Tweaking the Japanese/Allied Economies

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: vettim89

I am with Brady and the others about the PP issue with shipping to Capetown. Surprised the game will let you do that in the first place.

I think you alarmed over nothing. First, even if you ship restricted units to Cape Town without paying for them, they are then stuck in Cape Town. Unless you send them back where they came from. They can't load on board ship unless they are released with PP's.

More importantly, an honest PBM opponent will not do that. If your PBM opponent is dishonest then all the restrictions that people can dream up about supposed "exploits" will not help you. You simply must have an honest PBM opponent.

Look on the west coast. There are LBA units assigned to (IIRC) Eleventh AF HQ. They are unrestricted. But look deeper and you see that the HQ is assigned to the West Coast HQ, which is restricted. The point is that those LBA units are free to move among the US-Canada-Alaska(including Aleutians). If you want to move one to Hawaii, you are supposed to pay PP.

These situations exist throughout the game. The notion of a lock-down that is realistic in terms of the scenario intent is simply beyond the capability of the game engine. All of the talk about the Allies buying "several divisions a month" and about some fictitious "Cape Town exploit" are just nonsense that is distracting you from discussing the issue that you set out to discuss with this thread.

I think you started out with a valid issue to discuss and I hope you get somewhere in spite of the smoke screen being thrown at you.

[Brady]

1. The Allies have to import almost all of their supply from the US and UK.
2. The stuff from the areas that Japan conquers has to be taken back to Japan to be put into the Japanese Econ-o-matic. You see the Allied Econ-o-matic produces green widgets and we need red widgets like the ones our Econ-o-matic makes

I apricate the notion of simplfying it all, but the captured production centers did not go unused, Japan used everything it captured and even made made munatins for captured guns so it keep on using them.

Shisp were built in captured yards throught the empire, granted many of them were woden hulled ships.

Captured production centers the world over continued to build for enemy armys, look at french factories that retooled for German neads as an example.

Suply is a problem, but my fear is tweaking it now migh cause more problems and their apear to be other simpler means with which to efect a change.

.........................

By your math Allied players would all have 12 divisions bought by the end of '42. You cite only the exceptions to the general truth when you mention those very early understrength divisions. Indian divisions at something like 1/3 strength and 20 - twenty - experience level and you say you are addressing the problem of how early the Allies can go on the offensive. Not to mention you leave out the other myriad things that the Allies use PP's for, like leadership changes

It realy depends on what your priouritys are, what you think neads doing, Suport units are realitevly cheap, you dont nead much in the way of PP to take care of normal day to day stuff, but I have a plan and that involves getting the best fighting untis I can for best buy as soon as I can and freeing up a half a dozen Divishions is easy to do in the first 60 days.

If you never buy stuff that's going away (i.e. withdrawing) you give up a lot of your LBA fight in the Pacific, not to mention search. All those USN search groups that arrive restricted and withdraw later - you just leave them on the west coast (a couple arrive at Pearl).

You dont nead all that go away junk, Japan cant realy field all that much at the tip of the spear anyway, and you get points for returning it, that you can use to buy units that are not going to leave.

You buy Chinese divisions! I'm not interested in hobbling the game for everybody just to keep you from doing something unrealistic. "The allies can realy get several divishion a month." Now you are talking nonsense. Bye!

I buy the ones that faught in Burma historicaly and let them build.

[Kereguelen]

ORIGINAL: vettim89

I see your point but I still don't think the issue is with too many units. The issue is based in a number of things. As this is an economy thread, lets try to keep it to the economy. As JWE pointed out, there is just too much supply flowing from the western map edge. This needs to be changed. Perhaps he is right about removing industry from those areas not likely to be conquered by the Japanese (southern Oz, Western India, Hawaii, Alaska, etc.) Yes, there were resources available there and some industry but it wasn't industry that would produce war materials. Thinking about it, I am going to stop there because that is a very big thought.

