Focus Pacific: Release

[BillBrown]

ORIGINAL: paradigmblue

ORIGINAL: BillBrown

I don't see any link to a patch.

Sorry, fixed. Had to go in and deal with the police on a shoplifting incident at the store right as I was posting.

Not a problem, just wondering.

I want to thank you, this is an interesting scenario. Lots of action from turn 1.

[sanderz]

General observations on resources (lets hope i am using tracker correctly)

Whilst japan definitely has an oil problem at start with a supply of 213 days (not counting anything use for fueling ships)......

....it does seem to have an awful lot of oil i.e. oil reserves for starting refineries will last 1168 days (so all through 1944 into the beginning of 45). So with captured Russian oilfields they may never run out.........

resources also seem to be in infinite supply with nearly 500,000 surplus per day

the big HOWEVER with all these resources is whether its possible to ship them all back to where they are needed - i would be interested if Peever has any views on all this after his analysis of the resources issues with the previous version

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: sanderz

a few comments

should liz/rita/ki85 have reinforcement squadrons arriving, or do you just have to pay 100pp to upgrade existing squadrons?

only a very quick look but i couldn't see anything that upgrades to ki85

are ki85 meant to be navy?

ki85a has a factory upgrade to the liz?

i see the tojo reinforcements are still ki44 (not ki44a) and assume thats now intentional

cheers


EDIT:

1) J7W1 Shinden - should it be CV capable?

2) Ki64 Rob upgrades to Ki84b Frank?

3) Ki45KAIe NF upgrades to Ki102a Fighter?

Ugh, sorry was distracted while making these changes.

Liz, Rita and Ki-85 squadrons will need to pay the upgrade price. That is working as intended.

Nothing upgrades to the Ki-85, that is correct. The player will have to pay full factory cost to produce these.

The Ki-85 has now been fixed so that it is IJA as intended and the Ki-85a has no upgrade path.

The Tojo reinforcements are for the Ki-44a. The Ki-44 no longer has a build rate.

The Rob now has no upgrade path.

The Ki-45 KAIe Nick no longer has an upgrade path.

The Shinden is no longer CV capable.

I will make all these fixes when I receive the new Scen 75 file from Patton and re-upload the patch.

Thanks for the keen eye Sanderz.

[sanderz]

ORIGINAL: paradigmblue

Thanks for the keen eye Sanderz.

no problem, thanks for all the great work

i see that scn75 has rules for moving USA units into Soviet territory but yours don't (unless i have missed something). so i'm assuming its ok to move USA troops (combat and support) into soviet bases to defend them and provide eng/air support. the reason for wanting to do this would be to secure at least one base near Fairbanks (or Nome) so that lend lease planes could be flown across otherwise JAP could stop this completely

what are your thoughts on this?

[Peever]

paradigmblue

Thank you for the valuable feedback Peever, and I'm very sorry that the resource situation made the game unplayable. The new update, which I'm working on as we speak, should leave Japan in a better position economically.

No problem mate. If we wanted a stable game, we would have played stock. We knew the risks of running a mod and I got caught off guard. I wouldn’t say the resources made it unplayable, just harder than I anticipated and I did not properly research the situation at the start of the game like I should have.

By no means have I reached some point of no return. I’m just stuck between a rock and a hard place with a long uphill climb. The short to medium term is solvable but the long term is where the real problems lie. I could find a way to meet the daily requirements but the long term build-up of resources to have once the Allies are in full force is where the real problem lies. So much of the shipping capabilities would be tied to resource convoys that it would require careful planning to juggle operations around that.
I’m still having fun and learning a lot on how to play Japan which is exactly what I wanted.

sanderz

Whilst japan definitely has an oil problem at start with a supply of 213 days (not counting anything use for fueling ships)......

....it does seem to have an awful lot of oil i.e. oil reserves for starting refineries will last 1168 days (so all through 1944 into the beginning of 45). So with captured Russian oilfields they may never run out.........

I’m confused whit this. How do you have a 213 day of supply and 1168 days at the same time? Are you seeing the bigger number on the bottom half of tracker that lists the cities? If so, then don’t worry about those numbers as they are temporary due to the shifting of cargo around the country. For example, one of my cities list a 600-day surplus of oil, but the city has no oil refineries. Right now though there are 653 points of oil that are in that city. We can think of it as if they were on rail cars in transport to a refinery in another city. In this case that “surplus” of 600 days doesn’t actually exist since there is nothing in that city than can use the oil.

