Reality check for all us JFBs

[Commander Stormwolf]

just a few basic calculations:
without expanding the initial 6950 HI centers ~

6950x2x365x3/36 = 422,791 singe engine fighters

between December 1941 and December 1944

this number will be smaller, since merchant ships might be required to carry fuel for industry,
but if other aspects are sacrificed, it can be done

a distinction must be made between Steel and Duralumin

let us say 50 tons of steel for 1 ton of duralumin (50HI points for Ships, Vehicles for 1 HI point AC)
and limit japanese expansion to 100 per month

that lets you build 100,000 1-engines fighters in the same period, and realistically
that is still twice the historical number

[Commander Stormwolf]

Japanese strategic materials production



japan makes 60 times more steel than duralumin

[Commander Stormwolf]

US strategic materials



US makes 8 times more of everything than japan

[CV 2]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf

just a few basic calculations:
without expanding the initial 6950 HI centers ~

6950x2x365x3/36 = 422,791 singe engine fighters

between December 1941 and December 1944

this number will be smaller, since merchant ships might be required to carry fuel for industry,
but if other aspects are sacrificed, it can be done

a distinction must be made between Steel and Duralumin

let us say 50 tons of steel for 1 ton of duralumin (50HI points for Ships, Vehicles for 1 HI point AC)
and limit japanese expansion to 100 per month

that lets you build 100,000 1-engines fighters in the same period, and realistically
that is still twice the historical number

Except the minor detail of paying HI for all the pilots you have each and every month, this would be accurate, but take that in, and guess what? Your numbers dont make sense.

[Commander Stormwolf]

The calculations are based on the initial 6950 HI centers.

Japanese player will capture HI during the campaigns, and expand HI in japan itself

Duralumin production increased by 40% between 1942 and 1943
so it takes into account the consolidation of new resources as well

[CV 2]

The Jap HI pools go to zero at the start of every month because you are spending 6000+ HI for pilots every month. Only saving grace is the pool only goes to zero, and not negative numbers.

You should try playing the game as Japs before you tell us JFBs how our industry works [8D]

[Commander Stormwolf]

each pilot costs 60 HI points for 1 year of training

[HMSWarspite]

No amount of discussion or tweaking the production system will ever sort out aircraft production to everyone's satisfaction, for (at least) 2 reasons: hindsight, and the fact that no game that I have ever met adequately covers the intangibles on aircraft production. To use British examples, the Westland Whirlwind was (on paper) a brilliant aircraft - potentially the British cross between a P38 and a ground attack aircaft - 2 engines, massive nose armament and good performance. Sadly, it had horrendously unreliable engines, and was short lived. What player would use it (given any form of reliabilty model?) or even what player would not massively over produce relative to history if no reliabilty model!.

Similarly, the Typhoon - arguably the greatest ground attack aircraft of the western front (certainly in usage/effect if not pure stats). On entry in to service it had a sleeve valve Napier made engine. The engine failed every few 10's of hours - certainly lucky to make 100hrs. Bristol Engines had been making sleeve valve engines since the late 30's, and viewed it as 'crown jewels' technology. They were asked to help Napier out, and flatly refused until directly ordered to by the Aviation Ministry. Then the help was grudging and the minimum they could get away with. IIRC, Bristol machined sleeves for Napier, and would not teach them how. If a 'player' decided to double or triple Typhoon production in the game, Bristol would have had to agree to increase sleeve production, probably impacting their production  (Hercules for Halifax aircraft, or Centaurus for late Tempest etc). What game do you know that models that? Apply it to Japan or Germany, and you have even worse 'politics'!

