Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Blackhorse

. . . and what do you propose to do about on-map HI production for the allies?

If HI no longer produces supply it has no benefit for the Allies. A smart Allied player will turn off HI production.

One small caveat that I forgot to mention - by house rule HI and LI should not and cannot be "shut off" because civilian supply is subsumed to be in the economic model. Hence if you shut down LI or HI you are also "shutting off" the civilian part of the equation.

One option, (you?) mentioned before in the thread, is to damage all the Allied HI at start, so Japan has to repair it to use it. I think that works, but do you also want to rebalance resource points to reduce the surplus the Allies will have now that they don't need them for HI?

I don't think it is necessary to start the HI or LI damaged.

I salute you for tackling this project. [&o]

For all its shortcomings, the AE economic engine is actually well-balanced. There are wheels within wheels to be adjusted if you choose to tinker with the machine.

It is...

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: Blackhorse

ORIGINAL: treespider

Looking at Australia...

Stock AE Australia about breaks even in RP requirements. In other words it produces about what it needs and as a result generates roughly 5000 supply points per day.

In my mod Australia would produce even more supply, about 5600 supply points, however Australia would need to import roughly 9600 resource points per day to keep their Industry humming along.... that translates into imports of 3,504,000 tons/points of stuff per year...Not sure exactly what Australia imported but their official history has a whole chapter related to "The Problem of Limited Resources"

What incentive would the Allied player have to ship resources to Australia once the Malay Barrier falls?

If the Allies have both surplus resources and surplus supplies off-map or on the West Coast, then the overwhelming incentive is to ship supplies only at 10% the load cost of moving RPs (if I understand your mod aright, LI will convert 20 RPs to 2 supply). If the merchants have no supply to carry, then there would be a reason to export resources to Australia. Do you intend to substantial reduce allied supply generation in your mod?

There would be no incentive other than the fact that they would lose some supply production in Australia, and would have to make up the difference in lost supply production.

With the current game mechanics I see no way to provide the incentive you seek.

One other small point ...had to run the kids to school...in stock AE Australia breaks even from Resource to Industry perspective...so there is no incentive to bring in anything extra if you don't want to.

With the change there will be a shortfall...so the Australia will no longer be a supply producer unless the shortfall is made up through imports of either supply or resource points.

I can certainly justify just removing HI from the Allied portion of the map. As there is no Allied Economic system, the Allies do not need it. So the question then becomes should it be in place for Japan to capture. Again, we get to the issue of in RL what HI was captured? Was any it that was captured able to be then used by the Japanese. Considering that the bulk of the true HI we are talking about is in Oz and India (and WCUSA), is it really attainable in the first place? I guess I am saying that if this HI is likely not capturable by Japan, does it even need to be on the map at all. I guess your idea of having it present but 100% damaged is a nice work around.

ORIGINAL: vettim89

I can certainly justify just removing HI from the Allied portion of the map. As there is no Allied Economic system, the Allies do not need it. So the question then becomes should it be in place for Japan to capture. Again, we get to the issue of in RL what HI was captured? Was any it that was captured able to be then used by the Japanese. Considering that the bulk of the true HI we are talking about is in Oz and India (and WCUSA), is it really attainable in the first place? I guess I am saying that if this HI is likely not capturable by Japan, does it even need to be on the map at all. I guess your idea of having it present but 100% damaged is a nice work around.

Well in my model the HI centers are not changed other than they produce 0 supply...nor would they start damaged....nor would the players be allowed to turn them off....the "civilian economy" feeds off them as well - hence the reason they cannot be shut-off and as such would be a drain on RP.

One thing this thread has suggested to me is that there was greater merit than met the eye in the ‘tax’ upon resource production that was imposed by manpower’s need to be fed in the original WitP game. In order to generate manpower points, the number of resources at a location had to exceed 10 times the number of manpower centres. If this condition was satisfied, 5 manpower points per centre were added to the pool, but at a price in resources of double the manpower points added. There was nothing you could do to prevent this deduction of ‘tax’ on a location by location basis. Arguably it better represented the cost of feeding the civilian economy than does the present construct of LI doing so. Still, spilt milk…

Don’t have any great problem with removal of refineries’ supply generation capability.

One of the original premises of this thread was that the Japanese economy was defective due to its failure to put sufficient stress upon the mercantile marine. There are a couple of points about Treespider’s proposed mod that trouble me:

1) Remedying the understress on Japan’s merchant ships seems to have morphed into a desire to reduce her supply output by nearly 22%, with the comment “You can make up the 4420 pt supply difference produced in the Home Islands with daily allotments if you feel these are necessary...” What exactly are these daily allotments, and how are they produced? More importantly, what empirical evidence is there to demonstrate that the Japanese economy can accommodate such a 22% reduction in supply? To me, the most obvious area in which this is likely to have a potentially catastrophic impact is on Japan’s ability to repair damage – whether that be to new factories, oil and resource centres, or whatever. Before any such change is made to supply output, I would want to know what the effects of such a reduction will be.

