ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag
(c) Using 20/20 Hindsight to control choice of Aircraft.
...
The point is that *yes* you made them but so what? You should have balanced your production requirements to meet your needs. That is the whole point of Japan having some measure of control, so you CAN balance your industry against your losses and continue to produce what you need for what you have, not simplify your life by eliminating all but a few aircraft types through conversion of groups to other types to completely remove this headache from japan.
You are contradicting yourself here. You blast the use of hindsight in decding what aircraft to deploy, but then mention balancing your production to meet your needs which, by necessity,
requires hindsight insofar as knowing the upgrade paths of current squadrons and the arrival date and composition of future squadrons. So, why is the latter OK but not the former?
(d) Over-simplification of Japan's headache by consolodation.
There are 31 unique aircraft types that need to be produced to keep Japan in play with all her many types of aircraft. That is the task you are faced with. Reducing this nightmare to 10 through conversions grossly simplifies your task. That is neither the desire nor the intent of the Developers who went out of their way to make Japan play as painfully realistic as possible within the limited context of what they could do. The Developers also attempted to block research into future aircraft that was unreasonable (against saying they don't want you to go down that path).
If you find that you need the 10 because the 31 is just to complex, please state *that*, it is a far more reasonable line of discussion vs the "I just want to use xyz aircraft because I made them". So what? You made them? The 10+ of the air groups you have will need them anyways.
Overcoming this headache is part of doing a better job than the Japanese actually did. I think one of the flaws of the Japanese war plan was in producing so many different models, much like what the German tank programs have been criticized for.
If the intention was not to allow the player the freedom to improve these decisions, then production should not have been given to the player to control at all.
I think the key issue that screws up the player ability to tweak production and upgrades is research. I like the earlier suggestion of undirected research. It removes the ability for the player to power tech their way to the top line fighters, and appears to remove most of the problems with flexible upgrades.
