Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Aawulf

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

I can appreciate that it is a bit complicated to understand and I have always been willing to share what I have learned. But I must admit that the sarcastic "mushrooms" comment was nearly enough motivation for me to allow you to piss against the wind and learn the hard way.

Believe me, it was not meant to be sarcastic towards you. Your statement caught me so off guard that I said it to highlight my complete surprise. I had no idea it was this complex, hence my need to be on mushrooms to grasp it. Man I need to use emoticons properly! My apologies.

Dang the manual is confusing and wanting for information.

Under the circumstances, I should be the one apologizing. I misunderstood your comment as sarcasm even though it seemed terribly out of character for you. Shame on me.

Whaaaa! Hmmm, now whose being sarcastic, eh![:D] Seriously, I am a bit of a jackass sometimes but I was not trying to be a shiite there.

Hi Load costs are also what detirmines how much an item costs in supply.

I think Ron should actually play Japan before he decides if there is too much supply. This is an old issue with him and I don't think he has done his homework on how WITP and Japan actually work.

To be blunt.
1. The Japanese can't win WITP long scnearios. The Allied player can lose . Supply in SRA has nothing to do with this.
2 The Allied player can sit back till 1944 and still win. (many are simply in too big of a hurry )
3. There is no such thing as "supply generated in SRA" only "possible supply generated in SRA" In many games Japan captures no oil no resource and no supply because the places are destroyed. Your cutting what you don't even know exists.



In WITP is makes no difference if Japan has 100 transports or 1000 transports or 10,0000 transports. What matters
1. Who controls the sea and air. If Japan controls the sea and air then Japan will use what ever transports are on hand to conduct successful operations and move resource/oil/supply If Japan does not control the sea and air then transports become VP for the Allied player.

I don't think Ron has ever went into 1943 in anygame and I don't think he has ever made it to July 42.

Most WITP games have the Allies on the offensive by mid 1942. These changes will speed that up (not slow down Japan)

I think the changes are in the wrong area. Japanese supply in 1942 is the least of the Allied players worries. If Japan can move ships safely then they have a supply line if not they don't. This appears to be de facto cutting the Japanese supply line.

Ron you do know that most of what is consumed by military forces is in fact non military items. Units consumes their wieght many times over in food and other stuffs long before they empty the first magazine in a pistol. Stop trying to complicate this game. I think rather then make it more complicated you should make it simpler. Don't screw with ship sizes.

If you think the Japanese have too many AK then simply remove 143x7k AK (1 million load points)
Then play the game for a year or two and see if that was too many or not enough.

I play all my games as Japan
1. With 300x7k AP locked up forever
2. I never load assault units onto AK (except for Tanks )

I don't want to play a game that has Japan outbuilding not just the US but the entire Allied war economy or have 1000 4E bombers on Midway by Aug 42 etc. Pisses me off.

Amen brother! Seems we go to the same church!

Will not help much with outlying resource centers. If conquered, supply eating base forces containing support or motorised support squads will be destroyed. Once conquered, the effect will be gone.

Which is why I am playing with adding the supply eating things (device = support) to the resource center itself. Looks like it works so far.

He was workinig on it to simulate the ramp up of USA supplies.

I like it. I will play with it. Add heavy industry to certain US cities and they make more supplies after a certain date? That way you can start with reasonable levels and not compromise them by later war needs and STILL get the later war needs as they were.

The Japanese also start with too much oil production, as well as starting fuel reserves that are too large, and oil reserves that are too small.

Japan had oil reserves that were on a 30 month clock. The clock started ticking in July 1941 - when the embargo began. Japan produced about 10% of the oil it needed - a tiny bit in Japan and on Sakahalin - and rather more in Manchukuo. It also was able to buy about 10% via Thailand and China for the five months from July to December. Oil reserves should be 30 months at full consumption of the industry minus five months (July - December) plus one month ( 20 % - 10 for production and 10 for purchases times five months) = 26 months.

The thing I would really like to change is the coupling of resource generation with supply generation. If they were separated things could be set up a lot more realistically, in my opinion.

I think you want to REDUCE it but NOT eliminate it. That is because local places make food, timber and gravel - all significant for the local use by military forces. I think we can control how much of the supplies made at ANY resource center are consumed BY that resource center - giving us control of how many (if any) supply points we allow it to make (net). While we cannot stop the resource center from making supply points, we can "eat" them right there I think - right inside that center. Testing.

