Changing production..

[ollittm]

Do you feel that changing aircraft production priorities permanently constitutes cheating?

Personally I feel better range/performance of FW-190A justifies shifting some production from Bf-109.

Ditto for Do-217 and JU-88/HE-111 .. Since clearly superior plane is available, I'd rather produce them for 42, 43, 44, 45 than HE-111s ..

Was there a good reason to dump Do-217 production in favor of HE-177 in -42 as it now happens in WiR? While going on with the production of HE-111?

Ok, JU-88 was a very versatile plane so it had other uses such as a night fighter, but that's not modelled here. But neither are british nighttime raids.

[Svar]

Originally posted by Barleyman:
Do you feel that changing aircraft production priorities permanently constitutes cheating?

Personally I feel better range/performance of FW-190A justifies shifting some production from Bf-109.

Ditto for Do-217 and JU-88/HE-111 .. Since clearly superior plane is available, I'd rather produce them for 42, 43, 44, 45 than HE-111s ..

Was there a good reason to dump Do-217 production in favor of HE-177 in -42 as it now happens in WiR? While going on with the production of HE-111?

Ok, JU-88 was a very versatile plane so it had other uses such as a night fighter, but that's not modelled here. But neither are british nighttime raids.

Barleyman,

You will get all kinds of opinions about deviating from anything other than historical events or operations. If you are just playing a game do anthing you want, if you are trying to simulate the actual war stick to the default settings. However the default settings are limited by the DOS operating system limitations and are a compromise so this game doesn't do as good a job as a new one written in Windows could do.

In the old version of the game before the Do-217 was introduced, the He-111 was upgraded to the He-177.

I don't know what was done historically with respect to the Fw-190s versus the Me-109s but in the game with the limitation of factories at 15 it certainly makes more sense to produce more Fw-190s than Me-109s. In reality they probably could make the Me-109s faster and cheaper so they got higher numbers of planes.

Personally, I optimize everything but that just makes it easier to win.

Svar

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Svar:
Barleyman,
In reality they probably could make the Me-109s faster and cheaper so they got higher numbers of planes.

Personally, I optimize everything but that just makes it easier to win.

Svar

Well, my point is that was there some valid reason it was done this way, like the technical problems of HE-177 people pointed out. If it was just a misquided political decision like making fighter-bomber out of Ju-252, I don't feel bad about setting rectifying that kind of mistakes since it is within the scope of the game.

OTOH, if there is some good reason why did they keep on making He-111s until the end of the war, instead of reverting to Do-217s .. At least the values would suggest the upgraded dornier would be much better value for money. But perhaps it was thought that the high bombload of He-177 justified shifting production to that instead. (Before they found out it was a lemon)

As for the fighters, a better design might pay back for the extra cost if the difference is big enough.. Of course the Bf-109 was a remarkable plane in it's own right.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Barleyman:
Well, my point is that was there some valid reason it was done this way, like the technical problems of HE-177 people pointed out. If it was just a misquided political decision like making fighter-bomber out of Ju-252, I don't feel bad about setting rectifying that kind of mistakes since it is within the scope of the game.

I can't give you a complete answer, I don't know who was involved in updating the OOB. Politics is a main reason, but sometimes it has to do with the nature of the military/industry production system. The US was still producing P40s when they already had the P38 Lighning. There was an argument about this here on Matrix somewhere. In the case of Germany, politics had a lot to do with using inferior equipment when better equipment was already available. The relationship between the Nazis and the German war industry was more like a partnership than the Soviet system where the government owned the war industry and could dictate what they want, but technological progress can't be dictated. But even here there are questions, like why the Soviets continued to make Mig-3 type aircraft when they had the Yak-1.

I guess my answer is: there's no simple answer.

[Yogi Yohan]

Optimising production to the best models would not be considered cheating if the drop in production was anywhere near the real one. But since with human factory control ANY change of production (even within the same general type) means 4 weeks of delayed production, nothing less and nothing more, I feel optimising production should be considered cheating.

