Sacro321

I mean your problem is right there in your screenshots: the "avoid collisions" and "avoid torpedoes" buttons are on, which means your ships will ignore their formation/your orders if they think they will collide with another ship or if there's an enemy torpoedo somewhere within 10 lightyears. If you want your ships to keep their formation you'll have to turn them off.

Hmm I guess the only real way to know would be if we got a more detailed breakdown of the upkeep costs that we have. Right now we basically don't know anything about the upkeep costs that are non-ship related, since they're literally not shown at all except under "Total Expenses".

I'm guessing that it's because of crew upkeep. If you maxed out your crew slider, your crew pool will grow to its limit (from population) relatively quickly, thus your upkeep costs for the crew go up. Later on your crew pool stagnates (especiially if you don't use it) because of the limit tied to population, so your upkeep costs for crew stay relatively the same instead of increasing. At least that would be my theory.

Yes, and starting from 1890 I always build up the shipyard size by the maximum amount (4000t with 24 month build time) - but the 4000t that you can build in 24 months don't change. If you start in 1890 you can always only add 4000t in 24 months, but if you start in 1900 you can add 9600t every 24 months. 1910 again has a higher shipyard amount you can add in 24 months etc. For example: If you want to build a super battleship with the maximum size (which I think is 117.000t) then if you start in 1890 you can only do that after 53 years (so 1943) (if you always immediately build up your shipyard every 24 months) If you start in 1900 instead, you can build a 117.000 super battleship around the 1920s instead (or at least you'll have the shipyard size for it) since you start with a 20.500t shipyard and can add 9600t every 24 months. So if campaigns are actually supposed to eventually be able to run from 1890 to 1950, I think making the amount you can build grow as the years progress may be a good idea in the future. Would also help the AI, since if they don't immediately build up their shipyards everytime like a player may do, they may just be outpaced in pure ship size - especially if they're stuck with only being able to add 4000t every 2 years.

Oh, I made a mistake. I meant Shipyard size not port capacity - sorry about that - it's the Shipyard build amount that stays at the default 4000t for the 1890 start. I quickly started a new 1890 campaign again to confirm, and yes the Shipyard amount you can build stays at 4000t (I went until 1905, and always build the Shipyard up). If you start in 1900 instead, the Shipyard amount you can build is 9600t. So is it intended to stay at 4000t or is it supposed to grow?

@Nick Thomadis Just for clarification: was the port capacity that you can build supposed to grow as the years progress? I did a quick campaign test with Germany where I avoided war as much as possible to see tech/GDP progress, and I noticed that the port capacity I can build stayed at 4000t/24 Months - I thought it was supposed to grow? I went until 1921 so far.

I second this. Was playing an 1890 Germany Campaign and after I wiped out both UK and France, I kept hitting next turn to see how fast research and GDP growth is. After an initial rather fast-ish surge to 9.363 Billion, my GDP actually started shrinking despite still having economic growth of +14%. I kept going for a bit to see how it would develop, and even in like the mid to late 1920's my GDP was still slowly declining, despite positive economic growth, to 9.34 billion. At this point my transport capacity was at 200%, so that slider was at the default middle position, my crew training was also in the middle, and research maxed out. I had scrapped my entire fleet, and was still at a negative monthly balance. I also took some decisions that were supposed to increase naval budget %, but they didn't do anything. Neither did GDP % increase decisions. This is especially a problem, since the hard-cap doesn't go away. If you start a campaign with Germany in 1920, the starting GDP is I believe 30 Billion, but just like with the shipyard construction amount which doesn't go up as the years progress, the GDP cap also doesn't seem to increase, which means that no nation will be able to actually afford the newer ships if the campaign is started in 1890, since the GDP caps don't increase and thus the monthly budget is far too low.