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The Japanese did better in aircraft production, relative to the size of their industry, than Germany did. But what is not well understood is Japan did TOO MUCH aircraft production. In two senses:

1) They could not provide enough pilots for all the planes;
2) They could not provide enough aviation spirit for all the planes.

Japan would have been BETTER served IF it had produced fewer planes, and more of the more expensive ones. Extra production resources (e.g. plant floorspace) should have been devoted to things like vehicles. Actually, Japan is wrongly believed not to have converted its vehicle plants to aircraft production - in fact it did this too much! Japan did not see tanks, in particular, as war winning weapons. They figured this out eventually - but by then it was too late - economically speaking.

Ok Andrew - I guess you have to decide what is "good analysis" ... but here at least is "some analysis" ...

Japanese Aircraft Production in real life ( per Angelucci )
1941 05,088
1942 08,861
1943 16,639
1944 28,180
1945 11,066

Total 69,834 for the entire war

Note that this includes Trainer and Liason aircraft ( 7,192 total ) subtracting these from the total we have 62,642 total production for comparison to WITP.

These are the "official" Japanese production numbers as determined by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS). There were gaps in the data collected by the USSBS (many Mitsubishi records were destroyed in a December, 1944 earthquake; other manufacturers' had records lost during the 1945 bombing campaign.) I'd view the USSBS numbers as a "base." The actual Japanese production was probably slightly higher.

"in the ballpark" might be true, but it is still about 30% too high for 1943 (assuming that the early part of the year was not dramatically below historic production levels). It will be interesting to see whan happens in 1944 if you get that far...

Andrew

Plus 30% is probably in the range for what should be possible for a player "fine tuning" production by maximizing oil/resources, heavy industry and plane types. I, too, would be interested to see if the a/c production system "levels out" or if it allows the Japanese to ramp up production by another 70% (as it did IRL) in 1944.

A note of interest: To my surprise, I noticed that from 1941 through 1944, Japanese and US aircraft production geared up at virtually the same rate. US production was consistently about x4 Japanese production every year from pre-war 1941 through 1944. With (I assume) over half of US aircraft being sent to Europe in the early years, the actual US edge in new production for the Pacific was less than 2:1. Has anyone posted figures on what % of US production aircraft were sent to the PTO each year?

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
So, in summary I would say Japanese aircraft production is "in the ball park" for both stock and CHS ...

Andrew, if you'd like to see something diffferent let me know what - and I"ll try to produce it for you.

Thanks Joe, that is just the kind of information I think we need. More detail would be great, of course, but that would take a lot of time.

"in the ballpark" might be true, but it is still about 30% too high for 1943 (assuming that the early part of the year was not dramatically below historic production levels). It will be interesting to see whan happens in 1944 if you get that far...

Andrew

A big problem with Japanese production is the nearly limitless mountains of supply which materialize = to resources. The fact that supply pops up magically (by design to prop the AI) at the front and does not have to be manufactured from resources/oil frees up so much shipping that Japan does not have a serious constraint here like they did in WW2 which hindered production.

This problem exists for the Allies as well, but has less of an impact due to the lack of any production model.

Is there any way to further tweak the logistics model? Reduce the resources/supply levels even further perhaps, or further reduce the capacities of merchants?

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
So, in summary I would say Japanese aircraft production is "in the ball park" for both stock and CHS ...

Andrew, if you'd like to see something diffferent let me know what - and I"ll try to produce it for you.

Thanks Joe, that is just the kind of information I think we need. More detail would be great, of course, but that would take a lot of time.

"in the ballpark" might be true, but it is still about 30% too high for 1943 (assuming that the early part of the year was not dramatically below historic production levels). It will be interesting to see whan happens in 1944 if you get that far...

Andrew

Actually, I have more detail - I have all the above numbers by plane type - I rolled them up so you could see the summary - didn't wanna start out "dazzling you will detail" - since I thought the summary made the needed point more clearly - but - since you asked - I'll assemble and post more detail shortly !!!

ORIGINAL: Blackhorse

Ok Andrew - I guess you have to decide what is "good analysis" ... but here at least is "some analysis" ...

Japanese Aircraft Production in real life ( per Angelucci )
1941 05,088
1942 08,861
1943 16,639
1944 28,180
1945 11,066

Total 69,834 for the entire war

Note that this includes Trainer and Liason aircraft ( 7,192 total ) subtracting these from the total we have 62,642 total production for comparison to WITP.

These are the "official" Japanese production numbers as determined by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS). There were gaps in the data collected by the USSBS (many Mitsubishi records were destroyed in a December, 1944 earthquake; other manufacturers' had records lost during the 1945 bombing campaign.) I'd view the USSBS numbers as a "base." The actual Japanese production was probably slightly higher.