2) Mention is made of Japan having to import an additional 3,175,000 resource points, but nothing is said about where that extra is to come from. That raises three issues:
(a) where are the extra resources located?
(b) how much extra should there be?
(c) what is the impact upon Japan’s fuel position of the resulting demand for extra shipping?

On the ‘where’ question there have been hints from posters that the extra should be coming from resource centres captured in the SRA – it was even suggested that a capture of North Australia (no doubt Pt Hedland-Corunna Downs in particular) might become de rigeur for the Japanese player. No! As I’ve posted elsewhere, the only significant resource of which the Empire was short at the war’s start, aside from petroleum products, was bauxite stocks, so, with that exception, there should be no question of the Japanese having to make good resource shortfalls by capturing centres in the SRA.

On the ‘how much’ question, Japan’s economic potential is limited from the outset by the rate at which resources are generated outside the home islands. Evidence that the rate of resource point generation may be a problem can be seen from an examination of what resources the Empire is producing as at 7 December 1941. On that date, the aggregate daily resource production of the Empire is 5,100 points less than the daily amount required to run its starting industry – 1.8% short of the Empire’s aggregate daily resource need. I do not know the extent to which resource centres’ outputs have been matched to historical output figures (or have they been determined merely by reference to HI/LI demands?), but I get the strong impression that Japan could have imported greater quantities of raw materials than she actually did, yet failed to do so. In particular, I have the impression that there was a falling away of N. China coking coal imports that is not readily explicable by submarine sinkings of colliers in the Yellow Sea, and an even more inexplicable drop in the quantity of good quality coal imported from the Karafuto mines. My point is that, as it stands, the rate of generation of resources by ‘inner zone’ Empire resource centres may be acting as an unwarranted brake upon its economic potential. Given the undifferentiated nature of resources, this poses two issues:

1) how far the number of such ‘inner zone’ resource centres need to be increased to cover the increase in resource imports made necessary by a higher input : output ratio of resources to HI; and
2) how much additional resource generation capacity (if any) should be located in the ‘inner zone’ to reflect the fact that Japan did not import raw materials to the full extent that she was apparently able.

One last grouse: JWE has proposed an increase in the amount of fuel having to be imported to Japan to run her heavy industry. Sorry, John, but I disagree. Whilst I can see justification for a minimal input of petroleum products to make HI run, any significant increase in HI’s fuel requirement would imply its wider spread use as the source of the power required by HI, and I’m confident that if you were to survey the power houses of Japan’s wartime factories you would find that the vast majority of their boilers were fired by coal rather than by oil – it was, after all, Japan’s native fuel. As I see it, Japan’s perceived need of oil as the fuel for her ships rather than for those power houses was by far the most important reason for her advance into the Indies – so leading me back to the question: what will be the impact on Japan’s fuel position of an increase in demand for merchant ships that results from an increase in resource hauling requirements?

Sorry if this post adopts an unduly tetchy tone, but not feeling at my best [:(]

Going back up to Treespider's post about steel production as it relates to in game HI: it seems HI is out of balance. Instead of seeing the Japan player stressed for HI by mid 1944, we instead are reading numerous Forum posts about stockpiling HI to the level of a million points or more by 1944. Obviously that concept is completely out of kilter. So perhaps what truly needs to be adjusted is the amount fo HI avaialble. If HI is reduced on 7 December 1941, the the Japan player is forced to pour any excess HI points he has into expanding the HI. What we need to create here is a more fragile Japan Economy. One that will work well until a little stress is placed on it, then the Japan player will be forced to start making choices as to what to turn on and off.

I disagree with the LI in Oz concept Treespider made. Yes, from AB statements we know tha both Oz and NZ made major contributions to the war from an industrial standpoint. The question is how should their contributions be expressed in game terms? How much should be allocated to each of the economic centers: HI, LI, Vehicle, Armament, and Manpower? Because the Allied production is nearly 10%% "off map", most of the production by Oz/NZ should not be seen. So, what is left on map should only be that part of the war materials produced there that would fall into what would be AE supply (munitions, food, medical supplies, etc).

