Japanese Comodities

[Historiker]

I'm not counting the 81k produced monthly in Burma. I don't expect to ever see much of that.

A good reason do capture Ceylon and the Ganges delta - especially as the Ganges Delta also has a lot of supply production that may fed most of the Japanese Army demands there.

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Very good analysis, Q-Ball.  Unfortunately, I don't have a clue as to how much fuel the shipping will use.  My goal is to ship ~250k fuel from the SRA to Japan (~100k over the requirements for the HI there).  The rest (~250k) will be available for use by the fleet.  Not much at all.  I'm not counting the 81k produced monthly in Burma.  I don't expect to ever see much of that.

In WITP, I never repaired the Burmese Oil Fields, because it's too easy to bomb. In AE, there is alot more Oil in Burma, kinda hurts to not fix it, but it just seems too easy to shut it down. Not to mention the fact that loading at Rangoon could be within range of Allied LBA.

I think it will be important to develop a "budget" for IJN fuel consumption, or it will quickly get away from us. All production in 1942 will be artificially high because of existing stockpiles, once they are exhausted we will see the true sustainable rate of fuel consumption.

It is also making me think twice about building Musashi; I always did in AE, but now, between the reload difficulty, fuel consumption, and need for HI elsewhere.....seems like kind of a waste now, no? I will probably still build Yamato, as she is pretty far along at start.

[Mike Solli]

I'm not sure about the Musashi.  All your arguments are valid, but I just love to have Japanese BBs surprise an Allied TF somewhere and trash it.  Now with the new fuel situation, that may be a thing of the past....

[Historiker]

Nah! Never give up a Japanese BB! [:@] I'll build it for sure!

[Blind Sniper]

What do you think about building CV's?
Junyo and Hiyo need only 2800 fuel and they come early.

[Mike Solli]

I always build every CV I can get. [:D]  Since they are so slow, I consider the Junyo and Hiyo to be the flagships for the Japanese CVLs and CVEs. [:D]

[Mynok]

I don't foresee much of a baby KB in AE.

[vaned74]

Good analysis Mike. Maybe you've already done a sheet like this but this is my excel sheet for tracking efficiency of the Japanese merchants etc in regards to transporting fuel.

The file is .xls.txt - remove the .txt to view it as an excel file.

In the spreadsheet - about 20 columns are the ships by class. At the end of the columns is an interesting analysis. Assuming a 70 hex trip distance from the SRA to the Home Islands and 55% of the Japanese merchants sailing each day (leaving 45% for load/unloading, repairs, etc) you will see the merchant fleet can consume over 10,000 fuel points per day. Now this is extreme, not all will be hauling the long distances but one can play around with the numbers and %sailing daily to get some estimates of how much fuel you will need. As an FYI, you will need almost all of your merchant fleet hauling resources, fuel, supplies, and oil if you want to collect it all and bring it home...

[Mike Solli]

Very nice.  Thanks!  I've been wanting to do something like this.  The next step (for me) is to figure out distances between ports.

[vaned74]

Here is the table in the excel file posted as an embed picture (if it works...)

[vaned74]

For calculating your total merchie fuel consumption per day, all that really matters is the number of ships moving at cruise speed (assuming it is the rare ship engaged in merchant ops that is steaming at full speed) and not counting those days where you may spend waiting for berthing spots in the port and consuming a hex worth of endurance.

The number of ships available column at the end is the numbers of those ships that I have left. You will note that I,

(1) converted all Ansyu, Tosu, etc xAK and xAKL that I could to ACM, PB, AMc classes. I am not sure that converting all Ansyu (those capable of making 14 knots) with their 3,000 ton cargo cap was such a good idea now, but, I figure if they help keep the subs from shelling and can start gaining some ASW experience they will help in the long run. Also, I need as many 14 knot speed, long endurance escorts as possible.

(2) converted all 12,000 cap tankers to Tonan Whaler class - these things are large - protect them well (hence all the extra PBs).

(3) converted all other TKs to their oiler (AO) class - I lost a little liquid carrying cap on this (maybe 30,000 tons) but now my whole fleet is flexible and also heavily armed in case a sub tried to hit one on the surface at night and/or an aircraft comes after one (that is an ugly thought...).

I have a bunch of the next tanker class accelerated as well as a few Std-A freighters that can be converted to tankers. Also, using the Std-C xAKs only on very well protected routes as I will be converting them into TKs in June. Those conversions, the two type A freighters and 6 accelerated 8,150 ton tankers set to arrive by end June should add me about 120,000 tons of liquid capacity which in turn makes the whole system a lot more efficient.

