pre-dreadnoughts and monitors

[SGTscuba]

Will pre-dreadnoughts still be buildable in game or only available as legacy pre built units. I think they'd still be useful in secondary theatres and for smaller countries. Historically they were used extensively in the black sea and the Dardanelles campaign.

Will monitors such as HMS Raglan be buildable and with greater land attack stats and lower naval attack stats to reflect their land bombardment roles better? Such ships were widely used alongside armed lighters in the Adriatic sea to support land forces and defending Venice. See the book Warship 2016 for more info on the battles in the Adriatic.

Also, are we getting some new models for them?

[Nerei]

Personally I would say non-buildable simply because say AI britain and Germany should never, ever in a million years even consider building one.

Also there really is no reason for players to build such ships. They are not cheaper only slower and with worse to significantly worse combat abilities. A Lord Nelson class pre-dreadnought cost almost the same as HMS Dreadnought but are slower and with poorer performance.
Lord Nelson like say Satsuma however is not a good representative for the pre-dreadnought battleship as they carry a semi-dreadnought armament. Satsuma itself is so close to a dreadnought that had it been completed with an all 12in armament instead of a mixed 10in and 12in armament we would probably refer to them as "Satsumas" and not "Dreadnoughts".

King Edward VII is a much better representative of the pre-dreadnought and bluntly put is quite crappy compared to Lord Nelson but still fairly close in price to HMS Dreadnought. Basically it cost nearly as much as HMS Dreadnought but is slower and with a much less effective armament.
The newest British Super Dreadnoughts at the start of the war, the Iron Dukes only cost around twice that of a King Edward VII and is a much, much better investment than King Edward VII. Queen Elizabeth is roughly in the same price-range also.

Nations with less economic might did not build their own pre-dreadnoughts either and certainly would not in 1914 when such ships where horribly obsolete but nearly as expensive as dreadnoughts. Historically they bought them from shipyards in more industrialised countries, typically Britain, France or the US.
All warships involved in the South American Dreadnought arms race where built in Europe or the US. The Ottoman empire also bought her only two dreadnought battleships from Britain but they where never delivered due to the war.
The is a few reasons Britain used her pre-dreadnoughts during the Dardanelles offensive despite having the largest dreadnought fleet.
First off they entered the war with nearly 30 of them so they where on hand. They had however scrapped quite a few in the period between the launch of HMS Dreadnought and the outbreak of the war.
Also as mentioned the Ottoman Empire never fielded dreadnought battleships so they would not be outclassed. Had they however had a fleet like the German Hochseeflotte those pre-dreadnoughts would have been butchered.
Finally Hochseeflotte meant Britains Grand Fleet had to dedicate quite a few dreadnought battleships to contain Germany so there simply where less dreadnoughts available.

[way2co0l]

I've gotta disagree TBH. They should definitely be buildable. Now, whether or not someone would actually choose to build them is another matter.

I agree that they're not the most effective units, and every country capable of building better can do so. The problem with some of your examples though is that we don't have a mechanic in place to produce something in another nation. So you can't have your new dreadnoughts produced in British yards. You'll have to build them yourself, and likely won't have the tech as a non great power. That leaves the older designs as the only option for awhile. When a nation eventually finds it has more naval assets than it needs due to maintenance costs, it can then redistribute them around the world, but that will take a long time and again will be giving away older units first such as those predreadnoughts. But until then, nations are just going to have to build them themselves, if they're in a position to want them, but not in a position to build the more advanced versions. Very few nations are likely to fall into this catagory, so it's unlikely that many, if any, will be built. But the option should definitely be there. IMHO anyway.

[Nerei]

No we do not have any mechanics to order construction from someone else but we do have mechanics that allow us to buy units which to me is still far better than having Brazil build her own Minas Gereas dreadnoughts. By 1914 though the great powers where directing all resources towards the war effort and appropriated warships ordered by other navies.
They would not be taking shipyard orders though in theory they might transfer (especially older) warships to allies.

Also bluntly put if you by 1914 can build a pre-dreadnought you can build a dreadnought. It really is that simple. The infrastructure required to build either is massive. There is a reason battleships where a symbol of both the military and economic might of a nation.
Yes it is difficult to build a turbine engine but creating the armour plating is quite challenging also (just ask the Soviet Union) and you need to do that no matter what type you build as would you with the artillery, the fire control system etc. Designing a proper battleship in the first place is not something casually done either.

Consider that all nations building pre-dreadnoughts pretty much started building dreadnoughts at the same time again indicating that once you can build one you can build the other. By 1910 Britain, the US, France and Germany all had true dreadnought battleships and by 1912 Austria-Hungary and Japan also had them. Italy, Spain and Russia got theirs in 1913, 1913 and 1914 respectively.