Australia produced a sizeable amount of war material (among other things: 3.7in AA guns, 25pdr QF guns, Bren Carriers, Armoured Cars, trucks, airplanes, rifles) as did India (among other things: trucks, wheeled carriers, armoured cars, rifles - India alone did produce more trucks than Japan, btw.). Austalia and India did not produce tanks and only a low number of planes mainly because the war economy of the British Empire worked differently (it would not have been very efficient to produce everything everywhere). The fact remains that Australia and India (and to some degree even NZ) produced sizeable amounts of war material. Btw., Tata Steel Works at Jamshedpur was one of the biggest steel manufacturers of the world even in the 1940s and the ingot-steel output of India was about 1.4 million tons in 1942, finished steel slightly less than 1.0 million tons.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Kereguelen

ORIGINAL: vettim89

I see your point but I still don't think the issue is with too many units. The issue is based in a number of things. As this is an economy thread, lets try to keep it to the economy. As JWE pointed out, there is just too much supply flowing from the western map edge. This needs to be changed. Perhaps he is right about removing industry from those areas not likely to be conquered by the Japanese (southern Oz, Western India, Hawaii, Alaska, etc.) Yes, there were resources available there and some industry but it wasn't industry that would produce war materials. Thinking about it, I am going to stop there because that is a very big thought.

Australia produced a sizeable amount of war material (among other things: 3.7in AA guns, 25pdr QF guns, Bren Carriers, Armoured Cars, trucks, airplanes, rifles) as did India (among other things: trucks, wheeled carriers, armoured cars, rifles - India alone did produce more trucks than Japan, btw.). Austalia and India did not produce tanks and only a low number of planes mainly because the war economy of the British Empire worked differently (it would not have been very efficient to produce everything everywhere). The fact remains that Australia and India (and to some degree even NZ) produced sizeable amounts of war material. Btw., Tata Steel Works at Jamshedpur was one of the biggest steel manufacturers of the world even in the 1940s and the ingot-steel output of India was about 1.4 million tons in 1942, finished steel slightly less than 1.0 million tons.

Just as a comment--I believe most steel production went to commercial ship-building, with major end items (tanks, trucks, etc.) next. A British division had about 3000 vehicles. Allowing 50% wastage during manufacturing and estimating the steel required per vehicle at 5 tons, you find a division probably equated to a couple of large xAKs in steel. 50 tons per tank meant an armoured division was more like four xAKs. So most xAK production went to produce xAKs for the resources needed for xAK production... JWE probably understands this a lot better than I do.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: vettim89

I am with Brady and the others about the PP issue with shipping to Capetown. Surprised the game will let you do that in the first place.

I think you alarmed over nothing. First, even if you ship restricted units to Cape Town without paying for them, they are then stuck in Cape Town. Unless you send them back where they came from. They can't load on board ship unless they are released with PP's.

More importantly, an honest PBM opponent will not do that. If your PBM opponent is dishonest then all the restrictions that people can dream up about supposed "exploits" will not help you. You simply must have an honest PBM opponent.

Look on the west coast. There are LBA units assigned to (IIRC) Eleventh AF HQ. They are unrestricted. But look deeper and you see that the HQ is assigned to the West Coast HQ, which is restricted. The point is that those LBA units are free to move among the US-Canada-Alaska(including Aleutians). If you want to move one to Hawaii, you are supposed to pay PP.

These situations exist throughout the game. The notion of a lock-down that is realistic in terms of the scenario intent is simply beyond the capability of the game engine. All of the talk about the Allies buying "several divisions a month" and about some fictitious "Cape Town exploit" are just nonsense that is distracting you from discussing the issue that you set out to discuss with this thread.

I think you started out with a valid issue to discuss and I hope you get somewhere in spite of the smoke screen being thrown at you.

+1

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: Kereguelen

ORIGINAL: vettim89

I see your point but I still don't think the issue is with too many units. The issue is based in a number of things. As this is an economy thread, lets try to keep it to the economy. As JWE pointed out, there is just too much supply flowing from the western map edge. This needs to be changed. Perhaps he is right about removing industry from those areas not likely to be conquered by the Japanese (southern Oz, Western India, Hawaii, Alaska, etc.) Yes, there were resources available there and some industry but it wasn't industry that would produce war materials. Thinking about it, I am going to stop there because that is a very big thought.

