Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Silly that taking out Portland for one day, in Jan '42, somehow "kills" all the CVE's and tankers for the rest of the war.

As if the US couldn't build these ships elsewhere, as if they were planned to be built on Jan 1 '42. Like we'd be building liberty ships at 1x per hour (or whatever) in the Gulf coast.

Or "omg, Portland got invaded in Jan 1942, I guess that means we can't build a B17s in, idk, Omaha, or anywhere else. Them damn sneaky Japs ruining our unbuilt airplane factories!!!"

It's just a silly design decision. I'd say at best, give all those ships and planes a 1 month delay and have them come in on the East Coast.

Going for the West Coast on a "raid and destroy" mission is akin to loading up all the troops and making a beeline for Nomuea in the first week of game of UV.

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Silly that taking out Portland for one day, in Jan '42, somehow "kills" all the CVE's and tankers for the rest of the war.

As if the US couldn't build these ships elsewhere, as if they were planned to be built on Jan 1 '42. Like we'd be building liberty ships at 1x per hour (or whatever) in the Gulf coast.

Or "omg, Portland got invaded in Jan 1942, I guess that means we can't build a B17s in, idk, Omaha, or anywhere else. Them damn sneaky Japs ruining our unbuilt airplane factories!!!"

It's just a silly design decision. I'd say at best, give all those ships and planes a 1 month delay and have them come in on the East Coast.



Going for the West Coast on a "raid and destroy" mission is akin to loading up all the troops and making a beeline for Nomuea in the first week of game of UV.

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Silly that taking out Portland for one day, in Jan '42, somehow "kills" all the CVE's and tankers for the rest of the war.

As if the US couldn't build these ships elsewhere, as if they were planned to be built on Jan 1 '42. Like we'd be building liberty ships at 1x per hour (or whatever) in the Gulf coast.

Or "omg, Portland got invaded in Jan 1942, I guess that means we can't build a B17s in, idk, Omaha, or anywhere else. Them damn sneaky Japs ruining our unbuilt airplane factories!!!"

It's just a silly design decision. I'd say at best, give all those ships and planes a 1 month delay and have them come in on the East Coast.



Going for the West Coast on a "raid and destroy" mission is akin to loading up all the troops and making a beeline for Nomuea in the first week of game of UV.

Thank you. It refreshing to get a corroborating opinion on juts how much of a weasel tactic this is.

ORIGINAL: DRF99

I see this as an oversight or at least something that didn't make the cut in the design of the game, fair enough.

Using picket ships, "Sir Robin", Fortress Palembang, though they may not have been done in real life, could have been done given the political and military will. I see these as abstractions. Universal supply, off map movement file consumption, and aircraft replacements I see as a similar abstractions.

However, the capture of a port destroying ships that won't be built for years I see as an oversight. It's not something that would or could happen in real life.

If the game is ever updated, I would like to see construction shipyards. Capture would cause any ships under construction to be delayed by some amount for each day the city was captured and the construction shipyard could be damaged. At the same time, I can see political points being subtracted each day for certain events such as a Japanese invasion of the continental US, an allied invasion of Hokkaido, and similar events that would have been catastrophic politically in real life.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

ORIGINAL: spence


Roosevelt could NEVER have sold "Europe First" to anyone if the United States actually had enemy troops on its soil. As it stands the Allied Player has this "Europe First" political decision as a given. With enemy troops on US soil the flow of reinforcements would have been 90% against Japan as would all the upgrades to modern aircraft (even the remaining 10% might be in dispute).

The United States reached some 90+% mobilization sometime in 1944 and then stopped converting industries to war production. The Japanese were at 100% on day 1. The idea that the US would be publishing recipes for grass in one of its major newspapers (such as the Tokyo Times) at any point prior to the fall of England and Russia to the Germans is absurd. So the idea that, armed with the foreknowledge that a bunch of US reinforcements will appear in a certain place and will be wiped out permanently by some sacrificial invasion of the US right after the declaration of war is beyond the pale.

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

You are being a tad disingenuous, Kaiser's shipyards were not like the shipyards for building the capital ships. Other shipyards built ships, Kaiser assembled ships. When Kaiser couldn't get steel , he built the largest steel mill in the western US in 9 months during the war. When he told the Navy that he could build 50 CVE's, the Navy told him no; he went to Roosevelt and got the ok, so the resources and labor were there. His shipyards were built in 5 to 9 months, most built during the war. He built a city[ complete with schools, hospitals and a college-now Portland State] of 10,000 in months to house workers imported from across the country, utilized women and African -Americans for labor, he was not dependent upon local labor. Kaiser was a industrial genius, when the WPB during the war asked him to oversee the Brewster Aircraft facilities, with the same plant and workforce; they went from 12 planes a month to over a 120 a month.
IMHO A Ballpark figure for the disruption to production would be 9-12 months.

Considering the hysteria present in the US immediately following Pearl Harbor, I wonder if the VP reflections for a CONUS invasion are too low...

ORIGINAL: Bearcat2

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

You are being a tad disingenuous, Kaiser's shipyards were not like the shipyards for building the capital ships. Other shipyards built ships, Kaiser assembled ships. When Kaiser couldn't get steel , he built the largest steel mill in the western US in 9 months during the war. When he told the Navy that he could build 50 CVE's, the Navy told him no; he went to Roosevelt and got the ok, so the resources and labor were there. His shipyards were built in 5 to 9 months, most built during the war. He built a city[ complete with schools, hospitals and a college-now Portland State] of 10,000 in months to house workers imported from across the country, utilized women and African -Americans for labor, he was not dependent upon local labor. Kaiser was a industrial genius, when the WPB during the war asked him to oversee the Brewster Aircraft facilities, with the same plant and workforce; they went from 12 planes a month to over a 120 a month.
IMHO A Ballpark figure for the disruption to production would be 9-12 months.


IMHO a fantasy is moving a 100 miles up the Columbia River to invade Portland