Converting from sail to steam

[Bulldog69]

I was keen to swap from Warships to Battleships, but was surprised to see that, if I disband my old sail-powered warships, I pay a penalty in victory points / national morale.

Surely one should be able to disband obsolete units and gain something (rather than pay a penalty) as a result? Like x number of steel added to the stock pile, or x number of conscripts?

Or am I missing something?

[Random]

Agreed, when I scrap obsolete ships I write a script to negate the penalty and place it into the Plugin_1850GC.sct file on the turn that the scrapping is ordered so it fires that turn . The numbers can be adjusted to taste.

SelectFaction = $CMN
SelectRegion = $Ile de France
StartEvent = France scraps wooden ships (1875)|1|1|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL

Actions
SelectFaction = $FRA
DescEvent = France scraps wooden ships
ChangeFacMorale = 10
ChgVPCount = 360

EndEvent

-C

[loki100]

I think the charge is WAD, but its clearly not something everyone likes.

To me it represents some bonkers right wing nationalist newspaper going on a campaign about (a) wasting money or (b) leaving the country defenseless (depending on your country you can insert the paper of choice but in the UK this has to be the Daily Mail).

So its irrational, but then so is a lot of political discourse, especially about defense matters.

The charge I do mitigate (as above) is for scrapping obsolete heavy artillery that you captured in a war so you can clear up your force pool to build more modern units (ie ones that upgrade)

[epaminondas]

To me it represents some bonkers right wing nationalist newspaper going on a campaign about (a) wasting money or (b) leaving the country defenseless (depending on your country you can insert the paper of choice but in the UK this has to be the Daily Mail).

That's a reading that makes sense to me. Consider the ferocious opposition Fisher faced on the proposition that building Dreadnought would sacrifice Britain's naval superiority at a stroke.

[Random]

To me it represents some bonkers right wing nationalist newspaper going on a campaign about (a) wasting money or (b) leaving the country defenseless (depending on your country you can insert the paper of choice but in the UK this has to be the Daily Mail).

Except this never happened anywhere. The British press was in fact quite vocal in its criticism of the government retaining wood in an age of iron ships. This is evident in the famous 1863 editorial when the brand-new 120-gun screw ship-of-the-line HMS Victoria sailed to Malta as flagship of the Mediterranean Station. The politically influential London Times commented acidly that in the event of a war with France, Victoria's admiral was faced with the choice of "going into port or going to the bottom". The French Navy at that time possessed about five ironclads.

The reality was that countries which aspired to having first-rate navies could not dump their major wooden warships fast enough and this is why I see the penalty as entirely unreasonable.

-C

[Kensai]

The game is made of some assumptions. Some might also argue that the structure or force pools are not realistic either. They are needed though to make the game more challenging. I find the simulated loss in Prestige and Resources a good abstraction to dissuade nations from disbanding their fleet all too often unless they can afford it. In real life only the strongest of nations (probably GBR and FRA) could afford this. Indeed in game the loss for them is minimal, given how they lead in overall score.

[Random]

I should be clear that my objections to loss of VP and morale in this case applies only to the transition from wood to iron and not to subsequent obsolescence of technologically outmoded warships. The political, socio-economic and military ramifications of the change from wood to iron warships was completely different from the later phase of naval construction where some designs were obsolete before they even commissioned and others had active service lives effectively measured in months.

So the penalties applied for replacing obsolete ironclad variants is quite reasonable and part of the cost of doing business in the defence sector during a time of rapid technological change.

The Royal Navy examples of the political footballs that were the awful Admiral Class battleships of the 1880's or the scandals surrounding the rather horrific and effectively useless Elswick 16.25" gun development demonstrate that naval construction in the era was fraught with political ramifications and Great Britain was certainly not alone dealing with these issues.

Actually I think that the naval progression adopted by the PON design team has rather remarkable historical relevance and recreates the dynamics of the marine technological revolution quite effectively overall. With the caveat that the wholesale scrapping of wooden warships should really be free of most penalties. The passing of the highly-skilled shipwright and their guilds used to sculpting in wood was, for the most part economically and socially invisible as their replacements were the higher-paid metallurgist, engineer and mass-production iron-worker with their labour unions and rising political consciousness. As I see it ,within the potential PON universes naval construction affairs after iron replaces wood generally unfold in a manner that is reasonable, at least for the major Powers.

-C

[Kensai]

As you wish. But bear in mind that this applies to all nations that move forward in time so its effects in the end cancel out. However, the more advanced (prestigious) the nation, the easier it is to absorb this penalty since it is an absolute value, not a percentage.

It is a slippery slope to write events that give to your own nation bonuses. As a rule, I almost always script only penalties for my nation and bonuses for all the others. Helps with the challenge.

[Christophe.Barot]

the problem is not much penalty (it is deterrent) that it doesn't help AI to streamline navy upgrading

we need to find a way, whatever it is, and implement it, so AI upgrades her navy - as well as (Germany Japan) build it from scratch or so

[driggsd]

It would be nice if there was a "mothball" or "sell off obsolete ships" option. IRL that is how these things tend to happen. But I can understand how that might be hard to code. How-ever I image it would not be too hard to add a descion triggered by each naval upgrade that would let you "sell off obsolete hulls". Hell it could even end with those hulls showing up in a lesser powers ports as their fleet........

[Sir Garnet]

The ships could perish in glorious battle (definitely want the glorious victorious kind). A script could transfer them to a minor that might find them of value.
Or keep them, as some countries have, as museum pieces.

But Kensai is right that the disband penalty affects everyone. If scripting back lost VP, I suggest including all the other countries in an equal increase.

Inflated NM will be dampened by military retrenchment - I think that's ok. Double-digit NM should trend back up over time.