Ship cost and maintenance survey

[ZorinW]

I have made another spreadsheet to investigate the building and maintenance costs. In particular I have surveyed all the German battleship hulls in game right now. These figures come from the custom battle shipbuilder. Minimum armor quality, fuel type and engine type are noted and the increase in the ship stats (stability, hull form, etc) are a result from the passive tech tree boni. All hulls were set to minimum for each stat (displacement, range, speed, bulkheads, quarters and armor), except beam and draught wich remained at 0%.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iJZj2aZpY_qh4XGDGsV5C-EiJBdFjbKKnSDm1QBCiZc/edit?usp=sharing

1. Finacially speaking, never go beyond the smallest available hull
2. Battleship I, Small Dreadnought and Dreadnought III should get you through a whole campaign quite nicely if you want the most ship for your money
3. Between 1900 and 1940 the maintenance cost per ton and the overall cost per ton quadruple! Remind me again, why do I spend billions on tech to make my ships more efficient, when that doesn't translate to cost savings?? 
4. Something buggy happens in 1925 as all ships lose floatability points SOLVED @Nick Thomadis

 

NOTICE: Updated with TB and DD data | Updated with Light Cruiser data | Updated with HeavyCruiser data | Updated with Battle Crusier data

 

Edited September 7, 2022 by ZorinW

[Lastreaumont]

4 hours ago, ZorinW said:

4. Something buggy happens in 1925 as all ships lose floatability points @Nick Thomadis

I think this is because of the switch from coal to semi oil. Coal gives a bonus of floatability. 

Edited September 7, 2022 by Lastreaumont

[ZorinW]

5 hours ago, Lastreaumont said:

I think this is because of the switch from coal to semi oil. Coal gives a bonus of floatability. 

Well spotted, thanks. I removed the bug marking.

[ZorinW]

Updated the sheet with the Torpedo Boat and Destroyer data.

Finding: Building and maintaining a torpedo boat is FOUR times more expensive per ton than a battleship! That's wrong on so many levels and highlights the very problematic way of how the Devs are handling the limits on the AI right now.

Also, in 1925, the Dreadnought III and Modern Destroyer Leader have almost the same hull stats. That's one tough destroyer!

Edited September 7, 2022 by ZorinW

[ZorinW]

Next update with the data for the Light Cruisers.

[ZorinW]

Next update with the data for the Heavy Cruisers.

Edited September 7, 2022 by ZorinW

[o Barão]

3 hours ago, ZorinW said:

Building and maintaining a torpedo boat is FOUR times more expensive per ton than a battleship! That's wrong on so many levels and highlights the very problematic way of how the Devs are handling the limits on the AI right now.

Let's look at the German navy costs:

New Wilhelmshaven Locks (IV. Entrance)	RM. 250 million
German Stadium, Nuremberg	RM. 200-250 million (estimated approx.)
Battleship H	RM. 240.85 million (estimated)
Battleship J	RM. 237.6 million (estimated)
Battleship Bismarck	RM. 196.8 million (1938)
Battleship Tirpitz	RM. 181.6 million
Battleship Gneisenau	RM. 146.2 million
Battleship Scharnhorst	RM. 143.5 million
Aircraft Carrier Graf Zeppelin	RM. 92.7 million
New Reich Chancellery, Berlin	RM. 90 million (1938)
Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee	RM. 82 million
Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen	RM. 104.490 million
Heavy Cruiser Blücher	RM. 87.855 million
Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper	RM. 85.860 million
Olympic Stadium, Berlin	RM. 43 million (1936)
Light Cruiser Nürnberg	RM. 40 million
Destroyer Z28	RM. 13.106 million
Schwerer Dora 80cm railway gun	RM. 7 million
Torpedo boat 1939	RM. 5.7 million
U-boat Type XXI	RM. 5.75 million
U-boat Type VII C	RM. 4.7 million
M-boat	RM. 3.5 million
S-boat	RM. 2.275 million
Führerbunker, Berlin	RM. 1.35 million
Tiger I tank	RM. 0.25 million
Panzer IV tank	RM. 0.1 million
V-2 missile	RM. 0.1 million
Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter	RM. 0.08 million

source

https://www.kbismarck.com/warship-construction-cost.html

 

 Did you check the TB speed? What is the speed on both the TB and the BB?

[ZorinW]

Fianl update with the Battle Cruiser data added.

