What's the point of these ridiculous upgrade paths?

[Icedawg]

I did a bit of an experiment last night to see what units I could upgrade with the Reppu. I edited the 1945 scenario to include 100 Reppus at the start of the game and tried to upgrade airunits with them. To my surprise, nothing upgraded to the Reppu. None of the carrier or land based navy fighters upgraded to this plane!

Then, I repeated the test by editing in 100 A6M8's available at the start to see what units could upgrade to these planes. After I upgraded a few A6M5's to A6M8's, I noticed that the newly upgraded units could then upgrade to the Reppu. This seems like complete BS! Why can't I upgrade A6M5's directly to Reppu's? Now that I've spent a ton of time setting up the start of a new game as the Japanese player, I'm going to have to start from scratch (again) because I've converted a ton of factories to Reppu's, but none to A6M8's. I'm going to have a ton of Reppu's sitting in the aircraft pool, but won't be able to use them since I won't have any A6M8's to upgrade to first.

This is kind of like the ridiculous "upgrade path" that allows converting Mary's (and only Mary's) from the divebomber squadrons to Lily's (and only Lily's). In order to change say a squadron of Sonia's to Sally's, you first have to convert the Sonia's to Mary's, then the Mary's to Lily's, then the Lily's to Sally's. This forces you to keep a good deal of available Mary's and Lily's around so you can do this upgrade. For this particular upgrade, it's not really that big of a deal since you have a ton of Mary's and Lily's available in the pool from the start of the game. However, for the A6M5/A6M8/Reppu path, it's a killer since you have none of these planes coming in unless you convert factories.

Why did the designers choose to have these moronic upgrade hoops to jump through? And why doesn't the manual indicate what these upgrade paths are? Now if they had provided a list of the upgrade paths, you could at least anticipate what aircraft you need to have available in order to do a particular upgrade. As is, you just have to find out by trial and error. [:@] (And when you're talking about investing 100+ hours or so to get a game started, you're dealing with a ton of wasted time.)

One last observation about upgrades - it seems as though once the Randy is available, you can no longer do the Mary-to-Lily upgrade. What's up with this? (I noticed this while playing around with the above mentioned edited 1945 scenario.)

[rtrapasso]

i think the upgrade paths are based on historical upgrades - so blame the IJA and IJN... [;)]

[Icedawg]

Okay, death to Yamamoto and his staff!

I do understand the historical bit, but why do I have to have A6M8's around if I want to convert some A6M5's to Reppu's? Why bother giving the guys the A6M8's first if they're never even going to fly them? That's the part that seems silly.

Also, if I have 6 pilots in a squadron, why do I have to wait for 27 planes to become available to upgrade? Shouldn't I just need 6 planes?

[pauk]

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

Okay, death to Yamamoto and his staff!

he was already dead....

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: pauk

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

Okay, death to Yamamoto and his staff!

he was already dead....

OMG - his curse worked!!! [X(] [:'(]

[Vetamur]

But you cant pin that one on the IJN.. they never got the Reppu or the A6M8.. the A6m8 was also a stop gap while waiting for the Reppu, so if the Reppu had been ready, clearly it would have converted its A6M5s to Reppus..

[Icedawg]

Okay, he's off the hook for the Reppu bit.

But he was around for the Sonia-Mary-Lily-Sally garbage.

Give the pilot that shot down his plane a Medal of Honor on behalf of all WiTP players.

[TimoN]

Your A6M5 factories should autoconvert to A6M8 factories. Anyway A6M8 comes one month earlier than Reppu so you should have enough planes to convert a A6M5 group to A6M8 and then to Reppu when it is available.

[Icedawg]

That's good to know. Now I guess it wasn't such a waste to convert those factories to Reppu's.

How did you know about this late-game factory conversion? Have you been able to play a game that far into 1945? Or are you going by how the manual says that aircraft factories upgrade automatically once a new type of aircraft is available? If it is the later, I wouldn't count on those A6M5 factories converting even though the A6M8 is available. Thora's are around well into 1945 and the Tina is available. Sally transports are likewise even though the Tabby is available. A6M2's are around very late into the game even though the A6M3's and A6M5's are around. So, just because the manual says something should occur, don't count on it.

Some players have mentioned that you can get this factory conversion information from the editor, but I haven't been able to find anything. I've found out what plane a particular plane type can upgrade to, but I havent' found anything about factories and their upgrades. If anyone could enlighten me, please help out here.

[tsimmonds]

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

Some players have mentioned that you can get this factory conversion information from the editor, but I haven't been able to find anything. I've found out what plane a particular plane type can upgrade to, but I havent' found anything about factories and their upgrades. If anyone could enlighten me, please help out here.