I ALSO think we can make - and should make - places like cities EAT supplies - so the heavy industry (and surplus resource center) generated supply points have to support these places - or the pools get sucked down. And I think we can do that too INSIDE the locations. Testing.

Before one can begin to understand the implications of tinkering with the load costs of the device types, one must recognize that the load costs of the "squads" are as vital to the combat system as they are to logistics.

This is a major reason Ron's changes are not safe. We don't know how the code uses many things, and radical changes are LIKELY to have unintended consequences. I propose NOT to tamper with load values at all. Instead, to just eat supplies where we want them eaten until all that remain are exactly what we think should be produed there - if any. And further, in some places, maybe, we eat supplies in excess of what is generated there -so the place needs to be fed or it will tend to "suck" supplies out of pools. These supply eating things should probably be parts of locations - because if regular units they might be destroyed and cease to function - and because we don't want players moving them to some more convenient place.

I can appreciate that it is a bit complicated to understand and I have always been willing to share what I have learned. But I must admit that the sarcastic "mushrooms" comment was nearly enough motivation for me to allow you to piss against the wind and learn the hard way.

Professionals don't take things personally. And it is hard to know what is said tongue in cheek and what is said seriously when there is no body language or tone of voice. I am glad you are in this discussion - and I beg you not to let snide remarks dissuade you from participating. This is a big problem and I had not addressed it because I wasn't sure HOW to address it - until now. And I am having technical problems even so. The manual does not give me what I regard as crititical data.

What is the supply cost of a support? Motorized support? Aircraft support? What happens if one of these is present at a location that defines resources or manufacturing?

Doubling the load cost of an infantry "squad" from ten to twenty results in twice the load cost, but also doubles the number of men sent into combat. Because you would then have to cut the number of "squads" to half what exists in order to reflect no actual change to the balance of power in terms of combat infantry, you would also need to reduce the number of support squads unless the desired effect includes having far more support than the units require.

Reviewing squads for SNLFs and airborne, it was immediately obvious that "load cost" for a squad is basically manpower (although cavalry squads may also count horses). I bet that larger squads have more staying power in combat - they survive casualties better.

Oh, so adjusting the load cost of squads is the only problem? Having altered the TOEs as done in the CHS does not muck up anything? Say I increase the load cost of a vehicle, does this increase the number of vehicles?

Looking at a list of vehicles it appears load cost for a vehicle = its weight.

I'd suggest adding your suggestion to the wish list ( decoupling resource and supply generation ) in those areas where we wind up convincing ourselves that the resource being generated is food we may wind up splitting the allocation between supply and resource ( after all the "resource" part has to go feed those hungary factory workers back in Japan ! ). But where the resource is "tin" .. then it is just resource and no supply ( can't eat tin and be healthy for long nor shoot it outta your rifle ! )

First, you COULD shoot tin out of your rifle! Germans on Java ran plantations and ran tiny factories which made tin things - everything sent back to Germany went in tin containers and lots of other things were made of tin - so no weight on those "Yanage operation vessels" was wasted.

Second, local supplies include food, timber and gravel (or crushed coral = gravel). The amount of local supplies varies from place to place and should be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Third, some places need MORE supplies than they make - and we should force these to be provided or the places tend to "suck" supplies - simulating the economic effect of those needs. You might not supply them, but try to stockpile supplies there and some will "disappear" - as they should!

[quote]Ron you do know that most of what is consumed by military forces is in fact non military items. Units consumes their wieght many times over in food and other stuffs long before they empty the first magazine in a pistol.

While I agree that Ron has proposed far to radical a set of changes,
this "fact" is false. Most of what a military unit needs is food and fuel - on the order of 90% for modern motorized units. And the majority of what all military units need in combat is ammunition - about 60% in WWII era.
Now out of combat, not much ammunition is moved, and if the unit is unmotorized or not moving, fuel requirements are low - but the weight of what the unit needs for spares and food is not a great logistic issue. Sometimes water is a big deal - in the desert and in tropical places with no potable water - but never more than the weight of spares - about 2% of the total average requirements. For a good general set of numbers and discussion, see various sections of JF Dunnigan's How to Make War. For more detailed numbers, see Dupuy's Numbers, Predictions and War.

