Refit or build new?

[Crocophile]

Playing as Italy with MTG, a lot of their starting ships really aren't useful for anything. Is it best to spend dockyards and time on refitting them into more effective roles, or is it more efficient to just build new ones and use the old ones for exercising?

[andersrlarsen]

use old destroyers and light cruicers to patrol (may need to do some minor adjustments in refitting, but should only be for detection and aa)
for large ships, especially bb and bc, you should refit ships and keep them in action.

[RoastCoffee]

Keep in mind some of those cruisers (and BB's) can be refit into carriers. A crappy light cruiser can be refitted into a passable carrier.

[A Bat From Wuhan]

It sort of depends what parts your refitting. Radars, mine layers, depth charges have relatively short refit times (maybe?). Engines and cannons have longer refits though, so it may not always be worth it.

[Dr Duh]

You can look at the proposed cost of a refit and compare that to the cost of just producing the new class. Also, if you are spending xp to make an upgrade-only class, it better be for something you have a significant number to upgrade.

I can't comment on Italy specifically since I haven't tried it with MtG, but the countries I've tried usually the DD's are deficient on sub detection, AA, and maybe have no depth charges even. If all you need to add is a sonar to have a decent ASW escort then it's well worthwhile, but adding or swapping out 3-4 modules is likely to cost you excessive production time.

Another thing to consider is how long until you'll have a new hull researched. If it's going to be a while before you have new hulls to design new classes on, refits may be more attractive. If you're going to have a new hull soon though, why waste xp on an upgrade design, especially if it will keep production tied up after the new hull is available.

Yet another thing to consider is the naval treaty. Unless you're planning on abrogating the treaty, you probably can't start upgrades that would be worth the time and production on your capital ships until the treaty is gone.

Originally posted by andersrlarsen:

use old destroyers and light cruicers to patrol (may need to do some minor adjustments in refitting, but should only be for detection and aa)

I'm kinda the opposite - I keep old DD's and CL's as screens in TF's since that's what they were designed for and can still do adequately with existing fleets. For patrols you want speed and good surface detection, and for convoy escort/ASW you want speed, surface detection, and sub detection. My first new CL and DD designs are for these roles.

[Bored Peon]

Refit time is based upon the old and new production cost.

The only drawback to "early hulls" is their severely limited range. However if you give them a job their range does not matter then it is no big deal.

What you want to do is replace all your early hulls in your strike fleets to get rid of the range limitation, otherwise you run into situations where you strike fleets can not cross the Atlantic to South or North America.

So basically you can take your old destroyers and cruisers and refit them a bit and have them do escort missions around Spain and Madagascar.

Most of the difference between early hulls and 1944 hulls is hp, production cost, materials required, and range. All the rest of the differences is the refitable equipment.

So technically late game you can get more firepower to your dollar spent using 1936 or 1940 hulls because they require far less steel and chromium, which can be a real pain to acquire with some countries.

[nicovallejos]

Also, the production costs for those heavy ships are really too high and it risks reaching the end year of 1948 or so.

I hope a mod regarding the navy would be needed. Take Manchukuo (regarding the Imperial Chinese Navy). It's national spirit, named the 'Legacy of the Beiyang Navy' reduces production costs of Heavy Ships (whatever battleship or battlecruiser) and Cruisers (whatever light or heavy) by -50%