Australia produced a sizeable amount of war material (among other things: 3.7in AA guns, 25pdr QF guns, Bren Carriers, Armoured Cars, trucks, airplanes, rifles) as did India (among other things: trucks, wheeled carriers, armoured cars, rifles - India alone did produce more trucks than Japan, btw.). Austalia and India did not produce tanks and only a low number of planes mainly because the war economy of the British Empire worked differently (it would not have been very efficient to produce everything everywhere). The fact remains that Australia and India (and to some degree even NZ) produced sizeable amounts of war material. Btw., Tata Steel Works at Jamshedpur was one of the biggest steel manufacturers of the world even in the 1940s and the ingot-steel output of India was about 1.4 million tons in 1942, finished steel slightly less than 1.0 million tons.

Any pool type items produced in India, Australia, or New Zealand are in the game but the are not "built" per se. Being as the Allies don't have an in game economy, the Allied player doesn't have to use Armament or Vehicle factories to make them like Japan does. Same is true of shipping. We could put the plants and Merchant Shipyards on the map so Japan could capture them if the struck deep into the Allied rear areas.

What is relevant is how much of the expendable materials were produced in those locations. I am sure there were some munitions plants, pharmaceutical plants, etc that need to be represented but my guess is that it is no where near what is on the map now. Even a smal size 20 LI center produces 600 tons of supply a month. I know there must be some supply manufacturing accounted for in the Allied areas but I am saying there is too much. Figuring out how much is the problem

Again large HI complexes like the Tata Steel Mill would be enticing for the JFB to capture. The problem is that HI is pooled not delivered. So if Japan captures that mill, all the steel gets put into the Japanese Economy without having to actually be delivered to Japan. Thats an awful long way to deliver that material at no cost to Japan. Steel mills are some of the easiest things to sabtoage. Many blast furnaces need to be "on" all the time. Having the workers simply not show up to work for a day would probably have destroyed most if not all of the Tata works.

I am very interested in figuring how much expendable war material was produced in the areas in question

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Kereguelen

ORIGINAL: vettim89
I see your point but I still don't think the issue is with too many units. The issue is based in a number of things. As this is an economy thread, lets try to keep it to the economy. As JWE pointed out, there is just too much supply flowing from the western map edge. This needs to be changed. Perhaps he is right about removing industry from those areas not likely to be conquered by the Japanese (southern Oz, Western India, Hawaii, Alaska, etc.) Yes, there were resources available there and some industry but it wasn't industry that would produce war materials. Thinking about it, I am going to stop there because that is a very big thought.

Australia produced a sizeable amount of war material (among other things: 3.7in AA guns, 25pdr QF guns, Bren Carriers, Armoured Cars, trucks, airplanes, rifles) as did India (among other things: trucks, wheeled carriers, armoured cars, rifles - India alone did produce more trucks than Japan, btw.). Austalia and India did not produce tanks and only a low number of planes mainly because the war economy of the British Empire worked differently (it would not have been very efficient to produce everything everywhere). The fact remains that Australia and India (and to some degree even NZ) produced sizeable amounts of war material. Btw., Tata Steel Works at Jamshedpur was one of the biggest steel manufacturers of the world even in the 1940s and the ingot-steel output of India was about 1.4 million tons in 1942, finished steel slightly less than 1.0 million tons.

Quite right, K. However, the Allies don’t really need HI and LI. All their armaments and vehicles and ships and planes and bears, oh my, are done by the build rates and pool numbers and just appear (poof! et voila! – non?).

So it seems that HI and LI (and refineries) are there as capture prizes; but that begs another question. Could Japan have used any of the armament factories, steel mills, etc.. if they were captured? Refineries, sure; and some LI, too. But they would have needed the technical/industrial infrastructure of the captured place, or exported its own technical and industrial means, to get any kind of service out of a captured industrial center.

So, what does all this vaporing really mean? Well, it means that, in certain circumstances, Japan can capture a self contained, self sustaining, economy that does not require much in-coming transport. Burma has oil, resources, refineries and LI. It can make as much fuel as it has oil, so it’s a monster gas station for any IJN ops west of Singers. It also makes 340 supply points per day (from refineries and LI).

The DEI is even more self sustaining, since they have more refineries, more LI and even HI. The DEI produces over 2000 supply, per day (refineries and LI) and contributes ~ 80 HI points to the pool, which is enough to run a 12 point vehicle assembly plant in Maizuru, without requiring any transport. And the gas stations are more than monstrous.

