Tweaking the Japanese/Allied Economies

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Kereguelen
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.

Indeed.

Also, I view "supply" as including food and other consumables that the armed forces used. If this is included, then the contribution made by Australia to the war effort in the Pacific was considerable. So much material was sourced from Australia that, as far as I am aware, Australia and NZ were the only two Allied countries that provided as much value in Lend Lease to the USA (through supplying their Pacific forces) as they received in turn, meaning that there was no war debt to the USA after the war (unlike, say, the UK).

Andrew

[stuman]

ORIGINAL: Brady

ORIGINAL: darbymcd

Treespider, I get what you are saying, and it probably is the best that can be done. But my feeling is that there is some disconnect between aggregate input and output compared to RL. It may just be that because the res are undifferentiated it is just too easy to get all the necessary ones from Korea/Manchuko. I don't really know, but it feels a bit slack, although that is not very useful or precise!

The problem is it has to feal slack, becasue in the real world Japan only used half its merchant fleat to run the ecenomy, everything the game builds, what Japan more or less built was sustained in the real world by about 50% of Japans merchant fleet.

The other half was working for the military, for prety much the entire war. (not suporting the Industrail base.)

Also their is no civilain ecenomy as such in game, nor was their realy in Japan during the war, at least in the since I think most people understand it, prety much all the Industry in Japan was producing material for the war effort.

The notion that their is two ecenomys in Japan or was, is a mistake, implanted way back in WiTP to explane away why that game left out so many ships, we cant expect it to be perfect its just a model crafted to creat a feal for what it was like in the war. The isue their is of course that what people often think was the situation is realy not actualy how it was or why...

It was tight for Japan because only half her merchant was operating to suport the Industrail base in Japan, if a player uses only half the ships he has it should barely keep the war machine going.

The isue is players dont use just half their ships and they use them far more eficiently than the Japanese did.

Well if it is that big a deal with you, then find a game with a Japanese player, tell him your main house rule is that he has to keep half of all of his transports permanately disbanded in one of the Korean ports.

And the ones you do let him use, he has to do so poorly [:)]

[stuman]

ORIGINAL: Brady

You are forgetting that there is no distinction in the game between supply types. That is why I used the term "net supply" in my response. Yes, it would have been nice if there were separate types of supplies modelled, and had to be moved around individually, but that is not the case. That is why setting the supply requirements of an entire country to one particular sub-component of supply, and not that actual net supply moving in or out, is not reasonable. You have to look at the entire picture

I gues I am and I am not, in the since that my concern is that its enabling an early allied ofensive in part because folks have so many ships they dont nead to do anyhting else but move troops with them to the front.

That and you can actualy suport a limited ofensive from Austrailian suply.

For me hear the big picture is the Suply in Austraila is enabling, in part, the Allies to go on the Ofensive earlyer than they were realy able to historicaly, its a small part of the problem.

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

The transfer of ships in and out of the theatre is already modelled in the overall availability of ships in the game. That is why some Allied ships that really did serve in the Pacific (usually in convoys to/from) do not appear in the game. So no point missed. Pretending that the Allies did not have any ships to move units across the Atlantic, and had to always requisition ships from the Pacific to do so, is not reasonable.

This sorta comes back to the other isue with regard to how the US moved troops, their were not enough troop transports to serve both theaters, that why many were sent to the ETO from the pacific in 42, asuming their were enough to ove men to the CBI from the east cost is not corect, from a historical context.

I gues part of the problem hear is I have looked at the ships in game, every one of the allied merchant ships in fact for the first year or so, and spot checked many others for the rest of the war, and the picture I see is diferent.

Again this comes back to one of the reasions for the allies being able to go on the ofensive so early, its to easy for them to move men and material back and forth.

If their were a limit to the number of points that could be lifted I would be more inclined to buy the free ride to cape town, but theirs not, I can send everyhting I want to Cape town (heck I dont even have to pay PP till I remove them from cape town if their restricted).