If you want to optimise production without cheating, here's what I do:

If you change within the same general type of unit (Bf-109F to Bf-109G, PzIIIh to PzIIIj etc), go ahead and change the normal way, otherwise do nothing.

Save your game, and open it with Editwir.

For the factories that change within the same general type (including from tanks to assault guns with the same chassis, ie PzIII to StugIII or PzIV to JPzIV) simply reduce the delay from 4 to 1 and change nothing else.

Still in Editwir, for the factories where you want to change type completely (ie from Bf-109 to Fw-190), change the type. Divide current production with the cost of the new unit and enter as new production (so a capacity 15 Bf-109 factory retooling to Fw-190 would become 15/4 = 3.75 (rounded to 4). Increase delay to 6, 8, 10 weeks or more depending on what you feel is a believable delay for completely retooling a factory.

Now you have optimised production without cheating! (And now maybe you understand why obsolecent models were upgraded and kept in production rather than phased out... )

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
Optimising production to the best models would not be considered cheating if the drop in production was anywhere near the real one. But since with human factory control ANY change of production (even within the same general type) means 4 weeks of delayed production, nothing less and nothing more, I feel optimising production should be considered cheating.

If you want to optimise production without cheating, here's what I do:

If you change withing the same general type of unit (Bf-109F to Bf-109G, PzIIIh to PzIIIj etc), go ahead and change the normal way, otherwise do nothing.

Save your game, and open it with Editwir.

For the factories that change within the same general type (including from tanks to assault guns with the same chassis, ie PzIII to StugIII or PzIV to JPzIV) simply reduce the delay from 4 to 1 and change nothing else.

Still in Editwir, for the factories where you want to change type completely (ie from Bf-109 to Fw-190), change the type. Divide current production with the cost of the new unit and enter as new production (so a capacity 15 Bf-109 factory retooling to Fw-190 would become 15/4 = 3.75 (rounded to 4). Increase delay to 6, 8, 10 weeks or more depending on what you feel is a believable delay for completely retooling a factory.

Now you have optimised production without cheating! (And now maybe you understand why obsolecent models were upgraded and kept in production rather than phased out... )

It sounds good Yogi, if it were still early in the WiR project, I'd argue for this change.

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:

Now you have optimised production without cheating! (And now maybe you understand why obsolecent models were upgraded and kept in production rather than phased out... )

Well, yeah. My point was more of shifting production focus instead of optimizing production - Keep on doing Ju-88 since it's an excellent plane, but phase out He-111 since it's, imho, waster of resources in 1942. Maybe Heinkel had prettier pr personnell than Dornier..

Ju-88 is a dive-bomber, as well, but that's not modelled in WiR. Was it ever used for interdiction?

Anyways, I think airplanes are more modular than tanks. You probably have subcontractors doing the engines, the weapons, the electronics .. So basically the "factory" builds the airframe and assembles the parts that various contractors have produced.

If the Leader decides factory "a" should make Do-217 instead of He-111, they could probably use their existing machines to produce the parts needed by the new model.

There's about a zillion parts in the airframe, thought, so Dornier and Heinkel engineers would have their work cut out for them re-adjusting the machine parameters..

Furthermore, you'd place orders for more engines from the contractor who builds the dornier engines instead of the heinkel engines, extra electronics and so on.. You could probably use the same weapons. It'll take a while for the subcontractors to ramp up production, but that's a case of making more of the same product.

..

All in all, I figure you'd have a situation where you'd have big supply of engines, etc, but airframe production would be very slow until the assembly lines are properly streamlined. However, it should ramp up to the original levels faster than tank production.

It's so complex it would probably make a decent game in it's own right. SimFactory, anyone?

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Barleyman:
Well, yeah. My point was more of shifting production focus.

Its not some major issue, but if you're asking for an opinion about shifting production in an ahistorical matter, I would consider it cheating unless I allow my opponent to do it also.

Note that this means you should not do this while playing the AI, as it can't do what we can. The AI isn't very good, but cheating against it should be avoided since you, the human player, already have a huge advantage.

This is just a personal opinion.

