Why are aircraft carriers so horribly expensive to maintain?

hardcore_gamer · Oct 7, 2012

Seriously, they cost considerably if not much more to maintain then other ships like battleships and destroyers. Disbanding a few carriers has a very noticeable effect on your gold budget.

How does it come that carriers are so expensive to maintain?

Yzman · Oct 7, 2012

I am not sure if anyone understands the unit maintainance formula. I know that stuff increases in cost as the game goes on, but I wasn't aware that some units cost more than others. I am also curious about this.

The Little One · Oct 7, 2012

I've noticed recently that civilian units have at least double maintenance, probably more. Maybe aircraft carriers are counted as civilian since they can't actually attack

Smokeybear · Oct 7, 2012

Probably because carriers are the single most costly ship to build and maintain, in any navy. Always have been. Look at the American fleet today- the carriers are huge, they need a crew of over 4,000 people, they carry hundreds of aircraft and all the associated flight personal and maintenance people... and on and on. I'm only guessing, but I'd bet the cost of maintaining one modern aircraft carrier is at least the cost of any 2-3 lesser vessels, probably more.

Crow T Robot · Oct 7, 2012

The maint formula (discussed at length elsewhere) does not distinguish between workers and carriers. It does escalate exponentially as both the number of units and turn count increase. Before I changed the factors playing well after the victory/loss a unit could cost 22 GPT. There is (or was?) a bug where disbanding only gave credited for every other unit. So, if you disbanded a Cav and saw little or no change, then disband a carrier and saw a big change that would actually be the result of both.

((j n)//100 (1 + 2t m/1000))^(1 + 2t/(1000*d))

J == INITIAL_GOLD_PER_UNIT_TIMES_100 (def == 50)
N == Number of Turns
D == UNIT_MAINT_EXPONENT_DIVISOR (def == 7)
M == UNIT_MULTIPLIER (def == 8)
N == Number of units

It is difficult to verify the formula in the cost per turn game metric because SPs modify it a lot (8 free units for one; 33% reduction in one tree etc). I am not sure it is dead on, but comes very very close and allows you to model new J M D factors to allow playing indefinitely without enabling unlimited army sizes.

smallfish · Oct 7, 2012

hardcore_gamer said:
Seriously, they cost considerably if not much more to maintain then other ships like battleships and destroyers. Disbanding a few carriers has a very noticeable effect on your gold budget.

How does it come that carriers are so expensive to maintain?

Because they are expensive platforms.

adsin15 · Oct 7, 2012

I think the USA has less than 10 Aircraft Carriers in active service right now.

They're god damn expensive.

Socratatus · Oct 7, 2012

As said, carriers are VERY expensive in real life. Have you even watched a TV program on US carriers, probably not, but they are like mini cities with holding thousands of personell that all have to be fed and watered. On top of that, a Carrier holds advanced weaponry of warfare that cost millions. They are also HUGE things. The Nimitz carrier is 93,500 tons!

Other countries that have Carriers have only 1, including Russia. the British had 3, but had to decommison 2 to save money. The US has 11!

Only the US can afford to have huge Carriers sailing about the seas.

Yzman · Oct 7, 2012

I understand from the topic that carriers are expensive in real life...but did we determine if they actually cost more to maintain than other units IN GAME? Crow said they weren't any different than workers, does that mean all units are the same?

Crow T Robot · Oct 8, 2012

Yes, all units cost the same. Here is one of the more informative threads...The users Axxon and alpaca are the ones who finally cracked the cost and the source of the formula I posted.

Its annoying and pretty unrealistic that a given unit will cost more on turn X+1 than it did on turn X; and I dont know why a game would be designed to discourage you from playing on and on, but there it is. It is pretty easy to modify to factors GlobalDefines.xml to keep the costs from escalating so steeply every turn very late in the game.

Socratatus · Oct 8, 2012

On a slight tangent, I decided to check how many carriers the rest of the world has and all combined they have 8. America has 11 carriers and the rest of the world has only 8 (that`s one per nation)??

Wow. I had no idea the US were that strong. That`s almost as surprising as playing a game of Civ and having some Ships of the Line and suddenly bumping into 10 modern day battleships!