I understand what AB was saying about local civilian economy as it relates to LI, but at present the game allows a player to just turn it off, i.e., starve the locals. My point is that while Oz and NZ should produce some supply, it should not be enough to make them self sufficient. They should still be net importers in game terms even if they were net exporters in RL if you remove all the exports not represented in game (HI, vehicles, armaments)

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

One thing this thread has suggested to me is that there was greater merit than met the eye in the ‘tax’ upon resource production that was imposed by manpower’s need to be fed in the original WitP game. In order to generate manpower points, the number of resources at a location had to exceed 10 times the number of manpower centres. If this condition was satisfied, 5 manpower points per centre were added to the pool, but at a price in resources of double the manpower points added. There was nothing you could do to prevent this deduction of ‘tax’ on a location by location basis. Arguably it better represented the cost of feeding the civilian economy than does the present construct of LI doing so. Still, spilt milk…

Don’t have any great problem with removal of refineries’ supply generation capability.

One of the original premises of this thread was that the Japanese economy was defective due to its failure to put sufficient stress upon the mercantile marine. There are a couple of points about Treespider’s proposed mod that trouble me:

1) Remedying the understress on Japan’s merchant ships seems to have morphed into a desire to reduce her supply output by nearly 22%, with the comment “You can make up the 4420 pt supply difference produced in the Home Islands with daily allotments if you feel these are necessary...” What exactly are these daily allotments, and how are they produced? More importantly, what empirical evidence is there to demonstrate that the Japanese economy can accommodate such a 22% reduction in supply? To me, the most obvious area in which this is likely to have a potentially catastrophic impact is on Japan’s ability to repair damage – whether that be to new factories, oil and resource centres, or whatever. Before any such change is made to supply output, I would want to know what the effects of such a reduction will be.

Daily Supply allotments appear out of the mist and are assigned in a data slot in the editor. So in the case of my Mod if I choose to keep the supposed supply production capabilities of Stock AE I would need to add 4420 points of supply to be added to Japanese bases. Think of those points as the product of rural cottage industries and could be spread out amongst the various bases in the Home Islands.

2) Mention is made of Japan having to import an additional 3,175,000 resource points, but nothing is said about where that extra is to come from. That raises three issues:
(a) where are the extra resources located?
(b) how much extra should there be?

I did not look at Resource point deficits or surpluses in Manchuria or China...but I will certainly do so when i get home from the office this afternoon.

So you are suggesting there are not sufficient resources being produced on Mainland Asia to cover the extra 3,175,000 points per year needed to be imported?

(c) what is the impact upon Japan’s fuel position of the resulting demand for extra shipping?

Hopefully substantial. From everything I've read Fuel consumption weighed heavily on strategic decisions made by IGHQ.

On the ‘where’ question there have been hints from posters that the extra should be coming from resource centres captured in the SRA – it was even suggested that a capture of North Australia (no doubt Pt Hedland-Corunna Downs in particular) might become de rigeur for the Japanese player. No! As I’ve posted elsewhere, the only significant resource of which the Empire was short at the war’s start, aside from petroleum products, was bauxite stocks, so, with that exception, there should be no question of the Japanese having to make good resource shortfalls by capturing centres in the SRA.

IndoChina was a substantial source of tonnage of "resources" imported...

On the ‘how much’ question, Japan’s economic potential is limited from the outset by the rate at which resources are generated outside the home islands. Evidence that the rate of resource point generation may be a problem can be seen from an examination of what resources the Empire is producing as at 7 December 1941. On that date, the aggregate daily resource production of the Empire is 5,100 points less than the daily amount required to run its starting industry – 1.8% short of the Empire’s aggregate daily resource need.

Which is why the went to war...Is IndoChina factored into these numbers?

I do not know the extent to which resource centres’ outputs have been matched to historical output figures (or have they been determined merely by reference to HI/LI demands?), but I get the strong impression that Japan could have imported greater quantities of raw materials than she actually did, yet failed to do so.

Resource points were based on historical figures of output as pointed out earlier in this thread....

In particular, I have the impression that there was a falling away of N. China coking coal imports that is not readily explicable by submarine sinkings of colliers in the Yellow Sea, and an even more inexplicable drop in the quantity of good quality coal imported from the Karafuto mines. My point is that, as it stands, the rate of generation of resources by ‘inner zone’ Empire resource centres may be acting as an unwarranted brake upon its economic potential. Given the undifferentiated nature of resources, this poses two issues:

1) how far the number of such ‘inner zone’ resource centres need to be increased to cover the increase in resource imports made necessary by a higher input : output ratio of resources to HI; and
2) how much additional resource generation capacity (if any) should be located in the ‘inner zone’ to reflect the fact that Japan did not import raw materials to the full extent that she was apparently able.

