Ship Flaws

[Izargon]

So why ship flaws?
It is very irritating to see a majority of the ships one builds come with flaws that seem to be arbitrarly added despite the ships not necessarily having any equipment that encourages ship flaws...

One of my theories is that ship flaws perhaps are caused by an over burdened shipyard... Will need to test this out..

Any thoughts on ship flaws that are not related to the obvious "flawed" equipment?

[cylindricalseal]

My understanding is that without using 'advanced' tech (ie., items that note +5% flaws or whatever) is the roll of the dice multiplier of the shipbuilding function. I try to limit all my builds to no more than 95% of max displacement when kitted out. Such as a BB with max displacement of 35,000 tons is only fitted to 33,250 tons. This leaves space for flaws that increase weight but without overloading the ship.

[Pwnicus]

I kinda wish the flaw system was an optional checkbox. Like hopefully mines and subs will be.

[cylindricalseal]

I'm fine with the concept of 'ship flaws' as every ship ever built from the smallest pleasure craft to the largest warship end up with flaws when constructed. The manner in which the game increasingly penalizes the player when using advanced tech is also, conceptually, completely valid.

However, think the everyone's confusion about ship flaws in the game is understandable since the devs never explained in detail how it works and what can be done to reduce them. What effect (if any) do shipyards have on flaws? What about political meddling that results in change orders while the ship is already being constructed? Or if flaws can be completely eliminated?

Many opportunities for the devs to enlighten us.

[Izargon]

So, just tested this with a 1895 build, six cruisers were built within the limits of the ship yard, 10 months...

First, the equipment used was all FLAW FREE. No equipment at the time of design was added that promoted the growth of flaws.

Second; the building process was flaw free, with flaws appearing only at the process of commissioning on TWO of the six ships.

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This leads me to wonder if tech discoveries during the time of the ships building can lead to ship flaws...?

Perhaps a few others can help determine what leads to most ship flaws...

Currently, my theories range from the dockyard space question to tech discoveries related to hull construction...

But I only had 2 flawed ships out of the build batch of six end up with flaws.

More information would help from others... And we can therefore identify and attempt to isolate/prevent ship flaws... In part at least.

Edit:
Exactly what I'm aiming at here, to define the processes by which ship flaws happen, especially when building using equipment that has no chance of ship flaws.

[Sword_of_Light]

Because ship flaws are a thing. I served aboard a ship that had problems with its drive shafts, and had difficulty getting to its theoretical top speed. The entire class, the Coast Guard's Famous class cutters, were a little wonky, since for some reason the middle 100 feet were removed from the original design, and the resulting ship rode funny in heavy seas.

And these are modern designs laid down thirty years after the end date of this game. Remember that when you're building a dreadnought in the teens, there are still people alive who remember when ships were wooden, and all-metal vessels were experimental.

Here's the other thing - no matter how well tested a given technology is, there may still be idiots in charge. In 1919 a storage tank for molasses was built in Boston, for use in the production of military grade alcohol. But the guy who designed it didn't know a damn thing about engineering, and the engineer who did was ignored. One unusually warm winter day the whole damn thing burst, sending a wall of slow moving doom over the neighborhood. It sounds funny, but you're not as buoyant in molasses as you are in water, and quite a few people met a, well, a sticky end.

[Izargon]

That is quite true... the developement of the M13 torpedo after all...

Thank you for giving that perspective on things...

Also, As an aside, Prince of Wales didnt go thru her shakedown cruise, where those gun issues might've been caught... She had issues with guns jamming due to tolerances and paranoia about flashfires...

So, yeah, there could be a whole realistic reason for ship flaws to be in game, and perhaps some ship wrights suddenly derp and think theyre working on a sailship or something... Lovely humanity...

But in the build test earlier, thinking about it now.. 6 3999 ton cruisers is under 24k tons. My shipyards at the time were not quite to that level yet [17000 some tons], but it does seem to fit that my theory with ship flaws being also related to ships being built outside the ship yard.