Well isn't the easiest fix just to not do it then ? I never use that method. I always pay PP in such a situation, then use ships to move them. You can too.

[Andrew Brown]

There are a lot of ideas floating around in this thread, and it is a good discussion, but I thought I'd better toss in a few comments about what I had in mind when I was reviewing the economy data for AE.

Firstly, my golden rule was - start with what the original WitP had, and only deviate from it once I knew why I wanted to change, there was a purpose in doing so, and there was evidence to back the change up. So the fuel, supply HI levels and so on that I started with were originally set to be the same as in the old game, and they are largely that way now.

Resources - One of the big changes made was to resources production and consumption. With Treespider's excellent help, we reviewed the resources inputs to the Japanese economy and ended up with having far greater requirements for shipping resources to the Japanese Home islands than in the original game. As I mentioned earlier these requirements are still generous for the Japanese as they are not set exactly to the levels that the figures indicated - they are about 20% lower than that (to account for "missing" smaller ships etc.).

I viewed resources representing two main things:
[ol]
[*]Raw materials that are mined, such as coal and iron. To a lesser extent they also represent rarer minerals that were still required for industry to operate but were mined in smaller amounts (copper, tin, bauxite and so on). Of course the model does not differentiate between these, so they are not essential in the game, they are just represented on the map. So this type of resources come from resource centres that are located in places where mines existed. because it is based on tonnage, the main thing being represented by this type of resource centre is coal.
[*]"Raw" agricultural output - food, wool and other materials, rubber and so on. Because these types of items are produced where people live, the resource centres that output these resources were co-located with population centres, which in AE are bases. The higher the population, the more such resource centres were placed in the base (along with a modifier for how developed the economy was - the more developed, the more resource centres in proportion to the population).
[/ol]

LI - LI is representing two things:
[ol]
[*]The production of "low tech" military supplies - food, clothing, other "low tech" consumables, maybe small arms ammo. The placement of LI was also tied to population centres, and again the more developed the region the larger the proportion of LI to population. However even undeveloped areas such as the DEI were given some LI to represent the ability of armed forces to "live off the land" to a certain extent in these areas.
[*]A representation of the civilian economy. The intention being that players needed to "feed" the civilian economy by providing LI centres with resources.
[/ol]

HI - HI represents two things:
[ol]
[*]The production of "high tech" supplies for the armed forces (small arms, spare parts and so on). This is represented by the generation of supply points by HI.
[*]The creation of HI points which are the component parts and materials for ships, vehicles, aircraft.
[/ol]
HI is placed in areas of high population, again in proportion to the development level of the region, but with a larger bias towards more developed areas (so less developed areas having much less HI).

Refineries - These are new in AE. They convert oil to various types of fuels, of course. Since avgas and petrol are "supplies" in AE and not fuel (which represents ship fuel and input into Heavy industry only), I also added a small amount of supply generation to the refineries. Seemed a good idea at the time as this was more "realistic" but since supply is so generic I now think it may have been better to not do this and have refineries produce only fuel.

In reality there were large refineries in the DEI and Burma, and these are in the game. Also, Japan imported large amounts of oil as well as fuel before the war, so Japan also starts with a modest surplus in refineries. How well Japan does with fuel generation depends on how damaged the captured DEI refineries are.

In the old game there were no refineries, which were assumed to be co-located with the HI centres - the reason that HI had oil instead of fuel as an input in the old game.

So that was my thinking for the AE economy.

Andrew

[stuman]

Thanks Andrew, his helpful in better understanding the game.

