scenario ideas - production

[vaned74]

Hi there,

I have been working on a scenario mod - more to a historical bent.

I have started with Scenario 26, Babes Light - yes, thanks to JWE and Don on this one - I really like this scenario with all the extra goodies added in.

I have been working on the scenario based on the following premises and wanted to throw these out to see what folks thought.

1) Ship costs for Japan made more proportional. For example, a Ha class submarine costs 38,000 HI points or the equivalent of 1,000 fighters or 80 small destroyers. This can be addressed by modelling the ship building process as building a ship 'hull' and the fitting out/completion process by an upgrade with a time delay.

2) Japanese merchant shipping is not as heavily taxed as it should be to pull resources into the home islands. Oil shipments are about right - ~1.5 to 2.0 million barrels/month is about 10,000 tons/day of fuel/oil; resource shipping requirements are a little short. Some of this is offset though by not all of the merchant shipping being modeled in the game.

3) It is too easy to pull specialist units, especially artillery, out of Manchuria for Japan. This appears fixable by adding "artillery support" devices to the units to effectively greatly increase the PP cost of transferring the unit from the Kwangtung command.

4) China could be model differently to reflect:
- provincial armies (ie non Chinese KMT faction)
- some intrinsic supply for Chinese units (ie the unit generates self-supply)
- garrison requirements for China
- the above should allow the Chinese more staying power on defense by greater supply availability not tied to an industry center; but, also restrict a good portion of the Chinese AV to garrisoning cities and yet also allow a more active guerilla campaign by having some self-supplied guerilla units in action

5) While Japanese production is perhaps too flexible for the player, not forcing him to make tough choices (ie if I accelerate all my Unryus to arrive in late 1943; I should pay a price in merchant shipping or aircraft...); Allied production is not flexible enough. Solution - introduce some air groups and "replacement" land units that can be transferred from a restricted command and then disbanded to add to pools.

6) In all cases, early war Japan and mid-late war Allies, it is perhaps too easy to execute high tempo follow on amphibious invasions and hop from base to base. I think Da Babes Medium/Heavy will address some of this with the support/infrastructure forces. Outside of reducing amphibious capability though, I don't see this as possible to change right now.

[vaned74]

So here are my thoughts on Japanese Industry.

I assume in the course of an "average" war from Dec 41 to August 45 that Japan will output the following:

15,510,000 heavy industry points
1,050,000 merchant yard points
1,500,000 naval yard points

This is based on:

1941 - days 24; avg merch yard 807, avg naval yard 1384, avg heavy industry/day 13,000
1942 - days 365, avg merch 907, avg naval yard 1384, avg hvy industry 14,000
1943 - days 365, avg merch 1,007, avg naval 1384, avg hvy industry 14,000/day
1944 - days 365, avg merch 907, avg naval 1,100, avg heavy industry 11,000/day (starting, in late 44, to especially feel the effects of Allied sub campaign, loss of resources, beginning of bombing, shortages of fuel)
1945 - days 270, avg merch 500, avg naval 400, avg heavy industry 5,000/day (major shipping losses, fuel shortages, bombing effects cutting production by 50%)

Note I show merchant production increasing in period 41-44 - 1944 was a peak merchant building year for Japan historically.

Roughly in terms of expenditures in the three service types:

1) Naval - 2,550,000 points merchant and naval = 7.65 mln HI points

2a) Air Pilots - 44,000 pilots trained in period, avg time of 12 months, avg attrition of 10% in training; cost of 5 hi per month = 2.4 mln HI for pilots
2b) Aircraft and engines - 45,000 combat planes built in period; 1.4 avg engines per plane = 63,000 engines. Total hi cost for engines and assembly = 2.3 mln HI

3) Land - trackers shows about 400,000 arms and vehicle points req for full buildout of units plus reinforcements; assume another 200,000 for losses and upgrades = 600,000 points = 3.6 mln HI

So you have the following:

Naval - 7.65 mln HI, 48%
Air - 4.7 mln HI, 29%
Land - 3.6 mln HI, 23%
Total = 15.95 mln HI

[vaned74]

For supply production, I assume the following:

1941 - avg daily production is 23,000
1942 - avg daily production is 25,500
1943 - avg daily production is 26,000
1944 - avg daily production is 21,000
1945 - avg daily production is 13,000

Total supplies in the war will be - 30.2 mln tons

[topeverest]

Sounds very interesting...A few thoughts...Type Ha sub? What is that? Did you mean Type HA LST?

