Air missions should use Fuel

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: treespider

Likewise what does the "HI" expended at the start of every month for pilots represent? One could say "Fuel". So cut off the HI production in the Home Islands which requires "Fuel" and pilot production grinds to a halt.

Yeahbut in a fuel-flying system the Allies would have to haul it to their islands too. They don't have an HI pilot penalty. (Now Alfred will prove me wrong.)

Also, if the HI bank could be attacked and destroyed like fuel can be you'd have a better point for it being a plane fuel analog. As it is now it resides in some 5th dimension tesseract.

[oldman45]

I think we went down a too complicated road. There are so many things abstracted in this game, a simple 1 fuel point per engine per mission would be a good starting point.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: treespider

Likewise what does the "HI" expended at the start of every month for pilots represent? One could say "Fuel". So cut off the HI production in the Home Islands which requires "Fuel" and pilot production grinds to a halt.

Yeahbut in a fuel-flying system the Allies would have to haul it to their islands too. They don't have an HI pilot penalty. (Now Alfred will prove me wrong.)

Also, if the HI bank could be attacked and destroyed like fuel can be you'd have a better point for it being a plane fuel analog. As it is now it resides in some 5th dimension tesseract.

The Allies already have to haul "Avgas" in 55 gallon drums ...its called "Supply"

[oldman45]

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: oldman45

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

[PaxMondo]

I see no advantage in complicating and encumbering the current economic system.  If you really like that, I suggest a good game called "Victoria".  I don't see WitPAE as that type of game.  I think it fine the way it is.
 
The good news is that my opinion matters squat.[:D]  It won't happen, so I have nothing to worry about.[8D]
 

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: oldman45

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

Yeah, because we know how well that worked - SMH.

[inqistor]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

Air missions should use Fuel as well as Supply

I fully realise that there are no future functional code changes planned to the game engine, but I'm still going to try anyway.

Hypothesis:-

If there is one single thing that this game needs it is for air missions to use fuel as well as supply.

Why? Well AvGas is a product of oil refineries, so it's factual. Secondly, it would drastically reduce the operational tempo in general and thirdly (most importantly) Japan would be faced in-game with what was it's most crucial problem in reality. Which as of right now it isn't. It can keep thousands of planes in the air right up to the finish.

I do not believe this would be massively difficult to code, and the effects would be very well contained, just confined to how many planes take off for XYZ air mission. There ought to be no bug leakage into other areas unless the code really is borked beyond belief.

Discuss ... [:)]

The only possible problem with this approach, is that you have to now transport fuel for smaller islands, as most larger/continents have somewhere native fuel production. IIRC it is impossible to unload fuel without port, so that can create some problem, when player lands on undeveloped dot. It can somehere slow Allied advance, but that is whole difficulty I can see.

To sum up - it does not seem, that such modification change much in gameplay, unless planes actually use much of this fuel, in that case Japan will be unable to supply islands in range of Allied airforce, so overall result will be even faster tempo, because Japan will be unable to put planes on islands into air.

[Dili]

Land Units and airplanes, need fuel and there is fuel in game so it is puzzling they don't use it. This downgrades the importance of ship tankers for example, it makes possible to operate big air units with just supply.

[LargeSlowTarget]

Ships, aircraft and land units do not use the same kind of fuel - ships use either "heavy fuel oil", diesel (submarines for example) or gasoline (PT boats), land units also need diesel and gasoline, planes need avgas.

But IMO it would go too far to seperate fuel (in the general sense) into heavy fuel oil, avgas, diesel and gasoline in the game - it would really become a logistical management game.

It may have some benefits to have avgas as a seperate category, but I think for the sake of playability it is ok to assume that supplies include diesel and gasoline for land units and that fuel includes diesel and gasoline for ships.

Not wanting to hijack the thread, but what "bothers" me more than the fuel situation is that ship crews don't seem to eat - replenishment only concerns ammo. Heck, the USN coffee consumption alone should place a strain on the supply chain [:D].

I still remember the game "Guadalcanal" on the C64. There you had a supply chain including several different categories of supplies to shift around - I think there were troops, arms, ammo, medical supplies, general supplies (food, clothing etc.) and avgas. Imagine this on AE scale...

[Captain Cruft]

Repeat: The proposal is that air missions should consume the already existing item called Fuel. No new items ...

[LargeSlowTarget]

Sorry, I have not expressed myself properly - I am at work and while pretending to work I do not have enough time to sort out my thoughts... [;)]

I'll give it another try.

