Factory management - how to

[jjdenver]

Can a tester/dev comment on best practices and do's/don'ts for factory management?

I'm reading that section of the rules now and I'm not sure I'm grasping it all.

First - are the play notes in the rules 21.2.1.1 still accurate?

It says there that only 1 point from a specific AFV/AC factory needs to be moved. I think this means if I have a 24 point MIG-3 factory and move 1 point, the other 23 points are destroyed and at the new location the factory begins as a 1 point MIG-3 factory and eventually rebuilds to the MIG-3 maximum (whatever that is) over time.

Second, some factories such as HI, Armament can be moved 1 point at a time to various locations. If a 3 point HI factory has 1 point moved to a city in the east, the remaining 2 points stay in place (and do not grow) and the 1 point moves to the new city and after being repaired produced continuously as a 1 point HI factory there.

Also the notes mention that some factories (such as the MIG-3 factory in Moskva) shut down at a specific date. Do you know this only by going into production screen and clicking on Mig3 to see it ends production in 12 month of 41 or is it visible somewhere else? It'd be more convenient to see the "tear-down" date when I look at Moscow factory hex.

Now on to some other random questions.

Is a strategy of moving 1 HI and 1 armament point to every 1 or 2 pop town in the east a good way to go? This seems to leave more pop available to work the "big" factories like T-34 etc that have to get moved to the big urban hexes with lots of manpower. Is there any disadvantage to splitting up the armament/HI factories into lots of small towns? Do the towns need anything other than manpower? (rail, etc?)

What is a rule of thumb for how much manpower (population) is needed to work a point of HI or armament factory? A point of AFV or AC factory? Frex if I have a 50 point T-34 factory how many manpower points will that consume in an urban hex to handle its production? 50?

What other do's and don'ts are there for managing your factory moves east?

Thanks

[ComradeP]

I'd advise moving factories with a capacity in their entirety whenever possible, otherwise you lose too much production both because the repairs take longer and because the factory needs to expand to get to its previous capacity.

I'm not sure about how much, if any, manpower is required per factory point, I'd have to check.

You can check whether a factory stops producing anything or switches to another piece of equipment in the production screen. Click on a piece of equipment, if you see anything listed in the upgrade path part of the screen, it will switch to something else. If not, it will stop production when the equipment it's producing at that time reaches its last month of production.

[jjdenver]

Thanks CP.

Can you comment on some best practices once you check on manpower? For example I've been doling out Armament and HI factory points 1 of each per town with 1 or 2 pop in the east. Towns with 4 manpower I haven't decided what to do with yet. And the bigger city/urban hexes I assume I'll put the AFV/AC factories in but I'm not sure how densely to pack them.

But of course I'm not sure if putting the Arm/HI factories 1 each per 1 or 2 pop town is a good idea or not. Maybe I need to group them in cities with rail factories. Information gap - pls fill.

[ComradeP]

After checking it, population/manpower in a hex doesn't need to match the factories in some way, so you can place the factories where you want to place them, but I'd still suggest placing them mostly in cities for historical reasons, instead of railing them to the most remote dot hex you can find.

[ool]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

After checking it, population/manpower in a hex doesn't need to match the factories in some way, so you can place the factories where you want to place them, but I'd still suggest placing them mostly in cities for historical reasons, instead of railing them to the most remote dot hex you can find.

If one does evacuate factories to a remote dot on the map like, "haven't felt my toes in months" Siberia, with a low population. Does the population migration function target that town for population buildup to meet the needs of the new factories located there? After all thats a lot of factories to evacuate to the east and not all places will have exactly the population base ideal for the factories needs.

[ComradeP]

I asked about that a while ago, but population evacuation is essentially random it seems.

[ool]

I really don't see the Kremlin evacuating factories and not making provisions to move population to those towns to get them going at full tilt. I mean the Russians were well organized to crank out all the production that they did. Maybe down the line the powers that be will reconsider this rather sizeable hole in the logic of this aspect of the game.

[jjdenver]

I am reading the book "Absolute War" about USSR in WW2. It focuses not so much on operational or tactical considerations but more on political, industrial, and social topics.

The author discusses the move of industry east in some detail and in particular he mentions that entire factory worker units with their families and dis-assembled equipment were literally dumped into fields in Siberia and told to rebuild their factories. So I guess pop got moved with the factories.

Back on the thread topic though - from what CP said, it sounds like no specific pop level is needed to work factories so a pop 1 town could work any number of factories so moving pop to those towns isn't necessary in game terms.

[ool]

One would think considering that not only was manpower needed to work in the factory that there is also the consideration of support pop points to keep the workers fed, maintenance of the entire location, RR support etc. You would have to have a specific relationship of pop to the number and type of factories.

[ComradeP]

I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of a relation between population/manpower and factories/factory output, but that's the way it is currently.

[ool]

Obviously the priority was to get the game out and a great game it is to say the least. Hopefully these "finer" points/aspects of the time period can be addressed at a later date. Right now it is enough as the Soviets to put the C&C structure back together in the first months after the German attack.

[jomni]

I imagine that the factory workers are not included in the population count.
These workers are automatically included in the factory points wherever they go.
Less micromanagement considerations in the current model (which is good for me).

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: jomni

I imagine that the factory workers are not included in the population count.
These workers are automatically included in the factory points wherever they go.
Less micromanagement considerations in the current model (which is good for me).

I think that this is an excellent way to visualize this: As I understand it, pop points create manpower to populate armies. In RL, the factory workers WERE moved with their factories and WERE NOT drafted into the army after they arrived at those empty fields in Siberia. So, whether it was the design intent or not, I am very confortable with this model. [;)]