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OK I dont think we are in anyway close to having an answer to this one I certainly don't believe it is our intent to take away some flexibility of production for the Japanese because frankly that would be boring.
 
Whether there will be some none or total limits compared to stock I honestly couldnt say yet my guess at present is probably none but that is a guess.
 
We have a lot of things to test and we need to make sure the implications of combat. the new air model etc etc are accomodated.
 
I think I am probably one of the ones setting hares running in this area by my comments in the land thread about limiting allied device (squads ) production and that is certainly something we are doing in some cases - whether on testing some of those are increased will be a matter of testing.
 
Until we get some tests running over multi months and can asses the actual rate of loss in the new A2A model, the effectiveness of devices pools, the impact of the new resource/LI model and the needs of the AI etc etc I dont see how we hope to make a call on this one.
 
What I am basically saying is at present we have no plans to change the fundamental fact that the allies dont control production and the Japanese do. Whether limits are added to the Japanese I dont know but my suspicion is no if anything the compensation will be in other MODDABLE areas by increasing availability of allied devices.
 
We are partly compensating for this certainly in the land devices by having geographic replacements and reinforcements i.e. if the Japanese succeed there will now be a limited allied reaction e.g. India invaded north of Delhi triggers large one off device injections for allied types (tanks, inf and arty) and several new formations.
 
Similar rules will exist for NZ, South Aus and West Coast.
 
Again a principal we are trying to follow in setting it up this way is that it will be moddable I dont want hidden hard coded stuf that no one but the programmers can change
 
Andy

It's just has always seemed to me like both sides had too much of everything. Replacements, spare a/c, supplies, fuel. That the game might actually be more interesting if you took away from the side that has too much, instead of adding to the side that has too little by comparison; both already can put military power at the Schwerpunkte far more effectively and efficiently than was possible IRL.

There appears to be two issues under discussion here, play balance and production. The trouble is that Japanese production is so influential on play balance it may be impossible to separate the two.

The tempo of operations in the game has been brought up in other threads with both sides advancing too fast during their expansion phases but this doesn't explain any increased extent of the initial Japanese advance (if you rule out that the increased tempo causes Allied reinforcements to arrive too late for effective intervention). Using the excuse that the Japanese must advance further to extend the time of the Allied counter offensive just exposes a weakness in game balance if it is necessary in every game to achieve a historical end date.

The issue here is the Japanese player has the capability to fill the skies with larger than historically achievable numbers of aircraft in an ahistoric mix of types (generally the most powerful type in game terms - not the historically most appropriate type). This puts the Allied player in a difficult position who is limited to a TOE designed to engage the historical Japanese forces. Playing with PDUs on doesn't help as there is still a fixed number of Allied aircraft types available and allows the Japanese player to totally dispense with his less effective types and fill his Sentai's with the increased output from the new factories.

If we can quote a success, I suppose it is in ship production. If the Japanese player is doing well, ship production can be accelerated to launch additional ships but fixed shipbuilding list means there is still a realistic limit to what can be achieved by the shipyard industry. There have been complaints posted by players that they ran out of ships to build so the mind boggles as to what fantasy navy would have emerged had there been no limits...

Unfortunately I can't offer any solutions as I am not familiar enough with the very complex and interactive model but just want to stress that evidence appears to be that we do have an problem.

ORIGINAL: crsutton

I want the Japanese player to have options that will allow him to achieve better than historical results.

Believe it or not, so do I. A good player needs to be rewarded for his efforts. The issue here is that a good Allied player should be rewarded also.

Subject to a full analysis, the published AARs seem to indicate that this isn't happening and the Japanese always do better than historical. (Another caveat here is the AARs are almost exclusively early war. We need some more late war AAR to see the full effects).

ORIGINAL: Jutland13

7)A decent allied player will always beat a good Japanese player! Nobody ever accepts that they are less than genius from what I can read from the AARs. I know I am not.

Nobody is arguing that the Allies will win the war. Realistically the only victory the Japanese player can ever achieve is to do better than his historical counterparts (there have been numerous threads on this topic). Eventually the weight of numbers will steamroller the Japanese back to the Home Islands and the inevitable result.

Just look at Raver's game. He lost all of Australia but is now on the comeback trail and has recovered much of what he has lost. Another example is that John the 3rd seems to be able to take large portions of Australia at will. The only question being how long he can delay (beyond the historical dates) before he is overwhelmed by the rising Allied tide. Once again this observation is not based on any one game but on several against various opponents.

What is the issue it is that the Japanese consistently advance much further and it takes the Allies much longer to recover territory than was the historical case which assist the Japanese player to achieve victory in the game.

