A question of refits

[Purgato]

While the campaign is still quite far off I can't help but think about how refits would work.

What I'm very interested in, maybe because of the recent April fools update is a situation similar to the SMS Leitha. A Monitor having several refits decades after she was first built, ending up being used during and after the first world war by several powers, even if in a more limited capacity late in her career. She also had several different turret layouts, new engines, had new guns installed in older, but still functional turret mounts, etc.

My question here is what the limits of a refit should look like. Should the amount being changed have some proportional cost to it? Like up gunning a battleship a few years into service, while cost intensive, being a few month process that'll bring new life into an otherwise soon to be outclassed ship? Or should it be more simple as in replacing older quality guns for newer ones? I can assume making modifications to the hull is out of the question, but what about superstructure, funnels, etc?

Where exactly should the line be drawn and how much freedom should we have on a refit?
Feel free to throw ideas around, but this isn't anything to pressure the devs, more just think over what the limits a refits may end up looking like.

[disc]

I don't have a good answer for how the game should handle it.

Increased speed, torpedo bulges, longer stern or bow, extra armor,  new guns, new torpedo launchers, new or better engines, extra fuel, new masts, new bridges, new fire control, airplanes and catapults -- all were done.

Only things I have never heard of are additional main guns on battleships (occasionally on cruisers and smaller) and movement, addition, or widening of armored main gun barbettes (they were sometimes removed). I also don't think armored citadels were ever lengthened appreciably, although I guess they were made taller on American missile cruiser conversions.

[Purgato]

27 minutes ago, disc said:

I don't have a good answer for how the game should handle it.

Increased speed, torpedo bulges, longer stern or bow, extra armor,  new guns, new torpedo launchers, new or better engines, extra fuel, new masts, new bridges, new fire control, airplanes and catapults -- all were done.

Only things I have never heard of are additional main guns on battleships (occasionally on cruisers and smaller) and movement, addition, or widening of armored main gun barbettes (they were sometimes removed). I also don't think armored citadels were ever lengthened appreciably, although I guess they were made taller on American missile cruiser conversions.

Actually there may be a bit of an issue now that I think about it.

If the towers on a ship are the only components to them, we can't have a situation like the early US dreadnoughts replacing their cage masts, since the towers have a bunch of the components you mentioned all crammed inside them. Although the game is still quite early on, so I could see some changes to that.

Either way using history as a guide does seem at least somewhat useful to assist in getting an idea here, but I almost swore there were situations of larger ships having their guns swapped out for other larger ones. Granted, maybe you just mean they never added even more then they started with. So I guess beyond a situation of replacing a turret having a double mount with a triple if it can be afforded there shouldn't be too much of a reason to add more main turrets on a ship that large?

 

[disc]

1 hour ago, Purgato said:

I almost swore there were situations of larger ships having their guns swapped out for other larger ones. Granted, maybe you just mean they never added even more then they started with.

What I mean to say is that I've never heard of a battleship in our presumed time period (1890+) getting additional main guns from a refit. I don't know of any that managed to cram in an extra gun into a turret, upgrading, say, from a twin to a triple. This would be very hard to do. For the same gun caliber, an extra gun in a turret almost always requires a bigger barbette, which would cost an absurd amount of money to refit. I have certainly never heard of a nation adding a whole extra main turret in a battleship refit.

There were many ships that had their main guns increased in caliber, but this got rarer and rarer as ship size increased. Some weight compensation was often needed -- bigger guns add topweight, so usually the total number of guns decreased. Large barbettes would be extremely hard to expand, which limits the size of replacement turrets, limiting the size of any potential guns.

Additionally, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921 forbade increasing gun size on already-existing battleships, except for France (which never made use of this clause) and Italy. Thus, say, we never saw the US replace their three-gun 14in turrets with two-gun 16in ones, even though it was probably possible.

• I think changing gun caliber was not uncommon with destroyers. Several of the US Clemson class got 5in guns, and some got twin 4in instead of single 4in. I think a whole host of early Royal Navy destroyers got extra 76mm guns to replace 57mm. As so many of these ships used pedestal mounts for their guns, replacing them was very simple. Things get more complicated with bigger destroyers in the interwar era with bigger or dual-purpose guns.
• With light cruisers, there are a good number of examples pre-WWI, and during WWI a large number of German cruisers traded 105mm guns for 150mm. Post WWI, a number of light cruisers, such as the C-class, Isuzu, and Delhi, entirely replaced their 140mm or 152mm main battery with smaller dual-purpose guns (102-127mm).
• With the big Treaty cruisers, the only examples I know of are Mogami and Tone, which traded 155mm triples for 203mm twins. The 203mm twins were actually slightly smaller than the 155mm triples, which is why this was possible.
• For battleships, the Italian Andrea Doria and Cavour had their guns bored out from 305mm to 320mm; these ships underwent a positively enormous refit and lost their amidships triple turret in the process. I believe the external dimensions of the bored-out guns was relatively unchanged, so no barbette expansion was needed. Post-treaty, the German Scharnhorst class was scheduled to replace their 283mm triples with 380mm twins, but this never happened.
• I have never heard of a refit project to reduce the caliber of a battleship's guns during our timeframe, unless the main guns were totally removed, but undoubtedly this was technically feasible.

Edited April 7, 2020 by disc

[TAKTCOM]

More refit topic.  Yay.

[Purgato]

51 minutes ago, TAKTCOM said:

More refit topic.  Yay.

Damn, never realized this was talked about before.
Although I do think there is more to be said on even a hypothetical level. That thread was months ago and although the updates haven't been total overhauls since then, the way it could be imagined could certainly have changed.

Plus I think having what will end up being common procedure in the main campaign be brought up and discussed certainly can't hurt.

[Cptbarney]

1 hour ago, TAKTCOM said:

More refit topic.  Yay.

Theres nothing wrong with bringing a subject up that hasn't been discussed since last year. Plus things change in development so they might of left that out for whenever it comes out for us to play with.

Either way i think having a more upto date discussion also might jog the devs memories a bit if they forget certain aspects of the game (we are only human afterall).