Lunchmoney · Oct 8, 2012

Socratatus said:
On a slight tangent, I decided to check how many carriers the rest of the world has and all combined they have 8. America has 11 carriers and the rest of the world has only 8 (that`s one per nation)??

Off topic, but I'm pretty sure there are more than 8 other nations in the world (unless you are playing on a small world :lol:

).

Louis XXIV · Oct 8, 2012

Crow T Robot said:
Yes, all units cost the same. Here is one of the more informative threads...The users Axxon and alpaca are the ones who finally cracked the cost and the source of the formula I posted.

Its annoying and pretty unrealistic that a given unit will cost more on turn X+1 than it did on turn X; and I dont know why a game would be designed to discourage you from playing on and on, but there it is. It is pretty easy to modify to factors GlobalDefines.xml to keep the costs from escalating so steeply every turn very late in the game.

I think it was designed to keep your army size relatively the same, even when your economy got better.

Pook · Oct 8, 2012

Having served on 4 aircraft carriers for 10 years of my life, I just laughed at the title of the original post.

Pook · Oct 8, 2012

adsin15 said:
I think the USA has less than 10 Aircraft Carriers in active service right now.

The number is 11 right now, will drop to 10 for a few years until Ford is commissioned.

65 (Enterprise) will be decommissioned on 1 December 2012

68 (Nimitz), 69 (Eisenhower), 70 (Vinson), 71 (T Roosevelt), 72 (Lincoln), 73 (Washington), 74 (Stennis), 75 (Truman), 76 (Reagan), 77 (GHW Bush)- active service

78 (Ford) and 79 (Kennedy)- being built

80- (unnamed)- in planning

Jatta Pake · Oct 8, 2012

I really hope we can get some mods or expansions that model the 21st century. One Iranian Sunburn missle could leave a US carrier smoldering at the bottom of the Arab (Persian) Gulf. The future will be smaller cheaper carriers with unmanned stealth hyper sonic fighters.

Crow T Robot · Oct 8, 2012

Jatta Pake said:
... One Iranian Sunburn missle could leave a US carrier smoldering at the bottom of the Arab (Persian) Gulf.

Maybe, but carriers themselves are pretty defenseless, so they are generally escorted by DDGs and subs to prevent that from happening.

@Louis: I think the formula was meant to limit how much a large empire could overwhelm a smaller one very late in the game. There is no need for a really large military with 1UPT, so even with policies that grant extra units per city and per pop and/or the 33% reduction in maint, it makes it hard to actually maintain one too much larger than the free units. Its a good idea, they just took it too far, IMO.

Socratatus · Oct 8, 2012

Lunchmoney said:
Off topic, but I'm pretty sure there are more than 8 other nations in the world (unless you are playing on a small world ).

lol, I was in a bit of a rush, but I meant that only 8 other countries of the world have 1 carrier each. That`s pretty astonishing when you consider America has 11.

I reckon Civ5 has at least this part of the game realistic as they are very expensive to maintain or everyone would have 11 !

@ Pook and they`re making more? Are they expecting Aliens to invade?

warlordtheft · Oct 8, 2012

Jatta Pake said:
I really hope we can get some mods or expansions that model the 21st century. One Iranian Sunburn missle could leave a US carrier smoldering at the bottom of the Arab (Persian) Gulf. The future will be smaller cheaper carriers with unmanned stealth hyper sonic fighters.

If you believe the hype. The Iranians can't even keep their old tom-cats flying, what makes you think that they would work?

warlordtheft · Oct 8, 2012

Socratatus said:
Other countries that have Carriers have only 1, including Russia. the British had 3, but had to decommison 2 to save money. The US has 11!

According to my wikki walk the following countries have carries
Brazil, China, France, and Russia have a carrier. The US has 11.

Britain, Thailand, India have one STOVL carrier. Italy and Spain have two. The US has 9 of these.

Note STOVL carriers are not represented in game. Their aircomplement is typyically helicopters and a maybe a few jump-jets like the AV-8 (Harrier).

Why are aircraft carriers so horribly expensive to maintain?

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