ORIGINAL: treespider
ORIGINAL: Shark7
I realize you are trying to get the economy more historic, but TBH, in all of my games I have never had a fuel shortage as Japan. It really comes down to proper management of your merchant fleet (which Japan failed at miserably) and not trying to sail all over the globe looking for fights with massive fleets. Probably need to talk to other IJN players to see if this holds true across the board.
On paper, the numbers are different than in practice in game is what I am saying.
Again the real problem with the merchant fleet sitting idle is two-fold:
1. A player isn't stupid. We aren't going to send out a convoy to a resource area carrying supplies and not utilize it to bring in resources on the return trip. Personally I use a system where small ships are used to bring the resource/oil to a central point, and from there a large convoy hauls it back to the HI.
Example: In the DEI, I might pick up from Singapore and Palembang. Instead of hauling the oil resources from Java all the way to Japan, I send it to Palembang where it is picked up with the Palembang production in a series of large convoys. You set up 4-6 of these large convoys, along with all the other stuff going to the main load point, and you can get a convoy arriving at Tokyo once a week etc. All of these carry suppleis back to their resource load points for the return trip. The Japanese didn't do that, but would have shipped the resource from Java in 2-3 ships going to Japan, and may not load supplies on the return trip etc.
In the above example, it hits on something else...every ship making constant long trips caused maintainence problems. Players don't have that issue either.
2. We also aren't going to send them out in 1s or 2s without escorts, so we don't suffer the losses the IJN did during the war. The end result is lots of tonnage un-used.
I guess what I'm saying is that the real problem isn't that we have too much fuel or too little resource, a lot of it has to do with the playing have 20/20 hindsight and not making the historical shipping decisions.
I think what people forget with the un-utilized tonnage in game is that we are not making the same decisions the IJN did. Still, the idea of trying to get the player to use more of the merchant fleet, and need to leave the merchant build queue on is commendable.
Unfortunately we can't modify the game itself to do what would be best, which is have refineries able to turn a small amount of resource (to represent the bulk coal) into bunker fuel. Your solution may be the best. Since it seems we need to increase the number of resources that need to be hauled back to Japan to get a closer to historic use of the Japanese merchant fleet.
All very true...but why not try and bring Resource aand petroleum transportation into line with historical levels?
Then once that is accomplished you can CHOOSE to address game play style through the mechanism of a House Rule - such as handicapping the Japanese with a simulation of their historic convoy practices or lack thereof. One way to do this would be to limit the Japanese Cargo TF running oil and resources to say 5 ships total.
Of course MOST players don't want to be saddled with historic doctrine or politics.[;)]
Agree - bring the transportation requirements more toward IRL. Don't force the IJ player to do dumb things (with house rules, YMMV). The point is that with the transportation requirements up near IRL, the Allied player has the opportunity to see if he can impact the IJ economy with interdiction against the IJ player's efforts to stop same. As things stand now - the way you all have presented the analysis - very little has to be transported compared to IRL so it really doesn't matter how successful the Allied player is at interdiction.
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