Increasing HI - a strategy

[Hirohito]

Hello All,
I have been working on increasing HI, and I compared this to compound interest on an investment. Say you increase a location that has an HI of 30 to 60, it will take 30 days to actually come online, because the 30 additional HI will start out damaged. But, at the end of the 30 days you now have 60 HI. You can now increase again to 120, this time it will take 60 days to increase. So, you can go from 30 to 120 in 90 days. Now, instead of getting 30 supply points and 39 fuel points and 30 HI points you get 90 supply, 120 fuel, and 90 HI.

If you get carried away with increasing HI you won't have any HI points in the pool and then you won't be able to actually build anything, so there must be an optimum amount of HI increases you can do.

I am wondering if anyone has researched this to come up with the optimum number of HI upgrades you can do on turn 1, taking into account the increased production you will start seeing as these additional HI points become undamaged?

I have been using as a rule of thumb to upgrade any HI site that has less than 100 HI on turn 1, wait for all of these to become undamaged and then upgrade any HI site that has less than 200 HI, but I haven't researched if this is optimum. Seems to work okay.

Hirohito

[BlackVoid]

As Japan in PBEM it is Feb 42. I was checking the HI levels and found that my HI pool is growing. This is because production demand (other factories use HI) is lower then HI output.
Production does not need more HI and as I have ample supplies I do not consider increasing HI is a good idea. Maybe after the conquest of SRA if my resource and oil levels are growing fast, I will consider. Right now however resource and oil levels are dropping so I have enough capacity.

Instead, I increased all 3 types of shipyards: naval, merchant and repair. I only increased the small naval/merchant yards and expanded one repair yard to 100 from 50.

[mogami]

Hi, Japan has x number of supply on hand at start. (I've never had a fuel problem but I have encountered supply problems and I only do very modest expansions of Japanese production centers-I build the ones that start below 10 to over size 10 but I don't do the merchant or Navy yards before 1943 (just the repair yards)

The critical period begins around March and lasts till mid May 1942. After that supply level begin to climb again. (all those new units eat supply growing and I must have the base forces )

Starting aircraft and engine production meets my requirments. Here again I increase the more important types that are less then size 10

The higher the intenisity of combat the greater the supply use. It is pointless to obtain a forward base only to have the defending units run out of supply so a reserve has to be maintained. Units must have a period where they can rest at a base with a surplus of supply to recover from one operation before going to next or they will wear out.
(without any loss in combat Japanese units that are in continuous use for 6 months will be reduced to about 50 percent of their starting combat levels. Units must rest once again it is pointless to occupy a base and then defend it with out of supply half strength units)

Japan does not need oil/resource centers above what it can transport. Nor what it can transport after 1943. (1943 is the year of Japanese production) So you only need to increase to what you can run full time in 1943. After that the surplus in production is used to offset Allied damage. You just stop rebuilding damaged centers and restart ones you have placed on halt

So to arrive at numbers for expansion you have to decide what centers you can obtain and the amount of resource/oil you can transport during 1943.

[Arstavidios]

Also you have to choose where to icrease your industry. Singapore is the closest place with HI from your resources so it may be a good idea to build it up as much as you can as it vill be relatively safe from allied air power and you should not have too many problemens keeping the factories supplied. Honk Kong and Formosa are also good places.

IMO this is where Japanese HI increase should be done in priority.

[AmiralLaurent]

Japan has more HI than it needs at start: first thing to do is increase the armament industry IMOO. And also the naval yards.

Only if the HI pool is no more growing will I build more HI. But I will do it in spring 1942.

[worr]

Thanks Mogami!

What do you all think about production away from the islands...such as in China, Singapore, Bangkok. I feel that repairing and even expanding these places is important because it brings supply directly to the places needed without the need for shipping. Even resources give supply...so I let those repair too after the HI is back to zero.

Worr, out

[AmiralLaurent]

Second thoughts

As I said before, oil is the real limiting factor on Japanese production.

So my economical reasoning (long term) is :

1) find how many oil points I may have each turn (once the "Coprosperity Sphere" is conquered)

2) find how many of these points I may bring to HI centers, so having these HI centers running.

3) so I'm able to generate this amount of HI points each turn. Do I have enough HI to spend this oil ? If yes, no need of HI increase, except maybe on Singapore (and so on) to have more supply and fuel available near the frontline.

4) now that I have a count of available HI each turn, I search how to spend them in the various factories.

As for expanding HI in forward areas, it will cost you first much supply that may be more useful to support your units first. I will maybe do it in Singapore once Palembang is secure, so I can drop supplies generated by the ressource center here to increase HI.

[Hirohito]

ORIGINAL: Arstavidios

Also you have to choose where to icrease your industry. Singapore is the closest place with HI from your resources so it may be a good idea to build it up as much as you can as it vill be relatively safe from allied air power and you should not have too many problemens keeping the factories supplied. Honk Kong and Formosa are also good places.

IMO this is where Japanese HI increase should be done in priority.

I was thinking more about the cities in Japan and Manchuko that have low HI numbers at start. Places like Kyoto that has 60, there are several cities that have 5, 10, 30, or 60 in both Japan, Korea, and Manchuko.

I'm not as concerned about supply as I am HI points in the HI pool. I am very aggressive at building things that require HI in the HI pool.

My thinking is if you increase HI then each turn you have more HI points in the HI pool to then increase HI some more, so there is a compounding effect.

I want to increase armaments, vehicles, repair shipyards, naval and merchant construction and aircraft construction especially R&D greatly, then I want to accelerate ship construction on large numbers of ships. I figured if you spent the HI points first on increasing HI levels in the small HI cities (5,10, 30 and 60) then you could pay for all this increase in weapons systems from the HI points that were created from this additional capacity.

I think what I will do is keep an accurate record of the increases and see how long it takes to get HI to its maximum output, because there is a limit to how much you can increase HI in each city. I'll see what that maximum output is and how much you can increase weapons systems based on this additional HI going into the HI pool.

The bottom line will be that there is less weapons construction in the first few months, but much more weapons constructions later. I don't know what the effect of this will be.

I'll post the results here.

Hirohito

[Mynok]

I suspect you will run into serious supply problems before you ever get to max HI. Unless you don't plan to attack anything, in which case you will run into serious oil problems.

Having more HI than oil resources is pointless. Repairing resources beyond HI is also pointless unless the location is critical.

[2ndACR]

Only increase the small 30 and below HI sites until all oil/resource base's are captured. And then just double them. Until you know how much supply you will have to dedicate to repairing devestated oil/res locations, it is foolish to spend all your supply early.

My HI increases do not start until March 42 at the earliest. I make enough changes on Turn 1 as it is. My supply levels will get extremely low in Jan/Feb 42 and then start ramping up quickly as all my 1st turn changes are complete.

I have yet to really run out of HI. It continues to grow in my pool anyway. I do try and use every single point though when possible. Early war anyway.

[AmiralLaurent]

According to my Excel files, HI available to Japan at start generates a little more than 13000 HI points and about 11900 are used each turn.

After the conquest of PI, Malaya, Burma and DEI, Japan has enough ressources and oil to produce 15500 HI/turn, if you manage to bring them without too much losses.
At this stage, Japan alone is asking for 300 000 oil and 300 000 ressource each month.

Sorry to have no more precise numbers. I have Net connexion only at work while my WITP files are at home.

Edited:
Contrary to what I said before, within the historical "Coprosperity Sphere", there is more oil produced than ressources, so the limiting factor are the ressources !