On the subject of naval treaties

[BobRoss0902]

A major defining thing about the Washington naval treaty was how every nation tried to find their own way to barely skirt around it, or just outright ignored it in some places.

I think it would be a great mechanic if there was a system involved with naval treaties where let's say you are building a new ship, and a treaty limits it's tonnage, you can try to squeeze a few extra tons in and hope no-one notices, maybe put funding to shut people up about it, and if it becomes too common of knowledge, you could be faced with an ultimatum to scrap your ship that you put so much effort in, or face war/sanctions or other form of punishment.

 The AI would also be guilty of trying to skirt around naval treaties. Maybe implement a system where some admiralities are more prone to it than others.

I personally it would make the game just that much more interesting rather than being forced to abide by treaties without a doubt.

[Cptbarney]

Personally i really like this idea, would add a greater depth to the immersion of the game as whole and make it much more interesting as well since you can be a bit naughty in making your ship a bit more chonk.

You could lose pretige, have ship construction slowed down, funds taken away or external sanctions placed, maybe lose a ship or two and the other things you suggested as well. Makes me wonder what the limits we can set with treaties will be, im actually excited for the campaign but im willing to wait for a more stable release.

[Aceituna]

I like it too. Anyway i got an idea: This might be connected with the inteligence feature that was discussed before-if your spies would discover that some country is cheating on treaties you could choose to reveal this information (to hurt it's prestiege etc.) or keep this information for yourself if you wouldn't like to rise tension.

Also probability of somebody noticing might differ by how much you violate this treaty (it would be different if you extend limit about 1000 tons or about 10000 tons.

[BobRoss0902]

6 minutes ago, Aceituna said:

I like it too. Anyway i got an idea: This might be connected with the inteligence feature that was discussed before-if your spies would discover that some country is cheating on treaties you could choose to reveal this information (to hurt it's prestiege etc.) or keep this information for yourself if you wouldn't like to rise tension.

Also probability of somebody noticing might differ by how much you violate this treaty (it would be different if you extend limit about 1000 tons or about 10000 tons.

Or you could use it to blackmail top leaders in said other nation.

And yeah I was thinking let's say they ban anything above say 14 inch guns. A 16 inch gun is much more likely to be called out than a 15 inch gun.

[Marshall99]

Excellent idea! 

[Shaftoe]

Player should be able to decide whether or not they want to sign any treaty. And each treaty must have its own page, with PROs and CONs clearly laid out.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Shaftoe

[Cptbarney]

2 minutes ago, Shaftoe said:

Player should be able whether or not they want to sign any treaty. And each treaty must have its own page, with PROs and CONs clearly laid out.

Would that still apply if the player loses a war? (which i doubt that would happen often). Just wondering if they would be forced into an agreement, like in real life situations.

[SiWi]

1 hour ago, Aceituna said:

I like it too. Anyway i got an idea: This might be connected with the inteligence feature that was discussed before-if your spies would discover that some country is cheating on treaties you could choose to reveal this information (to hurt it's prestiege etc.) or keep this information for yourself if you wouldn't like to rise tension.

Also probability of somebody noticing might differ by how much you violate this treaty (it would be different if you extend limit about 1000 tons or about 10000 tons.

I wanted to post it myself, but yes: 

 

would go very well with a treaty system.

After all, what is a treaty that you can't break and what is breaking a treaty, if no one can know it (or simply know it automatically).

Of course both features are rather complex and will be missing early versions of the campaign but I think they both would be great.

 

Finding out that for example Japan has broken the treaty (random example ^^), could trigger "Escalation clauses" that allow for bigger ships and bigger guns ect.

Finding out and being right would gain prestige, accusing someone to break limits they didn't should diminish it. Meaning one would chose carefully if your intel is good enough to accuse someone.

[Aceituna]

1 hour ago, Shaftoe said:

Player should be able whether or not they want to sign any treaty. And each treaty must have its own page, with PROs and CONs clearly laid out.