One last grouse: JWE has proposed an increase in the amount of fuel having to be imported to Japan to run her heavy industry. Sorry, John, but I disagree. Whilst I can see justification for a minimal input of petroleum products to make HI run, any significant increase in HI’s fuel requirement would imply its wider spread use as the source of the power required by HI, and I’m confident that if you were to survey the power houses of Japan’s wartime factories you would find that the vast majority of their boilers were fired by coal rather than by oil – it was, after all, Japan’s native fuel. As I see it, Japan’s perceived need of oil as the fuel for her ships rather than for those power houses was by far the most important reason for her advance into the Indies – so leading me back to the question: what will be the impact on Japan’s fuel position of an increase in demand for merchant ships that results from an increase in resource hauling requirements?

Sorry if this post adopts an unduly tetchy tone, but not feeling at my best [:(]

I'll do the RP analysis this afternoon.

ORIGINAL: vettim89

Going back up to Treespider's post about steel production as it relates to in game HI: it seems HI is out of balance. Instead of seeing the Japan player stressed for HI by mid 1944, we instead are reading numerous Forum posts about stockpiling HI to the level of a million points or more by 1944. Obviously that concept is completely out of kilter. So perhaps what truly needs to be adjusted is the amount fo HI avaialble. If HI is reduced on 7 December 1941, the the Japan player is forced to pour any excess HI points he has into expanding the HI. What we need to create here is a more fragile Japan Economy. One that will work well until a little stress is placed on it, then the Japan player will be forced to start making choices as to what to turn on and off.

I disagree with the LI in Oz concept Treespider made. Yes, from AB statements we know tha both Oz and NZ made major contributions to the war from an industrial standpoint. The question is how should their contributions be expressed in game terms? How much should be allocated to each of the economic centers: HI, LI, Vehicle, Armament, and Manpower? Because the Allied production is nearly 10%% "off map", most of the production by Oz/NZ should not be seen. So, what is left on map should only be that part of the war materials produced there that would fall into what would be AE supply (munitions, food, medical supplies, etc).

I understand what AB was saying about local civilian economy as it relates to LI, but at present the game allows a player to just turn it off, i.e., starve the locals. My point is that while Oz and NZ should produce some supply, it should not be enough to make them self sufficient. They should still be net importers in game terms even if they were net exporters in RL if you remove all the exports not represented in game (HI, vehicles, armaments)

And in my MOD ... you can't shut-off industry...and as a result OZ has to import...be it resources or supply.

In the WitP-ZEN it doesn't really matter whether its RP or supply...because if it is supply, you can simple assume they are RP which get converted into supply upon arrival in OZ....either way shipping will be required to move the stuff to OZ which happened IRL...which the current numbers do not need because OZ produces enough RP to be self-sufficient.

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: vettim89

Going back up to Treespider's post about steel production as it relates to in game HI: it seems HI is out of balance. Instead of seeing the Japan player stressed for HI by mid 1944, we instead are reading numerous Forum posts about stockpiling HI to the level of a million points or more by 1944. Obviously that concept is completely out of kilter. So perhaps what truly needs to be adjusted is the amount fo HI avaialble. If HI is reduced on 7 December 1941, the the Japan player is forced to pour any excess HI points he has into expanding the HI. What we need to create here is a more fragile Japan Economy. One that will work well until a little stress is placed on it, then the Japan player will be forced to start making choices as to what to turn on and off.

I disagree with the LI in Oz concept Treespider made. Yes, from AB statements we know tha both Oz and NZ made major contributions to the war from an industrial standpoint. The question is how should their contributions be expressed in game terms? How much should be allocated to each of the economic centers: HI, LI, Vehicle, Armament, and Manpower? Because the Allied production is nearly 10%% "off map", most of the production by Oz/NZ should not be seen. So, what is left on map should only be that part of the war materials produced there that would fall into what would be AE supply (munitions, food, medical supplies, etc).

I understand what AB was saying about local civilian economy as it relates to LI, but at present the game allows a player to just turn it off, i.e., starve the locals. My point is that while Oz and NZ should produce some supply, it should not be enough to make them self sufficient. They should still be net importers in game terms even if they were net exporters in RL if you remove all the exports not represented in game (HI, vehicles, armaments)

And in my MOD ... you can't shut-off industry...and as a result OZ has to import...be it resources or supply.

That is modable? How is this done?

In the WitP-ZEN it doesn't really matter whether its RP or supply...because if it is supply, you can simple assume they are RP which get converted into supply upon arrival in OZ....either way shipping will be required to move the stuff to OZ which happened IRL...which the current numbers do not need because OZ produces enough RP to be self-sufficient.