Basically all nations that could build dreadnoughts by 1914 "had" build them and I outright refuse to believe that any nation would consider building something as expensive yet horribly obsolete by its very design as a pre-dreadnought by 1914 much less significantly later.
Even if we assume they for some reason only rely on domestic produced components and not import everything else needed to make their massively expensive warship competitive there in no way they would go with a typical pre-dreadnought design. They would at the very least have a dreadnought style armament layout. Anything else would be incompetent to the point where it makes the design of the Borodino battleships seem positively brilliant!

Further where say Brazil or Argentina to undertake such an endeavour they might not be able to do so before sometime in the 1920s as it would require constructing a large array of specialised industry and even then they might have to import components.
By the time their first pre-dreadnought leaves the slipway the major navies might be launching their replacements for the South Dakota, Tosa and G3 class battleships meaning they might as well stick with 1870's ironclad warships, they would be just as effective and at least those are cheap by comparison.

[way2co0l]

I can understand where you're coming from, but to me it doesn't seem much different from any other technological progression. The way the game works, to advance to modern tanks, you first have to be able to build cold war era tanks, and WW2 era tanks in order to get those. The same here, before you can build actual dreadnoughts, you'd first have to be able to build pre-dreadnoughts. For a nation like Brazil which probably can't build dreadnoughts at game start to make the jump from nothing right into actual dreadnoughts breaks with that basic progression system. The first battleship class ships Brazil should be able to field should be pre-dreadnoughts IMHO. Now, whether or not they are weighted to actually do so is another matter. You could argue that they are considered so obviously obsolete that even if Brazil is able to build them, that they'd rather have none at all until they can do it right. But with that logic, they might as well wait for the battleships that come after as you were mentioning, as those will make the prewar dreadnoughts obsolete in relatively little time as well.

But my personal opinion is that we need to stick with the basic progression mechanic that the game has followed for every iteration. It's not always the most realistic, but that's the way the mechanic is setup to work. It doesn't matter if you're in the year 2020, if you haven't unlocked actual dreadnoughts, then the only thing you'll be able to build until you do are the lowly pre-dreadnoughts, no matter the fact that any modern destroyer would take them on their own.

[Nerei]

You have to start your progression chain somewhere or you will be building hollowed out tree trunks. By 1914 dreadnoughts is the logical place to start.

Spain is going to start out only with designs for the España class dreadnoughts as Spain actually did jump strait into building dreadnoughts. From what I can tell Spain have never built a pre-dreadnought. I cannot even find plans for one. They went strait from 1870's ironclad warships to dreadnought battleships.
Spain did have plans for followup warships though they never happened so Spain is an example of forcing nations of research pre-dreadnoughts before jumping into building dreadnoughts is not just illogical but historically inaccurate.


Dreadnought vs pre-dreadnought is a fundamental shift in ship design more than it is anything else. It is the theory that secondary and tertiary artillery artillery is fundamentally not very valuable and that naval battles is going to be fought at ranges where they cannot hit the enemy anyway. Dreadnought battleships takes this knowledge and does away with most of these smaller calibre artillery instead replacing it with more large calibre artillery.

Just knowing this paragraph constitutes enough battleship design knowledge to give you the technology "basic dreadnought designs" and render King Edward VII style battleships obsolete.
There is a lot of practical observation etc. involved in getting it in the first place but once you have it (and all the great powers have built warships based on this design at game start proliferating it quite. a bit). It is a freely available technology.

It is accompanied by the new turbine engines which allowed battleships to be significantly faster than those using tripple expansion steam engines but if we look at USS Texas, oldest the preserved dreadnought battleship, it is actually using tripple expansion steam engines. The main thing differentiating USS Texas from pre-dreadnoughts is that it built to a dreadnought design. It is larger than any pre-dreadnought but the above mentioned España is not.


By 1909 every single nation that had any naval aspirations had gotten the idea that dreadnought battleships are better than pre-dreadnoughts (and any nations will get it way before being able to build their first battleship).
If you want it to be a technological progression every nation at the start of the game should have the "basic dreadnought designs" technology because everyone had it.

They might not have the industrial might to build them nor do they have the actual technology to build armour, the artillery or the optics etc. but once they get to that point their first warship will be a dreadnought. It might be a horrible deathtrap that makes the Borodinos look positively amazing but it will be a dreadnought design not a pre-dreadnought.

If Brazil jumps into building battleships she should start at a New York class battleship style design (maybe even the size of España) not a King Edward VII. They already have the knowledge of basic dreadnought designs and have had it for years. They had it in 1907 when they ordered the first Minas Geraes-class dreadnought battleship.


So no in 2020 you should never built pre-dreadnought battleships. Basic dreadnought designs and its implications is free for everyone and have been for around 110 years.