[Grfin Zeppelin]

Well last time I checked Japan produced 75000 Aircraft frames of all types during the war. Thats roughly 100 000 engines in game terms so its hardly "twice as historical"

[Commander Stormwolf]

best way for R&D is to keep the engine arrival dates fixed (even the subset engines, like Ha-33-62 from 1/43 etc)

hindsight is a major problem, player knows what desings worked out and which ones didn't
the same reason why cancelling ships like the shinano is unrealistic.. facts are that no one
knew that carriers > battleships, Japan had to build the Yamatos

just some basic rules for production would be good

1) 1 HI point for AC per 50 HI points generated
2) max engines expand 100 per month
3) fixed engine arrival dates


NOW... IJN player needs a few other things

1) choose what ships to lay down (limited to number of slots for capital ships, etc)
2) control the 12 japanese design teams, lay out custom specifications

for the simulation to be realistic, the japanese commander (yamamoto) is hard pressed for materials
but he can basically make any type of ships and AC that he wants, so a large amount of latitude
is present on how those limited resources are expended

(Yamamoto for example was a big advocate of the I-400 submarine, the program was minimized after yamamoto was killed)

[Gridley380]

In all these comments about how many aircraft, I'd like to note I see a lot of apples vs. oranges numbers.

"XXX,000 aircraft!"

"No! XX,000 fighters!"

Let's not forget that a large percentage of the aircraft built by each of the major powers were trainers, liaison birds, and transports.

Such aircraft, especially trainers, are necessary in proportion to the size and quality of your air force, but are included in statistics on a very patchy basis.

[spence]

Is it really even realistic in so far as Japanese Player "reality" is concerned to talk about airframes? In half the games in the AARs the Japanese Player lands and supplies (adequately) a dozen divisions in India while simultaneously expanding to the New Hebrides and Fiji meanwhile agonizing over whether to invade Australia or the Soviet Union next. Being forced into choices like that makes it obvious that reality has nothing whatever to do with Japanese play.

[oldman45]

ORIGINAL: spence

Is it really even realistic in so far as Japanese Player "reality" is concerned to talk about airframes? In half the games in the AARs the Japanese Player lands and supplies (adequately) a dozen divisions in India while simultaneously expanding to the New Hebrides and Fiji meanwhile agonizing over whether to invade Australia or the Soviet Union next. Being forced into choices like that makes it obvious that reality has nothing whatever to do with Japanese play.

+1 [;)]

[Commander Stormwolf]

Is it really even realistic in so far as Japanese Player "reality" is concerned to talk about airframes? In half the games in the AARs the Japanese Player lands and supplies (adequately) a dozen divisions in India while simultaneously expanding to the New Hebrides and Fiji meanwhile agonizing over whether to invade Australia or the Soviet Union next. Being forced into choices like that makes it obvious that reality has nothing whatever to do with Japanese play.

Those choices are made possible because of sufficient air support, simultanously in all theaters of expansion
main problem is always the "thousands of Tojos by mid 1942" phenomenon, and japanese player is quite insensitive
to AC losses because they are pretty cheap to replace (in comparison to ships and ground troops) in terms of HI points

just giving a finite amont, or ratio of Aluminum vs steel would be a big step to making the japanese player sensitive to AC
losses and those AC would be used more conservatively (or those Australia + India invasions would proceed without air support) [:D]

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf
Those choices are made possible because of sufficient air support, simultanously in all theaters of expansion
main problem is always the "thousands of Tojos by mid 1942" phenomenon, and japanese player is quite insensitive
to AC losses because they are pretty cheap to replace (in comparison to ships and ground troops) in terms of HI points

Commander Stormwolf, you seem to be a fan of Scen2, or did not have opponents that could meet you on face level up to now,
this combination would meet your description of Japanese potential quite good.

The "thousands of Tojos by mid 1942" phenomenon was partly enhanced by a bug squashed by Michael in on of the betas you don´t use
and is mainly a scen2 phenomenon as well. In Scen1 you´d have a harder time (I guess the "thousands" is a value chosen by you for similar reasons as
"5 times as much as historical") to accomplish this, and there the Japanese player needs every help he can get anyway.