[Bradley7735]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

LI - LI is representing two things:
[ol]
[*]The production of "low tech" military supplies - food, clothing, other "low tech" consumables, maybe small arms ammo. The placement of LI was also tied to population centres, and again the more developed the region the larger the proportion of LI to population. However even undeveloped areas such as the DEI were given some LI to represent the ability of armed forces to "live off the land" to a certain extent in these areas.
[*]A representation of the civilian economy. The intention being that players needed to "feed" the civilian economy by providing LI centres with resources.
[/ol]

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

One of the problems I see with LI representing the civilian economy, is that a player can choose to stop running LI. They can choose to stop feeding the population. I'm sure most of us would agree that they can't shut it down. They could fail to provide for it, but they can't just choose to stop it. Is it possible to change the "production on/off" switch so that no HI or LI can be turned off? That way, LI is sucking resources that are needed for HI.

I don't see why any player would choose to turn off HI. So, don't give them the option of turning off LI. Sure, have control over what planes are produced (off/on), or whether to use HI for ships and arms (on/off), but why would someone choose to stop producing HI?

Anyway, thanks for your input. I know my suggestion requires a code change. But, maybe it's a small code change.
bc

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

There are a lot of ideas floating around in this thread, and it is a good discussion, but I thought I'd better toss in a few comments about what I had in mind when I was reviewing the economy data for AE.

Firstly, my golden rule was - start with what the original WitP had, and only deviate from it once I knew why I wanted to change, there was a purpose in doing so, and there was evidence to back the change up. So the fuel, supply HI levels and so on that I started with were originally set to be the same as in the old game, and they are largely that way now.

Resources - One of the big changes made was to resources production and consumption. With Treespider's excellent help, we reviewed the resources inputs to the Japanese economy and ended up with having far greater requirements for shipping resources to the Japanese Home islands than in the original game. As I mentioned earlier these requirements are still generous for the Japanese as they are not set exactly to the levels that the figures indicated - they are about 20% lower than that (to account for "missing" smaller ships etc.).

I viewed resources representing two main things:
[ol]
[*]Raw materials that are mined, such as coal and iron. To a lesser extent they also represent rarer minerals that were still required for industry to operate but were mined in smaller amounts (copper, tin, bauxite and so on). Of course the model does not differentiate between these, so they are not essential in the game, they are just represented on the map. So this type of resources come from resource centres that are located in places where mines existed. because it is based on tonnage, the main thing being represented by this type of resource centre is coal.
[*]"Raw" agricultural output - food, wool and other materials, rubber and so on. Because these types of items are produced where people live, the resource centres that output these resources were co-located with population centres, which in AE are bases. The higher the population, the more such resource centres were placed in the base (along with a modifier for how developed the economy was - the more developed, the more resource centres in proportion to the population).
[/ol]

LI - LI is representing two things:
[ol]
[*]The production of "low tech" military supplies - food, clothing, other "low tech" consumables, maybe small arms ammo. The placement of LI was also tied to population centres, and again the more developed the region the larger the proportion of LI to population. However even undeveloped areas such as the DEI were given some LI to represent the ability of armed forces to "live off the land" to a certain extent in these areas.
[*]A representation of the civilian economy. The intention being that players needed to "feed" the civilian economy by providing LI centres with resources.
[/ol]

HI - HI represents two things:
[ol]
[*]The production of "high tech" supplies for the armed forces (small arms, spare parts and so on). This is represented by the generation of supply points by HI.
[*]The creation of HI points which are the component parts and materials for ships, vehicles, aircraft.
[/ol]
HI is placed in areas of high population, again in proportion to the development level of the region, but with a larger bias towards more developed areas (so less developed areas having much less HI).

Refineries - These are new in AE. They convert oil to various types of fuels, of course. Since avgas and petrol are "supplies" in AE and not fuel (which represents ship fuel and input into Heavy industry only), I also added a small amount of supply generation to the refineries. Seemed a good idea at the time as this was more "realistic" but since supply is so generic I now think it may have been better to not do this and have refineries produce only fuel.

In reality there were large refineries in the DEI and Burma, and these are in the game. Also, Japan imported large amounts of oil as well as fuel before the war, so Japan also starts with a modest surplus in refineries. How well Japan does with fuel generation depends on how damaged the captured DEI refineries are.