[ZorinW]

3 minutes ago, o Barão said:

Let's look at the German navy costs:

New Wilhelmshaven Locks (IV. Entrance)	RM. 250 million
German Stadium, Nuremberg	RM. 200-250 million (estimated approx.)
Battleship H	RM. 240.85 million (estimated)
Battleship J	RM. 237.6 million (estimated)
Battleship Bismarck	RM. 196.8 million (1938)
Battleship Tirpitz	RM. 181.6 million
Battleship Gneisenau	RM. 146.2 million
Battleship Scharnhorst	RM. 143.5 million
Aircraft Carrier Graf Zeppelin	RM. 92.7 million
New Reich Chancellery, Berlin	RM. 90 million (1938)
Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee	RM. 82 million
Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen	RM. 104.490 million
Heavy Cruiser Blücher	RM. 87.855 million
Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper	RM. 85.860 million
Olympic Stadium, Berlin	RM. 43 million (1936)
Light Cruiser Nürnberg	RM. 40 million
Destroyer Z28	RM. 13.106 million
Schwerer Dora 80cm railway gun	RM. 7 million
Torpedo boat 1939	RM. 5.7 million
U-boat Type XXI	RM. 5.75 million
U-boat Type VII C	RM. 4.7 million
M-boat	RM. 3.5 million
S-boat	RM. 2.275 million
Führerbunker, Berlin	RM. 1.35 million
Tiger I tank	RM. 0.25 million
Panzer IV tank	RM. 0.1 million
V-2 missile	RM. 0.1 million
Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter	RM. 0.08 million

source

https://www.kbismarck.com/warship-construction-cost.html

 

 Did you check the TB speed? What is the speed on both the TB and the BB?

The speed is given in the sheet. They are always the minimum speed so for the battleship 16 kn and for the TB 21 kn. 

[Wowzery]

The economics of the game needs some tweaking.  I either saw it wrong, or maintenance continues to go up each year even if you're not changing a thing making it so you start losing money each turn.  Makes it difficult to create a large fleet to counter some AI fleets.

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

I don't remember where I saw it, but I remember seeing something that says the devs are trying to use maintenance costs to try and control the size of the AI nation's fleets in an effort to keep their numbers low...but we've seen how well that works.

What should probably be done as far as maintenance costs and fleet size goes, is to add something that controls the number of each type of ship the player (or AI) can hold in each port/in total (Skesis made a post about this concept earlier).

That might sound limiting by saying "you can only have X amount of BBs because your ports aren't big enough/your infrastructure can't handle more than that many," but who wants to fight an uphill battle of the "numbers game" because you have 40 ships while your enemy can somehow raise a fleet that outnumbers you at least 2-to-1 easily, all while you both are fighting skyrocketing maintenance costs...but the only difference is, the AI seems to not give a damn and can somehow shove all of their 100+ ship navy into a port that can only hold 12,000 tons? Even if you win that war, you will have to scrap ships, reduce funding and all other manner of money saving acts while your enemy goes "you know what we need to go with our 12 ship navy? How about a completely new navy of 57 ships, built all at once!" and they still don't go bankrupt.

TL;DR Yes something needs done, but it needs to be more than "adjusting costs" or "balancing economies." Something needs to limit how many of each ship type a respective nation can reasonably/fathomably service and maintain.

[Dave P.]

On 9/7/2022 at 3:39 PM, Wowzery said:

The economics of the game needs some tweaking.  I either saw it wrong, or maintenance continues to go up each year even if you're not changing a thing making it so you start losing money each turn.  Makes it difficult to create a large fleet to counter some AI fleets.

I have not seen this happen, but if your GDP is shrinking, your monthly budget will decrease. (You'll go further into the red each month without spending any additional money.)

[Wowzery]

On 9/8/2022 at 6:58 PM, Dave P. said:

I have not seen this happen, but if your GDP is shrinking, your monthly budget will decrease. (You'll go further into the red each month without spending any additional money.)

You're GDP can increase and your monthly budget can decrease.  I just watched it happen on the game I was playing.  Numbers for 4 months:

Oct 1896:  GDP 25,996,200,000     Budget 90,133,830     Tot Exp  69,786,220

Nov 1896:  GDP  26,088,110,000     Budget  89,976,620     Tot Exp  69,749,070

Dec 1896:  GDP  26,169,290,000     Budget  89,803,340     Tot Exp  69,698,270

Jan1897:  GDP  26,240,270,000     Budget  89,620,820     Tot Exp  69,637,520

There were no ships under construction, no changes no events effecting economics (I actually had no events during this stretch), no war, no refits, all ships in limited, no ships moved, tech and crew at 100% and shipping at 200%.  It also said for all four months the naval percentage was 3.97%.  All I was doing was hitting next month.  Despite the fact the GDP was growing my budget was being slashed more and more each month while expenditures were only slightly decreasing.

Something in the economic system is messed up and I have no way to fix it.  If my GDP was not increasing and in the red, I'd understand it a bit more, still be a bit pissed there was nothing I could do, but more reasonable.