Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: LTCMTS

My two cents.

Carrier production costs and time do not start with laying down the keel. They start with long lead time items such as elevators, catapults, engineering plants and fire control directors to name a few. Then there is the production of the initial rivets, shell plating, framing and fixtures, many of which are standard, but many of which are not. From the time funding is appropriated and the decision is made to build a carrier, contracts not just with the shipbuilder, but all the subcontractors and sub-sub contractors have to be let, if the contractors are not in the current carrier production base, drawings have to be prepared and released. Materiel, especially steel, has to be ordered, negaotiated with the control board and the other service, then produced. Lead time to laying down the keel took as much as nine as little as six months for carriers.
Then there's slip or building dock availability. Kentucky (BB-65) was laid down on 7 Mar 1942. Her partially completed double bottom was mde water tight and floated out of the slipway on 10 Jun 1942, to make way for carrier construction. No, CA slipways/building docks won't work. Keel length and dead weight required that the "Essex" class carrier be built in a dock/slip in competition with "Iowa" class BBs and "Alaska" class large cruisers.
So "Lexington" is lost on 8 May 1942. The USN decides the next day to replace her with an "Essex" class carrier, above and beyond the six "Essex" class carriers already building at the time of her loss and the two more to be laid down by the end of 1942. All slipways and building docks or either in use or programmed. The large cruisers "Alaska" and "Guam" are building, but not launched, at NY Shipbuilding, which is converting "Cleveland " class cruisers to CVLs. We pick "Guam", have her hull made water-tight and launched while we prepare to lay down a new "Essex" carrier. We save some time by diverting catapults and elevators from the "Independence" conversion program, steal some single, pedastal mounted 5"/38s from CVE construction and take Mk.37 FCD and enclosed twin mounted 5"/38 from another "Cleveland" class cruiser, probably delaying the rebuilding of "California", "Tennessee" or "West Virginia". The main problem is the power plant. Engineering plants of that day are not modular. Boilers, turbines and gear boxes are all specifically designed to meet specific output and hp/wgt requirements and fit into specific spaces in a specific hull. Some of the machinery for the "Guam" can be adapted though as it is still being built. We can also use the steel already ordered for "Guam". This is a good thing because negotiating 20,000 tons of steel away from another program would be horrondous. 20,000 tons of steel builds 600 Sherman tanks, 3,000 heavy bombers, 15 destroyer escorts, 20 LSTs, 4 "Victory" ships, at time when these programs are more important to a "German First" strategy than another "Essex" carrier. Unfortunately, we don't need 9.5" Class A armor plates for an "Essex". All the plate already manufactured will probably have to be remanufactured as the adjustments are made on the production line.
As a result we cut down initial production time to laying down to six months or 8 Nov 1942. This puts us on a timeline with CV-13, Intrepid, laid down on 7 Dec 1942 at Newport News. NN, however, is the lead yard for the "Essex" class and already has six hulls building or under completion. This will be NYSB's first (and only) "Essex carrier. Let's use the game's 600 day building time. Commissioning date is thus, 30 July 1944. We have given up a large cruiser which would have been commissioned on 17 Sep 44 and delayed two "Independence" carriers by six months to 17 Apr 44 and 15 May 44.
There are ten "Essex" class carriers in commission, and 11 building.
So much for flippantly stating that the US could "just" lay down more "Essex" carriers as replacements for battle losses. As it was, those "Essex" carriers that came into service after late '44, were exactly that, battle loss replacements, as the planned numbers under the expansion bills of 1940 and the initial war program was met with the first 12 commissioned. In the same vein, the two "Saipan" class CVLs were included in the FY43-44 plan as replacements for expected attrition among the "Independence" class carriers. And they were laid down and built in place of, not in addition to, the heavy cruiser design they were developed from.
And before mdiehl and Scholl call me an "Axis Fan Boy", let me also catagorically state that it was impossible for the IJN to complete more of the planned 4th and 5th Replenishment Plan ships than they did. The single most destructive thing the US did to the Japanese military-industrial complex wasn't the cutoff in oil and gas shipments, it was cutting of the shipments of scrap steel. The Japanese could seek to replace the deficiency in the SRA. There was no way to replace the loss of 80% of the high grade steel. The national reserve lasted just long enough to complete the ships they did, but there was no steel for more "Taihos" or another "Yamato". Even more important was the limitation on slipways and building docks. OK, go ahead and build two "Shokakus" or "Taihos" instead of "Yamato". But slipway/dock availability actual means you're building your two carriers instead of "Yamato" AND "Musashi". The original "Shokaku" took four years from order to completion, even with Japanese naval industry on a near-war footing. So we lay down "Shokaku 2" on 4 Nov 37 instead of "Yamato" and "Zuikaku 2" on 29 Mar 38. We launch the first on 1 Nov 39 and complete on 15 Nov 40, the second on 30 Mar 40 and 1 Apr 41 respectively. We lay down the next two on 15 Nov 39 and 15 Apr 40 respectively, completing by 15 Nov 42 and 15 Apr 43. The residual steel is used to lay down a final "Shokaku" class carrier on 1 Dec 41, completing (?) on 1 Dec 44. This gives you two more carriers by war's start, two more during the attrition phase. Use them well. But where do you get the steel and alloys to build the aircraft needed to equipt these carriers? Where do you get the pilots, when you don't have the resources to build training a/c or provide enough fuel? Where do you get plant capacity, when it didn't exist? As a further point on Japanese industrial inflexibility, if you diverted all the steel used in all the tanks and field artillery built for the IJA between 1941 and 1945, you might get enough for two heavy cruisers or 1.5 "Unryus". Or do you just ignore the "terror" of logistics and strategic economic mobilization in order to create the end result you want?
I would consider reading "McNair Paper #50: Mobilizing U.S. Industry in World War II" by Alan L. Gropman, published by the National Defense University in 1996, along with a number of other sources before making extravegent statements about what US industry in WW2 could or couldn't do.