In the old game there were no refineries, which were assumed to be co-located with the HI centres - the reason that HI had oil instead of fuel as an input in the old game.

So that was my thinking for the AE economy.

Andrew

Andrew, thanks for clarifying what the various industries are supposed to represent in the end result of supply points. My personal thinking was that LI would include stuff like Canneries, Mills, Ammo Factories, while the Armaments industry represented the small arms production and training centers. While the HI built the things like marine engines, refined metals and other 'building' materials.

With the removal of the supplies from the refineries, would you suggest any changes to make up for it? There are over 1K of refinery points in the HI and Japanese territories on 12-7-1941, so it remains to be seen how this affects gameplay, that is the loss of 1k supply per day...coincidentally there are over 9k of LI available in the home islands and territories.

What I'm curious about is in trying to fix one thing do we end up throwing the balance off somewhere else?

Edit: I misread my industry page, thinking there were 9k refineries when it was actually 9k of fuel production per day with 1k supply. Still, 1K per day is quite a bit over the course of the game...I'm still curious what the end result will be.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735
One of the problems I see with LI representing the civilian economy, is that a player can choose to stop running LI. They can choose to stop feeding the population. I'm sure most of us would agree that they can't shut it down. They could fail to provide for it, but they can't just choose to stop it. Is it possible to change the "production on/off" switch so that no HI or LI can be turned off? That way, LI is sucking resources that are needed for HI.

You are right, and I should have made a comment about that above.

I had no inkling that players would voluntarily shut off LI (though I probably should have). So it came as a bit of a surprise to me that it was something that players would do. If I had thought about it, then I would have asked for the option to be removed (for LI only). Players should not be able to "shut down" the civilian economy at will. To be sure, there were times when the Japanese did something like this - removing food from the local economies of places like Vietnam to feed their troops, and thus causing mass starvation - but that is different from something as dramatic as shutting down civilian consumption in the Home Islands, just so that not as many resources need to be shipped in!

Andrew

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Shark7
With the removal of the supplies from the refineries, would you suggest any changes to make up for it? There are over 1K of refinery points in the HI and Japanese territories on 12-7-1941, so it remains to be seen how this affects gameplay, that is the loss of 1k supply per day...coincidentally there are over 9k of LI available in the home islands and territories.

What I'm curious about is in trying to fix one thing do we end up throwing the balance off somewhere else?

Edit: I misread my industry page, thinking there were 9k refineries when it was actually 9k of fuel production per day with 1k supply. Still, 1K per day is quite a bit over the course of the game...I'm still curious what the end result will be.

Good point. As I mention, my preferred ("safe") starting position is to retain what we have already. So if supply production from refineries was removed (and keep in mind we are only talking about a mod here), then to maintain supply output at the same level a slight increase of supply points from another source could be made. The trick is to do that without tipping the balance off somewhere else (for example, adding some more LI to create more supply would mean more resources required, which leads to higher shipping requirements and so on).

However that is in isolation. There may be other things that you want to address at the same time. For example, if the turning off of LI is a possible course of action for the Japanese player, then that may indicate that supply production for the Japanese normally generates a reasonable surplus, and removing the supplies from the refineries would not have a significant effect on the game (other than reducing the incentive to turn off LI).

Others who are more experienced at playing AE than I am can provide a better insight into Japanese supply levels though.

Andrew

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735
One of the problems I see with LI representing the civilian economy, is that a player can choose to stop running LI. They can choose to stop feeding the population. I'm sure most of us would agree that they can't shut it down. They could fail to provide for it, but they can't just choose to stop it. Is it possible to change the "production on/off" switch so that no HI or LI can be turned off? That way, LI is sucking resources that are needed for HI.

You are right, and I should have made a comment about that above.

I had no inkling that players would voluntarily shut off LI (though I probably should have). So it came as a bit of a surprise to me that it was something that players would do. If I had thought about it, then I would have asked for the option to be removed (for LI only). Players should not be able to "shut down" the civilian economy at will. To be sure, there were times when the Japanese did something like this - removing food from the local economies of places like Vietnam to feed their troops, and thus causing mass starvation - but that is different from something as dramatic as shutting down civilian consumption in the Home Islands, just so that not as many resources need to be shipped in!