As for your question on putting US troops in Russian bases I think that house rule is up to you. However, it should be noted that the relations between the US and the USSR were strained during the war. The two countries worked together to beat a common enemy but the extent of the alliance was nowhere close to the relationship between the US and the Western European Allies.

If the Germans had captured Moscow and or Stalin is killed/removed from power and there was the threat of an imminent collapse of the Russian government, then I can see US troops occupying Russian bases in the Pacific. Sort of like the British and French were making plans to invade Norway in early 1940 because they didn’t want Hitler to have it.

In my opinion I don’t think anyone but Russians should be in Russia. Preserving the lend-lease life line to Russia was nowhere near as important as securing the line from the US to Australia.

[sanderz]

hi peever, thanks for the comments - it was a typo on my part as the first line should have referred to Fuel

General observations on resources (lets hope i am using tracker correctly)

Whilst japan definitely has an FUEL problem at start with a supply of 213 days (not counting anything use for fueling ships)......

....it does seem to have an awful lot of oil i.e. oil reserves for starting refineries will last 1168 days (so all through 1944 into the beginning of 45). So with captured Russian oilfields they may never run out.........

resources also seem to be in infinite supply with nearly 500,000 surplus per day

the big HOWEVER with all these resources is whether its possible to ship them all back to where they are needed - i would be interested if Peever has any views on all this after his analysis of the resources issues with the previous version

i was looking at the bigger picture rather than per city and wondering if there was a big enough incentive to go get (by invasion) oil/resources when there are so many floating around in your own territory - i have no practical experience of this mod (and very little of the game in general) so may be interpreting things wrongly - its such a difficult thing to balance and as you have discovered can be pretty much game breaking

[Peever]

I'm about to leave for a family event but I wanted to post some very quick thoughts on my cursory look at version 1.4. I started a test game and ran it for a few days, loaded the files into tracker (I may have a problem with that as its giving a bunch of errors about AirGroupSmallDelta valaues ??). Anyways it looks like you may have gone too far in the other direction on resources. It looks like Japan now only has a ~30K deficit of resources which is way too small. That deficit can be overcome with a small convoy from Hokkaido meaning Japan will never lack for any resources which seems wrong.

There also seems to be a huge amount of fuel in Indochina. Cam Ranh Bay has nearly 400K points of fuel. That can be hard to fix as it may just be pooling there from other areas but seems a bit high by maybe ~100K or so. Again hard to say without looking deeper. It may be nothing once Japan starts burning through it with all their ships sailing around everywhere invading the DEI and what not.

I'll have to look into this more tomorrow when I get a chance.

[paradigmblue]

All right - all this has highlighted to me how important that tracker is to have if I'm going to be fiddling with resources. Unfortunately, I have never been able to get tracker to work. I'm out of my depth, and it pains me to see games of Focus Pacific, which people are investing their time into, being ruined because I don't have the tools to make informed decisions about the Japanese economy.

I need help to make this work. I'm hoping that I can get 2-3 volunteers that are familiar with playing Japan to act as the Japanese economic team to create a balanced Japanese economy, with these goals in mind:

- Japan's overall economy should be much stronger than in stock

- Japan should have the ability to expand aircraft production to much higher levels than in stock. The fact that this will make Japan even hungrier for resources should be taken into account.

- Japan should have the ability to expand supply generation to much higher levels than in stock. The fact that this will make Japan even hungrier for resources should be taken into account.

- The Home Islands + Hokkaido should not be self sufficient, but more resources and oil should be available in the Japanese sphere of influence, available to be shipped in.

- The Japanese player should have enough HI and resources for a 1-2 month buffer while they get their supply convoys sorted.

- The Japanese player should have a compelling reason to go after resources and oil in either the DEI or the Soviet Union

- Overall, the Japanese player should be able to support their expanded OOB, their expanded production and their expanded fuel use in Focus Pacific. However, they should also have to accept risk in doing so, in the form of either supply convoys from existing territories or conquering new supply and oil sources.

[btd64]

Para, I can use tracker as the Allies, I just don't....GP

[sanderz]

Heres the starting position for Oil and Resources in 1.04

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: General Patton

Para, I can use tracker as the Allies, I just don't....GP

Do you think you'll have your files for me today? I can start working on them so I can get the full patch out this weekend.

[sanderz]

and for supplies and fuel

[sanderz]

and the chart for good measure

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: sanderz

Heres the starting position for Oil and Resources in 1.04

It looks like my reductions in LI on the Home Islands went too far in decreasing resource use. What are people's thoughts on bumping LI back up by 1,500, which would use 30,000 more resources a day, for a total Home Island shortfall of 60,000 resources/day?

