Happy 103rd birthday Kongou!
Happy 80th birthday Shigure!

NotFuret said:

Happy 103rd birthday Kongou!
Happy 80th birthday Shigure!

Kongou is really o..... *cough* has lots of experience huh?

this picture is lovely, really.

If a shipgirl counts her birthdays from date of the original launching, does that mean Shigure is old enough to drink? Have a driver's licence? Go to R rated movies without adult supervision?

Scholastica said:

If a shipgirl counts her birthdays from date of the original launching, does that mean Shigure is old enough to drink? Have a driver's licence? Go to R rated movies without adult supervision?

Since she was still 21, yes. Even most of the DesDiv 6 are old enough to be our great grandmothers and drink vodka.

What a coincidence... my two favorite shipgirls and they were both launched on the same day in May!

Scholastica said:

If a shipgirl counts her birthdays from date of the original launching, does that mean Shigure is old enough to drink? Have a driver's licence? Go to R rated movies without adult supervision?

Since us humans count our age from the day we were born and not from the moment our father bang our mother, so yeah.

NotFuret said:

Since us humans count our age from the day we were born and not from the moment our father bang our mother, so yeah.

Although I've often wondered if launching is really when a ship is born myself. That's the point at which it can technically float true, but it could never go to sea and it's often months from being completed. There are also numerous cases of ships being 'launched', but never finished and never going to sea. In some cases they might even be hurriedly patched to a state they where they can be launched for no other reason then to get them out of the slip quickly (breaking them down in place would've taken longer) so something else could be built with no real intention of ever finishing them.

You could thus alternatively argue that it's the commissioning date, when it's fully finished and accepted for service, that's the real 'birth' date for instance. Another perhaps even more accurate date would be when it begins sea trials, at that point the ship is basically finished and is going to sea with a crew for the first time.

Tk3997 said:

Although I've often wondered if launching is really when a ship is born myself. That's the point at which it can technically float true, but it could never go to sea and it's often months from being completed. There are also numerous cases of ships being 'launched', but never finished and never going to sea. In some cases they might even be hurriedly patched to a state they where they can be launched for no other reason then to get them out of the slip quickly (breaking them down in place would've taken longer) so something else could be built with no real intention of ever finishing them.

You could thus alternatively argue that it's the commissioning date, when it's fully finished and accepted for service, that's the real 'birth' date for instance. Another perhaps even more accurate date would be when it begins sea trials, at that point the ship is basically finished and is going to sea with a crew for the first time.

Just buy three cakes (or four) every year for each shipgirl in your fleet.

Tk3997 said:

Although I've often wondered if launching is really when a ship is born myself...

Think of it as an infant on the stage development before being sent in the real deal. I did some explanations before but kinda forget where did I put it.

Yes, shipgirls do age gracefully.

Lunatic6 said:

Think of it as an infant on the stage development before being sent in the real deal. I did some explanations before but kinda forget where did I put it.

But it's not an infant stage, infants are fully developed and independent. A 'launched' ship is nothing of the sort it cannot sail and it's missing major pieces of equipment including quite possibly engines. As noted many, many ships have been 'launched' and never sailed a single time before being scrapped. The issue is that attempting to fit the process to a human gestation cycle is imperfect because it has a second stage between conception and proper birth that said cycle lacks, but oddly enough not other animals.

Perhaps a better analogy then placental mammals would be egg layers or marsupials, a launched ship is a laid egg or joey. It's nominally moved out of the 'womb', but it is not yet 'born' or fully developed and depending on circumstances might never reach that point. It's only 'born' properly when it hatches or leaves the marsupium.

Tk3997 said:

But it's not an infant stage, infants are fully developed and independent.

Not... as such. I mean, I get where you're going with that, but practically speaking it's not accurate. Human infants can do virtually nothing for the first several months of their lives - even compared with many other placental mammals, they're pathetically incapable. Horses can walk on Day 1. Humans spend three to six months figuring out how to raise their heads and look around on their own. We practically are marsupials, it's just that our parents have to build an artificial pouch out of blankets and a Buzz Lightyear of Star Command mobile. :)

zgryphon said:

Not... as such. I mean, I get where you're going with that, but practically speaking it's not accurate. Human infants can do virtually nothing for the first several months of their lives - even compared with many other placental mammals, they're pathetically incapable. Horses can walk on Day 1. Humans spend three to six months figuring out how to raise their heads and look around on their own. We practically are marsupials, it's just that our parents have to build an artificial pouch out of blankets and a Buzz Lightyear of Star Command mobile. :)

Human infants are fully developed and independent, they are not missing major organs and unable to function in an outside environment, marsupial in the pouch often don't even have all their LIMBS when they enter it. You bringing up other animals which can function basically completely at birth merely shows further what a bad analogy it is. Any 'infancy' that exists might possibly be assigned to sea trials were the largely finished ship 'matures' to full operational status.