I'm not asking for new items, on the contrary I argue against it.

I understand the goal to let Japan face an avgas crisis later in the war.

But I am against using fuel for air missions since "fuel" represents different kinds of petrol products which are at opposite ends on the scale of refinery products.

I just find it odd to use "fuel" for both 'light' products like avgas and petrol and 'heavy' products like fuel oil of the "Bunker C" variety.

Therefore I think the way it is in the game is ok - supplies represent the "light" products for land and air, while fuel represents the heavy stuff for ships and HI (with diesel and gasoline for subs and PTs being - ahem - disregarded).

If I am not mistaken, in stock scenarios refineries have a supply output which represents avgas, so "supplies" does cover avgas.

As an afterthought: air missions also require machine gun ammo, bombs and rockets i.e. supplies - so the mechanics would have to be changed to require both fuel and supplies for air missions.

[Captain Cruft]

Yes in stock refineries do produce supply. Nothing like the amount which comes from LI though. It also causes problems like Fortress Palembang etc.

In DaBabes, which is the best data available, refineries no longer produce supply.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: oldman45

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

To me the issue is that this is exactly what the PTO Allies did do. They went after the tankers with gusto from the summer of 1944 until they were all dead. This largely grounded the Japanese air training program, somewhat crippled kami pilots' preperation, and would have prevented any CAPs if the HI invasions had gone forward. There would have been no 5000 fighter CAP to stand up to B-29s in late 1945 as we see in AE.

My point about the Allies was in response to your seeming focus on only the Japanese implications of a flying-fuel mod. The Allies would also have to haul fuel forward to fly in the course of their re-conquest march west. The ranges would be greater than any the Japanese player has to deal with. They get massively more ships, and xAKs can haul fuel, inefficiently, but my point was that there would be Allied penalties to op tempo as well. And, the Allies don't care about HI or the fuel production of same consumes, so they would get a "hidden bonus" to an extent if fuel were required to fly training missions. Their huge replacement pilot pools are free.

A fuel-flying mod would be thus be a mixed bag of downstream effects, differing relative to the two sides.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: oldman45

I think we went do a too complicated road. There are so many things abstracted in this game, a simple 1 fuel point per engine per mission would be a good starting point.

I agree that in a perfect world fuel for flying would be included. I don't regard this as a minor abstraction; fuel destruction was a key strategic driver of the Allied war plan in both the PTO and ETO. It was a core goal of the submarine war in the Pacific. There are things represented in the game of far, far lower impact on strategy and tactics than having planes need petroleum to fly--coastal minesweepers come to mind.

As for the specific number, I agree it could be a simple point-per-engine thing even taking Alfred's excellent points about combat speeds and altitude efficiencies into account. I think one point per engine would be way too high though relative to how much fuel is needed to fuel a warship and how difficult it would be to keep far-flung bases supplied. But the idea of a fixed number has merit.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

I just find it odd to use "fuel" for both 'light' products like avgas and petrol and 'heavy' products like fuel oil of the "Bunker C" variety.

Therefore I think the way it is in the game is ok - supplies represent the "light" products for land and air, while fuel represents the heavy stuff for ships and HI (with diesel and gasoline for subs and PTs being - ahem - disregarded).

The core issue is that supplies can be made out of LI installations; planes can fly by burning bauxite, or iron ore, or rice. By forcing them to burn some type of petroleum product--fuel that already exists in the game, of whatever distillate name--you force each player, but the Japanese more so--to protect and manage the rarer petroleum source points and you elevate the strategic importance of refinery sites. You encourage the Allies to wage an anti-economic war, which they did, and not the LCU-destruction war we often see now, or the anti-IJN fleet actions we also see. The IJN becomes the protector of the resource flows which was its historic role after the defensive perimeter was established. As it is now the HI will have huge air capability long after would be the case if fuel were needed to fly. You relieve the Japanese player from having to make a guns vs. butter decision on how to use his limited fuel stocks after the big petroleum centers are re-conquered by the Allies.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: oldman45

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

To me the issue is that this is exactly what the PTO Allies did do. They went after the tankers with gusto from the summer of 1944 until they were all dead. This largely grounded the Japanese air training program, somewhat crippled kami pilots' preperation, and would have prevented any CAPs if the HI invasions had gone forward.

Which is abstractly represented by the denial of "Fuel" to the Home Islands which is needed for HI production which is subsequently needed for Pilot production...thus largely grounding the Japanese air training program.

