big ships

> David wrote:
I don't know much about the Canadian navy, but if they were working on a class
of ship they're used to working on, and they weren't trying to do anything
they hadn't done before, then I don't think size would have that much to do
with their overruns.

[Tomb] You'd think that. But as I said, ship
construction is a continuing affair. You make it sound like you issue a design
and it gets built. Each one (or each small run if you're building small ships)
tends to vary from the last and incoroporate design changes, engineering
improvements, bug fixes, and sometimes some new bugs. Often that means that
you never really get full
cookie-cutter production underway. If you
end up with a major Shipalt, (Shipboard Alternation), then you can have a
significant production delay and cost increase.

Additionally, your point above about cost overruns not always being technical
in nature doesn't exactly remove the point. If you construct a large vessel,
you involve more hands. Each one looks at the larger project and says "Hmmm, I
can bury more profit in this one because its so big". Plus you get the
inefficiencies of scale (and there are a lot of those). This pork barrelling,
profit taking, and sometimes just recouping
of costs lost low-balling on other contracts is
one factor that helps drive up the cost of larger projects. Plus empire
building goes on in larger project teams.

Allan made good hard-data points about
modern ship construction costs. If you don't think that things will be the
same in 200 years, do what you want to do. Just realize your universe will
favour the construction of supervessels. Costs being the same per mass (or
cheaper), the combat efficacy of large vessels will make them the choice. You
can do this, it's your game:)

Sometimes a hammer costs $150 because it has been tested 13 ways from
sideways, it floats, it won't ever break, it resists
corrosion, it meets MilStd-1111A and
1111B, it can be used as an emergency close combat weapon and also as a
splint. Sometimes it is because the military procurement bureaucracy runs on
its own set of rules and these methods increase the cost of a good without
increasing its capacities.

The toilet seat on the Admiral's private can aboard the CVN is probably no
more functional than that in the Other Ranks communal can aboard a DD, but I'd
bet it ends up costing more. No "technical" reason for it, but plenty of
political, business, and organizational reasons.