ORIGINAL: Lowpe
Spidery wrote a simple program that would estimate plane arrivals and I really can't share data from his AAR since he might come back, but it argues for a select late war fighter research program.
It's all about the distribution of R&D. Both extremes (concentrating on early, and concentrating on late planes) are wrong because of diminishing returns you get from each additional R&D factory in the same model of plane. You get huge boost when getting from 0 to 1, or from 1 to 2 factories researching. But adding more and more factories you are getting less and less acceleration (in terms of time bonus)
i made some illustrative calculations:
E.g. assume you started the game, decided to allocate say 10 factories to your navy fighter research, and ponder A6M5 vs A7M2 allocation. Assume Rufe->A6M5 path, bypassing M3s for simplicity. Key thing is that when A6M5 arrives you would switch all research to A7M2.
1. A6M5 factories repair (as Rufes) in 3/42 and start researching A6M5 with upgrade chain switch.
2. When do Sam factories repair? Luckily, Ki-95 has same arrival date as Sam at 10/45, so we can assume all A7M2 factories fully repair at Obvert's date, which is around 5/44 (no engine bonus and 1 factory, 100 days per advancement, 4 advancements made until arrival at 6/45, 5/44 + 100*4 ~ 6/45 sounds about right).
3. What about engine bonuses? Ha-35 bonus is almost always there, highly sought for, and we can safely assume it works for the duration of A6M5 research. Ha-43 is tricky with arrival date at 9/45, so it would be a strain to get bonus for Sam research in 1944. Assume no bonus for all duration for simplicity.
4. Now what are the dates of arrival for both planes given all research done? Some guesses here about the timing of A6M5 switched to A7M2 repair but nothing wild:
Code: Select all
A6M5 A6M5 A7M2 switched fac A7M2 w/o switch A7M2 with switch
fac arrival fac repair at? arrival arrival
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0 8/43 10 - 10/44 = 10/44
1 2/43 9 late 44 nogood 10/44 = 10/44
5 8/42 5 ~10/44 12/44 11/44
9 6/42 1 ~9/44 6/45 12/44
10 6/42 0 ~9/44 10/45 1/45
You trade earlier A6M5 vs earlier A7M2 as expected, but giving some R&D to each model in the beginning (like 5/5) gives you much bigger combined time advancement. In the end it all depends on how you value different planes early availability.
Supply cost is also different but I assumed 100k supplies is manageable
Engine bonus presence/absence tilts things somewhat but does not change fundamentals
Edit: there is luck involved here and I might've unerestimated its importance. When R&D repair is lucky for you, you can get couple fully repaired factories earlier and this is not a small matter as with engine bonus 1 advancement a month not only gets research done but also makes arrival date closer and allows other factories to repair faster. So quantity of R&D factories is a quality of it's own )