There would have been no 5000 fighter CAP to stand up to B-29s in late 1945 as we see in AE.

Is a 5000 fighter CAP possible? I thought there was a hard limit on the number of units. Or is 5000 simply hyperbole?

My point about the Allies was in response to your seeming focus on only the Japanese implications of a flying-fuel mod.

Which seems to be what the biggest complaint so far in this thread...that LI Production in Japan allows for supply production which allows planes to keep flying.

The Allies would also have to haul fuel forward to fly in the course of their re-conquest march west. The ranges would be greater than any the Japanese player has to deal with. They get massively more ships, and xAKs can haul fuel, inefficiently, but my point was that there would be Allied penalties to op tempo as well. And, the Allies don't care about HI or the fuel production of same consumes, so they would get a "hidden bonus" to an extent if fuel were required to fly training missions. Their huge replacement pilot pools are free.

A fuel-flying mod would be thus be a mixed bag of downstream effects, differing relative to the two sides.

IMO (which we all have) there are a number of items that need to be addressed and aircraft consuming Fuel is far from the top of the list.

A number of mods address some of the issues...

1. DBB-C reduces cargo capacities.
2. My mod and now my and Vettims mod will increase the resource transportation requirements for the Japanese coupled with DBB-C's cargo limits

As to code changes the simplest would be to alter the spoilage formula and dramatically reduce the supply storage capacity in malarial regions on the map.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: treespider




So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

To me the issue is that this is exactly what the PTO Allies did do. They went after the tankers with gusto from the summer of 1944 until they were all dead. This largely grounded the Japanese air training program, somewhat crippled kami pilots' preperation, and would have prevented any CAPs if the HI invasions had gone forward.

Which is abstractly represented by the denial of "Fuel" to the Home Islands which is needed for HI production which is subsequently needed for Pilot production...thus largely grounding the Japanese air training program.

But it doesn't work. We see many AARs where the HI bank by 1945 is in the several millions, and HI banks aren't attackable by the Allies. There is never a shortage of pilots. If fuel were exposed on each airbase and needed to fly CAP the Japanese player would have to make a lot more difficult decisions.

There would have been no 5000 fighter CAP to stand up to B-29s in late 1945 as we see in AE.

Is a 5000 fighter CAP possible? I thought there was a hard limit on the number of units. Or is 5000 simply hyperbole?

It's not in collective terms. See rader's game vs. Greyjoy.

My point about the Allies was in response to your seeming focus on only the Japanese implications of a flying-fuel mod.

Which seems to be what the biggest complaint so far in this thread...that LI Production in Japan allows for supply production which allows planes to keep flying.

Fuel supply was never a problem for th eallies. Fuel location and transport was. In both cases making fuel a requirem,ent to fly, either at continental or island bases, would affect tactics, op tempo, and target focus. It would shhift the war in most games to different, more historical flows.

The Allies would also have to haul fuel forward to fly in the course of their re-conquest march west. The ranges would be greater than any the Japanese player has to deal with. They get massively more ships, and xAKs can haul fuel, inefficiently, but my point was that there would be Allied penalties to op tempo as well. And, the Allies don't care about HI or the fuel production of same consumes, so they would get a "hidden bonus" to an extent if fuel were required to fly training missions. Their huge replacement pilot pools are free.

A fuel-flying mod would be thus be a mixed bag of downstream effects, differing relative to the two sides.

IMO (which we all have) there are a number of items that need to be addressed and aircraft consuming Fuel is far from the top of the list.

A number of mods address some of the issues...

1. DBB-C reduces cargo capacities.
2. My mod and now my and Vettims mod will increase the resource transportation requirements for the Japanese coupled with DBB-C's cargo limits

As to code changes the simplest would be to alter the spoilage formula and dramatically reduce the supply storage capacity in malarial regions on the map.

[Captain Cruft]

In my Downfall game I am successfully avoiding most of the HI cost for training pilots by the simple method of pulling pilots from the pipeline onto the map to fill out Kamikaze and/or Training units. Once on the map they can train up using only Supply, and at a faster speed than off-map training.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

In my Downfall game I am successfully avoiding most of the HI cost for training pilots by the simple method of pulling pilots from the pipeline onto the map to fill out Kamikaze and/or Training units. Once on the map they can train up using only Supply, and at a faster speed than off-map training.

So you intentionally found a work around?