Okay? Okay??? It was a damned fine point. If the game starts on December 7, I have no problem with the militaries that were at peace at the time being locked in place to represent the sluggish nature of peace time redeployments.Originally posted by mdiehl
It's an okay point.
The Pearl Harbor question is a very good one, considering about half of the people responding to a poll wanted the game to begin before December 7, 1941. Most of them want to change history in China. But if you do that, how do you provide for a Pearl Harbor? America would have to be able to react to Japanese advances prior to the start of hostilities. For example, if the game started in, say, 1939, and by the time Japan got around to attacking the U.S., Japan owned all of Southeast Asia and Malaysia, America would probably have reinforced the PI. But how would you control U.S. redeployment so that the Pacific Fleet isn't permanently dispersed thus preventing a PH type attack? Dunno, and I hope no one really goes off on this tangent.
I argued months ago for a fairly elaborate production system based on resources, but I don't think I advocate that anymore and, though workable (in my mind, anyway), I don't see Matrix making the effort. Mdiehl's system is even too complicated for me now. I guess what I foresee, or would like to see, is just a souped-up PacWar system. There could be restrictions based on resources (e.g., if Japan has no access to rubber, many factories shut down), but you would, in essence, have so many points to spend for a month or quarter, and you would divvy that out amongst whatever it is you want to buy. You could have R&D expenditures toward particular a/c kind of like in BTR that would speed up introduction of the a/c. I could see that a/c would have higher costs and delays initially to reflect tooling up and the process of working out kinks, which would provide some incentive for sticking with efficient production of current, less-capable a/c instead of immediately shifting production to the new whiz-bang a/c. PacWar did this to a degree, and I think BTR did it well. Due to delays and costs, if you kept changing production every month/quarter, nothing would ever be produced.
BTR's production was interesting. As I think you are suggesting, you had to produce in-line engines for particular a/c and radials for other a/c. In BTR you also had to devote factories to producing parts for particular a/c. And, of course, other factories had to provide enough generic stuff like weapons and avionics to feed the entire a/c industry. It was definitely challenging and some fun. But Gary embedded enough crap in there that it was more frustrating than anything else, and the BTR crowd is still trying to sort it out (right, HardSarge?). The HE-219 would only produce at a certain rate and at a certain time regardless of how much R&D you committed to it, but no one realized it. They threw billions of Reichs Marks at the factory and the design staff, but nothing happened. I am vehemently against these little programming secrets because you never know whether the problem is a bug or not. You should get what you pay for and, if you don't, you should be told why.
Sorry, I digress. Anyway, for a game with the scope of WitP, I think this kind of production is just too complicated. With everything else that you have to worry about - like supply convoys - having to worry about your balance of Merlins and Pratt & Whitneys is too much hassle. And having this kind of a system with an option to have the computer run it is just asking for trouble. I think you keep it simple but flexibile. P-40's cost one point, P-38's two points, and B-17's five points. Changing production to P-51's costs a one-time charge of X points (retooling costs), will cost 2 points to build for the first four months (inefficiencies and generic penalty) but settle to 1 point thereafter, and the factory starting production will not produce anything for one or two months. That's it.
Ships, with their long-lead times are tougher. I guess that, once you commit to building a ship, the computer automatically deducts X number of production points during each production cycle until the ship is either built or scrapped. That's it.
Maybe you have separate expansion points that you can devote to a particular type of production, i.e., army, ships, or a/c (and whatever else). Thus, you could create an unbalanced military by expanding production only of a/c factories at the expense of other capabilities. That kind of flexibility should go hand-in-hand with flexible production. And if you screw it up, tough. And there would be the option to have the computer allocate expansion points "historically" so you would have the same production mix and capability as is historically accurate and so you don't accidentally end up with an unbalanced mix out of ignorance.
But I see it's being fairly simple and a kind of blend of BTR and PacWar. You are not given the option of building the dreaded Mitsubishi XY2000 six-engined bomber, but you can speed up development of the Raiden by spending R&D on it at the expense of current production of Zeros. PacWar did a pretty good job of the a/c production, though it (i) left out R&D to speed up introduction and (ii) seemed to override by commands a lot. Do the same for ships and armies, and I think you've got an adequate system.
This book even has pictures of P-38s dropping torpedos. How about that in the early SWPAC campaign.