Player will only control navy. Shouldn't this be rather up to government? (Altrough player should have some influence over this)

Edited June 2, 2020 by Aceituna

[Wowzery]

34 minutes ago, Aceituna said:

Player will only control navy. Shouldn't this be rather up to government? (Altrough player should have some influence over this)

Your government has signed a treaty with other countries.  Those shiny, new ships you designed and being built are now being scrapped as part of the treaty.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Wowzery

[Aceituna]

1 minute ago, Wowzery said:

Your government has signed a treaty with other countries.  Those shiny, new ships you designed and being built are now being scrapped as part of the treaty.

Yes this might happen but player could prevent this by using the influence he has.

[SiWi]

18 minutes ago, Wowzery said:

Your government has signed a treaty with other countries.  Those shiny, new ships you designed and being built are now being scrapped as part of the treaty.

welcome to the world of the RN in real life

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

7 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Personally i really like this idea, would add a greater depth to the immersion of the game as whole and make it much more interesting as well since you can be a bit naughty in making your ship a bit more chonk.

You could lose pretige, have ship construction slowed down, funds taken away or external sanctions placed, maybe lose a ship or two and the other things you suggested as well. Makes me wonder what the limits we can set with treaties will be, im actually excited for the campaign but im willing to wait for a more stable release.

Could also be tied in to what government your county has. Prime example, obviously, being Japan and Germany, who exceeded the treaty limits (Washington/Versailles) by quite a bit - to put it mildly   

So a country with an autocratic government could be "allowed" to exceed treaty limits by a much larger margin than democracies for example (of course, still subject to other country's intelligence)

[Aceituna]

10 minutes ago, The_Real_Hawkeye said:

So a country with an autocratic government could be "allowed" to exceed treaty limits by a much larger margin than democracies for example (of course, still subject to other country's intelligence)

I think that they shouldn't be allowed to do so. But the exceeding of treaty limits might look different for different regimes. For example: in autocracy this would mean rise of tensions, diplomatic problems etc. while in democracy (and some monarchies) you would get these affects too but you would additionaly get penalty for your personal prestige (which is promised in blog).

[BobRoss0902]

10 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Personally i really like this idea, would add a greater depth to the immersion of the game as whole and make it much more interesting as well since you can be a bit naughty in making your ship a bit more chonk.

You could lose pretige, have ship construction slowed down, funds taken away or external sanctions placed, maybe lose a ship or two and the other things you suggested as well. Makes me wonder what the limits we can set with treaties will be, im actually excited for the campaign but im willing to wait for a more stable release.

I think the two most important things that treaties will be able to decide is tonnage and gun size.

[Aceituna]

20 minutes ago, BobRoss0902 said:

I think the two most important things that treaties will be able to decide is tonnage and gun size.

These two points are important for sure. But I think that the limitation of the size of the fleet as a whole is equally important. Especially as part of peace treaties. So we are able to pacify enemy fleet that could become serious treat in the future.

Edited June 2, 2020 by Aceituna

[Shaftoe]

People in this thread seem to treat the government and the military as two completely different entities. This is wrong. Military, and thus the Navy, is merely a branch of larger government (i.e. state), with its own field of expertise and operations. Head of state will not listen to ministers of education, justice and healthcare for an advice on naval or otherwise military matters. While people like minister of finance and minister of defence may have a say in naval affairs, historically Naval officials were the ones promoting/opposing participation in treaties, such as the Washington Treaty. Normally, navies are directly engaged in policy making, when it concerns them. And you must agree - not involving them would have been stupid.

You see, coding a complicated system of international (and internal) policies has to be very time-consuming, and at that it falls outside of the scope of this game, therefore a simpler and easier-to-control system is needed: it should be up to the player to affect signing of any treaty concerning naval restrictions or spending, although in bad situations players should not always be able to get preferable political solution. However, if the system were to be completely outside player's control (as if the minister of education decided whether to sign a naval treaty or not), then it would be nothing more than a questionable and frustrating design choice on the devs' part.

Ultimately, you may agree or disagree with that approach, but this is a game, and finest examples of gaming industry (particularly strategy games) demonstrated time and again that more control is better than less. 