In any statistical analysis of multiple examples, any exceptional results one way should be matched with examples of results in the opposite direction. Any consistent trend toward any one outcome can be considered bias.

ORIGINAL: Jutland13

3) Everyone who plays the game as the Allies and does not perform well, never accepts responsibility for their fate, they all want to achieve historical or better results.

As I stated above, I am not talking about any individual game but an overview of the outcomes of a number of games (which includes some by very experienced players)

ORIGINAL: Jutland13

8) Lastly, just because we believe certain aspects to be untrue or incorrect does not make them so. Japan never really should have been able to accomplish all that she did originally, but she did. Maybe, just maybe she could have done much more. We all buy into a lot of old history, politics and propaganda that has existed and still finds its way into much of what we read about how corrupt and inefficient Japan was and how overwhelming and all powerful the Allies were.

I totally agree with this also. However, more and more published works are coming out to re-evaluate the lessons of history and are attempting to uncover to real factors that produced the events of history. By creating a game where the Japanese player consistently does better than historical, aren't we doing a disservice to history by creating an interactive work that perpetrates the myth (just to placitate players of one side of a game) that the Japanese were more powerful than they actually were as opposed to what they could/should have been. The ultimate benchmark being what they actually achieved!

If you want a 'what if', that's what Mods are for and there is no shortage of people willing to do them!! Alternatively a variable difficulty game setting affecting production might also be the way to go.

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

We are partly compensating for this certainly in the land devices by having geographic replacements and reinforcements i.e. if the Japanese succeed there will now be a limited allied reaction e.g. India invaded north of Delhi triggers large one off device injections for allied types (tanks, inf and arty) and several new formations.

I love this approach. No rules, only consequences!!!
It gives flexibility and leaves options open but makes the players pause to consider whether they can deal with the consequences of that action (much like the real commanders..)

[size=-1]Edit: Grammar...[/size]

Reg wrote:
"(* See my thread P-40 replacements in Dec'41 to Jan'42 where I tender the theory that this is because the early deliveries of P-40s were destroyed before being effectively deployed in fall of the SRA resulting in the historical campaign characterised by a shortage of fighters. The game designers have recreated this characteristic of the campaign by simply not including them in the game. In effect they destroy the entire historical delivery of nearly 200 P-40 fighters to the SRA in this six week period without the Japanese player having to lift a finger, resulting in a shortage affecting the Allied Player for nearly 18 months afterward.))"

This is something that I would seriously like to see corrected. If those aircraft were shipped from the US to the Pacific theatre and do not show up in the game then there is a serious imbalance here.

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

This is something that I would seriously like to see corrected. If those aircraft were shipped from the US to the Pacific theatre and do not show up in the game then there is a serious imbalance here.

Bradfordkay, This will be a tricky one to address. If you read the thread (and I see one of your posts on it) there are other factors involved such as attrition due to transfers across vast distances with minimal infrastructure to assist the pilots.

Very few people realise how undeveloped Australia was at the time.
My Grandfather drove a truck with his family in the back down from Townsville to Brisbane and it took over a week and generated may adventures for a journey that only takes about 12 hours now. The road down the Queensland coast was only a track and the rail line was the only reliable link. The Air route across the outback to Darwin and beyond was even worse and was quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

As I stated in the thread, I think that to address these missing fighters we need to include them in the game and introduce the attrition hazards associated with primitive infrastructure which eliminated them as effective force in the SRA campaign.

The other factors such as the port being overrun and the aircraft loaded on the Seawitch being dumped into the harbour before they were uncrated is a very specific historical circumstance related to the speed of the Japanese advance and may not actually happen in a game. Similarly the Langley may not stumble into a hostile Task force and those aircraft could be available to the Allied player as well. The rest of the losses appear to be transfer attrition related and should be simulated somehow.

It really will be a judgement call how the designers want to recreate these unfortunate circumstances and still maintain the 'flavour' of the campaign. I only brought this issue up to highlight that the Allies are constrained by history and the Japanese were free to take advantage of game mechanics.

ORIGINAL: JWE

Actually, herwin, why play with the factory machine. Shoot, there’s almost always “enuf” – caves, women, wood, ingenuity. Why not dictate tempo by the inputs. You can always put a factory in a hapa by a hill, but … aluminum, woof !

Seems to me, a smart way to apply limitations would be to limit what comes in. We are dealing with this on a very serious level in AE; it applies in a 7 way matrix (to production, transport, construction, ship conversion, military logistics, you name it. The math is extensive, and a real bitch in application, but it’s working extremely down to early ’44.

