Matrix Games Forums

I don't know if this is WAD, but ships under rebuild don't seem to take up shipyard capacity. Since my shipbuilding industry regularly complains about insufficient use of capacity, this is a problem.

You'll also find that KEs are built in Civilian rather than Naval yards and therefore don't take up yard space

It's indeed WAD that refitting ships don't take shipyard capacity. However, we may revisit how this works in the future.

Probably for the best, if you consider refit should satisfy dockyard use requirements. (And if not, then not.)

The regular complaints and downsizing of my yard (because I can almost never have enough ships under construction to get to 25% of capacity) does end the ridiculous 90K ton BB problem. It seems sort of deus ex machina, though. Maybe you could just make the cost of yard increases go up more dramatically as the size increases? I can't imagine playing as the Japanese and getting to 65K tons with this mechanic.

I'd like to add some comments here about refits/repairs/yard capacity.

First, for ships over a certain size (perhaps anything above a DD) civilian shipyards would NOT be able to handle them and it should be that repairs and refits compete with new build for yard space. This may make the player have to face some realistically hard choices.It might also prevent the trick of starting and then halting new build to keep the Kaiser/PM/whatever happy, which is usually without cost other than the modest halted expenditure rate.

Second, refits and repairs should count against shipyard capacity for the complaining yard owners. While the skills don't overlap entirely (you aren't building a new hull for example), work is work, and 12 months replacing machinery or whatever is still very significant employment for lots of people.

Third, I'm inclining to the view that repair times are much too short and should perhaps be doubled. Others have noted that human commanders are much more aggressive than the AI. A more realistic repair time might do much to make the humans a bit more reasonable about chucking those light cruisers at BBs, if you won't see them again for six months or more, during which time you may need the yard space for something else...

Ships, especially capital ships, were and are extremely valuable and I don't feel the game has put a high enough premium on getting the fenders bent.

How far down the path do you go?

Consider construction is only in drydock for the initial phase, then the ship gets moved to a graving dock for the remainder of the construction, whilst many refits did not required the ships to be drydocked.

In game, ships spend all their construction time in drydock.

Heck, the game could be massive if we had to track every individual drydock and graving dock.

Or...we could have the current, abstracted system where yard space is explicitly for new construction.

I'm not suggesting the grognard line as I don't much care for that sort of thing myself.

But I think there is scope to tweak these things. Over to the devs...