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by Shaftoe

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

3 hours ago, Aceituna said:

I think that they shouldn't be allowed to do so. But the exceeding of treaty limits might look different for different regimes. For example: in autocracy this would mean rise of tensions, diplomatic problems etc. while in democracy (and some monarchies) you would get these affects too but you would additionaly get penalty for your personal prestige (which is promised in blog).

I might be misunderstanding something here, but are you saying no-one (including autocratic regimes) should be allowed to exceed treaties or that _everyone_ should be allowed to?

I assume you mean the latter and that only the consequences should be different for different forms of government?

If so, I could live with that, but still think that there should at least be a limit (10% perhaps?) for democracies, by how far they can go over a treaty limit, while autocratic regimes can to over a lot more, but run the risk of other nations finding out with _serious_ repercussions.

[The_Real_Hawkeye]

1 hour ago, Aceituna said:

These two points are important for sure. But I think that the limitation of the size of the fleet as a whole is equally important. Especially as part of peace treaties. So we are able to pacify enemy fleet that could become serious treat in the future.

The bold part is something _very_ important in my mind. One of the things that annoy me to no end in RtW is that winning a war has virtually _no_ lasting consequence on the loser.

[disc]

For the Washington Naval Treaty, the Japanese delegation was led by Navy Minister Admiral Kato Tomosaburo and his chief aide Admiral Kato Kanji. The US delegation, and indeed the Treaty conference as a whole, was led by US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes.

The Washington and 1st London treaties did not include strong official provisions for compliance. Navies were required to communicate certain basic characteristics about covered classes to the signatories, but there was no method of checking the truth of these statements. Blatant violations would naturally be obvious to outside observers, unless perhaps great secrecy was taken (ie highly suspicious activity to other signatories). There were no official consequences to violations, but obvious wrongdoing might collapse the treaties and have grave political effects.

 

[Tycondero]

I think the OP made a fantastic suggestion. RTW implemented treaties as a mere event that would allow the player to decide whether to sign or not. However it seems that if the player wouldn't sign the treaty could still be enforced if enough nations agreed on the treaty. I hope that, on the penalty of a prestige hit and restrictions of within treaty build specifications when ordering the construction of ships at foreign shipyards, the player can still build ships that are not part of the treaty. Perhaps each finished capital ship that does not meet treaty specifications would trigger a general increase in tensions with the signees. 

Alternatively, I agree with the OP that it should be possible to sign a treaty and not uphold the conditions. This could indeed be uncovered by random events or spy activities. When exposed, this would cost the player a serious amount of prestige not to mention major rise in tensions with signees of the treaty. An event that would demand the scrapping of treaty violating ship could lower most of the tension as generated during the exposed event.

 

[Cptbarney]

5 hours ago, Tycondero said:

I think the OP made a fantastic suggestion. RTW implemented treaties as a mere event that would allow the player to decide whether to sign or not. However it seems that if the player wouldn't sign the treaty could still be enforced if enough nations agreed on the treaty. I hope that, on the penalty of a prestige hit and restrictions of within treaty build specifications when ordering the construction of ships at foreign shipyards, the player can still build ships that are not part of the treaty. Perhaps each finished capital ship that does not meet treaty specifications would trigger a general increase in tensions with the signees. 

Alternatively, I agree with the OP that it should be possible to sign a treaty and not uphold the conditions. This could indeed be uncovered by random events or spy activities. When exposed, this would cost the player a serious amount of prestige not to mention major rise in tensions with signees of the treaty. An event that would demand the scrapping of treaty violating ship could lower most of the tension as generated during the exposed event.

 

While what shaftoe said makes sense, i wouldn't mind the system being expanded upon just for the sake of gameplay (if it takes too much time then maybe like 2-5 extra features, but still).

[Jatzi]

Oh eventually a long time from now or in a sequel when carriers become thing conversions to aircraft carriers instead of just scrapping a ship should be an option. And in fact if construction is early enough maybe converting large battlecruisers and battleships into like heavy cruisers should be possible. I'm right in thinking that that's possible if construction is only like a month or two or 3 in right?

Edited June 3, 2020 by Jatzi