Ship Age and Armor

[fluorophil]

My question for today is...(and if it should be somewhere else, please correct me - but I think it applies to Battleship Row/Bitter Rivals more than CoD)
Should older ships have a modifier to their armor rating to take into account that some ships were 20 years old (and some were older) when WWII started? This is to take into account (for example) metal fatigue from steaming through a large number of miles, sustaining damage from adverse seas...
Or is this too picky a house rule?
And if I have missed this in the rules please point me in the right direction...
Thoughts, anyone?

[regiamarina]

I'd say this question could apply to any era of naval gaming though I agree WW2 seemed to have a lot more refurbished older ships still in service in world navies than in WW1 or pre-dreadnought era.

I think it's probably a bit picky to arbitrarily put in a modifier for all ships of a certain age. Some ships were maintained much better than others. Some ships left port fairly rarely and fell into disrepair. You could also put in modifiers for poorly/quickly built ships such as some US liberty ships, I think, that cracked in half due to poor steel and welding. I would say these sort of modifiers would be a special scenario rule depending on the ship involved.

Martin

[theguy]

It would be an interesting change in gameplay! But a rating system for age would be hard to standardize as regiamarina said differing care and treatment of ships was abound.