ORIGINAL: vettim89

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: vettim89

Going back up to Treespider's post about steel production as it relates to in game HI: it seems HI is out of balance. Instead of seeing the Japan player stressed for HI by mid 1944, we instead are reading numerous Forum posts about stockpiling HI to the level of a million points or more by 1944. Obviously that concept is completely out of kilter. So perhaps what truly needs to be adjusted is the amount fo HI avaialble. If HI is reduced on 7 December 1941, the the Japan player is forced to pour any excess HI points he has into expanding the HI. What we need to create here is a more fragile Japan Economy. One that will work well until a little stress is placed on it, then the Japan player will be forced to start making choices as to what to turn on and off.

I disagree with the LI in Oz concept Treespider made. Yes, from AB statements we know tha both Oz and NZ made major contributions to the war from an industrial standpoint. The question is how should their contributions be expressed in game terms? How much should be allocated to each of the economic centers: HI, LI, Vehicle, Armament, and Manpower? Because the Allied production is nearly 10%% "off map", most of the production by Oz/NZ should not be seen. So, what is left on map should only be that part of the war materials produced there that would fall into what would be AE supply (munitions, food, medical supplies, etc).

I understand what AB was saying about local civilian economy as it relates to LI, but at present the game allows a player to just turn it off, i.e., starve the locals. My point is that while Oz and NZ should produce some supply, it should not be enough to make them self sufficient. They should still be net importers in game terms even if they were net exporters in RL if you remove all the exports not represented in game (HI, vehicles, armaments)

And in my MOD ... you can't shut-off industry...and as a result OZ has to import...be it resources or supply.

That is modable? How is this done?

In the WitP-ZEN it doesn't really matter whether its RP or supply...because if it is supply, you can simple assume they are RP which get converted into supply upon arrival in OZ....either way shipping will be required to move the stuff to OZ which happened IRL...which the current numbers do not need because OZ produces enough RP to be self-sufficient.

H-O-U-S-E R-U-L-E....[;)]


Just like the House rule in my Mod that Units have to be part of China Command Structure to move into China from Manchuria...ie the units have to be bought from the Kwantung Army...problem is I staticly attached most of the units that remained in manchuria...so no more wholesale exodus of AA, Engineers and Tanks.

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel
One last grouse: JWE has proposed an increase in the amount of fuel having to be imported to Japan to run her heavy industry. Sorry, John, but I disagree. Whilst I can see justification for a minimal input of petroleum products to make HI run, any significant increase in HI’s fuel requirement would imply its wider spread use as the source of the power required by HI, and I’m confident that if you were to survey the power houses of Japan’s wartime factories you would find that the vast majority of their boilers were fired by coal rather than by oil – it was, after all, Japan’s native fuel. As I see it, Japan’s perceived need of oil as the fuel for her ships rather than for those power houses was by far the most important reason for her advance into the Indies – so leading me back to the question: what will be the impact on Japan’s fuel position of an increase in demand for merchant ships that results from an increase in resource hauling requirements?

Sorry if this post adopts an unduly tetchy tone, but not feeling at my best [:(]

Hi John. No worries.

I don't have any concrete proposals for anything. Lots of suggestions and ideas, but since production is definitely not my forte, any concrete proposals will come right out of the nether brown place.

All I'm thinking of is how to increase the utilization of the Japanese merchant fleet qua merchants; not as a handy transport source for 10 division invasions. The only things required to be transported, as an input, is Fuel and Resources. So the only way to increase the transportation requirement is to increase Fuel and/or Resource input requirements. [ed] shouldn't mess with the ship fuel requirement, because a ship uses the same gas whether its schlepping "stuff" or invading Australia or India. Requirements were originally calculated on the basis of most ships, reasonably moving around, and needing a reasonable amount of gas. So there's gas aplenty - making it painless to use excess ships aplenty to go invade Australia or India with all the divisions one can suck out of the Kwantung and China armies.

In terms of Fuel, I might look at Fuel as anything that produces heat energy when it is oxidized. So Fuel could be petrol, kerosene, coal, wood, even raw Oil. It's just an abstract input for many things, with a "name" designation that might tend to mislead in certain circumstances. Perhaps we should have merely called it "Stuff #1". Same sort of thing is true for supply; it subsumes POLs, which makes things very confusing with respect to the item called "Fuel". It is also an abstraction and perhaps we should just refer to it as "Stuff #2".

I mention Fuel, because it is the booger that is bigger than the nose. It is both input and output, it has only one source, multiple uses, and its production location is extremely important.

Ciao. John

Treespider,

Regarding the ~4,000 supply shortfall in the home islands..... I would suggest not doing daily supply allotments, as there's nothing the allies can do to stop it (ie, bombing/blockade/etc).

