Merchant Shipping - No Nomad

[heenanc]

I have a suplus of Merchant shipping points and I have extra merchant shipping as well.

I've got 19'000 point of merchant left and because I turned them all off they are dropping by 800 points a turn giving me 23 ish turns of stockpile before I run out.

I was thinking when it does hit 0 I could still leave all the Merchant factories off as I've got enough Merchant ships to transport troops and supply and enough tankers for now to transport all the oil. This is give me a extra 2'500 HI per turn which could be used later in the game for more important stuff.

Do you think i'll regret this later? Will something really bad happen? Does anyone do this?

[Mike Solli]

Personally, I'd produce all the TKs and AOs.  Depending on your losses, you may want to reconsider.  It'll get really bad later, when the US sub torpedo dud rate drops.  What's the date in your game, and what mod?

[heenanc]

It Febuary 9th 1442 and we are using stock.

[Mike Solli]

Ahh, still very early.  With 19k in the pool, I'd shut the merchant shipyards off for awhile too.  I'd still keep the ships coming though.  You'll wish you had more later.  It's amazing how potent the Allied subs become in 1943.

[engineer]

Ditto Mike. 
 
At the beginning there's no real hazard in conducting independent sailings, but when the US subs get effective you may want to consider setting up escorted convoys.  That will put much more inefficiency into the resource extracton since you'll need to accumulate shipping and oil/resources at the convoy origination ports.  Then having those extra tankers and merchants on hand will come in handy. 

[Q-Ball]

You need to produce a few AO's, but the need for those lessens as the Empire, and IJN, shrink.

Mike, I've seen you post that a couple times on TKs, and honestly, I'm running a game into late 1944 and I don't lack for TKs. But I think you've played more than me, so maybe I need to change my thinking. Maybe I'm just lucky in my losses.

I haven't heard anyone say you need more AP's and AKs. You can lose hundreds of those, and still have excess if you manage them right.

[Mike Solli]

To be honest, Q-Ball, my longest PBEM is May 43.  I haven't lost many TKs either (5 maybe) but I am paranoid.  Palembang just can't be emptied quickly enough.  I figure that the more TKs I have the faster I can ship the oil out so I'll have more stocked up when things get shut down in 1944.  Right now my HI has about a 6-7 month stockpile of oil and resources.  I figure you can't have too much.