Spending Spree (NOT OFFICIAL!!!!)

[Walter]

Ouch 9 Fully Modern Regular Corp at Full Time Readiness....??????

If I interpret the rules correctly...

1885 / 1880: 1880 Army Tech & 1880 Forts and Siege Guns

Years are: Years everyone can get it/Years only those with required establishment can get this.

... even with required establishments, it is impossible to start the sim with 1880 units. You can only start changing the units to the 1880 level after 1/1/1880 if you have the required establishment (1/1/1885 if you don't) and what we're doing right now to start it is stuff that is 31/12/1879 and earlier...
... so the army expenditure is going to be a little bit less expensive for Valles. :)

[ctwaterman]

Well Yes The 1880 Tech is just being invented so cost is lower.  The fact that he wants to keep all 9 Corp at full combat status well that 450,000 men eating, and getting payed and training.  I dont think I intended to have more then say 4 Corps in this status and I have Texans as a neighbor and hostile native tribes.  :o

[Valles]

I note that it really doesn't matter - the permitted rollover cushion is large enough for the necessary upgrades - and therefore my position is that worrying about the strict timing of 'tech activation' at this stage is simply more trouble than it's worth.

That said, it's not much trouble, so if that's how the rules are interpreted, I can do it, no problem.

[Korpen]

10 10,000 ton support bases     $20             $436.5          ($2)
2 50,000 ton support bases      $20             $416.5          ($2)
1 100,000 ton support base      $20             $396.5          ($2)

Is that that not a bit limiting in how you could move any significant force around the islands? With only three places capable of stationing capital ships you seem to be very operationally limited.

Also should it be Nagasaki and not Hiroshima that is the main base?

[Valles]

My second draft does expand my basing a bit, though not overwhelmingly. Keep in mind that the entire nation, from the northern Kuriles to the southern Ryukyus, is only about 3,000 nm, as well as the fact that for this phase, 'capital ship' describes something that's ten ktons at most.

Nagasaki is on the western coast of Kyushu - it's in Korean hands. And anyway, I chose Hiroshima, yes for name recognition value, but past that because it was and is an industrial center even before a port, which 'in period' would be Nagasaki's claim to fame.

Or would, if Japan had ever been a sealed country in this setting as wasn't.

[TexanCowboy]

Only 4?

Silly, naive plotting....MWAHAHA!!!

[Korpen]

Does anyone have a suggestion as to how to improve the naval infrastructure setup?  Anything at all?

Well, the obvious thing would be to cut the upkeep on bases or drydocks.
But some loose ideas:
Most if not almost all drydocks were not only military, but conducted civilian business as well as for the navy.
So how about, to represent that reduce the upkeep cost of a dry-dock by half OR €0,4 (exact number is open), whichever is lower. This would make smaller drydocks relatively cheaper, and represent the fact that most civilian ships do not need very large docks so their earning power is not allot more then the smaller ones. This should help to keep the number of very large docks down, which I suspect is one of the main intentions of the rule.

Another (or possible as well) way would be to introduce maintenance drydocks; drydocks which are not part of full shipyard and so limited to maintenance and basic repairs (so no complete major repairs, constructions or rebuilds). In return they would be slightly cheaper to build and much cheaper to upkeep. Floating drydocks would be a sub-category.

The problem of sort is that once it is built a drydock itself is likely to remain until the next ice age (at least in Scandinavia were drydocks are cut into bedrock: http://maps.google.se/?ll=56.159709,15.577224&spn=0.002327,0.006968&t=h&z=18&vpsrc=6 )without any maintenance at all.  So the drydock upkeep really is wages for workers and some of the associated infrastructure such as cranes and rails. But at the same time it feels a bit like much one is already paying for allot of that with the naval base cost, the ship upkeep cost and ship building costs.
Another idea to chuck around would be to separate naval bases from the dockyards, with the later having much higher upkeep costs and perhaps a limit on how much tonnage that can be build / rebuilt there every year.

[miketr]

I will ask the others about this suggestion.

Any other comments / suggestions?

Michael

[Korpen]

I will ask the others about this suggestion.

Any other comments / suggestions?

Michael

Yes, one more:
Perhaps allow bases to be put in reserve at only 10% the upkeep for the base and its infrastructure, but only allow it 5% of the support ability while in reserve.

[Sachmle]

I like the Shipyard vs Naval Base idea, but I also thought I'd throw out that the out of 156 Pre-Dreadnought battleships built by the US, GB, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy (I didn't do Japan since a lot of their early ships where purchased abroad) 71 (45.5%) were built in private yards not owned by the government. In the US ALL their PDNs except Connecticut (New York Naval Yard) were built by private companies. If you discount the Russians, 69 out of 129 (53.5%) were built in private yards. Is there some way we can simulate this? Perhaps ships built in private yards cost more (5%?) but finish faster, or if a nation uses private yards to build it's ships it gets some kind of economic bonus since more 'citizens' would be employed (private sector usually pays more).

[miketr]

I like the Shipyard vs Naval Base idea, but I also thought I'd throw out that the out of 156 Pre-Dreadnought battleships built by the US, GB, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy (I didn't do Japan since a lot of their early ships where purchased abroad) 71 (45.5%) were built in private yards not owned by the government. In the US ALL their PDNs except Connecticut (New York Naval Yard) were built by private companies. If you discount the Russians, 69 out of 129 (53.5%) were built in private yards. Is there some way we can simulate this? Perhaps ships built in private yards cost more (5%?) but finish faster, or if a nation uses private yards to build it's ships it gets some kind of economic bonus since more 'citizens' would be employed (private sector usually pays more).

Early drafts had some attempt to differentiate between private and national capacity but nothing was agreed to.  IE all ideas put forward were heavily flawed.

Best suggestion I can have is that to view your dry docks and shipyards as what your nation has.  Want to call them private companies that is fine, its just what your nation has.

Michael

[Darman]

In N3 Egypt "privatized" some of its military industries to facilitate foreign arms sales.  The government could (justifiably) claim that any arms sales were part of the free market (the English were quite good at using this excuse OTL)

[Korpen]

I can see several ways one could implement "civilian" as different shipyards, but agree with the official line that it is most likely not worth it.

But what is other people's thoughts about the ideas I posted?