Tech trade-offs

[mdsmall]

A) I would be interested to know if and when other players chose to invest in Production Tech. I find whenever I am playing that I will always to prefer to invest in Industrial Tech, rather than Production Tech, as the pay-off is greater (usually at least at 10 - 15% increase in MPPs, versus a 5% decrease in costs per increment) and the MPPs gained this way can be used for any purpose, not just for purchasing units. I know that there is a benefit to Production Tech in reducing NM costs of lost units and strength points, but surely this is a marginal benefit. How do other players view this?

B) in a similar vein, I find if I have MPPs to spare and the investment capacity, I will usually invest in Command and Control before investing in Infantry Warfare. My thinking being that better generals provides equivalent combat benefits, while benefiting air units too. But I have never tried to directly compare the value of a 1 point increase in general's' command rating vs a 10% increase in morale, at least for infantry and cavalry units. Which do you think is more useful?

[Chernobyl]

I think C&C is stronger than Infantry Warfare. The range and extra unit slot for your HQs help because most countries don't have enough HQ. I actually get C&C before Infantry Weapons research in this game. I think many players research Infantry Weapons a bit too early out of habit from the WWII games.

Production Tech is really hard to find the right moment for. I always get it for rich countries, but only after researching most other things. The research MPP limit for many countries prevents you from researching it even if you wanted to (which simplifies the dilemma).

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Ah the Production Tech question.

Well, of course it depends on the nation but I usually go for Industrial Tech before Production. Also Command and Control before Infantry Warfare.
Of course it depends on the circumstances and which nation your talking about. I found getting C&C for France relatively early is helpful for instance.

One thing I really like about SC-WW1 is that research is a lot more granular. So, if there is like an extra 40, 50, or even 75 MMPs in the wallet after the other priority expenditures, well its nice to have the option to drop that money into a secondary reaserch slot.

Production is pretty important though. Not only because units cost less, but that those units if lost while having higher Production Tech means less loss to NM and less gain to NM to the victor.

Id say try to get Production Tech going marginally at least if possible fairly early on. You can always add more chits to it if warranted.

[Bavre]

B)
The thing with morale is that it goes poof REALLY fast in the late game. A max tech cannon does an avg 4*20 demoralisation a turn, a ground attack bomber 45 etc, you get the idea. The bonuses from HQs (both rating and xp) however go directly to readiness and the only ways to negate them are cutting off the unit or destroying the HQ. Furthermore those bonuses are "absolute" ones. Not sure how to word this, so here's an example: Let's say you have a kick ass high xp HQ that gives 30% readiness on its own. Then it will boosts a 50% unit to 80% and a 20% one to 50%. While it's the same % the 20% unit will relatively speaking gain much more from this. With the massive barrages of the mid and late game totally demoralised and severely damaged units en masse just can't be avoided, but propped up by a rating 10 xp 3 Foch or Hindenburg they will still give a hell of a fight. So yes C&C all the way!

A)
Admittedly not one of my top priority techs, though there have been some long and hard fought matches where I regretted not having it.

[AEWHistory]

A) I would be interested to know if and when other players chose to invest in Production Tech. I find whenever I am playing that I will always to prefer to invest in Industrial Tech, rather than Production Tech, as the pay-off is greater (usually at least at 10 - 15% increase in MPPs, versus a 5% decrease in costs per increment) and the MPPs gained this way can be used for any purpose, not just for purchasing units. I know that there is a benefit to Production Tech in reducing NM costs of lost units and strength points, but surely this is a marginal benefit. How do other players view this?

B) in a similar vein, I find if I have MPPs to spare and the investment capacity, I will usually invest in Command and Control before investing in Infantry Warfare. My thinking being that better generals provides equivalent combat benefits, while benefiting air units too. But I have never tried to directly compare the value of a 1 point increase in general's' command rating vs a 10% increase in morale, at least for infantry and cavalry units. Which do you think is more useful?

Okay, I have a question about Production tech that relates to this discussion: does Prod Tech lessen the cost of replacements as well as purchasing units? More specifically, what exactly does production tech help you save on?

I’ve done a wee bit of math and if the only savings is on purchasing units (new units or replacement units like destroyed corps units) then Prod Tech is barely worth it or is t worth it at all. But if this decreases the costs of all replacements then it is a great bargain. It would be even better if it brought down the costs of unit upgrades as well.