I would suggest a combination of increaing existing LI and reducing the resources needed to operate LI until you can come to a balance that sort of matches your current balance.

ie, increase LI by 1350, but reduce resources needed to 17. I didn't do the calculations, but you probably get my drift.....

Treespider basing those allotments upon cottage industry makes sense imo. Strat bombing would not have stopped or significantly affected such industry, only taking the ground upon which it's based would. However, it would lead to an odd situation where you have the Japanese 'working' for the allies if those bases are taken.

Various points in no particular order:

[8D] I think I mentioned this in the other thread. Mostly chrome, but consider adding to oil production in the continental USA - or at least via Panama - so that oil can be exported to Australia and (a little) to Hawaii. If an Allied player wants to play 'realistic' this will allow them to take on the additional burden of getting oil to those two places. Aden produces only a tiny bit extra. IRL if I am correct the USA supplied those places.

[8D] FYI for Local Yokel, the daily supply that Treespider mentions also has the benefit that it can't be destroyed and even produces when enemy forces are in the hex. The base must be captured to stop production.

[8D] The notion of starting some HI or perhaps LI in the continental USA damaged is a good one for throttling the amount of supply that will be available to leave the continental USA during the first few months of the war. Put asied the other possible reasons, for this reason it makes sense. In CHS and RHS it was a very successful feature.

[8D] @Local Yokel: I do not understand (in context I mean) your comments about Japan only needing to import bauxite as far as resources go (resources in game terms). So they imported oil (oil in-game), food (supplies in-game), resources from teh inner perimeter (resources in-game from Korea, Manchuria, China, et al). But you are saying that except for bauxite they did not import any resources (in game terms) from beyond the inner perimeter? What about rubber? What about tin (I think someone mentioned it earlier)? I'm no expert so I can't give a list of targeted questions, but I had thought there were several things they imported from the lands they conquered after 1941-12-07?

[8D] @Treespider: When you talk about Australia needing to import resources (proposed in-game), are you including the need to ship resources from enemy-endangered places like Port Hedland and NE Australia, or from actually outside the continent?

[8D] I agree with anarchyintheuk that having some portion of Japan's Home Island supply be invulnerable is a good idea.

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

One thing this thread has suggested to me is that there was greater merit than met the eye in the ‘tax’ upon resource production that was imposed by manpower’s need to be fed in the original WitP game. In order to generate manpower points, the number of resources at a location had to exceed 10 times the number of manpower centres. If this condition was satisfied, 5 manpower points per centre were added to the pool, but at a price in resources of double the manpower points added. There was nothing you could do to prevent this deduction of ‘tax’ on a location by location basis. Arguably it better represented the cost of feeding the civilian economy than does the present construct of LI doing so. Still, spilt milk…

Don’t have any great problem with removal of refineries’ supply generation capability.

One of the original premises of this thread was that the Japanese economy was defective due to its failure to put sufficient stress upon the mercantile marine. There are a couple of points about Treespider’s proposed mod that trouble me:

1) Remedying the understress on Japan’s merchant ships seems to have morphed into a desire to reduce her supply output by nearly 22%, with the comment “You can make up the 4420 pt supply difference produced in the Home Islands with daily allotments if you feel these are necessary...” What exactly are these daily allotments, and how are they produced? More importantly, what empirical evidence is there to demonstrate that the Japanese economy can accommodate such a 22% reduction in supply? To me, the most obvious area in which this is likely to have a potentially catastrophic impact is on Japan’s ability to repair damage – whether that be to new factories, oil and resource centres, or whatever. Before any such change is made to supply output, I would want to know what the effects of such a reduction will be.

Daily Supply allotments appear out of the mist and are assigned in a data slot in the editor. So in the case of my Mod if I choose to keep the supposed supply production capabilities of Stock AE I would need to add 4420 points of supply to be added to Japanese bases. Think of those points as the product of rural cottage industries and could be spread out amongst the various bases in the Home Islands.

Doesn't that skew the way supply gets produced? If any arbitrarily selected base can produce an arbitrary amount of supply each day without cost, why not any other base? "Why are my bases less productive than yours?"

2) Mention is made of Japan having to import an additional 3,175,000 resource points, but nothing is said about where that extra is to come from. That raises three issues:
(a) where are the extra resources located?
(b) how much extra should there be?

I did not look at Resource point deficits or surpluses in Manchuria or China...but I will certainly do so when i get home from the office this afternoon.

So you are suggesting there are not sufficient resources being produced on Mainland Asia to cover the extra 3,175,000 points per year needed to be imported?

Yes - hence my reference to the 'at start' Empire producing 5100 less resource points per day than are required to run the 'at start' industry.

