Naval combat is a huge part of Hearts of Iron 4, since you need to control the waves as well if you want to win the largest war in the history of mankind.
Unfortunately, everything that has to do with ships in this game can be very confusing at times, since the mechanics are so different from what we use for the land troops or the air force.
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With the Man the Guns DLC, you will end up upgrading your ships with many different unique parts, making them better than their predecessors. To get older ships to reach the same level of the new ones, you’ll first need to refit them.
To refit ships in Hearts of Iron 4, you will need to press the arrow button that appears when you select one of the boats.
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Why Refit Ships?
One of the main reasons to refit ships is to give them all an upgrade you feel is necessary to make them powerful enough to do their jobs properly.
For example, you might have just afforded recently an upgrade to the engines and would like to evolve all of the similar ships. This is what refitting will help you do at any point, without having to leave your old ships to be completely useless.
Since you should never scrap older task forces, you should always preferably refit them into new designs with better parts if you want them to be relevant.
Unfortunately, since you are limited to using the same hull, there is no way to actually make them keep up with newer, better designs.
How Refiting Works
To refit a ship means to change its design from its original one to a different one with the same hull as a base.
It doesn’t matter if the pieces of the new design are older or less powerful. As long as the same hull is present, you can always change the design.
Once you select to refit a ship, the vessel will be sent to the Production tab and the Naval Dockyards will work on changing the design for a reduced cost compared to building the ship from scratch.
How to Refit Ships in HOI4
To refit a ship in HOI4, you will need to select it, then look up where the button to delete the task force is, and, to the right, you will see a button with a yellow arrow and a plus sign inside of it. Press it to see the refit options for the vessel.
Then, press on the new upgrades design you want to refit the ship into and the boat will appear in the Production tab now, using your Naval Dockyards to get the selected upgrade.
You will now have to wait until the ship is “produced” again, with a much lower cost than it would be required to make the thing from the ground up.
If you just upgrade an existing hull, you should see the arrow button appear right to the right of the name of the ship, which you can easily press to send them for some refitting.
Similar to how equipment conversion works, you can only refit ships that have the same hulls into a new, improved version. For example, let’s say you have a 1936 Cruiser Hull design that you got at the start of the game.
If you make a new design with the same hull, you can then refit old ships that had the default design into the new design you’ve just created.
This means that you cannot refit a Destroyer into a Cruiser, or an Early Destroyer into a 1936 Destroyer.
Players can also refit their ships into older models. By checking the box that says Show outdated equipment, you can see the older models that use the exact same hull, including the one that you are likely trying to replace.
That’s everything you need to know about how to refit ships in Hearts of Iron 4!
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