Air Production

[Arigoth]

Still trying to get my arms around Japanese production. I THINK I want to shut off Nates and build more Oscars and Zeros. Any reason I should keep Nates going?

Also, any other air advise you might have would be greatly appreciated toward the eventual and inevitable death of my capitalist dog opponent. [:D]

[bigred]

Any reason I should keep Nates going?

it is possible to create a production problem where you dont have any oscar replacements. So keep the nates around until you have 60 to 90 oscars produced each month.

[Numdydar]

Also it depends if you set 'Player Defined Upgrades' on or off (default is off). If you left this as is then you will need to produce almost every type of Jap plane and engne in the game so that you will have the right planes to upgrade the squadrons to. I.E. if you do not have the right planes available, then the squadrons may not be able to be upgraded at all. of course, in some cases upgrading may make the planes worse instead of better [:D]
 
If you turned this feature on, you can upgrade almost any fighter type to any other fighter type or bomber to bomber, etc. This makes the Jap production to be both more complex and simple. More complex because you have to decide which plane and engine factories to switch over to the planes you want to build the most of and which types you never want to produce.
 
As an example the Helen series are the ONLY ones that use the Nakajima Ha-34 engines. So a decision needs to be made, are the Helens worth the price of tying up engines factories just for a single airframe versus not building Helens at all and using those engine factories to build Ha-35s which a LOT of different airframes use?
 
On the other hand you can massively reduce the quanity of different airframes to just producing the relative good ones, Zeros, Tojos, etc and never build Nates, Rufes, etc. You can do the same thing with the R&D factories too. Of course make sure that the engine production is keeping up with the increase in production of whatever plane types you do want to produce. Another reason to carefully weigh the Helen production decision above as you will need more engine factories than you may think. While expansion of engine factories can help, expansion uses precious resources to do that. You made need elsewhere later in the game.
 
Two last things about Jap production that is very important to keep in mind.
 
First all R&D factories start out damaged at the beginning of the game (execpt Helens, why them I have no idea). This is the way the game has been since the 1st release (I actually loaded the original unpatched game and they are like that there). I TOTALLY disagree with this and do not think this was truely the way the designers meant it to be (otherwise why skip the Helens?). Just my opnion of course. What this means in game turns is that ZERO points are accured towards the 100 you need to advance the planes availability date by a month UNTIL ALL the damage to that R&D factory is repaired.
 
So if I have a R&D factory that starts out at 0(5) and then gets one repaired (so now it's 1(4)), the one point that is now producing is wasted. The factory would need to be at 5(0) before ANY points would go toward the 100 needed for advancement. Once it was at 5(0) then 5 point would go towards advancement. So on average, it would take 20 months for that plane to advance a single month (5*20=100). Impressive huh?
 
Here is the real kicker, if you expanded that factory by a single point (to 5(1)), then the points would again stop going towards advancement until the point was repaired. You would not lose what you had put in, but no more would be added until after the repair. Of course not knowing any of this, I expanded a R&D factory by 20, lol. Good luck if that plane advances any [:@].
 
The last thing to understand is that the above matters ONLY if you want to try and get planes sooner than the historical record. You will ALWAYS get the planes on the historical timeline regardless of reseach or not. Strange but ture. If you want to save some HI and wanted planes to show up historically, you could turn off every R&D factory and it would not effect anything They would still convert to production factories without damage too at the approporate time.
 
Hope this helps. And of course if anything is wrong with my post, I KNOW someone will let me know [:)]

[Sun Tempest]

ORIGINAL: Numdydar
As an example the Helen series are the ONLY ones that use the Nakajima Ha-34 engines. So a decision needs to be made, are the Helens worth the price of tying up engines factories just for a single airframe versus not building Helens at all and using those engine factories to build Ha-35s which a LOT of different airframes use?

That was before one of the patches corrected the historical error. Now Naka Ha-34 is also used by Ki-44 Tojo series. Nonetheless, Ki-49 Helen is worth building, having a longer range, armor and better defensive weaponry. Further, the first Helen, while poor as LB, is a very potent ASW tool, being equipped with MAD.
On the other hand, Naka Ha-44 engine is used only by a very late coming fighter and the B6N1 Jill. Although overall better than B5M1 or B5N2, the first Jill is outclassed in just 5 months by the much better B6N2 Jill, powered by a more common engine

The last thing to understand is that the above matters ONLY if you want to try and get planes sooner than the historical record. You will ALWAYS get the planes on the historical timeline regardless of reseach or not. Strange but ture. If you want to save some HI and wanted planes to show up historically, you could turn off every R&D factory and it would not effect anything They would still convert to production factories without damage too at the approporate time.

R&D factories produce for free, you only spend supply to repair them. Further, it is worth trying to research planes such as Tojo, Frank, B7A Grace, G3M Betty, Ki-49 Helen, Tony c and d or the advanced DBs(Judy) and TBs (Jill) etc

[Arigoth]

As for engines and air I have done this:

1. Turned off Hitachi Early, Kawasaki early, and Hitachi Amakaze per some random post I saw somewhere in the forums by someone that seemed to know what they were talking about.
2. Expanded the HA-32 for my Bettys, and the HA-35 for the Zeros.

Air:

1. Stopped producing Nates and Claudes.
2. Expanded production of Zeros, Bettys, Oscar 1C, and Nells
3. Started production of the B5N2 Kate (figured this one out two late. Carriers are running with about 50% of the Kates they need)

Crossing my fingers on all of this. Being new to this I havent figured out yet what long term damage I am doing to my economy with decisions I am making now.

[SqzMyLemon]

ORIGINAL: Sun Tempest

ORIGINAL: Numdydar
As an example the Helen series are the ONLY ones that use the Nakajima Ha-34 engines.

That was before one of the patches corrected the historical error. Now Naka Ha-35 is also used by Ki-44 Tojo series.

I'm sure it's just a typo on Sun Tempest's post, but the latest patch switched the engine required for the Tojo series to the Ha-34 not Ha-35 as stated. So two Japanese aircraft require this engine.

On R&D I have found it useful to have two or more factories researching a particularly important aircraft/engine I'd like either accelerated or produced in large numbers. If I have a factory at 5(0) for example I'll leave it to produce the research points while I expand a second factory to say 0(20) or 0(25). You will be producing those 5 points continually while your second factory is repairing. When the second factory is up and running you can then expand the original factory if desired and time permits. Then you have options to either switch to the next generation in the research tree for that particular aircraft prior to production thus never missing a beat and avoiding another round of repairs, or let a factory convert to actual production and hit the ground running. There are R&D factories that are researching some extremely poor future aircraft, so those are the ones I will change to more important models first.

Works for me. Good luck

[Sun Tempest]

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon

ORIGINAL: Sun Tempest

ORIGINAL: Numdydar
As an example the Helen series are the ONLY ones that use the Nakajima Ha-34 engines.

That was before one of the patches corrected the historical error. Now Naka Ha-35 is also used by Ki-44 Tojo series.

I'm sure it's just a typo on Sun Tempest's post, but the latest patch switched the engine required for the Tojo series to the Ha-34 not Ha-35 as stated. So two Japanese aircraft require this engine.

Yep, sorry a typo. Thanks for pointing it[&o]