IJN Merchant/Naval building

[Misconduct]

I've been reading some AAR's to see what Japanese players are doing with production building, and noticing some either slack off on Naval building to build more aircrafts, or vice versa. I myself just started a game vs AI as a japanese player, and I am thinking of R&D'ing pretty aggressive in newer A/C and wanted to boost production on aircraft over naval shipping, would this be a wise idea?

[n01487477]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct
I've been reading some AAR's to see what Japanese players are doing with production building, and noticing some either slack off on Naval building to build more aircrafts, or vice versa. I myself just started a game vs AI as a japanese player, and I am thinking of R&D'ing pretty aggressive in newer A/C and wanted to boost production on aircraft over naval shipping, would this be a wise idea?

A/C R&D is IMHO something that is icing on the cake rather that something you can do wholesale. I'd pick one or two a/c and try for that. These a/c should be +8 mths away, but not more than 15 mths away... As I've stated before you need the factory to be fully repaired before any R&D points are accumulated and the best size is about 30. Any larger doesn't give substantial advantages and although larger factories repair quicker, it takes longer to repair all ... there seems to be a sweat spot between size and repair rate. Repairs to these factories are better the closer to the date of arrival, but once again too close and you're not going to get the points necessary unless you do multiple factory lines multiplying the result.

As for Naval shipbuilding, it is usually the Merchant build which is reduced, the Naval build list can be streamlined with some SS's for example turned off, but usually you can build it all just over a longer period of time than the usually peak demand in 42 running into 43-44.

The game is about logistics essentially, so the HI cost of building a naval ship is always going to be more than outfitting your planes. Take a durability 10 DD, which will take 100 days to build. 10*100 = 1000 points * 3 = 3000 HI. 3000 HI (if my arithmetic isn't wrong) will build 83 one engine planes or 41 two engined planes. Now this is only a 10 durability DD ...

CLASS SIDE DUR DELAY ACC can ACC Start Building HI COST
Junyo IJ Navy 84 146 0 0 -694 36792
Junyo IJ Navy 84 235 0 0 -605 59220
Taiho IJ Navy 103 820 0 0 -210 253380

Making planes seems to be the logical conclusion, but then again you need those ships too ...

[Misconduct]

Pretty good idea N0 I understand much better, I turned off some SS's and a battleship also slowed the merchant building a tab. My main concern was trying to find the best balance for the R&D,
I guess I need to simply run a few trial campaigns and see how it plays out to get the best understanding.

Right now I am researching Ki-61's and A6M3's for the time being, figure its a start, I still got to research all the Ki-43 upgrades etc.

[Czert3]

Stoping of yamato/musashi is nice way how to transfer HI from navy to planes, but remember yamatos are behmots at sea, if they have air cover, then they can kill relativer easy every enemy TF, and are very usefull for shore bombardments. In one of my games yamatro suirived over 55 bomb hits with relative light damage (float/engine/fire was low), sys damage was medium, but ship was operational (all main/secondary naval gns was ok), onlyeast thinks which was masacred was AAA.
In game they are simple more powerfull than in RL.

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: Czert

Stoping of yamato/musashi is nice way how to transfer HI from navy to planes, but remember yamatos are behmots at sea, if they have air cover, then they can kill relativer easy every enemy TF, and are very usefull for shore bombardments. In one of my games yamatro suirived over 55 bomb hits with relative light damage (float/engine/fire was low), sys damage was medium, but ship was operational (all main/secondary naval gns was ok), onlyeast thinks which was masacred was AAA.
In game they are simple more powerfull than in RL.

I am thinking of finishing the Yamato and stopping musashi for now, Yamato will be finished in time to put her to any use, but Musashi on other hand is to much of a gamble. I think this was one of the first things I researched in a dozen or so AAR's, however I have seen players using both BB's to great use in the war.

[Grfin Zeppelin]

ORIGINAL: Czert

Stoping of yamato/musashi is nice way how to transfer HI from navy to planes, but remember yamatos are behmots at sea, if they have air cover, then they can kill relativer easy every enemy TF, and are very usefull for shore bombardments. In one of my games yamatro suirived over 55 bomb hits with relative light damage (float/engine/fire was low), sys damage was medium, but ship was operational (all main/secondary naval gns was ok), onlyeast thinks which was masacred was AAA.
In game they are simple more powerfull than in RL.