Imagine … your choice as Yamaherwin, is to keep boats as transports, or maybe convert them to tankers, or maybe ammo carriers, or maybe you already screwed yourself by converting them to ASs, or AVs, or maybe you let some convert to Army landing ship carriers. You got pooploads of options, early war, just like Tojo. You get fancy, you get squat, later war, just like Tojo. The more you convert early to support ops tempo, the less you have later to support production tempo. Oh, you definitely have type options for the boys on the building skids, but which option do you choose ??

This works fairly well. It took me almost a month to develop a complete set of coefficients, so’s the determinants of the various matricies reduce to the limits. Now, all I gotta do is skew up or down on one set, and just watch the tilts on the others. I really think you will like the results in AE.

Sounds like you're already doing something in the direction I'm suggesting. The only reason I'm suggesting that you use the kth root of the product of k factors is that it allows you to model substitutability without having to worry about modelling the economy in hideous detail.

Personally, I'd rather have the player control of production be removed from the game all together! What is this, Age of Empires or Total Annihilation? The only thing the player should have control of is getting the supplies and resources needed for the economy to the necessary points...none of this fantasy crap.[8D]

Reg, HFP has already promised us that aircraft attrition is going to be higher in AE, at least in that fewer aircraft will be ready for use on any day. I realize that just putting 200 aircraft into the pool makes it too easy to get them to the front, but it's just as easy for either player to get replacement aircraft to the front.

As far as the loss of the aircraft aboard the ships, most of us have found some way to replicate the experience of the Langley in the early going. I don't think that forcing either player into having to experience a monumental historical foulup is very fair. We are, after all, trying to simulate history, not replicate it.

Just my opinion...

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

It's just has always seemed to me like both sides had too much of everything. Replacements, spare a/c, supplies, fuel. That the game might actually be more interesting if you took away from the side that has too much, instead of adding to the side that has too little by comparison; both already can put military power at the Schwerpunkte far more effectively and efficiently than was possible IRL.

Bang on...[:)]

First; the reason the average Jap player does much better than his historical counterpart is because he knows from hindsight not to do certain things/do certain things. There is no real consequence of doing something wrong. Let KB hang around Pearl a week or two and bomb the base to bits. If you screw up and lose a CV or two, a new game is just a restart away. There is no IJA/IJN conflict, the supply system is abstracted enough to let you reload 16 inch-shells from any random base on the map you captured two days ago. Aircraft magically appears on a remote jungle base simply by clicking on a button. Etc etc etc. Production comes very low on this list of why the Japs do better than historically.

Second; the idea to cripple the Japanese industry by putting a limit on the production is ridiculous. That is like claiming that it was physically impossible for an industrial nation with millions of citizens to build more than 1000 aircraft a month. Thats just stupid. Does anyone in here really believe that if the Japs had had enough resources, factories, manpower, oil, infrastructure etc, they wouldnt have been able to build more aircraft than they did in real life? The US would always be able to produce more, yes, but that is a different kettle of fish entirely. Then your beef is with the US production system and not the Jap production system. A far better solution would be, then, to increase US production if Jap production reaches a certain threshold. For example, if Japanese aircraft production gets higher than 1000 aircraft per month, then the US production doubles. If it gets higher than 2000 aircraft per month, then the US production is quadrupled.

In many of the AARs where the Jap player has huge production numbers, the Jap player has also captured large parts of China, sometimes even India or Australia. With all that the added industry, resources, manpower who can really argue that it would be impossible for the Japs to produce more than they did in history?

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Reg, HFP has already promised us that aircraft attrition is going to be higher in AE, at least in that fewer aircraft will be ready for use on any day. I realize that just putting 200 aircraft into the pool makes it too easy to get them to the front, but it's just as easy for either player to get replacement aircraft to the front.

I was hoping for additional attrition for long distance transfers which would prevent units madly hopping all over the the map (and setting up those infamous CAP ambushes). Whilst this can still be done, you would have to be prepared for the cost. The size of destination bases would be a big factor in the attrition rate suffered.

Check these very forums, IRL they are still digging aircraft out of Artic ice and Welsh beaches which were lost on these long distance transits - in some cases entire flights were lost!!

One can only hope.

2by3 made a mess of it from the start. The original game should have come with TWO basic campaign scenarios. One would be the "Historical Scenario" with actual real-life reinforcements/replacements/etc. The Japanese player in this one would need a really big set of "hairy brass ones" to deal with the situation his real-life counterparts found themselves in. "Survive to the end of '45" and you gain "Diety" status..., plus the right to "razz your opponant" for 5 years.

