Some tricks for the engine

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Bogo Mil

ORIGINAL: el cid again
You can set it to arrive at any date. And "immediate upgrade" is a variable thing. It is much more likely to upgrade fast at a major shipyard in a major port with lots of HI and supplies. It is much less likely to upgrade if there are lots of other ships needing upgrades, few supplies, little or no HI, and little or no repair shipyards. I am having trouble getting the RTN big gunboats to upgrade ever

I have never seen a ship not upgrading. The ship must be disbanded in port, and there must be a repair shipyard. I think any size will do, I know size 10 is large enough to upgrade CA. The sys damage must be very low. How low is low enough depends on the class - the larger the ship, the lower the sys damage must be. If I turned on upgrade to a ship without sys damage, it always upgraded immediately - even if the port is cramped with dozens of repairing vessels. I never saw anything else.

You can give new ships 99 sys damage. If they don't have floatation or fires, they will not sink. If they have floatation, it may get out of control with 99 sys - even a ship which starts at 20 float damage might sink. Just don't add any float damage.

This is not correct - and I wish it were. RHS users can testify - from older versions - we had problems with losing craft - landing craft in particular - when damage is set too high. I thought this was the case - and it seems to be for a while - then - wa la - the darn thing sinks - many weeks later.

It is possible setting damage to 0 may lead to an instant upgrade - I doubt that for technical reasons - but the mechanism we are discussing specifically wants us to have damage. In general, GG loves die rolls and conditional tests - so for example the number of repair points at a port is likely related to the durability of a ship - and that probably affects the chance of an upgrade - with it being zero when the repair points are less than durability. Also, it is becoming clear the ships upgrade in class slot order - until something is reached (probably total ship repair points- maybe other things) - after which NO ship upgrades at all - so very high ship class slot numbers tend not to upgrade.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

ORIGINAL: el cid again

My concern was logistics. As supplies draw down, all units in a hex share and starve together, losing squads. Worse, which squads go is statistical - there is an equal chance per slot. If I have a 14 inch CD gun in small numbers (e.g. 4 at Fort Drum) - they will become 100 per cent disabled long before the infantry does. This is backwards: IRL the guns were undamaged - until spiked at the surrender. Worse - it was disclosed about 1981 that Fort Drum might not have surrendered - if it had food. A player does not have the option of stocking it and having it survive - closing Manila Bay without defending Bataan. Also - I would like Fort Drum not to be malarial.

There is ONE slot which DOES NOT share supplies (2125). Must be hard code. I use it for the Fort Drum CD Fort - to help it last longer with big guns (instead of becoming ineffective as the engine makes happen). It was originally used by stock for the Hawaii base force or something like that.

Yep, the supplies swim across the lagoon to the 2nd base[:(]

While it may be acceptable in some cases, I assume there would be times you didnt want it to happen. (Assuming its not going to share with the enemy)

No - supplies won't "change sides" - except at the moment of capture. But we DO want them isolated per base. It appears units share supplies in the same hex - and I bet bases do too - and if only units do - we still have a problem.
I want a unit at Fort Drum NOT to share supplies with a unit on Bataan. Otherwise we lose the CD guns - which is plain wrong - but I don't see a solution - short of tampering with the code. Hmmm - I just thought of a solution - but it is too much work - and probably in violation of our licence agreement - so we cannot use it. We need Matrix to change the way attrition works in re land units IMHO.

[Bogo Mil]

When I played against Drew Black, I had 4 barge and junk goups sinking (all were AK in game terms). But if I recall it correctly, they all started the game with some float damage.

About the upgrades: I'm really convinced there is no die roll. There are die rolls in repairing, yes. Sometimes it takes ages to repair ships. Upgrade will not happen if sys damage is too high. I don't know exactly, but I think the damage must be < or <= the damage which will be added in the upgrade - e.g. 3 for BB, 12 for most DD. At least this is a good rule of thumb.

The ship must be disbanded in port, docked ships don't upgrade. A repair shipyard must be present (merchant or naval shipyard doesn't help at all). Then the ship will upgrade in the next turn. I've never seen any random delay. I have upgraded ships up to CA at small shipyards like Perth or Darwin without any problems. Repairing the sys damage after the upgrade is a problem there, of course (that's why I never tried to upgrade a BB or CV at such small places, but I'm quite sure it would work as well).

There is a dalay of one day when the update becomes available first. E.g. the 4/42 updates will not happen in 4/1/42, but in 4/2/42. This is 100% deterministic, no die roll.

[el cid again]

I have yet to see RTN CA or CL upgrade - we made them durability of 1 to minimize cost (they are not built in the game period - so they should not cost shipbuilding points) - then they are to upgrade to the right ship. But they are not doing that - although Bangkok (where the 8 inch gunboats are) has a repair shipyard - and so does Lop Bury (where the 6 inch gunboats are). It is for this reason clear - it isn't automatic. I expect it to happen - eventually.

Curiously, RTN submarines and non warships in the SAME locations DO upgrade - but again - not automatically on the second day of the month as you say. They upgrade one at a time - over time.

[Bogo Mil]

Do these ships have sys damage? How large is the port there? Ships must be disbanded, so the port should be at least size 3, I think. I don't know if it works for ships which start the game disbanded in a smaller port.

If you put the ships in a large yard (e.g. Osake), will they upgrade? If not, probably something with the ship class is wrong...