"in the ballpark" might be true, but it is still about 30% too high for 1943 (assuming that the early part of the year was not dramatically below historic production levels). It will be interesting to see whan happens in 1944 if you get that far...

Andrew

Plus 30% is probably in the range for what should be possible for a player "fine tuning" production by maximizing oil/resources, heavy industry and plane types. I, too, would be interested to see if the a/c production system "levels out" or if it allows the Japanese to ramp up production by another 70% (as it did IRL) in 1944.A note of interest: To my surprise, I noticed that from 1941 through 1944, Japanese and US aircraft production geared up at virtually the same rate. US production was consistently about x4 Japanese production every year from pre-war 1941 through 1944. With (I assume) over half of US aircraft being sent to Europe in the early years, the actual US edge in new production for the Pacific was less than 2:1. Has anyone posted figures on what % of US production aircraft were sent to the PTO each year?

As to leveling out - I think that is the case - the bottleneck to ramping up is resources - not even oil !!! Now I have only my games to go by but in my games thus far anyway - even when I manage to capture some resources in CHina ( which is usual ) I lose some due to "demolition" in the expansion process ... and at some point lose some to 4EB ( there are a lot of spots to protect ! ) and then eventually will lose some to capture. I'd say by late 43 the Japanese will peak in all of my games any ( farthest advanced is the one I quote above - which is in Aug/43 ). It is certainly possible to increase the engine and aircraft factory capacity by a good bit more - and reserve is still growing - but the resource reserve is essentially flat at this point and thus that is the limiting factor. Does this mean there are actually insufficient resources in the game vis-a-vis history to permit the Japanese to increase production up to the historical levels ? Possibly - but based only on Joe's games I'd say "insufficient data" ... we need more folks to post their data who have gotten into late 43 from the 7/8 Dec start and to post their resource and oil status as well as their air factor status. In my AUg/43 game ( CHS 1.2 ) My resources are hovering right around 1 million in the reserve and oil is 1.8 million and still growing. Air production capacity is right around 1670 and growing very slightly. Heavy industry reserve is 600K and growing slightly.

As to % of aircraft for US .. the theory was 15% in 1942 and King got approval to increase to 30% in 1943 ... however, the theory and the reality are probably very divergent. And this "theory" was overall military resources in general ... the divergenece is greater when you look at the resources by type. Pulling together complete information on this topic sounds like a heck of a challenge, though I can grab bits and pieces, like the B17s we have by tail number and date, due to the FATS book. But very briefly and at a high level here is what it would look like if you took the total production numbers and laid them out by the 15% and the 30% factors. Of course this includes trainers, so reduce by maybe 30% for that, if you want to compare to WITP Japanese numbers. And this is only USA not Brits, Aussies, etc.

1941 19,445 (15%) 02,917 (30%) 05,834
1942 47,836 (15%) 07,175 (30%) 14,351
1943 85,898 (15%) 12,885 (30%) 25,769
1944 96,318 (15%) 14,448 (30%) 28,895
1945 47,714 (15%) 07,157 (30%) 14,314


So at least this provides a very rough ball park. Pulling the actuals by plane type might be a Ph.D. thesis ... unless it has already been done ...

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
So at least this provides a very rough ball park. Pulling the actuals by plane type might be a Ph.D. thesis ... unless it has already been done ...

When I said "more detail" I wasn't thinking of detail down to individual planes. I was thinking of ensuring that the figures really were as accurate as reasonably possible, and comparable to values from the game. So this would mean things like ensuring that trainers were not included, numbers of aircraft going to the Pacific theatre, and similar things. That is just so that we can compare apples with apples, instead of oranges.

The big question for me, regarding the Japanese economy, is whether the total outputs - ships, aircraft, fuel, supplies. etc - are equivelent to what was historically possible, given the variation in areas captured in the game vs real life, and other conditions, and the different priorities players place on things. For example, if the Japanese player can build more aircraft than was done historically by putting more resources into increasing this production, do they then suffer reduced levels in other areas as the trade-off, when compared to the historical record (taking into account all of the things I mention above). I don't think these are easy questions to answer, given that games diverge from what happened in reality, but I would not like the Japanese industrial capacity to be over-, or under-, represented to a sigificant degree, if that is possible to determine.

Or to try to put it another way - if the Japanese in the game conquer the same territory as in real life, and exploit the resources to the same degree, for the same amount of time, then the aircraft/ship/equipment production outputs should be roughly equivalent to the real life values, not higher or lower to any significant extent.

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
So at least this provides a very rough ball park. Pulling the actuals by plane type might be a Ph.D. thesis ... unless it has already been done ...