Andrew

That would be great if that could be included in a future patch. Considering that the LI exists to cover the loss of supply that turning off refinery supply would cause, I would be more concerned about if enough resources exist. Turn one levels are currently 13000 supply/day from HI, 1000 Supply/day from Refineries, and 7100 supply/day from LI. So the supply loss from refineries is only 5%. Considering many players turn off part of the LI, I think balance should be pretty easy to maintain. What will need to be done is an marked increase in resouces needed to be imported. This may make the northern Australia invasion a given as there are a couple of resource centers there. We are talking about 600k of resources needed to fuel the LI. I have read that Japan has a resource deficit on Honshu or about 100k/month on 7 December 1941. Is that number for 100% of the LI on?

[Buck Beach]

ORIGINAL: vettim89

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735
One of the problems I see with LI representing the civilian economy, is that a player can choose to stop running LI. They can choose to stop feeding the population. I'm sure most of us would agree that they can't shut it down. They could fail to provide for it, but they can't just choose to stop it. Is it possible to change the "production on/off" switch so that no HI or LI can be turned off? That way, LI is sucking resources that are needed for HI.

You are right, and I should have made a comment about that above.

I had no inkling that players would voluntarily shut off LI (though I probably should have). So it came as a bit of a surprise to me that it was something that players would do. If I had thought about it, then I would have asked for the option to be removed (for LI only). Players should not be able to "shut down" the civilian economy at will. To be sure, there were times when the Japanese did something like this - removing food from the local economies of places like Vietnam to feed their troops, and thus causing mass starvation - but that is different from something as dramatic as shutting down civilian consumption in the Home Islands, just so that not as many resources need to be shipped in!

Andrew

That would be great if that could be included in a future patch. Considering that the LI exists to cover the loss of supply that turning off refinery supply would cause, I would be more concerned about if enough resources exist. Turn one levels are currently 13000 supply/day from HI, 1000 Supply/day from Refineries, and 7100 supply/day from LI. So the supply loss from refineries is only 5%. Considering many players turn off part of the LI, I think balance should be pretty easy to maintain. What will need to be done is an marked increase in resouces needed to be imported. This may make the northern Australia invasion a given as there are a couple of resource centers there. We are talking about 600k of resources needed to fuel the LI. I have read that Japan has a resource deficit on Honshu or about 100k/month on 7 December 1941. Is that number for 100% of the LI on?

Pardon my ignorance here but if the LI was created to produce the supplies that support the civilian economy then how is that supply consumed or drained off in the game?

Buck

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach

Pardon my ignorance here but if the LI was created to produce the supplies that support the civilian economy then how is that supply consumed or drained off in the game?

Buck

I think they mean that the LI running consumes resources thereby requiring that resources be shipped to the the Home Islands.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach

Pardon my ignorance here but if the LI was created to produce the supplies that support the civilian economy then how is that supply consumed or drained off in the game?

Buck

I think they mean that the LI running consumes resources thereby requiring that resources be shipped to the the Home Islands.

Yes. You can think of the LI as producing two distinct things: 1) Supplies for the armed forces. These are the supplies you get in the game. 2) "civilian stuff" which does not exist in the game. It is "invisible" and magically goes to feed/supply the equally "invisible" civilians. This is one reason why there is a large input of resources for LI but only a small output in supply points.

Andrew

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735
One of the problems I see with LI representing the civilian economy, is that a player can choose to stop running LI. They can choose to stop feeding the population. I'm sure most of us would agree that they can't shut it down. They could fail to provide for it, but they can't just choose to stop it. Is it possible to change the "production on/off" switch so that no HI or LI can be turned off? That way, LI is sucking resources that are needed for HI.