Is that a reasonable amount to be moving back to the Home Islands each turn? I have 70 additional large capacity xAKs in the newest version of the mod, so I think the shipping capacity is there to do so.

Initial resource and oil storage on the Home Islands look like they can be reduced a bit.

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: sanderz

and for supplies and fuel

I looks like refinery capacity might need to be increased on the Home Islands a bit as well, but I want players to have to expand their refineries manually for the most part.

[Peever]

ORIGINAL: paradigmblue

It looks like my reductions in LI on the Home Islands went too far in decreasing resource use. What are people's thoughts on bumping LI back up by 1,500, which would use 30,000 more resources a day, for a total Home Island shortfall of 60,000 resources/day?

Is that a reasonable amount to be moving back to the Home Islands each turn? I have 70 additional large capacity xAKs in the newest version of the mod, so I think the shipping capacity is there to do so.

Initial resource and oil storage on the Home Islands look like they can be reduced a bit.

Here is a snapshot comparing current Focus Pacific resources compared to stock and my proposal.



As you can see there is way too much surplus resource in Japan's sphere of influence. Bring the number of resource centers down in the Home Islands by 6,000 points (This would reduce the total resources the Home Islands produce by 120,000) or increase the number of light industry to create a resource deficit.

I thought that doubling Japan's resource shortage from stock would be a way to represent all those new toys they get to play with. The resource locations around Japan could provide around 145,000 points of resources and the rest must be obtained through new conquests. Under my proposal Japan would need to obtain 9% of its resource deficit from new conquests which is in line with stocks need of 10% obtained from new conquests.

I would recommend at least bringing Japan's deficit to around 100K at minimum and greatly reducing the surplus from the surrounding areas to at least keep the new conquest percentage to around 10% like in stock. As for ships don't forget you could always change the starting class of some of the AKLs to AKs instead of having to create new ships. I'm not sure if that saves you time in editing but it could help.

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: Peever

ORIGINAL: paradigmblue

It looks like my reductions in LI on the Home Islands went too far in decreasing resource use. What are people's thoughts on bumping LI back up by 1,500, which would use 30,000 more resources a day, for a total Home Island shortfall of 60,000 resources/day?

Is that a reasonable amount to be moving back to the Home Islands each turn? I have 70 additional large capacity xAKs in the newest version of the mod, so I think the shipping capacity is there to do so.

Initial resource and oil storage on the Home Islands look like they can be reduced a bit.

Here is a snapshot comparing current Focus Pacific resources compared to stock and my proposal.



As you can see there is way too much surplus resource in Japan's sphere of influence. Bring the number of resource centers down in the Home Islands by 6,000 points (This would reduce the total resources the Home Islands produce by 120,000) or increase the number of light industry to create a resource deficit.

I thought that doubling Japan's resource shortage from stock would be a way to represent all those new toys they get to play with. The resource locations around Japan could provide around 145,000 points of resources and the rest must be obtained through new conquests. Under my proposal Japan would need to obtain 9% of its resource deficit from new conquests which is in line with stocks need of 10% obtained from new conquests.

I would recommend at least bringing Japan's deficit to around 100K at minimum and greatly reducing the surplus from the surrounding areas to at least keep the new conquest percentage to around 10% like in stock. As for ships don't forget you could always change the starting class of some of the AKLs to AKs instead of having to create new ships. I'm not sure if that saves you time in editing but it could help.

I'm concerned that a daily shortage of 160,000 is too much for the ports to handle. That's a lot of unloading throughput that would have to be handled, and I'm not sure if it can be done.

[btd64]

Paradigmblue, I vote for peever to handle the Japanese economy. By the way, I'm waiting for a data fix from Sid then I will send you the files....GP

[BillBrown]

There is no problem unloading that much. Shimonoseki can unload 174,500 per day on its own. Ominato and Hirosake/Amoori can unload 80,000+ to start and Ominato can enlarge its port from 5(6) to 9(60 and unload much more.
Look at section 6.3.3.2.5 in the manual. Unnload rates and daily limits are affected by refineries and oil for fuel and oil and resources for resource loading.

You need to get tracker up and running, it will show how much each port can handle.

Peevers numbers look good. For expansion Java and Sumatra produce about 116,000 per day total and much will be over what it needed locally.

[paradigmblue]

Okay, I'm good with giving Peever's numbers a try if you guys think that it looks good.

Peever, would you be willing to massage the LI and resource centers in the Scen file since you have tracker so that it matches the your proposal?