(c) what is the impact upon Japan’s fuel position of the resulting demand for extra shipping?

Hopefully substantial. From everything I've read Fuel consumption weighed heavily on strategic decisions made by IGHQ.

In principle that's entirely appropriate. But figures are needed. The amount of extra fuel needed is going to be affected by such factors as distance over which the extra resources have to be hauled and the number and fuel efficiency of the ships allocated to the task. For these reasons it appeared that quantity and location of the extra resources would critically affect the extra strain placed on fuel reserves.

On the ‘where’ question there have been hints from posters that the extra should be coming from resource centres captured in the SRA – it was even suggested that a capture of North Australia (no doubt Pt Hedland-Corunna Downs in particular) might become de rigeur for the Japanese player. No! As I’ve posted elsewhere, the only significant resource of which the Empire was short at the war’s start, aside from petroleum products, was bauxite stocks, so, with that exception, there should be no question of the Japanese having to make good resource shortfalls by capturing centres in the SRA.

IndoChina was a substantial source of tonnage of "resources" imported...

What resources make up this substantial source of tonnage? Can't have been soybeans; Indochina contributed 8.2% of Japan's needs, and that only in 1944. I agree that Indochina contributed between 63% and 75% of Japan's rice imports between 1940 and 1943, which accounts for 12% by weight of Japan's imports in 1943, the year of greatest rice imports from Indochina/Siam/Burma. But in any event, Indochina was already integrated into the Empire as at 7 December 1941.

On the ‘how much’ question, Japan’s economic potential is limited from the outset by the rate at which resources are generated outside the home islands. Evidence that the rate of resource point generation may be a problem can be seen from an examination of what resources the Empire is producing as at 7 December 1941. On that date, the aggregate daily resource production of the Empire is 5,100 points less than the daily amount required to run its starting industry – 1.8% short of the Empire’s aggregate daily resource need.

Which is why the went to war...Is IndoChina factored into these numbers?

Yes it is. Leaving aside the Japanese aircraft industry's need of bauxite, the IJN's lust for oil appears to have been the only significant economic factor that prompted Japan's decision for war. A decision to ship required imports using coal- rather than oil burning vessels and reliance on a scaled down aircraft industry using only the Palaus' bauxite deposits might have left Japan with a viable economic alternative to war when the stringent sanctions were applied following occupation of Indochina in summer 1941. Of course, given the political power wielded by the IJN, such an alternative never stood a chance of being explored.

I do not know the extent to which resource centres’ outputs have been matched to historical output figures (or have they been determined merely by reference to HI/LI demands?), but I get the strong impression that Japan could have imported greater quantities of raw materials than she actually did, yet failed to do so.

Resource points were based on historical figures of output as pointed out earlier in this thread....

Sorry, must have missed this - can you please point me to the relevant post?

In particular, I have the impression that there was a falling away of N. China coking coal imports that is not readily explicable by submarine sinkings of colliers in the Yellow Sea, and an even more inexplicable drop in the quantity of good quality coal imported from the Karafuto mines. My point is that, as it stands, the rate of generation of resources by ‘inner zone’ Empire resource centres may be acting as an unwarranted brake upon its economic potential. Given the undifferentiated nature of resources, this poses two issues:

1) how far the number of such ‘inner zone’ resource centres need to be increased to cover the increase in resource imports made necessary by a higher input : output ratio of resources to HI; and
2) how much additional resource generation capacity (if any) should be located in the ‘inner zone’ to reflect the fact that Japan did not import raw materials to the full extent that she was apparently able.

One last grouse: JWE has proposed an increase in the amount of fuel having to be imported to Japan to run her heavy industry. Sorry, John, but I disagree. Whilst I can see justification for a minimal input of petroleum products to make HI run, any significant increase in HI’s fuel requirement would imply its wider spread use as the source of the power required by HI, and I’m confident that if you were to survey the power houses of Japan’s wartime factories you would find that the vast majority of their boilers were fired by coal rather than by oil – it was, after all, Japan’s native fuel. As I see it, Japan’s perceived need of oil as the fuel for her ships rather than for those power houses was by far the most important reason for her advance into the Indies – so leading me back to the question: what will be the impact on Japan’s fuel position of an increase in demand for merchant ships that results from an increase in resource hauling requirements?

Sorry if this post adopts an unduly tetchy tone, but not feeling at my best [:(]

I'll do the RP analysis this afternoon.

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

ORIGINAL: treespider

Daily Supply allotments appear out of the mist and are assigned in a data slot in the editor. So in the case of my Mod if I choose to keep the supposed supply production capabilities of Stock AE I would need to add 4420 points of supply to be added to Japanese bases. Think of those points as the product of rural cottage industries and could be spread out amongst the various bases in the Home Islands.