The second would be the "Hirohito has a Wet Dream Scenario" with the Japanese player getting all sorts of "extra goodies" and production, and the Allies hamstrung. Certainly more fun for the Japanese players, and more of a struggle for the Allies..., but not really "The War in the Pacific"...., and with "Ho Hum Bragging Rights".

Unfortunately, 2by3 only gave us the second version.

ORIGINAL: herwin
Sounds like you're already doing something in the direction I'm suggesting. The only reason I'm suggesting that you use the kth root of the product of k factors is that it allows you to model substitutability without having to worry about modelling the economy in hideous detail.

Spot on, herwin ! No, we’re using neither Cutler, nor Kraus, nor Greenspan; the internal velocities of the Japanese economy are irrelevant. It won’t poop if it ain’t fed.

This reduces to 3 relatively simple matricies of input coefficients. How hard would it be to get self-consistent sets of determinants?? But that was the easy part.

The harder part was to express the input parameters as a function of the ‘shipping’ capabilities on the one hand, and bound the ‘shipping’ capabilities, by operational requirements, on the other. Even worse, ship tonnage and capacity (different) have substantial and different effects on things like the ability to dock at certain ports, carry troops (or not), repair/upgrade/convert requirements, woof!

I’m looking at a 5 dimension vector space, so don’t be surprised if the Huflungpoo Maru does not have the exact tonnage and cargo capacity she did in IRL.. Almost all the vessels are “tweaked” to fit within the many, and often conflicting, requirements of the code. If anybody tries to “improve” things by using IRL numbers, I hope I live far enuf away from the blast.

I mention all this just to let you know that we, too, are thinking, and thinking very deeply. Everything is heavily documented, so when this puppy hits the street, I can shoot you my specs and my math if you want. We can happily argue over the shape of the model; always looking for new and intelligent solutions. Ciao.

ORIGINAL: JWE

Everything is heavily documented, so when this puppy hits the street, I can shoot you my specs and my math if you want. We can happily argue over the shape of the model; always looking for new and intelligent solutions. Ciao.

This could be the biggest improvement of all. From discussions I've seen in the past, it seemed that nobody really knew how the programming worked in the current versions of the game.

ORIGINAL: msieving1

ORIGINAL: JWE
Everything is heavily documented, so when this puppy hits the street, I can shoot you my specs and my math if you want. We can happily argue over the shape of the model; always looking for new and intelligent solutions. Ciao.

This could be the biggest improvement of all. From discussions I've seen in the past, it seemed that nobody really knew how the programming worked in the current versions of the game.

Unfortunately, you still won’t know. The program code is proprietary, and I am unalbe to talk about it..

The math elements used to define device specific parameters is not (unless I change my mind, or am asked to do so). But how the elements are utilized by the code is proprietary and will not be discussed. That's not to say there will not be tons of things to talk about, and sufficient grist for mathematicians to go on about for quite some time. But as for the code, itself ... Sorry, no joy.

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

First; the reason the average Jap player does much better than his historical counterpart is because he knows from hindsight not to do certain things/do certain things...

...With all that the added industry, resources, manpower who can really argue that it would be impossible for the Japs to produce more than they did in history?

So if an average Jap player (let alone a good one) does much better than his historical, conquers more territory than historical and produces more military items than historical, you are happy with this as a simulation of the real War in the Pacific??

Though hampered by a fixed setup, the Allied player also has all the benefits of hindsight and should be able to counter Japanese player strategies (the Sir Robin strategy being a good example). The underlying balance must be a factor.

Mike Scholl, with some players saying the AI is too easy you would think that they would jump at the opportunity of a more realistic and challenging scenario.[:D]

ORIGINAL: JWE


I mention all this just to let you know that we, too, are thinking, and thinking very deeply.

All I could think of was ..."Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy"

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: JWE

I mention all this just to let you know that we, too, are thinking, and thinking very deeply.

All I could think of was ..."Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy"

Actually my best favorite was Leonard "Pith" Carnell

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: herwin
Sounds like you're already doing something in the direction I'm suggesting. The only reason I'm suggesting that you use the kth root of the product of k factors is that it allows you to model substitutability without having to worry about modelling the economy in hideous detail.

Spot on, herwin ! No, we’re using neither Cutler, nor Kraus, nor Greenspan; the internal velocities of the Japanese economy are irrelevant. It won’t poop if it ain’t fed.

This reduces to 3 relatively simple matricies of input coefficients. How hard would it be to get self-consistent sets of determinants?? But that was the easy part.

The harder part was to express the input parameters as a function of the ‘shipping’ capabilities on the one hand, and bound the ‘shipping’ capabilities, by operational requirements, on the other. Even worse, ship tonnage and capacity (different) have substantial and different effects on things like the ability to dock at certain ports, carry troops (or not), repair/upgrade/convert requirements, woof!

