Back at post #156 I threatened an outbreak of peace in the Pacific for the purpose of giving the Japanese economy in this mod. a trial run that was so far as possible isolated from the effects of hostilities. Having completed a 91 day run of turns in this ‘Peace in the Pacific’ variant of Treespider’s mod., I hope he won’t mind my use of this thread as a convenient place to report my findings.
To simulate a continuation of peacetime conditions beyond 7 December 1941, all Japanese air forces were stood down, all invasions cancelled, and all LCU’s set to rest except for engineers. Allied air units have been removed, as have Allied ships. The game was run in head-to-head mode to ensure that no Allied ground forces committed acts of aggression upon the Japanese Empire!
To cater for an anticipated shortage of petroleum products in the absence of the Centrifugal offensive, Miri, Brunei, Balikpapan, Samarinda and Tarakan were made Empire territory. However, I refrained from commencing any tanker loading at any of these ‘petroleum ports’ until 1 March 1942 to simulate delayed capture of additional fuel/oil resources, and Japanese aversion to hazarding their tankers in waters still accessible to Allied military action. Oil and fuel accumulate at these bases until out-shipping starts, but I judged this a reasonable reflection of the likelihood that the Japanese would have captured some petroleum stockpiles had Centrifugal taken place. Since I have only just started to load oil and fuel, its significance for the economy and prosecution of warlike operations is hard to predict, but I suspect that the increase in fuel required to ship resources to the Home Islands may have bigger consequences for the conduct of Japanese military operations than anything else in this mod.
I expanded Japanese production facilities in accordance with a pre-conceived programme. 72 vehicle factories at start were initially increased to 100, with a further increase to 120 in progress. Aero-engine output required substantial expansion. 40 Ha-35 factories were added. Ha-32 factories have gone from 60 to 140, reflecting the importance of this power plant to the JNAF in particular. Ha-34 production has gone from 10 to 80 factories, anticipating a big production run of the Ki-44. I followed convention with expansion of airframe production, re-starting the B5N line and increasing Army and Navy single seat fighter output – more A6M’s and Ki-43’s. Finally, I progressively increased naval shipyards from 1384 to 1462: just enough to permit acceleration of Unryu class carriers and Taiho, but with submarine and Shinano construction halted.
According to my calculations, in this mod. the ‘at start’ Empire is subject to an overall daily resource shortfall of 1,050 points, but the quantity of resources stockpiled is such that the economy can be sustained for nearly 7,000 days,
provided resources are efficiently transported from where they are produced to where they are consumed. The principal places from which resources need to be shipped to the HI are, in descending quantity, Hokkaido, Manchukuo, Chosen/Korea, China and Karafuto/Sakhalin.
The accompanying graph illustrates the outcome to date of my efforts to carry these resources to the Home Islands. The data is sampled at 3 day intervals, but I found it impossible to operate efficiently otherwise than by resort to a single day turn cycle. The first few days are a bit crazy, and are marked by intensive efforts on the part of the game code to equalise fuel and oil levels in Honshu and Kyushu. Since the merchant fleet starts out in all the wrong places, it takes a few turns to move adequate shipping to the resource loading ports, during which time stockpiles of resources grow at these ports, notably at Port Arthur. There follows a period in which these excess resource levels get reduced at ports of lading until the point is reached at which the rate of loading equals or exceeds the rate at which fresh resources are being generated. I didn’t find it easy to anticipate when this would take place, but a good indication after the event is when the convoys start to sail with only partial loads. When this happened, I reduced the lift capacity being brought to bear; there was no sense in incurring excess bunker oil expenditure by despatch of half-loaded ships.
The green line of Indochina resource shipping starts low and stays that way. I dedicated the big NYK and OSK 18 knot ships to this service on grounds of speed and fuel efficiency, but the contribution Indochina makes to the economy is so modest that I am unconvinced that this is the most worthwhile employment of these ships in a hot war. The same could be said for shipping resources from Formosa.
Near the end of this 90-day initial period the yellow line indicates an unexpected increase in stockpiled Kyushu resources for which I can’t account. I am unsure whether there’s much more to be learned from this exercise, but it might be interesting to take the game a few turns further in the quest for some explanation of this phenomenon.
The ships used for carriage of resources were, with one exception, strictly limited so as to exclude all ships committed to the aborted Centrifugal offensive. This meant that I could employ none of the ships at Saigon, Cam Ranh, Samah, Pescadores, Takao or Babelthuap. The exception mentioned was my use of some big, fast merchantmen at Saigon and Cam Ranh on the Indochina-Home Island run.
I managed resource transportation mainly by means of CS convoys. If the point was reached at which a port’s loading rate exceeded its resource stockpiling rate I would revert to manual control of the convoy, waiting until the surplus of resources justified another convoy’s departure – this was particularly necessary on the Formosa-Kyushu run.
I found that by far the most critical factor in transport efficiency was the rate at which a resource convoy could be turned round in port. This isn’t a problem with the Home Island unloading ports, as these are either big enough or numerous enough to preclude any bottlenecks. However, docking capacity at the ports of lading is in some cases absolutely critical, particularly for the Manchukuo and Karafuto traffic. In Karafuto the problem arises from small port size and limited docking capacity. In Manchukuo it is the number of convoys to be turned round that’s the problem: careful management both of convoy size and interval between convoys is vital to ensure that no convoy is loading whilst undocked. I also got the strong impression that the game code may not be making the best fist of managing the docking of task forces – I had the hubris to think I could do a better job by micro-managing the docking of convoys on a day-by-day basis.
I get the impression that CS convoys only refuel at their home port. This produced fuel shortages in ships on the Karafuto run in particular. It occurs to me that, since many of the ships on this route could reasonably be expected to have been coal-burners, it might be appropriate to replicate on a smaller scale on Karafuto the daily fuel bonus Treespider gave to Harbin to simulate coal used as ship fuel in Manchukuo. If this were done, one could not object to a commensurate decrease in Karafuto’s resource output.
Probably the most significant conclusions to be drawn from the attached graph are (a) that Honshu supply levels rise to 2M points from a starting figure of 1.18M and (b) that Honshu resource levels can be raised from about 4.15M at start to an apparently sustainable level in the region of 5.4M points, equivalent to a reach of 56 days. On the supply side, however, any such interpretation of my figures needs to bear in mind that consumption of supply by armed forces has been substantially reduced by reason of the absence of any hostilities. It seems that about 240 merchant ships are required in order to maintain resource imports at the level shown.
On the evidence of this 90 day exercise it does appear that this modified version of the Japanese economy can be both sustained and expanded without too much grief.