Doesn't that skew the way supply gets produced? If any arbitrarily selected base can produce an arbitrary amount of supply each day without cost, why not any other base? "Why are my bases less productive than yours?"

I think you are looking at this from the wrong perspective. It's not about the purity of the mechanism, it's about the results obtained in game terms.

Consider: Why put 100 x LI at base A and only 50 x LI at base B? Because you are trying to approximate the IRL situation. So if some game dynamics mean that using the tool of 100 x LI doesn't work as needed for some reason, you have another tool. You can use Daily Supply for some or all of that to approximate the IRL situation. They're just game-tools to achieve the desired in-game situation.

ORIGINAL: JWE

All I'm thinking of is how to increase the utilization of the Japanese merchant fleet qua merchants; not as a handy transport source for 10 division invasions.

I entirely agree! And I think that the earlier suggestion (yours?) that this be done on an incremental basis is the right one because it may then become possible to achieve the desired result with minimal changes - e.g. by increasing required resource inputs - but without the law of unintended consequences kicking in.

ORIGINAL: JWE

The only things required to be transported, as an input, is Fuel and Resources. So the only way to increase the transportation requirement is to increase Fuel and/or Resource input requirements. [ed] shouldn't mess with the ship fuel requirement, because a ship uses the same gas whether its schlepping "stuff" or invading Australia or India. Requirements were originally calculated on the basis of most ships, reasonably moving around, and needing a reasonable amount of gas. So there's gas aplenty - making it painless to use excess ships aplenty to go invade Australia or India with all the divisions one can suck out of the Kwantung and China armies.

Agreed, up to a point. But there is a difference between a one-off lift of the Sendai Division into the Marquesas (too close to home? [;)]) and the year-round plod between the port of resource embarkation and the Moji roadstead. In the latter scenario, the distance over which the cargo has to be lifted may cumulatively have an unforeseen adverse effect upon Japan's fuel stocks. Big difference between shipping the extra out of Dairen and lifting it at Saigon and points south.

JWE touched on this but the fact that oil production and refineries nearly match 100% in the SRA is perhaps off the historical model. If sufficient refinery capacity existed to convert all the oil in the SRA to usuable POL products, why did the IJN resort to putting unrefined Borneo light crude into fuel bunkers in late 1944. Something seems out of whack here. I wonder if there is data out there that can tell us a breakdown of how much SRA crude was refined locally vs exported as crude for refining at the end destination. My guess is that a significant portion was exported unrefined.

The truth of the matter is that Japan was desparate for fuel as early as late 1942/early 1943. The game doesn't seem to create such a stress on IJN operations so quickly. Something is out of balance

ORIGINAL: witpqs


[8D] @Local Yokel: I do not understand (in context I mean) your comments about Japan only needing to import bauxite as far as resources go (resources in game terms). So they imported oil (oil in-game), food (supplies in-game), resources from teh inner perimeter (resources in-game from Korea, Manchuria, China, et al). But you are saying that except for bauxite they did not import any resources (in game terms) from beyond the inner perimeter? What about rubber? What about tin (I think someone mentioned it earlier)? I'm no expert so I can't give a list of targeted questions, but I had thought there were several things they imported from the lands they conquered after 1941-12-07?

You got me with the rubber! I hadn't considered this and just don't know whether/how far it influenced Japanese decision making. As it turned out, it was the Allied powers that had to deal with the denial of Malaya's rubber as a strategic good yet they seemed to accomplish it notwithstanding what I presume was a vastly greater demand from their automotive industry than Japan's.

But by and large, the impression I have formed from the figures is that, yes, Japan did not need to resort to much in the way of imports from outside the inner zone of the Empire. Just by way of example, in FY 1940 Japan received 21% of its iron ore imports from the Philippines and 36% from Malaya. The 1941 embargoes temporarily put an end to the availability of those import sources, and yet, after the southward extension of Japanese power in 1942, Philippine iron ore imports never accounted for more than 4% of the Japanese total and Malayan imports even less: 1%. This is a very marked change in the Japanese consumption pattern, and I wonder to what extent it was one prompted by a Japanese desire to shorten the distance over which such ore imports had to be shipped, and thus to economise on the bunker oil required.

As to tin, I think I may have mentioned in another thread that the Japanese captured ample supplies of tin ingot stock during the push south. Insofar as they needed tin from the SRA, therefore, it was a transient requirement rather than one requiring continuing shipments.

As a possibly usable idea, for the US supply could you eliminate all or nearly all of the daily supply at all of the USA bases and then have a series of supply convoys arrive at EUSA? That would allow the ramp up that seems to be desired.