ORIGINAL: Nomad

Ron, I remember something from one of the CHS people about it being possible to have factories and/or resource/oil locations that had a delay time. He was workinig on it to simulate the ramp up of USA supplies. I do also remember that there was a problem but maybe it would work with a house rule( the Allied player could do something to circumvent ). I wish I could remember more about this.

I was the person working on that idea. It sort of works, but there are some quirks that I never fully understood. Sometimes the "reinforcement" base would appear on the right date, and sometimes it would not. Also, even though a base would not be visible on the map until its assigned date, any resource/supply/oil centres attached to the base would still start producing from the start of the game, with the output building up at the base until it appeared on the map.

Also there are not a huge number of spare base slots left.

Eventually I gave up and adopted an alternative approach for the problem I was trying to solve - that of increasing US supply generation during the war - by adding additional Heavy Industry to US bases, along with damaged resource and oil centres that must be repaired. This works well for the purpose I wanted it for.

Andrew

. I never load assault units onto AK (except for Tanks )

Which means you never play historically. Not that you have to do so, but that is not simulating what IJA did.

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi Load costs are also what detirmines how much an item costs in supply.

I think Ron should actually play Japan before he decides if there is too much supply. This is an old issue with him and I don't think he has done his homework on how WITP and Japan actually work.

To be blunt.
1. The Japanese can't win WITP long scnearios. The Allied player can lose . Supply in SRA has nothing to do with this.
2 The Allied player can sit back till 1944 and still win. (many are simply in too big of a hurry )
3. There is no such thing as "supply generated in SRA" only "possible supply generated in SRA" In many games Japan captures no oil no resource and no supply because the places are destroyed. Your cutting what you don't even know exists.



In WITP is makes no difference if Japan has 100 transports or 1000 transports or 10,0000 transports. What matters
1. Who controls the sea and air. If Japan controls the sea and air then Japan will use what ever transports are on hand to conduct successful operations and move resource/oil/supply If Japan does not control the sea and air then transports become VP for the Allied player.

I don't think Ron has ever went into 1943 in anygame and I don't think he has ever made it to July 42.

Most WITP games have the Allies on the offensive by mid 1942. These changes will speed that up (not slow down Japan)

I think the changes are in the wrong area. Japanese supply in 1942 is the least of the Allied players worries. If Japan can move ships safely then they have a supply line if not they don't. This appears to be de facto cutting the Japanese supply line.

Ron you do know that most of what is consumed by military forces is in fact non military items. Units consumes their wieght many times over in food and other stuffs long before they empty the first magazine in a pistol. Stop trying to complicate this game. I think rather then make it more complicated you should make it simpler. Don't screw with ship sizes.

If you think the Japanese have too many AK then simply remove 143x7k AK (1 million load points)
Then play the game for a year or two and see if that was too many or not enough.

I play all my games as Japan
1. With 300x7k AP locked up forever
2. I never load assault units onto AK (except for Tanks )

Russ, Russ, Russ...

First off let's address this..I don't think Ron has ever went into 1943 in anygame and I don't think he has ever made it to July 42.


Aahhh, yeah. Well into 1943 multiple times. July 42 so many times I feel like the Star Trek crew in the time loop episode. In fact our game was into July 42 Mog when I temporarily lost my internet. Would have gone further but bugs and poor AI make this pointless.

I think Ron should actually play Japan before he decides if there is too much supply. This is an old issue with him and I don't think he has done his homework on how WITP and Japan actually work.

Have not done my homework? A gradeschool kid realises this to be the case. Main reason is due do generic nature of supply model. The supply is like tofu. Want it to be food, it tastes like food, want it to be bullets it tastes like bullets, want it to be 18.1" shell, it tastes like 18.1" shells. This multiplies the amount of supplies at a given point simply by a factor equal to whatever you want to explain what supply is.

We are going to find out soon enough if supply and economy is overabundant.. I am not convinced the massive cuts I've made will anything but slow down the pace a little.

To be blunt.
1. The Japanese can't win WITP long scnearios. The Allied player can lose . Supply in SRA has nothing to do with this.