[PMCN]

I think that a limited amount of changes is fine but when you go for whole scale optimisation than that becomes cheating. And against the AI it is unnecessary. Against a human it ruins the game I think...I was seriously ticked off to find the entire soviet air production switched to Yak1s.

Normally I change the following:
german
PzKw II factory in berlin to a PzKw IIIh
Do217 factory to Stuka (their loss rate is so high you need more of them)
I used to manually change the Me110d to a Me110e but that factory vanished.
I play around a bit with tank production in late 42 and early 43 to give me 1 more Tiger I factory and 1 more PzKw IVH factory plus I build the Elephant which requires that you have a factory doing so.
Russian
I change the Mig 3 to Yak1 and Lagg3 to give me equal numbers of Yak and Lagg factories. No other changes seem necessary since there is a huge demand for things and a 4 week delay is more hurtfull then slightly better vehicles. Plus the T60/70s come in handy in 43 when they convert to SU76s and I can't see what else you could change.

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:

Normally I change the following:
german
PzKw II factory in berlin to a PzKw IIIh
Do217 factory to Stuka (their loss rate is so high you need more of them)

I don't bother fiddling with the german tank production. What they make sucks before PzIVg/StuG-IIIg so you'll take quite big AFV losses no matter what. Ok, Pz-IIIj is a big improvement, but still inadequate.

With the perfect 20/20 hindsight it might be a good idea to shift entire Pz-III production to StuG-IIIg once it becomes available. Those 75mm KwKs might have pushed certain op SW of Moscow in -43 around.

I've noticed Me110s are quite good at getting tank kills but you need to be able to completely dominate the airspace in advance. One neat trick is to switch one bomber flight at a time to "A" and keep on raiding the offending HQ.

Do-217 has 50% bigger load, longer range, better AA rating and better survivability than the He-111 and/or Ju-88A, so .. They're bad at getting tank kills but MASSIVE disruption is kinda nice :p

Anyways, better to agree in advance what kind of tweaking is acceptable..

..

How's the Blizzard patch coming along? I'd hate to take on a human-equivalent AI with the huge german disadvantage right now..

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Barleyman:
How's the Blizzard patch coming along? I'd hate to take on a human-equivalent AI with the huge german disadvantage right now..

Arnaud is working on it, and cleaning up a few other issues. He hasn't said how close he is to being ready, or having us test it out. Still not sure what changes he is making to try and fix the blizzard losses, though. He did find that the West and Italian front strengths for the Axis did include airpower, even though he didn't add it in, which is good, and he fixed the bug showing the two front's strengths being halved after a restart.

[Barbos]

Originally posted by Yogi Yohan:
Optimising production to the best models would not be considered cheating if the drop in production was anywhere near the real one. But since with human factory control ANY change of production (even within the same general type) means 4 weeks of delayed production, nothing less and nothing more, I feel optimising production should be considered cheating.

If you want to optimise production without cheating, here's what I do:

If you change within the same general type of unit (Bf-109F to Bf-109G, PzIIIh to PzIIIj etc), go ahead and change the normal way, otherwise do nothing.

Save your game, and open it with Editwir.

For the factories that change within the same general type (including from tanks to assault guns with the same chassis, ie PzIII to StugIII or PzIV to JPzIV) simply reduce the delay from 4 to 1 and change nothing else.

Still in Editwir, for the factories where you want to change type completely (ie from Bf-109 to Fw-190), change the type. Divide current production with the cost of the new unit and enter as new production (so a capacity 15 Bf-109 factory retooling to Fw-190 would become 15/4 = 3.75 (rounded to 4). Increase delay to 6, 8, 10 weeks or more depending on what you feel is a believable delay for completely retooling a factory.

Now you have optimised production without cheating! (And now maybe you understand why obsolecent models were upgraded and kept in production rather than phased out... )

I agree with Yogi again: to be more historically accurate we must upgrade easier within the "breed" (minimum delay and experience drop) and much harder outside it: large delay and experience drop. Could Arnoud think about such a change as well?