When I said "more detail" I wasn't thinking of detail down to individual planes. I was thinking of ensuring that the figures really were as accurate as reasonably possible, and comparable to values from the game. So this would mean things like ensuring that trainers were not included, numbers of aircraft going to the Pacific theatre, and similar things. That is just so that we can compare apples with apples, instead of oranges.

The big question for me, regarding the Japanese economy, is whether the total outputs - ships, aircraft, fuel, supplies. etc - are equivelent to what was historically possible, given the variation in areas captured in the game vs real life, and other conditions, and the different priorities players place on things. For example, if the Japanese player can build more aircraft than was done historically by putting more resources into increasing this production, do they then suffer reduced levels in other areas as the trade-off, when compared to the historical record (taking into account all of the things I mention above). I don't think these are easy questions to answer, given that games diverge from what happened in reality, but I would not like the Japanese industrial capacity to be over-, or under-, represented to a sigificant degree, if that is possible to determine.

Or to try to put it another way - if the Japanese in the game conquer the same territory as in real life, and exploit the resources to the same degree, for the same amount of time, then the aircraft/ship/equipment production outputs should be roughly equivalent to the real life values, not higher or lower to any significant extent.

Andrew,

So your initial request was for "good analysis" of the Japanese production as compared to the game. We gave some overall figures for that and these are as accurate as reasonably possible, to my knowledge. And I excluded trainers as indicated.

As to US production, or Allied air coming into the theater, that is a totally different question and I was not attempting to answer that one in my initial response to you. Nor would I care to go further with that at this time - given the desire to complete the IJA/IJN Air/ground revamp I'm working on. Pulling the actual figures by type for the Americans ( and the other Allies ) will be a project ( unless it is already done - and if it is already done - I haven't seen it ).

I would say the Japanese should have the "Capability" to produce aircraft at approximately the same levels as they did historically if all other things are equal. The game does give the Japanese player the ability to prioritize airproduction higher or lower than say for example ship production. However, the game does not allow the Japanese to produce more air units ( slot in which to deploy aircraft ) than he had historically .. hence no matter how many aircraft the Japanese player produces, he cannot have more effective planes on the map than the historical slots provided. Only if scenario designers added more hypothetical air units could any increased production come into play against the allies. And currently, in the game, the Japanese player has the ability to out build his slots at least as far as I've gotten in the game ( Aug 43 ).

Absorbtion of aircraft production is also a function of the rate at which they are destroyed in operations, the rate at which the Japanese player can train up new crews and the willingness of the Japanese player to deploy partially trained crews in combat. If the Japanese player can train his crews up to 70-75 before deploying in combat they will accomplish more than if the Japanese player deploys 50 exp crews. And it takes 1-2 months to train up from 50 to 70-75 ...

PDU really just allows the Japanese player to be much more efficient in producing planes that will be used. In my games without PDU I have hundreds and hundreds of useful planes ( Zeros, Kates, Vals, Betty's for example ) that will never be used. If I could've upgraded all the Zeros to the same A6M3 model ( instead of having to split them between A6M3 and A6M3a ) I would not have 600 unused zeros in my pool now. If some Nells could've upgraded to G4M1 instead of having to wait for G4M2 .... I would never have even built G4M2 and would've had everyone wait for P1Y1. Also I had Claudes sitting around waiting for A6M5 ... wouldn't happened in PDU game. So PDU always increase in effficiency, not numbers. And no matter how many planes you build, you can never deploy more than the slots available. And you can't train any faster than you can train ( lets say 2 months ) so you will also have significant portion of the air units in training ( as many as you have airbase space for in useful training areas ). So even if you are good at expending your aircraft rapidly ( in exchange for useful results hopefully ) you still have to spend 2 months training up to go do it again. And you can lose 100s of planes in a few days in the Uber air battles that seem to define the game from late 1942 on ...

I do suspect Japanese aircraft production would be difficult to raise up to historical levels in 1944 ... due to resource constraints ( not the ability to import them, just there existence ) ... but I'm not clear whether thereis purpose in doing so. What needs to be added to the Analysis then is looking at the available slots and the production needed to fill these slots, primarily the question is about 1944 ... I can state that it is possible to full the slots with historical production through Aug 1943 .. cuase I've done that .. with plenty of spare planes. So key question is, what level of aircraft production [increase] is needed to fill the new slots which become available in 1944 ? Unfortunately, not sure I have time to do that and continue down the IJA/IJN air/ground upgrade I'm working on ... but you set the priorities so you can change them !!! But until you do change them - I'll get back to working on the priority I already have !

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
... but you set the priorities so you can change them !!! But until you do change them - I'll get back to working on the priority I already have !

