"That thing belongs in a Museum!"--AI nations, and scrapping ships

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

Ok, so I don't know if anyone else has a problem with this/thinks this is a problem...but I have found that the AI DOES NOT LIKE to scrap their ships.

I'm not specifically talking about the playable nations here, though the major/playable nations don't scrap a whole lot of ships either (which is why I'm currently slaughtering ships built in 1900-1910 with my ships built in 1925 that have 1927/1928 tech). I'm mostly talking about the minor nations that you can become allied with/special trade partners with: Egypt, Mexico, Finland, Sweden, etc.

I get that the minor nations are just that: minor nations. They are meant to be a source of extra income through warship sales and oil resources (if they have them), their ports can be used as supply ports, and any ships in their navy can be used in battle to help your side (but even though I'm not allied with Mexico, I can still use their ships in the Caribbean because I'm allied with Japan, who is allied with Mexico...idk, just kinda weird but whatever. Not gonna complain too much about free firepower). Only problem is...once you start getting out of the early 1900s (so like 1900-1910 I'd say), their ports are completely full--depending on the nation and how many ships they order/you sell them--and so then you end up in the 1920s, trying to fight a battle with your "modern" ships and obsolete ships you sold your friends in 1903. In my current campaign (year is 1926), Egypt is still using battleships and cruisers I sold them in 1907. DDs are a different story as they have recently bought some of my latest designs, but that's only because they didn't have the port capacity to hold anything bigger than 3 DDs. Their ships are so slow, they can barely catch transports...luckily my ships are all capable of doing at least 30 knots. And then, if you don't go to war or actively try and get their ships sunk (when they appear in battle), that's an income source that all of a sudden dries up. Not to mention, because those ships are so outdated...they basically just turn into dead weight or contribute nothing.

The major nations are no better. Before the UK collapsed in my current campaign, they had 574 ships...47 of which were torpedo boats from 1900. I won't even try and tell you how many other museum pieces they had sailing around, but suffice to say the vast majority of their navy was, at minimum, moderately outdated or in severe need of refit/retirement. France still has 329 ships, and that's because they are still using ships from 1910-1915. My heavy cruisers with 8" guns are ripping their battleships apart while laughing hysterically at the 10.3" French shells that simply bounce off their armor. It's not even a challenge at this point...unless I go into battle with one of my modern CLs and 4 museum pieces from various friendly minor nations that can't do anything but move slow, waste ammo and maybe get a kill if they manage to get a lucky torpedo salvo away. I find myself actively being reckless with/trying to get any "outdated" ships that aren't my own sunk just so I can build my "friends" new ships that won't be a hindrance, on the off chance that I get into another conflict and they feel obliged to lend a hand (victory points for losing ships be damned...I'll earn them back with interest on the next turn when I sink more of the enemy's artifacts without breaking a sweat...ain't like it's that hard). I am outnumbered by a minimum of 3 to 1 against France, and was outnumbered almost 6 to 1 against the UK had they not collapsed and finished building the 86 more ships they had cooking. By all accounts, I should not be able to win since I'm basically outnumbered 9 to 1...but since the UK and France are raiding their museums to fight me and Spain, Germany and Italy (my allies) have nearly 750 combined ships combined ships (along with my 105 and growing)...I'm sitting pretty terrorizing the Pacific and making sure the French stay out of it.

I mean, Victory Points are Victory Points, and I'm causing Admirals to retire and countries to revolt like it's going out of style--which is getting me tons of reparations and provinces--but there needs to be something done. Personally, I think there needs to be some sort of check system that checks the build dates/hulls against the ships in service and tech levels. Something like "Oh, nobody has been able to build a TB for 10 years and I've still got 47 of them? Maybe I should replace them with DDs..." or "This BB was cool and all back in 1907...but now it's 1924 and it is horridly obsolete. OH PLAAAAYER! Got any designs for a new BB? We scrapped our old one because we need to stay up with the times."

TL;DR  I feel like Indiana Jones said it best..."It belongs in a museum!" And that's genuinely how I feel fighting any nation when you start a campaign in the early years. Fighting hordes of museum pieces, with the help of museum pieces, that you sold to your allies 15-20 years ago...isn't exactly challenging, which in turn isn't really all that fun. The major nation AI needs to be scrapping more ships, retrofitting more ships...or some mix of both. For the minor nations you can be "trade partners with," if they can't retrofit their ships...then they need to scrap them after so long and ask for more, or ask the nation who they bought them from to retrofit them for them. Whether its a system of "this hull has been obsolete for X years, let's scrap them" or "this ship is now over X years old, either retrofit or scrap it" or something else...I don't know what would work best, but I feel like something needs to change.