Two of the four ships were build outside the dockyards, hence they ended up with ship flaws while those built in the dockyards did not..

In a way, this was a good test to run with a certain number of ships outside the dockyard too, because four ships within the dockyard, 4 ships no ship flaws. Two ships outside dockyard, those ships ended up with flaws.

Ergo, from what it seems to be linked to is a mix of newer equipment and being built outside the dockyard results in ship flaws. So, try to limit production runs to dockyard limits.

[Izargon]

Indeed..

[stevenkj]

Ships do often come out the yards with flaws (happens all the time - the USS Gerald Ford, & the Elizabeth class carriers immediately come to mind), but they go on trials to spot those flaws. Then they go back to get fixed - & that's the problem with the games flaw system, they don't have a system for allowing fixes, so you get stuck with them, *all* of them.

[cylindricalseal]

Originally posted by stevenkj:

Ships do often come out the yards with flaws (happens all the time - the USS Gerald Ford, & the Elizabeth class carriers immediately come to mind), but they go on trials to spot those flaws. Then they go back to get fixed - & that's the problem with the games flaw system, they don't have a system for allowing fixes, so you get stuck with them, *all* of them.

That's an excellent point! All of this would have been great to have been added and play-tested during development. Adding new processes after "release"....I mean, if it worked logically in game and if how it worked (and doesn't work) was explained by GameLabs--well, that would be terrific!

[edit, added]: I have a feeling such an option would result in very odd behavior from the AI in-game. And if the AI cannot take advantage of the feature or cannot do it at all, then it should not be in the game.

[Izargon]

Very good points, those who replied... Very good points. I think I've found the ingame reason for ship flaws primarily being the case of the over filled dockyard, And thank you for the feedback and info about al the reality flaws found in ships.. we could go on for days on that...

Hood, Prince of Wales...

Bismark had her radar too close to her main guns... Wonder if theres a flaw like that in the game?

This is why I feel that 1950 is too short of cutoff point, as not necessarily all of the tech desired has been researched... But thats an aside. Not really related to this topic.

[Coheed]

Think my main complaint about this system is that you either get no flaws or alot of flaws, like 10+ flaws.

I wouldn't mind it so much if flaws were common, but you only regularly got 2-3 flaws per ship. Seems a bit feast and famine at the moment, you either get perfect designs or absolute trash...

[Mobzonk]

Originally posted by stevenkj:

Ships do often come out the yards with flaws (happens all the time - the USS Gerald Ford, & the Elizabeth class carriers immediately come to mind), but they go on trials to spot those flaws. Then they go back to get fixed - & that's the problem with the games flaw system, they don't have a system for allowing fixes, so you get stuck with them, *all* of them.

Refit a ship and the flaws may be reduced - even if you refit technology that is more likely to be flawed,

[Pwnicus]

I never use flaw-increasing components when designing a ship, but a good 1/3 to 1/2 of all ships built are quite flawed after commissioning until I've unlocked the required techs to reduce flaws.
I get it. We're not building with Lego here. Maybe give the player more info on the flaw system, like "there is X percent chance of flaws with this design" based on current tech level, etc.

[Stone]

It's not dock capacity. I still use only BB and DD builds and build at max 10 ships at a time. I do this to balance for dock space for repairs and refit. I do not exceed dock capacity yet still have quite flawed ships. Just information for those wanting to test what cases more flaws.

[AlphaVictorKilo]

Originally posted by Stone:

It's not dock capacity. I still use only BB and DD builds and build at max 10 ships at a time. I do this to balance for dock space for repairs and refit. I do not exceed dock capacity yet still have quite flawed ships. Just information for those wanting to test what cases more flaws.

Flaws are random through using "advanced tech" whereas the tech we're given that reduces flaws doesn't keep up at all. Doesn't have anything to do with dock capacity

The only way (which is LAME) to reduce flaws on a ship is to refit, and even then, it's not guaranteed, which imo is stupid. You should be able to say "I want all flaws gone, and yes, I'll take a 6 month ship building penalty for it"