Well, it should not really be up to me to set priorities. But you have answered the question of Japanese aircraft production levels well enough for me, at least. It looks like not much should be changed on the Japanese production side, then? This is a timely question, because I have been reviewing the bases in China, including Manchukuo. From my initial analysis, it seems that:

- There are too many resources in Japanese occupied China/Manchukuo.
- There is too much HI in Japanese occupied China and Manchukuo.
- There is too much oil in Japanese occupied China/Manchukuo.

The oil should not be an issue, because as far as I can tell, the overabundance of Japanese domestic oil production can, and would, be more or less balanced out by a huge increase in Japan's initial oil stockpile, which appears to be much smaller than historical, but that leaves the HI and the resources.

If the Japanese industrial capacity in the game (and that means total capacity, not just aircraft) seems to be about right in the current scenario, then I will either have to make up for my reductions elsewhere, or increase the levels back to similar values to the stock scenarios. For HI, I think that the shortfall should be made up by increasing HI numbers in Japan proper. To me it seems that the proportion of HI in Manchukuo compared to the empire as a whole is too great. I am not sure what to do about resources if that level need to be increased again - if necessary, I will probably increase the levels in Manchukuo again (which is what the game designers seem to have done - of course it is quite possible that I have underestimated the resource values in Manchukuo and the designers really did get it right).

Edit - I don't think we need to revisit US production. I was just using the "theatre" comment as an example, although it is relevant if we are comparing number of US vs Japanese aircraft.

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
... but you set the priorities so you can change them !!! But until you do change them - I'll get back to working on the priority I already have !

Well, it should not really be up to me to set priorities. But you have answered the question of Japanese aircraft production levels well enough for me, at least. It looks like not much should be changed on the Japanese production side, then? This is a timely question, because I have been reviewing the bases in China, including Manchukuo. From my initial analysis, it seems that:

- There are too many resources in Japanese occupied China/Manchukuo.
- There is too much HI in Japanese occupied China and Manchukuo.
- There is too much oil in Japanese occupied China/Manchukuo.

The oil should not be an issue, because as far as I can tell, the overabundance of Japanese domestic oil production can, and would, be more or less balanced out by a huge increase in Japan's initial oil stockpile, which appears to be much smaller than historical, but that leaves the HI and the resources.

If the Japanese industrial capacity in the game (and that means total capacity, not just aircraft) seems to be about right in the current scenario, then I will either have to make up for my reductions elsewhere, or increase the levels back to similar values to the stock scenarios. For HI, I think that the shortfall should be made up by increasing HI numbers in Japan proper. I am not sure what to do about resources if that level need to be increased again - if necessary, I will probably increase the levels in Manchukuo again (which is what the game designers seem to have done - of course it is quite possible that I have underestimated the resource values in Manchukuo and the designers really did get it right).

Edit - I don't think we need to revisit US production. I was just using the "theatre" comment as an example, although it is relevant if we are comparing number of US vs Japanese aircraft.

Overall capacity seems about right - to me through 1943 ... can't say for 1944 ... I did accelerate the three Unryus and the Taiho and got them all in Summer 1943 ... I did freeze Shinano and Musashi - although I have finally unfrozen Musashi, she will come in - in Q1 1944. Also I accelerated a pile of tankers and AOs ... all my tankers are busy ... but I have 30 AOs just stting around waiting to support the next fleet action. Botton line - no oil carrying bottleneck at this point.
Reducing oil/resources in China will certainly not help - even though I don't pull much out of China to ship back to Home Islands ... it doesn't build up in CHina/Manchuko .. so either the AI is moving it to Japan on its own ... or the CHina/Manchuko HI are eating it.
There are no spare resources, in my games at least ... I do have a little oil reserve buildling up ( 1.8 million and climbing for oil ... 1 million resources and hovering for resources ). The bottleneck to increasing industrial capacity is for me in my games at least, resources.

Joe, why don't you use your AOs to carry oil back to Japan?

ORIGINAL: Nomad

Joe, why don't you use your AOs to carry oil back to Japan?

2 reasons ...

(1) The Tankers are clearing the ports at this point ( i.e. their are no spare oil points to carry )

(2) As soon as I run off with them(the AOs) - the USN CVs would show up - and I'd have to fight without them(the AOs) - which I prefer not to do - so they are "part of the fleet" - until the tankers can no longer carry all the oil back. Though I suspect I'll have the oil points bombed out before I lose the tankers. Even with all our house rules, subs still suck, though we will have to see if 1.7.7.8.9.9 helps, when it comes out ..

No my problems aren't in bringing the oil or resources back to Japan .. it is just there aren't enough resources ( there is enough oil ) to massively increase production at this point.