You are right, and I should have made a comment about that above.

I had no inkling that players would voluntarily shut off LI (though I probably should have). So it came as a bit of a surprise to me that it was something that players would do. If I had thought about it, then I would have asked for the option to be removed (for LI only). Players should not be able to "shut down" the civilian economy at will. To be sure, there were times when the Japanese did something like this - removing food from the local economies of places like Vietnam to feed their troops, and thus causing mass starvation - but that is different from something as dramatic as shutting down civilian consumption in the Home Islands, just so that not as many resources need to be shipped in!

Andrew

Go further--LI autorepairs if damaged, using supply. Or perhaps make it undamageable.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach

Pardon my ignorance here but if the LI was created to produce the supplies that support the civilian economy then how is that supply consumed or drained off in the game?

Buck

I think they mean that the LI running consumes resources thereby requiring that resources be shipped to the the Home Islands.

Yes. You can think of the LI as producing two distinct things: 1) Supplies for the armed forces. These are the supplies you get in the game. 2) "civilian stuff" which does not exist in the game. It is "invisible" and magically goes to feed/supply the equally "invisible" civilians. This is one reason why there is a large input of resources for LI but only a small output in supply points.

Andrew

Andrew thanks for the clarification about the role of LI and what it represents in game.

All in all this thread and merchant ships thread are by far the most interesting I have read over some time on the forum.


Just some thoughts:
Removing the option to switch off LI wont get rid of the problem as a whole. It only removes
the issue on the home islands for bases where additional HI is present in the same hexes.
If you simply ship no ressources to those bases containing LI, you have a similar effect as switching it off.

I wonder if a solution could be a combination of LI with adding garrison requirements.
Bases with LI could have 0 garrison required in case they have enough ressources to run the LI present.
In case the ressource stock is too low to run LI, a value gets added to the garrison requirements proportional
to the size of the LI.

So the player still has a choice, either supplying LI with enough ressources, or accepting (for a certain period of time)
the increase in garrison requirements, or slowly let the base damage grow to 100%.

This could as a side effect be a good abstraction of increased unrest under the civilian population because of a shortage
in consumer goods.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: witpqs



I think they mean that the LI running consumes resources thereby requiring that resources be shipped to the the Home Islands.

Yes. You can think of the LI as producing two distinct things: 1) Supplies for the armed forces. These are the supplies you get in the game. 2) "civilian stuff" which does not exist in the game. It is "invisible" and magically goes to feed/supply the equally "invisible" civilians. This is one reason why there is a large input of resources for LI but only a small output in supply points.

Andrew

Andrew thanks for the clarification about the role of LI and what it represents in game.

All in all this thread and merchant ships thread are by far the most interesting I have read over some time on the forum.


Just some thoughts:
Removing the option to switch off LI wont get rid of the problem as a whole. It only removes
the issue on the home islands for bases where additional HI is present in the same hexes.
If you simply ship no ressources to those bases containing LI, you have a similar effect as switching it off.

Once michaelm gets the supply/resource/oil/fuel transportation model sorted, resources will move to demand. LI will be a major demand. If it has priority, can't be switched off, and self-repairs, it will be the dragon you have to feed.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: herwin
Go further--LI autorepairs if damaged, using supply. Or perhaps make it undamageable.

I do think that LI should be much more resistant to the effects of strat bombing.

Andrew

[LoBaron]

I was thinking more of the countless small islands with LI. Agree though that it would be less of an issue then.
Is there somethign like a order of priority in which ressources are distributed? Like first LI, then HI?
If this is the case then it could be an additional help in increasing the influence of LI.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown


As I mention, my preferred ("safe") starting position is to retain what we have already.

Perhaps that is the root of the "Problem". The economic model used stock WitP as the basis line. I would suggest that perhaps the outputs of HI and LI may be too generous.

Read an interesting quote last night...