Irrelevant (or should we call you Zippy?), please read my entire post and the alternatives to Yamato.

Personally when playing the allies I will leave any respawned CVs parked on the west coast and when playing the Japanese insist my opponent to do the same. To me the only legitimate use of the respawning rules is as an AI cheat.

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Personally when playing the allies I will leave any respawned CVs parked on the west coast and when playing the Japanese insist my opponent to do the same. To me the only legitimate use of the respawning rules is as an AI cheat.

So does this mean that you will not use the Essex class Yorktown that was built and used in the war? Wasn't there also another Hornet?

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Personally when playing the allies I will leave any respawned CVs parked on the west coast and when playing the Japanese insist my opponent to do the same. To me the only legitimate use of the respawning rules is as an AI cheat.

So does this mean that you will not use the Essex class Yorktown that was built and used in the war? Wasn't there also another Hornet?

ORIGINAL: TIMJOT

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Personally when playing the allies I will leave any respawned CVs parked on the west coast and when playing the Japanese insist my opponent to do the same. To me the only legitimate use of the respawning rules is as an AI cheat.

So does this mean that you will not use the Essex class Yorktown that was built and used in the war? Wasn't there also another Hornet?

No, CV10 (Yorktown), CV12 (Hornet), CV16 (Lexington), CV18 (Wasp) are in the game under there original names. Bon Homme Richard, Kearsarge, Cabot, and Oriskany
respectively. This is NOT a naming issue this is about adding ships that were never built and could not have been built in the time frames aloted in the game.

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

ORIGINAL: TIMJOT

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay



So does this mean that you will not use the Essex class Yorktown that was built and used in the war? Wasn't there also another Hornet?

No, CV10 (Yorktown), CV12 (Hornet), CV16 (Lexington), CV18 (Wasp) are in the game under there original names. Bon Homme Richard, Kearsarge, Cabot, and Oriskany
respectively. This is NOT a naming issue this is about adding ships that were never built and could not have been built in the time frames aloted in the game.

It most definitely *is* a naming issue. Ships in the database each occupy a slot. This slot has all the information about the ship. It points back to a class slot. This slot contains all the information about the class of ships, including upgrades. Hacking into the database on the fly to change names is very much a code issue. Please do not try and pretend otherwise.

As I have said before, the game has a very simple solution. When the replacement CV shows up, park it somewhere for the duration of the war. It costs you nothing to do so. You can even wait until the next "official" hull shows up then swap the two, leaving the "named" ship back in play and the "unnamed" ship sitting in the USA port for the war.

All it requires is a little self control on the part of the Allied player.

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

ORIGINAL: TIMJOT

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay



So does this mean that you will not use the Essex class Yorktown that was built and used in the war? Wasn't there also another Hornet?

No, CV10 (Yorktown), CV12 (Hornet), CV16 (Lexington), CV18 (Wasp) are in the game under there original names. Bon Homme Richard, Kearsarge, Cabot, and Oriskany
respectively. This is NOT a naming issue this is about adding ships that were never built and could not have been built in the time frames aloted in the game.

It most definitely *is* a naming issue. Ships in the database each occupy a slot. This slot has all the information about the ship. It points back to a class slot. This slot contains all the information about the class of ships, including upgrades. Hacking into the database on the fly to change names is very much a code issue. Please do not try and pretend otherwise.

As I have said before, the game has a very simple solution. When the replacement CV shows up, park it somewhere for the duration of the war. It costs you nothing to do so. You can even wait until the next "official" hull shows up then swap the two, leaving the "named" ship back in play and the "unnamed" ship sitting in the USA port for the war.

All it requires is a little self control on the part of the Allied player.

ORIGINAL: MikeKraemer


The challenge is The respawned CV's were CV's that were built CV's 10,12,16 and 18 were built and whether or not you use the original names or the respawned names is irrelevent.