Not realy, they cant sustain even half the beating it took to sink them in rl. Hell not even a quarter. 5 torp hits and they are usualy finished.

[Czert3]

No idea how many torp hits yamato sustained in RL, but sinking with 5 torp hits sounds deadly for any BB to me. Yes, I have mainly exps with old Witp and still geting hand with AE, so it may be some differnce in damage calculation. And resistance to bombs is good IMO.
And imagine yamatos with allied damage control .

[n01487477]

Forgot to say in my O.P

While the accumulation of HI is good economic management remember that there are some other ways to cut the fat... while you'll need to increase the Veh factories to about 150, mid-early '42 you can really turn off a large proportion of Arm factories ... and watch judiciously.

Also this is not WITP, where the plane losses are as large (In Nemo and my game May '43) we had 50 K plane losses .. this won't happen in AE and there aren't enough sqd to place them ...

Really the objective is to accumulate HI/OIL/Res balanced with keeping a well stock fighting force, but primarily HI for later in the game (PBEM)... not sure the Allied AI can survive anyway.

More to say, but off to watch my nephew's soccer match ...

Cheers

[vonTirpitz]

One thing to watch out for though is the afv upgrades (particularly the type 1 medium tank). It plowed under about 3k vehicle points in one turn in june and now a lot of my reinforcements are taking the long road to building up.

Not sure what the right number is but I was running at about 240 vehicle factories up until that first happened. Now it is a rush to try and compensate. In hindsight, I'm thinking I would have been better with building up to a total of about 400 vehicle factories from the start.

As for HI, with the help of Tracker I expect that you will need to stockpile at least 440k points per month that you want to live without your industry. Plan ahead. [;)]

ORIGINAL: n01487477

Forgot to say in my O.P

While the accumulation of HI is good economic management remember that there are some other ways to cut the fat... while you'll need to increase the Veh factories to about 150, mid-early '42 you can really turn off a large proportion of Arm factories ... and watch judiciously.

[Grfin Zeppelin]

ORIGINAL: Czert

No idea how many torp hits yamato sustained in RL, but sinking with 5 torp hits sounds deadly for any BB to me. Yes, I have mainly exps with old Witp and still geting hand with AE, so it may be some differnce in damage calculation. And resistance to bombs is good IMO.
And imagine yamatos with allied damage control .

It varies with sources. Yamato took around 12 and Musashi 19-26. + dozens of bomb hits and near hits.

[CapAndGown]

You may be a little too focused on accumulating HI points. HI is used to make stuff. It is the "stuff" that is the end goal, not the HI used to make the "stuff." In particular, over time you should start accumulating engines. There are only so many engine factories and so they represent a choke point in Japanese production. I would look to eventually building a stock of the types of engines you will be most heavily using in the late game. You should also have a stock of vehicle and armaments points. For armaments, you will most likely have a large stock by mid 42. At that point you can turn off some armament factories. For vehicles, expand your factories to 150-180 from the start of the game.

I would also point out that your focus on what you use HI for will shift over time. In the first few years it makes sense to use HI to build ships. So for instance, go ahead and build the Yamato and Musashi. Once they are done, you have freed up a lot of naval points. At that point you can decide whether you want to shut down some naval ship yards to save on HI or go ahead a build some other stuff.

My recommendation would be to spend HI on ships in the first year or two, and then shut down those shipyards and devote your HI to making engines. Go ahead and accumulate a reserve of HI, but don't go hog wild. In the end, it is the stuff HI makes that you want, not the HI itself.

[Q-Ball]

Cap and Gown had a pretty good summary there.

I would build both YAMATOS; they are expensive, but they are beasts too, and surface combat is more important in AE than IRL. This is a Naval game; ships are important. In fact, the reason the Allies win is really 1) qualitative superiority in bombers, and 2) shipbuilding.

But it is true that your HI expenditures will shift over time

Early it's SHIPS, later more AIRCRAFT