So what? This may be true, may be not. Is that any reason to let the game run its course according to pure hoshposh? It's akin to making a football sim where one side always wins, the other loses, regardless, and because of and to spite this, the game is actually baseball.

This is totally impacted by supply. Loads of supply, no need for shipping to move it, results in a massive increase in available hulls. You I know I don't want to play a game where Japan can invade twenty or thirty places on the first move and have the supply and sealift capability to simultaneaously eat up the area she historically invaded in a fraction of the time. If this is not a reality of the game design why so you do this? I play all my games as Japan
1. With 300x7k AP locked up forever
2. I never load assault units onto AK (except for Tanks )
No supply issue here.[8|]

2 The Allied player can sit back till 1944 and still win. (many are simply in too big of a hurry ) Well, I'm glad you had such a massive impact on the games design, Russ. Seeing as the Allied player really can't do squat with his CVs until late 42/43 because of other design "insights", he does sit back and relies on monstrous fleets of LBA based at huge fantasy bases fueled by fantasy mountains of supply. Loads of fun for the serious gamer. Man, no supply issue here.[8|]

3. There is no such thing as "supply generated in SRA" only "possible supply generated in SRA" In many games Japan captures no oil no resource and no supply because the places are destroyed. Your cutting what you don't even know exists.

Uggghhh. Is this Mogami or Donald Rumsfeld? You know what I'm trying to do here, cut the silly notion that supply and resources should be produced in the same quantity at resource bases. Fine, if it WAS just basic food, I can see it. But the generic model makes this silly as the supply generated does it all from feeding the troops to filling their magazines. Pretty good for regions whose populations still eat Big Pig and whose economies are based on foreigners exploiting the populace as slave workers extracting raw materials out of a hole in the ground and piling on the crudest of docks waiting for it to be shipped to an industrial centre for manufacture.. This basic element of logistics/maufacturing whatever IS MISSING. Nope, no problem with supply here.[8|]

This is what you don't understand about my point of view. You say supply is food. I say in a game where supply is generic, there is no civilian economy and the game is primarily military (War In The Pacific), supply is military.

Hi Load costs are also what detirmines how much an item costs in supply.

Fine, but are there any other hidden consequences as Aawulf outlined? He states...

Device load costs affect more than the logistics in transporting the units. By doubling the load cost of a device, we increase the carrying capacity required for transport, decrease the supplies and support required per man unit for support of the device and doubles the strength of infantry units.

To accomplish the effect of doubling the support and supplies required by an Allied infantry unit, one would actually make the load cost half that of the similar Japanese infantry unit. The trick to it is that Allied units would require twice as many infantry "squads" in a division, the number of support squads needed would double and the supplies consumed would increase.

The primary reason for this is that the combat system treats each load cost unit as a set of boots.

This system would be a powerful tool except for the fatal flaw that we have only a single slot for the generic support unit rather than support unit slots that could be edited for the forces being represented. Because there is but one generic support unit, it would be impossible to historically reflect the secondary manpower when we tinker with the load costs and number of squads as I assume the current OOB's do now. At most, we can use the motorized support slot as a second standard support to help distinguish the logistical support needed by the different forces in the theatre.

If this is a bit illogical sounding and confusing, then you read it right.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

I'd suggest adding your suggestion to the wish list ( decoupling resource and supply generation ) in those areas where we wind up convincing ourselves that the resource being generated is food we may wind up splitting the allocation between supply and resource ( after all the "resource" part has to go feed those hungary factory workers back in Japan ! ). But where the resource is "tin" .. then it is just resource and no supply ( can't eat tin and be healthy for long nor shoot it outta your rifle ! )

First, you COULD shoot tin out of your rifle! Germans on Java ran plantations and ran tiny factories which made tin things - everything sent back to Germany went in tin containers and lots of other things were made of tin - so no weight on those "Yanage operation vessels" was wasted.

Second, local supplies include food, timber and gravel (or crushed coral = gravel). The amount of local supplies varies from place to place and should be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Third, some places need MORE supplies than they make - and we should force these to be provided or the places tend to "suck" supplies - simulating the economic effect of those needs. You might not supply them, but try to stockpile supplies there and some will "disappear" - as they should!