So there is a, basically, freeby, side-bar economy running in the captured areas, which actually reduces the “marginal” transportation components necessary to support them. Since they are, in large measure, self sustaining, what happens is they become the local source “from which all things flow”. The only requirements on the transport fleet is to schlep in enuf EXCESS fuel to keep the Home Islands HI factories running, and enuf EXCESS oil to keep the Home Islands refineries running.

But keeping the Home Islands refineries running don’t mean much because of the refinery capacity in the captured areas. Don’t matter where the fuel is made, if you utilize all the refinery capacity in the DEI to make gas, you need only ship the EXCESS oil to Japan, and let their refineries suck hind teat (as it were). Similarly, only EXCESS supply requirements need to be shipped into the conquered areas, but certain of the conquered areas produce supply in excess of their requirements and can therefore short-haul their excess to a near neighbor, consequently reducing the stress on the transport fleet.

The more Japan conquers, the “marginally” fewer merchies it needs. It’s a monster Ponzi scheme – the more they get, the more they “can” get, until of course the cliff (poof!, et voila, she is naked, non?).

[Nikademus]

One of interest, how many US units do Allied players move to the CBI, compared to Real Life? Many more? A few more? Less? Keep in mind that the opposite also applies - if a player moves fewer units compared to Real Life, they don't get extra transport ships as a benefit.

In the joe Nik game vs. Rob and Tony, i think we house ruled against too much transporting of US units....but enough were allowed to once more allow a quick SB campaign to be started had we not also house ruled that. Instead....they used the 4E's to bomb airfields and gain air superiority in Burma very quickly (before mid 42)

[JWE]

So what does all that crap mean? I really don’t know. I haven’t looked at this aspect very hard, any one of a dozen Tracker-Heads could blow some doors off my assumptions, but here’s my thoughts, anyway.

(1) I would remove LI and HI from anywhere that is not a base in a contiguous technical nation. So keep India and OZ but schtupp the rest.

(2) Refineries don’t make Supply. Yes, I know, avgas and motor fuel is part of supply, but your general, run-of-the-mill Pacific Rim refinery didn’t really make that stuff. They basically cracked-80 and sent the product home, to petro-chemical plants, where chemists and petro engineers did the voo-doo on the doo-doo. Nobody, but a specialty shop was gonna make iso-octane.

(3) Reduce Refinery Fuel Out from 9 to 5 (comes right out of my butt). Even though the local refineries can still gas up the IJN, there still has to be some transport required to provide fuel to Japan’s HI. (wish to gosh HI required Oil as an input, rather than Fuel, but we work with what we gots).

(4) Increase HI Fuel In from 2 to 10. If you ain’t having to schlep Oil from the SRA, you should be forced to be schlepping something, and fuel is all that’s left, so …

(5) Seriously reduce refinery (device) capacity everywhere except Japan, US, maybe a couple places in OZ or India, and off-map. The whole idea of the game is to get the oil and transport it home. That is the whole point of the tanker fleet. If one can do all that stuff elsewhere, what is the purpose of a tanker fleet?

These are scen mod, and scen mod only, suggestions. These are suggestions for changes to data files, only. No code changes will ever happen (fun to talk about, and I have a few thoughts of my own, but irrelevant in the context of what we have to work with).

[ny59giants]

I liked some of the innovations that El Sid and others did in RHS back in WITP days. One that could be used would be a series of huge "Supply Sinks" (static units) stationed at major Allied bases (India, Australia, and USA). At game start they would be very large and eat up huge amounts of supply. At certain points throughout the game they would be 'withdrawn' and replaced with slightly smaller "Supply Sinks" to simulate the growing Allied economy.

The same could be done in Japan's Home Islands and if there is a greater draw on supplies by them, it could slow down the Japanese from expanding their airframes to such an extent that a player will give some thought into producing 300 plus Zeros and Tojo per month by mid to late '42. Too much of a drain on limited supply.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

I liked some of the innovations that El Sid and others did in RHS back in WITP days. One that could be used would be a series of huge "Supply Sinks" (static units) stationed at major Allied bases (India, Australia, and USA). At game start they would be very large and eat up huge amounts of supply. At certain points throughout the game they would be 'withdrawn' and replaced with slightly smaller "Supply Sinks" to simulate the growing Allied economy.