Let me suggest if you have not mathmatically detail modeled of each core element of the economic model, starting with resources - please do so. With this step complete, you will be able to place an upper and lower bound on the Empires new capabilities. there is a big difference between what the Empire actually did during the war and speculation about what she could have done (within their existing architecture) if decisionmaking were different. I would caution you against increasing the costs of anything or effectively making any economic component more scarce through these means wihtout understanding unintended downstream shortages that will impare the war effort. in other words, such core assumption changes can and likely will singificantly affect playability and play balance. (this is a game of course!) For example, if ships (on average) are now 10% more costly, then fewer ships or fewer other components will be made. How much shorter will the average war now be? If incremetnal core elements are added to offset this, how do they actually integrate into the economy / do they work as intended / does the empire have the on-map assets to ship and produce such extras...etc.

[vaned74]

Top - sorry I meant type ST, SS, etc. The small subs at the war's end that have high durability but only 4 torpedos. They cost way out of proportion economically to Japan to the point that most folks will simply cancel them when they can use the heavy industry points to build something else like accelerating carriers.

I agree with your comments. I was thinking in terms of small adjustments but keeping the same basic resource, production scheme intact. My general thoughts, and I have dabbled already with some of these adjustments, are:

1) Keep the input/outputs the same and/or increase from 20 to say 23-25 the number of resources to run each HI unit. Doing this would require about 10,000 more HI per day be shipped into the home islands or about 3,000,000 tons more of imports per year (currently requirements are running about 30,000,000 tons required in imports per year to run the home islands at full blast). So this would be a 10% increase.

2) The change in #1 above would put more emphasis on bringing back resources from the SRA - where about another 500 centers would need to be placed. This in turn would mean a little more fuel expenditure for Japan, my guess on the order of another 300-400 tons/day to move the associated 10,000 tons of goods back from the SRA each day. This would in turn require placing another 30-40 oil centers in the SRA.

3) The effect of #1 and #2 is then to put a slightly elevated demand on the Japanese cargo haulers and thus force Japan to focus economically a little more on producing merchant ships; as she did historically in 43 and 44 (although too late...).

4) There should probably be a slight increase in Japanese capability the more she focuses on pulling resources in. I have not decided how far to go on that, if at all - probably not at all at first.

5) Adjusting ship costing is a must. The proposed model works - ie building the hull with shipyard points and then using an upgrade of the hull to the 'real' ship class. This gets the costing right from ship to ship and also mitigates some ability on Japan's part to accelerate say all carriers and knock off 2 years of delivery time (which can be done for the late war Unryus). Right now, a Japanese player can scrap something like Shinano and from the savings of that bring 3 Unryus into the war about 17-18 months early.

[topeverest]

Vaned 94,

Thanks.

Question on your last #1. Did you actually go in and crack the code to change the relationship between HI and R or are you modifying the 'pull' by increase one or both? Just curious. If it is the latter, let me suggest you test the impact of dispersing the resources where they have to be shipped versus dumping them where they do not. My view of the IJN shipping capacities is that even a small increase (not sure how much that is) would be hard to pull off without some incremental cargos available to merchant roles during the expansion phase of the game.

Question on your last #5. Is that trade off and acceleration something you think should not be possible? There are many examples of accelerating and decelerating ship and ship classes on both sides. to confabulate a scenario where such could be so, I could see the Empire player immediately cancelling one of more ships at the start to allow for enough points to speed through 3 Unryus as soon as production is enabled on them.

It sounds like you have an excellent grasp on what you want to accomplish.