Estimating Historical U.S. Navy Construction
In anticipation of the upcoming USA rework I thought I'd share a small project I've had for a while now. My goal was to take historical warship construction dates and match them with a representative ship design to calculate how many dockyards are needed to match historical construction efforts. The resulting graph is pictured below.
Here is a second chart that breaks down demand by ship type.
The methods I used were far from perfect but I believe they create a good low-end estimate of naval production.
The key takeaways I gathered from the results are:
- This probably isn't possible in-game.
- Destroyer escorts and Escort carriers make up the lion's share of peak demand. This can mostly be contributed the their high cost relative to the number produced. Narrow construction windows don't help either.
It cannot be stressed enough how rough of and estimate this is (more on that below). I might add to this in the future if I have the free time. Feel free to leave suggestions.
Important Notes:
Start of the Game: (Paradox pls fix)
- USA starts the game 3 dockyards short of what it needs to complete currently constructing ships on time.
- 6 submarines, 25 destroyers, and 7 light cruisers that should be at some stage of construction are missing.
- All destroyers under construction when the game starts (Porter and Mahan class) have been bastardized and incorrectly use the Farragut class template.
Ship Designer:
- It is sometimes impossible to create a ship design that accurately portrays the capabilities and economic burden of the namesake class. (Ex. Multiple destroyer designs were experimented with in the pre-war years. You cannot sufficiently show the differences in capabilities between the classes with the limitations of the early destroyer hull.)
- In mid to late 2023 carriers were given the option to mount cruiser armor in the ship designer, but base speed was not increased to compensate. Creating an "accurate" design is an impossible balancing act. Accurate air group, accurate top speed, accurate armor. You can only pick two.
- An accurate Iowa design is also not possible. Any such design must include heavy guns IV (1943 tech), have a top speed of 33 knots, and be ready to start building by mid 1940. The advanced battleship hull can just barely reach this speed with the help of a MIO perk. Historically Iowa was very similar to South Dakota but with greater length and more powerful machinery to push up the speed. This came at the cost of increased displacement which is not modeled in game.
- Good luck getting Heavy guns III and DP secondaries III in time to build North Carolina. Historically NC's design was revised while under construction to accommodate the 16" guns, but the under-construction-refit penalty in game is so severe it isn't a practical strategy.
Omitted Construction:
- Axillaries, minesweepers, minelayers, and seaplane tenders are not included in this estimate.
- Ships that were not completed, or could have been built had the war continued are not included.
- Ships built for other countries were likewise not included.
It is worth noting that some ships cannot be built according to their historical timetable because there are limits to how many dockyards can be assigned to a single ship.