The same could be done in Japan's Home Islands and if there is a greater draw on supplies by them, it could slow down the Japanese from expanding their airframes to such an extent that a player will give some thought into producing 300 plus Zeros and Tojo per month by mid to late '42. Too much of a drain on limited supply.

I think the implementation of the supply sinks was a failure because they turned out to have huge defensive value when those bases were attacked. However, the supply side of the effort was on the right track.

The bit about having some industry centers begin damaged (which I think was first done in CHS by Andrew Brown, et al) is a good idea. It definitely made it much tougher to get supply out of the USA for the first six months or so. I think the whole ramp up was on the order of a couple of years.

As an aside, I would like to see more oil production available in the USA so the Allied player has the option of going historical and attempting to send some to Hawaii and Australia. A tiny, tiny thing in the overall game and really just chrome (which by the way is a great browser).

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: JWE

So what does all that crap mean? I really don’t know. I haven’t looked at this aspect very hard, any one of a dozen Tracker-Heads could blow some doors off my assumptions, but here’s my thoughts, anyway.

(1) I would remove LI and HI from anywhere that is not a base in a contiguous technical nation. So keep India and OZ but schtupp the rest.

(2) Refineries don’t make Supply. Yes, I know, avgas and motor fuel is part of supply, but your general, run-of-the-mill Pacific Rim refinery didn’t really make that stuff. They basically cracked-80 and sent the product home, to petro-chemical plants, where chemists and petro engineers did the voo-doo on the doo-doo. Nobody, but a specialty shop was gonna make iso-octane.

(3) Reduce Refinery Fuel Out from 9 to 5 (comes right out of my butt). Even though the local refineries can still gas up the IJN, there still has to be some transport required to provide fuel to Japan’s HI. (wish to gosh HI required Oil as an input, rather than Fuel, but we work with what we gots).

(4) Increase HI Fuel In from 2 to 10. If you ain’t having to schlep Oil from the SRA, you should be forced to be schlepping something, and fuel is all that’s left, so …

(5) Seriously reduce refinery (device) capacity everywhere except Japan, US, maybe a couple places in OZ or India, and off-map. The whole idea of the game is to get the oil and transport it home. That is the whole point of the tanker fleet. If one can do all that stuff elsewhere, what is the purpose of a tanker fleet?

These are scen mod, and scen mod only, suggestions. These are suggestions for changes to data files, only. No code changes will ever happen (fun to talk about, and I have a few thoughts of my own, but irrelevant in the context of what we have to work with).

Wow, JWE that is a pretty enormous cliff you are thinking about driving the bus that is the Japanese economy off.

I would be a little more incremental than your proposal. Just eliminating supply production by refineries and eliminating outlying LI and HI would create a pretty major swing for Japan as far as both imports and exports. I would do that and get some people to run the game for like a year and see what you get.

[JWE]

Yeah, well; in for a penny, in for a frikkin pound.

If I'm going over a cliff, it's gonna be with the hammer down.

[treespider]

Dang....might want to hold your horses there Kemo Sabe...and let some folks do some research.

IIRC the SRA did provide a fair amount of "supplies" to the Japanese war effort...but I don't have my sources at the moment and will need to do some research.

----

Currently at the office so do not have the editor in front of me ... couple of questions for you folks to ponder and answer for me in the next few hours before I get home...

1. Are Light Industrial Centers capable of producing HI points?

2. If the answer to #1 is No...I wonder what the effect would be of shutting off the supply production of Heavy Industry Centers?


----

Next up for TGC... a re-examination of LI, HI, Refineries and Resource centers... perhaps some tweaking of numbers is in order.... perhaps a decrease in Center numbers with increases in input and output...or viceversa... all to strike a nice balance...

[Blackhorse]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

I liked some of the innovations that El Sid and others did in RHS back in WITP days. One that could be used would be a series of huge "Supply Sinks" (static units) stationed at major Allied bases (India, Australia, and USA). At game start they would be very large and eat up huge amounts of supply. At certain points throughout the game they would be 'withdrawn' and replaced with slightly smaller "Supply Sinks" to simulate the growing Allied economy.

