contemporary warships.

Yeah...no. They were launched only with government help. Without government help, Cunard would never have managed to launch the Queen Mary. Nor would the NDL have launched the Bremen.

[/quote]

Whether Cunard needed government support for the 5 million loan in the 1930s is rather questionable. It was certainly convenient since the government terms namely taking over White Star were not exactly catastrophic but from there to claiming that without government support the queens would be impossible to complete there is a distance.

[CmdrWilkens]

Q2 rolls around and I am now 100% Motorized...hells frickin yeah. Time to start upgrading my armored units to more current stuff and finally get around to building a carrier.

Congratulations, with 1.1 million motorized men you might just have the most advanced army (in number of motorized units) around right now.

Lesson learned from the Panamanian War: 20mi/day sometimes isn't enough.

[loomer]

I wonder if I should skip landships and instead make sandsubs...

[Steve]

Depends on whether you want me to drop asteroids on your head or have supervolcanoes erupt beneath you.

[Steve]

Uh, Wilkens?

It takes a year to update an infantry division to motorized status, with 9 months at reduced effectiveness.

[CmdrWilkens]

Uh, Wilkens?

It takes a year to update an infantry division to motorized status, with 9 months at reduced effectiveness.

That would add 1 qtr to all of my past upgrades I'm frankly disinclined to recalc where the hell that left me in terms of ending old upgrades and starting new ones since I've beens spending on a 3qtr not 4qtr basis since literally game start. That was how I read the rules and its been in my queue that way since Q1 1925.

On a quick basis I have roughly 160 brigades worth that needed upgrading (180 bdes - 15 game start Bdes of motorized and 5 game start Armored Bdes). Each of those brigades only got 3 qtrs of IBP expenditure instead of 4 which means I have a shortfall of 480 IBPs. I have just over 140 IBPs unallocated from build queue prior to this latest one for a total shortfall of roughly 340 IBPs. With a brigade costing 12 IBPs over its build life I'd be short roughly 28 Brigades. If you are okay that is the accounting I'm going with.

[Steve]

That works.

[CmdrWilkens]

Good to go, that would be 28 Bdes as of the end of Q1 1927/ start of Q2 1927. I've slightly edited my Q2 1927 queue as I'm going to hold off increasing my Armored Bde count until I finish motorizing everyone.

[Thanas]

In other news, does any Royal House have any princess of Royal Blood around? After all, the German Crown Prince needs a new wife.

[Thanas]

While a convenient argument the ships had a normal displacement well over 80,000 tons. Since we are not going to get into 70+ slips... it doesn't work out.

Are you too stupid to register the difference between a displacement at full load and the standard tonnage which is the level for this game?

The cynic would note that I spoke of normal displacement. Which differs from standard displacement yes but usually not to the degree to get an 83,000 ton ship within the slipway limits. Not that it really matters. 100,000 tonners were already being planned. Let's see how you springsharp these within the 70,000 ton limit or otherwise how you explain why they should not be feasible.

Passenger liner, Enter country Enter ship type laid down 1927

Displacement:
67,440 t light; 69,452 t standard; 100,597 t normal; 125,512 t full load

Dimensions: Length (overall / waterline) x beam x draught (normal/deep)
(1,064.73 ft / 1,030.18 ft) x 119.42 ft x (36.09 / 43.89 ft)
(324.53 m / 314.00 m) x 36.40 m x (11.00 / 13.38 m)

Machinery:
Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
Electric cruising motors plus geared drives, 4 shafts, 298,066 shp / 222,358 Kw = 32.20 kts
Range 10,500nm at 31.00 kts
Bunker at max displacement = 56,060 tons

Complement:
2,823 - 3,671

Cost:
£13.373 million / $53.493 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
Armament: 0 tons, 0.0 %
Machinery: 9,409 tons, 9.4 %
Hull, fittings & equipment: 58,032 tons, 57.7 %
Fuel, ammunition & stores: 33,156 tons, 33.0 %
Miscellaneous weights: 0 tons, 0.0 %

Overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
Survivability (Non-critical penetrating hits needed to sink ship):
417,419 lbs / 189,338 Kg = 3,865.0 x 6 " / 152 mm shells or 16.8 torpedoes
Stability (Unstable if below 1.00): 1.39
Metacentric height 11.6 ft / 3.5 m
Roll period: 14.7 seconds
Steadiness - As gun platform (Average = 50 %): 71 %
- Recoil effect (Restricted arc if above 1.00): 0.00
Seaboat quality (Average = 1.00): 1.69

Hull form characteristics:
Hull has a flush deck,
an extended bulbous bow and large transom stern
Block coefficient (normal/deep): 0.793 / 0.814
Length to Beam Ratio: 8.63 : 1
'Natural speed' for length: 36.10 kts
Power going to wave formation at top speed: 52 %
Trim (Max stability = 0, Max steadiness = 100): 42
Bow angle (Positive = bow angles forward): 25.00 degrees
Stern overhang: 13.12 ft / 4.00 m
Freeboard (% = length of deck as a percentage of waterline length):
Fore end, Aft end
- Forecastle: 20.00 %, 45.93 ft / 14.00 m, 39.37 ft / 12.00 m
- Forward deck: 30.00 %, 39.37 ft / 12.00 m, 39.37 ft / 12.00 m
- Aft deck: 35.00 %, 39.37 ft / 12.00 m, 39.37 ft / 12.00 m
- Quarter deck: 15.00 %, 39.37 ft / 12.00 m, 39.37 ft / 12.00 m
- Average freeboard: 39.90 ft / 12.16 m

Ship space, strength and comments:
Space - Hull below water (magazines/engines, low = better): 32.0 %
- Above water (accommodation/working, high = better): 297.0 %
Waterplane Area: 111,797 Square feet or 10,386 Square metres
Displacement factor (Displacement / loading): 535 %
Structure weight / hull surface area: 366 lbs/sq ft or 1,788 Kg/sq metre
Hull strength (Relative):
- Cross-sectional: 2.25
- Longitudinal: 2.67
- Overall: 2.29
Excellent machinery, storage, compartmentation space
Excellent accommodation and workspace room
Ship has slow, easy roll, a good, steady gun platform
Excellent seaboat, comfortable, rides out heavy weather easily

You were saying?

[Siege]

In other news, does any Royal House have any princess of Royal Blood around? After all, the German Crown Prince needs a new wife.

Heh, well, HRH the Princess A'ishah, heiress apparent to the throne of the Sultanate, is not yet married, and she probably has one or two younger sisters as well. It's not your traditional European royal house, but hey, stranger things have happened...