[vaned74]

and finally, if you assume the civ fleet is consuming maybe 9,000 fuel per day in full operations (about 40-50% sailing time on average) then your fuel economy is roughly as follows:

if all oil captured in SRA and repaired fully (including the additional 160 oil centers in Brunei and Miri that start damaged) you will see have the following:

2,704 oil centers (300 additional in Magwe, Burma - assuming the transport route is too long and too hazardous to make it worthwhile to pick up from Rangoon - whatever trickles down the roads into Thailand is gravy...)

This allows you to produce 27,040 tons of oil per day which can be refined (through 2,704 refineries) into 24,336 fuel points and 2,704 supplies.

Now, in my PBEM (now in Feb, 42 and one we restarted made it to Mar, 42) Japan controls about 7,100 heavy industry centers.

This means fuel consumption is as follows:

heavy industry - 14,200 fuel per day
merchant fleet - 9,000 fuel per day

total 23,200 per day

That leaves about 1,136 fuel per day for fleet operations and note these fleet operations also include all those minesweepers, patrol craft, destroyers, etc that have to escort your merchant fleet around as well as all those miscellaneous supply ships and transports that have to move troops, etc around as well as accounting for any spoilage loss and loss of fuel for overland transports.

In other words Japanese Fan Boys - you don't have a lot of margin to go galavanting around the globe to far off places. Consider the following operation -
KB sails from Truk to raid Fiji:

- distance is 2,000 nm (50 hexes)
- so you have to sail 100 hexes in total
- assume another 50 hexes spent for either accounting for a sprint at max speed somewhere or just cruising around
- assume you took:
* all six fleet CVs
* 15 destroyers (Shiratsuyu, Hatsuharu classes with 6,000 endurance)
* CA Tone and Chikuma
* 2 Kongo Class BCs

You will consume 224 tons of fuel in this operation per cruise speed hex travelled or about 34,000 tons. Things have changed quite a bit from Witp days.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: vaned74

(2) converted all 12,000 cap tankers to Tonan Whaler class - these things are large - protect them well (hence all the extra PBs).

That is an error. Those TKs should not be able to convert to the Tonan Whaler class. It's supposedly fixed in the patch. (I haven't installed the beta patch. I'm waiting for the official patch.)

[vonSchnitter]

Hi Mike,

sorry to intrude, but it looks like the Honshu commodity distribution system is at least partially flawed.

Have a look here.

tm.asp?m=2232587&mpage=1&key=&#2234145

[Mike Solli]

vonSchnitter, it's no intrusion.  This is an open forum for all to come in to discuss stuff.  That's an important find.  You may want to mention it in the economics thread here:  http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1639011
 
That's something that needs to be fixed.

[vonSchnitter]

Hi Mike,

your thread - and an important one - so please use your post count to get some attention to the issue: Shimoneseki alone , Honshu in general or the old land movement thing.

The honours are yours.

[stuman]

I have not experienced that yet. So are we sying that resources from all over Honshu slowly collect at Shimoneseki no matter what ? Interesting to say the least.

[Q-Ball]

Maybe Honshu is slightly tilted to the left?

Seriously, that needs a fixin' if it's true. That would mean Resource storage on Honshu is basically capped at 1mil., and you wouldn't see Shimoseki go down until the remaining cities are out.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

Maybe Honshu is slightly tilted to the left?

Seriously, that needs a fixin' if it's true. That would mean Resource storage on Honshu is basically capped at 1mil., and you wouldn't see Shimoseki go down until the remaining cities are out.

That wouldn't be good. With all the resource centers on Honshu producing, 1 million resources in the pool is only a 10 day supply.

[vaned74]

I also encountered the Shimonoseki 999,999 resource issue - I figured it was because I was running resources from Fusan into there as well as had a route from China into Nagasaki plus the port-to-port transfer from Kyushu to Honshu there.

I ran some large freighters in and took off about 150,000 resources and then next day it dropped down to 450,000 resources stored. Perhaps at 999,999 - it stops sucking resources from the site.

Regardless, that got me to start looking around Honshu and I found Iwaki (next to Sendai) with its 640 resource centers up at 948,000 resources. This makes local convoy planning hell when stockpiles build or vanish in seemingly illogical fashions.

I do note though that my local convoys from Hakodate to Aomori/Ominato are doing a good job sucking the resources off of Hokkaido, and in particular Kushiro (900+ resource centers). In my last PBEM (ended Mar, 1942) I had 600,000 resources there and was struggling to get caught up as the place was making another 16,000/day and the port size 3 only allowed 24,000 tons to dock there at a time. In this game I have been steadily running two 20,000 ton convoys every 2-4 days from Hakodate and this has done well to keep Hokkaido from building up a stockpile (actually less resources on it now than when the war started). The further advantage of this local convoy route is that it is 1 hex jump with minefields in both ports so Allied subs would be asking for a lot of trouble here.