I’m looking at a 5 dimension vector space, so don’t be surprised if the Huflungpoo Maru does not have the exact tonnage and cargo capacity she did in IRL.. Almost all the vessels are “tweaked” to fit within the many, and often conflicting, requirements of the code. If anybody tries to “improve” things by using IRL numbers, I hope I live far enuf away from the blast.

I mention all this just to let you know that we, too, are thinking, and thinking very deeply. Everything is heavily documented, so when this puppy hits the street, I can shoot you my specs and my math if you want. We can happily argue over the shape of the model; always looking for new and intelligent solutions. Ciao.

Amen, brother. I've done econometric modelling (of an ancient economy)...

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

First; the reason the average Jap player does much better than his historical counterpart is because he knows from hindsight not to do certain things/do certain things. There is no real consequence of doing something wrong. Let KB hang around Pearl a week or two and bomb the base to bits. If you screw up and lose a CV or two, a new game is just a restart away. There is no IJA/IJN conflict, the supply system is abstracted enough to let you reload 16 inch-shells from any random base on the map you captured two days ago. Aircraft magically appears on a remote jungle base simply by clicking on a button. Etc etc etc. Production comes very low on this list of why the Japs do better than historically.

Second; the idea to cripple the Japanese industry by putting a limit on the production is ridiculous. That is like claiming that it was physically impossible for an industrial nation with millions of citizens to build more than 1000 aircraft a month. Thats just stupid. Does anyone in here really believe that if the Japs had had enough resources, factories, manpower, oil, infrastructure etc, they wouldnt have been able to build more aircraft than they did in real life? The US would always be able to produce more, yes, but that is a different kettle of fish entirely. Then your beef is with the US production system and not the Jap production system. A far better solution would be, then, to increase US production if Jap production reaches a certain threshold. For example, if Japanese aircraft production gets higher than 1000 aircraft per month, then the US production doubles. If it gets higher than 2000 aircraft per month, then the US production is quadrupled.

In many of the AARs where the Jap player has huge production numbers, the Jap player has also captured large parts of China, sometimes even India or Australia. With all that the added industry, resources, manpower who can really argue that it would be impossible for the Japs to produce more than they did in history?

While I agree there are many factors that can be attributed to the average Japanese player achieving far greater success in most games than was done historically, MASSIVE over-production is the dominate reason.

Here’s the overall Japanese air frame production numbers given in John Ellis’ book, World War II: A Statistical Survey. Transport air frames are unknown, but I think that’s because most Japanese transport aircraft doubled as bombers so are tabulated in bomber production.


………………. Fighters………. Bombers………. Recon………. Trans………. Trainers
1941………. 1,080…………… 1,461.............. 639…………… unk…………. 1,489
1942………. 2,935…………… 2,433.............. 967…………… unk…………. 2,171
1943………. 7,147…………… 4,189.............. 1,046………… unk…………. 2,871
1944………. 13,811………… 5,100.............. 2,147………… unk…………. 6,147
1945………. 5,474…………… 1,934.............. 855…………… unk…………. 2,523

I’m not going to list the allies as they massively out-produced the Japanese in all areas, but as a comparison, the US alone produced 4,416 fighters in 1941 which is almost 100% pre-war production levels. They built 10,769 in 42, 23,988 in 43, 38,873 in 44 and 20,742 in 45.

The UK more than doubled Japanese fighter production until 1944 when they actually were out-produced by Japan by a few thousand, but by then they depended on the US for the majority of their fighter production.

So for 1942 the Japanese averaged 245 fighters a month of ALL types. Japan typically produces more than 300 zeroes a month in game and hundreds more other types. I seriously doubt Japan could ever have achieved such levels of fighter production historically no matter how much its economy was tweaked.

At its highest point in 1944 Japan only produced 1150 fighters a month of ALL types, Japan beats even that production figure in game from the first few months of the war on. I think I read one AAR where Japan's in-game economy was building 3,000+ fighters a month in 42 or 43 with no reported shortages to other areas of the games economy.

This is just fighter production, Japan only produced 13,350 artillery guns (including AAA and AT tubes) for the entire war. Heck just the AAA upgrades to its ships probably accounts for more than half these historical tubes, I bet Japan builds 10-20 times as many artillery tubes in game as they did historically.

Over-production for the Japanese is a huge game imbalance when it comes to historical accuracy and capabilities. And it is the main reason the Japanese can achieve so much more in game, not some historical hindsight on the players part. Hindsight helps, but isn’t as big an issue as you might think, since both players have that advantage so it negates out a lot of the advantage.

Jim