In order to supply the steel necessary to produce combat and tracked vehicles, it was necessary to sharply reduce motor vehicle production. In order to raise the level of air ordnance output in 1944, when the aircraft drive reached its peak, it was necessary to sharply reduce steel allocations for Army ground Force items such as artillery, ammunition, tanks, etc. In order to award the major priority on basically limited steel supplies to merchant shipbuilding, the whole ordnance program, though it expanded substantially, had to be held to levels which did not meet scheduled plans of production or military requirements.

p.233
Japan's Economy in War and Reconstruction
Jerome Cohen

For my MOD -

I would suggest a COMPLETE re-evaluation of the economy. For example examine the HI requirements to produce what the Japanese historically produced. IIRC players are capable of creating huge stores of HI points, which obviates the need to transport in resources late in the game as the Japanese player can subsist on the HI stores created earlier in the game.

I do not know for I have yet to study the numbers ... and this is just a theory...but perhaps a reduction in the At-Start numbers of HI Centers and/or a reduction in their output would be in order.

The work required would be intense...but essentially involves the following --which is just the beginning framework and is not thought out entirely yet:

1. A month by month examination of the HI points required to produce the historic Japanese reinforcements.

2. A comparison of the requirements of #1 with the output generated by the current HI Centers.

3. An estimate of Total Japanese Daily Supply Requirements. (perhaps the Tracker Heads can shed some light here...)

4. Examination of the supply produced in the various map sub-regions.

5. Determination of Japanese historic supply production capabilities.

6. Re-define the meaning of HI centers and LI centers - HI centers representing the part of the economy used to generate HI points that are used to build war material...LI centers being the part of the economy used to produce items consumed by units.

7. Factor in the "hidden" Civilian economy as is currently done by requiring HI centers and LI centers to consume more resources than their output.

8. Set the HI and LI requirements such that Japan is required to import c. 25 million resource points per year at start. Need to look at stockpile numbers for coal and iron to determine how much of a surplus is generated if any early in the war.

9. Set outputs to mirror / emulate the historic capabilities.




ETC ETC...

[JWE]

Okay, okay, I don’t really want to drive off the edge of the Earth. [:D] That was like the wish list. For sure, I would never change more than one particular item at a time. Thought a bit more and have a couple things. Maybe ideas, maybe just questions. I’m sure Andrew or a Tracker-Head can set me straight if I’m off base.

Two components to the model – inputs and outputs. I think (hope) they are relatively independent. The main idea is to increase the transportation tonnage requirement (phase-1) without doing major violence to everything else. Don’t think the “amount” of supply or fuel produced is much of a factor here since, so long as a “sufficient” amount is being produced, it takes exactly the same number and tonnage of ships to move a lesser (but sufficient) amount of stuff as it would if there were a surplus and one was only schlepping a sufficiency anyway. I think the first premise is not to make less, but rather require more.

There might be a marginal increase in required tonnage to move stuff to peripheral areas if those areas were made less than self sufficient, but not a whole lot of additional tonnage.

If the I/Os are independent, and the idea is to require more ships to move stuff, perhaps Phase-1 would be to arbitrarily increase Input requirements. This would force a lot more tonnage into hauling more Resources and Oil to Japan. The same amount and proportion of stuff gets produced, it just takes more Resources and Oil to produce it.

To be perfectly arbitrary about it, increase all inputs by 50%:
Increase HI Fuel In from 2 to 3
Increase HI Res In from 20 to 30
Increase LI Res In from 15 to 23
Increase Refinery Oil In from 10 to 15
Increase HI Fuel In from 2 to 3 (I would actually make it 4, but what the hey)

If the absolute value of Resource and Oil production has been finely tuned to their use as Inputs, this can be compensated by increasing Resource Out and Oil Out by the same 50%, but I would keep that as a Phase-1b thing and not do it on the first pass.

Thus, one can make the same amount of “stuff”, but it will take 50% more Inputs to do it, and thereby require 50% more tonnage to move it. Since Resources and Oil are not used for anything else, this seems a reasonable first step.