The same could be done in Japan's Home Islands and if there is a greater draw on supplies by them, it could slow down the Japanese from expanding their airframes to such an extent that a player will give some thought into producing 300 plus Zeros and Tojo per month by mid to late '42. Too much of a drain on limited supply.

I think the implementation of the supply sinks was a failure because they turned out to have huge defensive value when those bases were attacked. However, the supply side of the effort was on the right track.

The bit about having some industry centers begin damaged (which I think was first done in CHS by Andrew Brown, et al) is a good idea. It definitely made it much tougher to get supply out of the USA for the first six months or so. I think the whole ramp up was on the order of a couple of years.

As an aside, I would like to see more oil production available in the USA so the Allied player has the option of going historical and attempting to send some to Hawaii and Australia. A tiny, tiny thing in the overall game and really just chrome (which by the way is a great browser).

Both AB and El Sid made noble efforts to address the oversupply / overshipping issue in stock WitP.

The shortcoming of both approaches is that they both reduced the supply to be moved -- thereby creating even greater surpluses of merchant ships. It was not uncommon in WitP for both the Japanese and Allied players to have over half of their merchant tonnage swinging at anchor for most of the war. Or, conversely, to load a single division onto 100 AP/AKs, to facilitate rapid off-loading, because the excess ships were there to be had.

Directionally, JWE is on the right track, forcing the Japanese to make more use of their merchants to get resources and oil back to Japan, then supplies and fuel to the front; while forcing the Allies to carry more supplies from off-map to the war zones. The devil, as always, is in the details.

FWIW, I think China is fairly well-balanced. But the ability to support a substantial war effort from indigenous supply alone in places like DEI and Burma seems overstated.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: treespider

...Currently at the office so do not have the editor in front of me ... couple of questions for you folks to ponder and answer for me in the next few hours before I get home...

1. Are Light Industrial Centers capable of producing HI points?

No. Light Industry only generates supply points.

Alfred

Edit. Delete this answer, misread your question.

[Shark7]

Edited for length/pertinence.

ORIGINAL: vettim89

So the light bulb moment: most of the HI and LI outside of the 1941 Japan sphere of influence does not belong there. It wasn't making war materials for the most part. It would not have been able to be converted to Japanese stuff very easily. The labor force was not likely reliable enough to get anything meaningful out of it any way. Perhaps a small portion of the LI could be left in Oz, NZ, and maybe India to represent munition factories that were in existence. That would be worth researching. This does two things to the game

1. The Allies have to import almost all of their supply from the US and UK.
2. The stuff from the areas that Japan conquers has to be taken back to Japan to be put into the Japanese Econ-o-matic. You see the Allied Econ-o-matic produces green widgets and we need red widgets like the ones our Econ-o-matic makes.

Thoughts?

Actually, you've gotten me to thinking. Currently in game, their are only HI, LI and refineries.

Refineries: Once repaired can be put back into service and manned by your own people.

HI: Build heavy things...marine engines, or smelters to make steel etc. These make your building materials. You may or may not be able to put these back into service. Repairable, and even manable by your own people, though it may not make the right widget you need. Also, heavy industry doesn't make bullets and can beans, it makes steel, marine engines, big guns, and trains etc.

LI: I think of these more like textile mills and canneries. LI doesn't make 'war materials' outright, but the products they do make can be used by the army.

I think that sums up the current types. Now then to my thoughts:

1. Refineries are probably fine as is, though one can argue that it shouldn't produce supply. As far as on capture, the system as is works for these. If undamaged, the refinery should be workable...if damaged, repairs can be done. I know the game abstracts this, but one thing to consider in the next generation game is the requiring of having a Japanese Engineer unit present to both repair and operate the refineries and oilfields. This would have an additional effect of needing to move supplies to the unit and help tie up some merchant shipping.

2. Heavy Industry should be heavily damaged when captured and require a supplies to repair. Honestly, HI should be completely destroyed on capture, but still repairable. As far as manning it, the Japanese of that era were less compassionate about the plight of the worker...IE they'd use forced labour to get the factories back into production. In the end, I'd suggest that HI be completely destroyed and if it is repair it's production is halved.

