Some useful online reports for AE team

[asdicus]

The combined arms research library website is a goldmine of useful online reports for ww2. The following reports may be useful to the AE team :

Report on the petroleum situation in the far east - this is dated 1948 but it includes plenty of prewar information. I doubt very much that any of the facilities/oil reserves mentioned were developed from 1946 to 1948 ie they are all relevant to the ww2 timescale

http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm4/item_viewe ... X=1&REC=19

Field survey on japanese defenses on Truk - a goldmine of info all about truk in ww2 - includes plenty of good photos and diagrams of the extensive base installations - also plenty of statistics as well.

http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm4/document.p ... 162&REC=19

These reports are just the tip of the iceberg on what is available on this site and it seems they are constantly adding to number of available reports.

[asdicus]

The report on Truk defenses / facilities gives some very detailed information on oil storage capacity or rather the lack of it. In one reference it mentions there are no land storage fuel oil tanks at all - just a few oil barges. Looking at the diagrams of the various base installations eg seaplane/submarine/naval base you can see a few oil storage tanks - the total capacity adds up to around 40000 t max ( or about 3-4 ship tanker loads ). The report mentions that normal ship tankers would be moored in the harbour and then used for ship refueling as necessary.

My question to the AE team is that in witp fuel storage capacity is linked to port size. A class 9 port like Truk therefore has unlimited fuel capacity in the game. This makes it easy for the japanese player to store large quantities of fuel which in turn means very large fleets can be easily refueled. In reality the shortage of tankers in the japanese fleet would really start to affect decision making. ie do you park your few precious tankers permanently at truk waiting to refuel ships or do you use them to move fuel back to japan from the oil fields ? You cannot do both at the same time yet the standard witp game allows you to just devote tankers to moving oil not act as refueling bases. You can see how offensive operations would be massively slowed down or reduced by having to deal with this problem.

I suspect most japanese bases in the pacific outside the home islands are like truk ie no or minimal permanent oil fuel storage. The only solution to fixing this in the standard game is to cut the max port size dramatically. A good anchorage like truk or ulithi does not mean it should be classed as a type 9 port ( like pearl harbor is ). Will AE work the same way as the standard witp game ? What size of port is truk in AE ? Max fuel capacity of truk in AE ?

[jrcar]

Port sizes are very different to stock. Truk for example cannot be built to level 9.

This is an area which has had stacks of research, thought and discussion and is still being tweaked.

Cheers

Rob

AE BETA Breaker