Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: treespider

But I digress...

The real concern seems to be the late game the Japanese are able to put up a bunch of fighters in the air because they are not burning Fuel but using supply.

So lets say hypothetically we cause the aircraft to burn Fuel...how much should they burn?

The Japanese in DBB-C can theoretically produce c.7900 Fuel points per day in the Home Islands. Don't you think players will simply start to create large stock piles of fuels points in the HI to compensate?

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: treespider

But I digress...

The real concern seems to be the late game the Japanese are able to put up a bunch of fighters in the air because they are not burning Fuel but using supply.

So lets say hypothetically we cause the aircraft to burn Fuel...how much should they burn?

The Japanese in DBB-C can theoretically produce c.7900 Fuel points per day in the Home Islands. Don't you think players will simply start to create large stock piles of fuels points in the HI to compensate?

I can attack those.

I don't play DBB yet. I assume those fuel points must still come from Oil, which had to be hauled to the HI on scarce tankers. If I sink the tankers before the endgame, by historic use of my subs for example, there won't be 7900 fuel points per day, and a lot less air defense for the HI. In contrast, now, with the LI model, the HI make supply from local resources and planes can fly while isolated from the rest of the map forever, unless the Allies take out either Resources or LI. I've done a strat bombing campaign into mid-1946. Trying to swat down LI is really hard to do.

In summary, the difference with a fly-fuel model is the petroleum resources are geographically distant from the HI where they will be needed at the 11th hour. LI is right next to Resources in Japan. Supply is a closed loop.

ORIGINAL: Puhis

It is no longer possible to shut off LI.

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.

The problem is structural. In fact, AVGAS is supply points in this system - refineries produce supply explicitly for that reason.

At root, a better system would be if we had a breakout of "supply" as three items

munitions (ammo for short) - which is 90% of what is used (by weight) when fighting
fuel (POL for short - the formal military meaning - all petroleum products) - which is the majority of what is used by motorized units when
moving - and by ships
general supply (supply for short) - everything else - including food, spare parts, name it - this is a small requirement for all but draft land
units - but it is universal - and pretty much independent of if a unit is fighting or moving - it always needs general supply

I even proposed that for WITP - compared to UA - but it was too fundamental to get included.

The other thing that needs to be present for economics to make real sense is more kinds of "resources"
The ancient paper "War in the Pacific" by SPI had "northern Resource points" and "Southern Resource Points" - an attempt to say that you cannot just
import resources from one place and get all you need, period.
I prefer to separate out things like coal - which is the MAJORITY of what Japan imports (by weight) - and which is also important economically (coking coal is a fundamental requirement to make steel - steel is the second most important limit on wartime production after oil - the total amount of steel you can make is limited and hard to grow rapidly - and your choices of what to do with it are critical - you can build rifles, tanks, warships, bridges, railroads, steel frame factory buildings - the list is long) - and coal also is a fuel used for most electrical power and many steam powered industrial operations. Not to mention a fuel for some ships. So coal alone accounts for a significant majority if imported resources. Then there is iron ore - the second biggest thing needed by weight. But both are worthless without other minerals - I represent them by copper - but one might use another term. All these are different from oil. And there is important critical stuff - I represent it with rubber - but it includes antimony - you can't make ammunition without it. Finally there needs to be some sort of agricultural input - a place that generates food or cotton (for guncotton as well as uniforms) - ought not to be creating the same thing as a place making coal, iron, other minerals, etc does. That way you value a location for what it makes, and cannot substitute that for what you must get somewhere else.

We are not going to see this stuff in WITP/AE or derivitive products.

The real problem with air units is they do not need enough supply points. They pretty much fly almost for free. Since supply is defined in tons, supply for combat missions ought to include the weight of bombs! It does not. It does not even matter how much you fly. Only the use of drop tanks increases your supply costs - a little.

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 ... [:)]

ORIGINAL: treespider

So give us a number how much Fuel should be used for 2 Babs flying a recon vs 27 Zeros on CAP vs 48 Sally's?