3. Light Industry should be left as it is, though LI in areas that are occupied should probably require even more resources to simulate wastage. The one thing that remains constant is that despite the fact that you are under occupation, you still have to feed your family...you will go back to work at the textile mill or the cannery and do your job, although you probably aren't going to take any pride in it (knowing its funding the war effort). These light factories would also be subject to partisan attacks form an unhappy populace, again affecting resource requirements and output.

Fixes under the current game:

1. Any area that starts allies and can be captured that has Resource, Oil, refinery, HI or LI should have garrison requirement. This at least ties up troops or will render the industry useless over time. This is good for the allies as well since places like the DEI were already experiencing unrest prior to the Japanese invasion.
2. Remove the supply production from the refineries. Troops in the field can't eat JP or bunker fuel. And while supply might simulate aircraft fuel, it simulates bullets and beans more so.
3. Remove or severely reduce (as in have the HI present at 0 factories) the HI industry from starting Allied bases...the Japanese wouldn't have been able to make much use of it immediately, and the allies don't need HI production.
4. The BIG CHANGE: remove all supply production from HI. It doesn't make consumables. To compensate, incrase supply production of LI and tweak the resource requirements of LI. This will definately take a fine balancing act...you need to make up the 2 supply/unit output of the HI with the LI and very careful balancing of the resource in/out formula.

Possibility of input/output. I'm sure you guys that are better with numbers can find a better formula:

This will keep the current level of Japanese supply in game as well as increase raw resource requirements (balancing is going to be the key, and I'm not real good with numbers)

Current Japanese total supply output on Dec 7, 1941: 46455/day
Current Allied on map factory output on Dec 7, 1941: 81409/day (more than half of which comes from refineries)

The increased supply needs of the LI for the increased supply output would certainly require more shipping be committed to the economy.

• HI: Resource in: 20, Fuel in: 2, Supply Out: 0, HI out: 2
• Refineries: Oil in: 10, Fuel out: 9, Supply out: 0
• LI: Resource in: 20-30?, Supply out: 4.9 so round to 5 (to maintain current Japanese supply levels)

The problem is that it doesn't work out for both without adding more on map LI for allies, or increasing the daily 'magic infusions' by 22239 supplies/day.

Anyway, there are my thoughts on it, maybe you guys that are better with numbers can figure out a better way to make it work.

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Yeah, well; in for a penny, in for a frikkin pound.

If I'm going over a cliff, it's gonna be with the hammer down.

Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?

[vettim89]

An additional point I thought of about refineries producing supply: unless they are completely trashed when the change hands they can produce the supply to repair them on site. No that is wrong on so many levels.

The more I think about it, the more I think that just eliminating the refinery supply might be enough to put an enormous amount of the Japanese merchant fleet to work.

Besides the aforementioned extra 60k of supply needed a month, the supply to repair facilities in the SRA will now need to be shipped.

Lets say Palembang is damaged 50% when it changes hands leaving 500 Oil and Refinery centers working. With the current settings, the Japan player has to do nothing and within 20 days, the industry will produce enough supply to repair one center every other day without importing a single supply point.

New system with no supply from refineries, the Japan player gets his 450 fuel points a day but no supply. It would take a net move of 1 million supply points imported to fully repair both centers now. Now that will leave a mark.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Brady
As for any other US units that wanted to go to the CBI from the east cost if they have to take a ship they will have to pull it from the Pacific, if they were to get to the front from the US west coast they would have to take the same ship anyway.

Do you have any examples of US units moving across the Atlantic using ships that were pulled from the Pacific to do so?

In the game, the trade off the Allies should pay for moving more units across the Atlantic than was done in RL is the expenditure of PPs. One of the things PPs represent is the "political" aspect of a reallocation of strategic assets.

It will make players have to realy make a choice.

Exactly what the PP system is for.

Thier is a tremendious glut of lift also Andrew so this is all easly doable with ships to spare.

Well, I don't agree on making arbitrary cuts to the Allies forces just because someone thinks they have enough stuff anyway. There need to be valid reasons for doing so. Arbitrary cuts like that belong in Japanese fantasy scenarios which are intended to cater for such things.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Don't see the point in further discussion of this idea.

Andrew

PS: I guess if this is about transport ships specifically, then any further discussion belongs in the Merchant ship thread?