Just a hint, you could play PDU off if you are so much into realism. Good luck.

just giving a finite amont, or ratio of Aluminum vs steel would be a big step to making the japanese player sensitive to AC
losses and those AC would be used more conservatively (or those Australia + India invasions would proceed without air support) [:D]

Hey, mod your heart out and try to sell it. But not to me, thanks. [:D]
I am thankful this will not happen, since Japanese players would become so rare that the PBEM part of this game will die with the change.

[spence]

For most of the last half of 1942 the Japanese had slightly more than 2 divisions engaged in active operations in New Guinea and the Solomons and couldn't supply them adequately. The distance to Rabaul from Osaka was only about half the distance from Osaka to Calcutta. It wasn't for not trying that those troops had little food and next to no medical support - it was because the Japanese never developed a logistical system capable of supplying all the needs of the troops. Japanese logistical doctrine required that the troops find local sources for the mundane requirement for food for the troops. Fighting in regions where that requirement could not be met from local resources overwhelmed the Japanese system. Japan had too few AK's and AP's to meet its needs before the war. For every mile that Japan expanded those (too few) AK's and AP's had to sail 2 miles. Protecting those areas that Japan needed for raw materials required its forces to advance into very unhealthful regions nearly devoid of food requiring a geometric increase in the amount of shipping required because in addition to ammunition and spares the same ships had to carry food and medical supply. So Guadalcanal becomes "Starvation Island" and half the troops landed in New Guinea end up as feverish lumps of flesh lying along the side of the Kokoda Track.

If JFBs had to contend with realistic logistical constraints on their operations they'd be converting aircraft factories into merchant shipyards.

[mike scholl 1]

Spence. Thank you for injecting some common sense and reality into this discussion...

[Commander Stormwolf]

Japanese player would have a lot more fun if ~

as I said:

1) choose what ships you want to lay down
2) select the TO&E of your ground forces
3) have some control to customize the AC designs


keep the ratio of Steel and Aluminum correct.
As it is, ships are more expensive than AC
Historically, Japan was pumping out carriers without any AC
to put on them

most people here have played out a few PBEM games of Witp regular and WITP:AE

the japanese admiral (yamamoto) could choose to build 20 sen toku submarines (like Yamamoto wanted),
or another Shinano carrier (Hull #4), just build Yamatos and no other carriers, or any other ships
he chooses, that is realistic since the axis commanders have 8 millions tons of steel per year,
and can spend them as they wished. If japan is winning the war, that amount may have increased to
12 million or so (and 50% more aluminum as well)

it would make AE more like an RTS, but remember even in a game like starcraft (minerals and vespene gas)
are separate. Ships and tanks cost minerals. Planes cost vespene gas.


*(the customization would be really fun, some type of 3D layout of the basic design and the player just sticks
armament onto them.. a "Koku Hombu" room where the player assigns specifications to the different AC design teams)

it was literally that simple.. historically those people in the Koku Hombo would just tell Horikoshi "stick a Sakae-12 engine
into your Reisen prototype" and a certain result would take place "put 20mm cannons in the wings with 60 rounds each"
"put this much fuel into it".. a set of player inputs causes a set of outputs


basically 2 things to summarize ~
1)makes steel and aluminum in the correct ratio
2) player control of ship prodcution, TO&E, and AC designs

it would make everyone the "japanese production fanboy" [:D]

[Commander Stormwolf]

My Toryu ~ Westland Whirlwind Immitation [:)]

[Commander Stormwolf]

My Reisen IIc, a short-ranged carrier fighter (8 hexes with drop tanks)
with really low wing loading (94 kg/m2) and little faster [:)]

basically the MVR of an A5M, and firepower of an La-5 [&o]




Inputs:

Airframe: Reisen II
Engine: Ha-35-12 (980hp, 1-stage-sc)
Guns: 2xType-99(200 rounds) on the nose
Internal Fuel: 275L
Armor: None

Outputs:

Wing Loading: 94kg/m2
Top speed: 349 mph
Range: 4 (8 with drop tank)