Here is my thinking: a unit of Production tech is 75mmp and a corps is usually around 225mp, right? One Production tech reduces the cost of the corps by 5% I think, so the savings is around 11 points of mmp. So to break even you need to purchase 7 new corps units. Early in the game this is easy to do as you’ll be buying and replacing units for four more years. However, later in the game you may not need to buy a lot of new/replacement units, so it seems Prod Tech is only good if you get it early. Still, even getting Prod Tech early is barely a decent investment for some powers. The Ottoman Turks, in my limited experience, are stretched so thin economically that buying lots of units may not be feasible if you also spend a lot on production tech. So the net effect might be to by a good discount that you can’t really use…. Unless each replacement point also gets the discount! In which case it would be useful for pretty much any power.

Anyway, to me this questions revolves around the nitty gritty of what exactly gets discounted and by how much.

[BillRunacre]

Okay, I have a question about Production tech that relates to this discussion: does Prod Tech lessen the cost of replacements as well as purchasing units? More specifically, what exactly does production tech help you save on?

I’ve done a wee bit of math and if the only savings is on purchasing units (new units or replacement units like destroyed corps units) then Prod Tech is barely worth it or is t worth it at all. But if this decreases the costs of all replacements then it is a great bargain. It would be even better if it brought down the costs of unit upgrades as well.

It doesn't reduce the price of upgrades but it does decrease the cost of buying and reinforcing units, including destroyed ones.

[AEWHistory]

Okay, I have a question about Production tech that relates to this discussion: does Prod Tech lessen the cost of replacements as well as purchasing units? More specifically, what exactly does production tech help you save on?

I’ve done a wee bit of math and if the only savings is on purchasing units (new units or replacement units like destroyed corps units) then Prod Tech is barely worth it or is t worth it at all. But if this decreases the costs of all replacements then it is a great bargain. It would be even better if it brought down the costs of unit upgrades as well.

It doesn't reduce the price of upgrades but it does decrease the cost of buying and reinforcing units, including destroyed ones.

Okay, great, tyvm! So does it work on fractions? Like if a replacement point costs 10mmp, does one prod tech make it 9.5? Or would it stay at 10 until a whole point can be removed? (Eg- one prod tech wouldn’t result in a discount, but two prod tech points would lower the price to 9?). It seems like most bonuses are only applied in whole numbers, like needing two tank tech points to be allowed to build a tank unit.


If I can, I’d like to eventually cobble together enough info to determine how and when production tech is worthwhile.

[mdsmall]

Production Tech does not reduce the cost of upgrades but it does reduces the base cost of new units, including replacements for units killed in combat at supply of 5 or higher which can be bought back at 60% of base cost.

So, if Germany has Infantry Weapons 1 (which costs 10% of base cost to upgrade) and Production Tech 2 (reducing base costs by 10%), buying new corps upgraded to Infantry Tech 1 costs only 225 MPPs versus 248 if they did not have any Production Tech. A replacement corps upgraded to Infantry Tech 1 would only cost 135 MPPs versus 149 without Production Tech.

In the above situation, if Germany needs to buy back one killed corps a turn, then the 150 MPPs needed to reach Production Tech 2 would be saved in 11 turns. Of course, if Germany also needs to buy reinforcements for damaged corps and other new units, the savings would accumulate more quickly.

The value proposition over time for this tech is a function of the volume of production each turn that a given major will spend on production (ie buying reinforcements, replacement and new units). So, if Germany is spending 100 MPPs per turn in production, it will take 15 turns earn back the 75 MPPs invested in once chit of production tech. If Germany is spending 200 MPPs per turn on production, it will take only 8 turns.

The trade-off between investing in Production Tech versus Industrial Tech also depends on the current Industrial Modifier for a given power. The returns on investment in Industrial Tech are much greater for powers with low Industrial Modifiers, whereas the returns on Production Tech are constant. Nevertheless, the returns on investment over time for Industrial Tech exceed Production Tech in most instances until a major has an Industrial Modifier well above 100% and is spending over half its income each turn on producing units. That is a more likely situation in the later years of the war. This argues for making Industrial Tech a priority over Production Tech early in the war, at least until a major has reached its maximums for investing in Industrial Tech.