It's very simple, once you know the standard upgrade path of a particular aircraft, you also know how the factories for that aircraft will upgrade.

[Icedawg]

What about these obsolete planes like the Thora and MC-21 Sally? Since their factories don't upgrade, this logic would mean these planes don't upgrade to anything, but they do. (I've upgraded the Thora's to Tina's and the Sally's to Tabby's.)

Also, why don't the Oscar II factories upgrade to Franks? At the start of the 1945 scenario, there are at least two factories producing Oscar II's when the Frank is available.

[tsimmonds]

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

What about these obsolete planes like the Thora and MC-21 Sally? Since their factories don't upgrade, this logic would mean these planes don't upgrade to anything, but they do. (I've upgraded the Thora's to Tina's and the Sally's to Tabby's.)

They have no standard upgrade. With PDUs off, you're stuck with those.

Also, why don't the Oscar II factories upgrade to Franks? At the start of the 1945 scenario, there are at least two factories producing Oscar II's when the Frank is available.

In Stock, with PDUs off, there are tons of IJA air units that do not upgrade past OscarII.

[Hoplosternum]

I thought that planes will upgrade two jumps at one time if thats all that is available. e.g My Mohawks upgrade to P40Bs (then P40Es) but if there are not enough P40Bs and I leave them on upgrade allowed then they will switch straight to P40Es given enough supply and P40Es. Its just that without PDUs you cannot do this manually?

Anyway I thought this was how it worked, fairly sure I've done this....[&:]

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Hoplosternum

I thought that planes will upgrade two jumps at one time if thats all that is available. e.g My Mohawks upgrade to P40Bs (then P40Es) but if there are not enough P40Bs and I leave them on upgrade allowed then they will switch straight to P40Es given enough supply and P40Es. Its just that without PDUs you cannot do this manually?

Anyway I thought this was how it worked, fairly sure I've done this....[&:]

But, isn't that the normal upgrade path??

EDIT: PDUs are not necessary...

[TimoN]

Screenshot from the scenario editor where you see that A6M5 upgrades to A6M8. Btw, A6M8 factories autoconvert to Reppu factories one month later so you'll only get one month production of A6M8. Basically it is just useless.

Edit: Doh... the picture was from the A6M8 --> Reppu, but you'll get the point.

[TimoN]

And as you can see OscarIIa upgrades to nothing else but itself.

[Icedawg]

Could it be downgraded to the Nate and then upgraded from there?

I think many of you guys missed the point of my original post. Why do you have to follow this "path"? It seems as though you should be able to upgrade any plane to a suitable plane type directly. For example, IJN fighter pilots should be able to change from any IJN fighter to any other IJN fighter (Claudes directly to Reppus for example). Why should you have to make all of those stops along the way?

[anarchyintheuk]

The only reason you have to follow the path is by choosing pdu off. Choose pdu on and live a life of upgrade freedom and religious fulfillment.

[Icedawg]

I play with PDU set to "on" and I have these problems. (I assume by PDU, you mean "player defined upgrades", right?)

[AmiralLaurent]

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

I play with PDU set to "on" and I have these problems. (I assume by PDU, you mean "player defined upgrades", right?)

So you should be able to use the Reppu at any time...

The "set upgrades" of the game are pseudo-historical.... ie as historical Japan used Oscars until the end of the war, Oscar II are terminal upgrades.... while in most cases they used Tojos or Franks when available. The problem was that the output of Tojo and Frank was not enough to replace all Oscars

The problem with WITP is that industrial research, expansion and aircraft upgrading is very simple. Now imagine something closer to real life:
_ cost of aircraft production depending of the aircraft (the Frank was far heavier, complex and expensive to build than an Oscar even if both are single-engine fighters....)
_ slower expansion of factories, and use of political points to convert a firm to another
_ we know that the A6M8 will be useless and the Reppu is worth nothing... if in WITP there was a probability that an aircraft was released with performance 20-30% less than what was planned (something very usual with military aircraft in WW2) you can't focus research on one AC but should start several programs at the same time
_ another defect in the research side of WITP is that if yo udo nothing the aircraft will be released at the historical date (more or less). Japanese engineers didn't do nothing. If you spend no ressource to find an aircraft type you should never have it released.
_ factory conversion are too fast, and free auto-conversion are "magical". Make them slower and make all of them cost money (supplies and HI) and you will have a more historical Japanese production.
_ last but not least, any unit converting to a new AC should be out for a given time with a table giving the corresponding time between one type and another. So you may transfer pilots from Rufes to Zeroes (as was done IRL) but they will be out of the game for 6 months. You may also convert medium units to heavy one (as was done IRL too) but they will also be out of the game for 6 months. And so on