I differentiate between Tin as a finished good and Tin as a raw material ingredient. Perhaps you can shoot Tin ore out of YOUR rifle - but I will not shoot Tin ore out of MY rifle !!! [:D] Tin ore may assaye in at around 7.5 pounds of Tin per ton. At this point it was usually manufactured into "Virgin Pig" prior to actually being used in a true application. Note that Virgin Pig Tin is still considered to be a raw material and not a finished good ( i.e. a secondary metal in the terminology of the minerals year books ).

Applications ( per the 1939 Minerals year book ) included: Tin Plate ( for Tin cans), Solder, Babbit, Colapsable tubes, foil and bronze. These are considered to be finished goods, at least from the perspective of Tin manufacturing.

So, if ed cid wants to shoot tin ore out of his rifle, I suppose he can. But on my part I will await a commodity more suited to the purpose !

Kidding aside, we have discussed adding light manufacturing capability to the SRA to represent some of the simple transformations that could occur in this area. Though I would need more data before I would agree that game significant ammunition manufacturing occured here during the war.

I still think separating auto-supply-generation from resource generation is ultimately the way to go.

And yes absolutely each spot needs to be investigated separately and that is a pretty huge job - but it can be done. And the minerals year books will be a part of that - I'm sure !!!

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/usbmmyb.html

Ron has proposed far to radical a set of changes

Just to reiterate. I'm not proposing these go into anything. I simply want to see if these changes do have an appreciable effect on the pace and feel of the game. I've been saying that perhaps we need to play the CHS for awhile and many will do so, I merely wanted someone with lots of experience as Japan to fart around with my ideas as well. (Thanks Tony) The point is not accuracy here, it is simply to establish the limits of the logistical model by "breaking it". But Tony and I have yet to even run a turn and we are debating the accuracy of these changes. Good ideas are flying around however.[8D]

Hi, The SRA is not a desert with a few scattered oil wells and tin mines.
The area in 1941 supported over 100million people. It is in fact a giant supply generating farm. Supply of all kinds. Trying to sort it out makes no sense. It is worring about unimportant matters.

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, The SRA is not a desert with a few scattered oil wells and tin mines.
The area in 1941 supported over 100million people. It is in fact a giant supply generating farm. Supply of all kinds. Trying to sort it out makes no sense. It is worring about unimportant matters.

Not at all. Of course it is not a desert but it is also not a black market which stocks everything from rice to torpedoes. The current generic supply model says anyplace with supply is exactly that. Worse, they hardcoded the dynamic between resource and supply so that it is next to impossible for anyone to make it work as it should.

Why can't supply generation be seperate from resources? This at least would allow the player to differentiate between food and war materiel in the editor. Presently we can't and it is a shame.

Nobody is saying the the logistics model is totally BS because it does not have a myriad of different supply and resource types. This would be overkill and grognard mania of the highest order. What a fair number of us are getting at however is that it does not even have the basic differences which necessitate shipping resources to the manufacturing centres and reshipping the war materiel back to the front. Given enough resources in the DEI, Japan does not have to ship anything out for manufacture as basically supply/war material magically appears with it. Cut out this basic concept of resource--->manufacture--->product and the basic problem facing Japan (shipping and resources for her factories to make war) is for the most part gone. WTF is that and how is it unimportant? Any defence of this can't hold water and is suspect.

Other things that would have made the abstract model of supply workable are simple to apply yet no thought was given to the implementation. (despite the ideas being provided for them).

For example, Naval munitions. How annoying is this puppy? I can't count the number of threads highlighting the ability of ships to rearm and refuel anywhere. Why could this not have been tied to say...the size of the port, the amount of supply at the qualifying size port, or even better, tie the generic supply to a specific service unit? If a naval base unit is present and supply is ample, voila.[X(] Wow, mindbogglingly simple and abstract yet it satisfies the fact that some differentation is necessary for this not to get out of hand as it is. What we have now is a list of house rules which are larger than the manual would be if the manual was sufficiently in depth.

Any sort of qualifying unit would work. Presence of a Japanese Navy air base unit allows torpedoes given enough supply...not every base unit. Some of this exist now so the concept is not a new one. Size 9 ports allow mines. AS tenders supply torpedoes to subs...

I can't fathom how such basic and crucial elements of a game system were overlooked and remain so given all the kicks at the can on designs such as this and all the input from gamers for years.