ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag
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Think it is 1941. You are in charge of Japan's aircraft production. You have finite abilities to come up with aircraft for two different services who have different requirements. You have very real limits as to what you can come up with based on available technology. What would your system look like?
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That's what we have now and that's what we have if the upgrade situation was changed. And nobody complains about the situation we start with. The only thing we can influence at this time with respect to air production is the research of future toys. It is up to us, how much factories we assign to research. Every factory doing research means less planes in operation sooner or later in the game. Less operational fighters means more ships or bombers lost to enemy air units. Less bombers means slower advance and inability to prohibit enemy naval operations by superior air power. Less patrol/recon means being blind to enemy stength and operations, and so on... If the enemy does not exploit this situation because he thinks we are still operating at full strength with a lot of reserves shall not be my problem. And if I am able to throw brand-new superior units against him when he thinks he can finally stand up against me - I laugh in his face!
But all this is research and actually not part of the real intent of this topic...
Now think it is 1944 (historically, not with some magic termination due to an imaginary score). We did better, expanded as planned, hold all key location, convoys bring all the resources and oil we ask for to fully feed our industry, the enemy can't hurt our production. New types of planes just arrive according to pre-war plans (no accellaration).
Would the industry be able to deliver sufficient planes to supply most/all our units with the newest toys?
1. (historical) Yes. Well, then give us the chance to simulate this situation by upgrading our units as we wish and as our historical couterparts would have done.
2. (historical) No. Could it do so in-game?
2.1. No. No need to bother then...
2.2. Yes. Production system 'broken', well at least flawed. How to fix it?
2.2.1. Tie the player with a system that wouldn't make no sense at all, historically speaking. Pretty much what we have now - very annoying situation for many players and creates heated discussions over many pages with often flawed arguments from both sides and personal insults.
2.2.2. Change the game mechanics to reflect the historical reasons. What where the historical reasons?
2.2.2.1. According to Mr. Frag resources of whatever kind (aluminium, rubber...). Well, then let us pay for modern toys! How?
2.2.2.1.1. Let us pay with supplies to switch factories to modern planes. Maybe something like upgrading factories to second generation planes (Oscars, A6M5) cost 1.5x supply, third generation 3x...
2.2.2.1.2. Make the airframes more expensive per unit produced (we don't want to add another mess in the engine production, so we might just stick with messing up the airframes). Steps maybe like above...
2.2.2.1.3. Reduce the resources available on the map. This might be the actual problem if we are able to produce sh!tload of new stuff while we just performed according to history or even worse.
However, this might also lead to a new discussion about the enemies performance. If the resources are somewhat historically reasonable, then it might be the enemy who failed to sink my ships, bomb my resource centers, ... But then we would be back at 1.
2.2.2.1.4. All of the above in any combination and maybe more (suggestions welcome)...
2.2.2.2. Somebody else might pick up here as well...
About downgrades: Imagine we have early February 1942. My factory managed to spill out 9 Emilys. I sent my Mavis group at Wake Island back to Tokyo, upgrade them and return to Wake Island. Just in the next night, the enemy comes along with a bombardment TF and trashes all but one Emily. Wouldn't it make sense to pick up all your pilots in the remaining plane, fly back to Tokyo, board your old planes (they wouldn't have scrapped them within one day) and have a nice and operational patrol unit again??? As is now, we are almost blind on an eye for many days, where with a downgrade we would be back to normal operation after a few days - the latter sounds more realistical to me... Oh, btw: downgrades should cost you PP and moral.
Finally a somewhat off-topic remark to you Mr. Frag: it is neither Zoom1980 nor my job to provide solutions to Matrix/2By3. We as almost everybody else on this board (incl. you!) are customers. As such, it is our right to complain about a product in its entity or parts of it. If we feel something is broken/doesn't work as we expected, it is up to us, to say so or live with it. It is up to Matrix/2by3 to react to our complaints in whatever way they might feel appropriate. If we say 'We would want to be able to use planes from the pool to replace old planes in whatever airgroup we want.', then it is up to Matrix/2by3 to evaluate this complaint, classify it, check for possible solutions if neccessary, make a risk assessment and check the feasibility of any possible solution they see and last but not least maybe/hopefully come back to us with their solution/rejection ('You use this option in a way it was not meant to be used'). If we as customer feel like 'You could do it this way', then this is a courtesy of us, which could be used as an indicator of how important it is to us, to 'waste' our time on it. And with a complex problem as the one at hand, you can't seriously expect us to provide an all-around wrapped up solution applicable for all possible situations - we just don't have the full picture of the effects of a seemingly small change we might suggest.
PS: I would prefer to continue the discussion about the actual problem at hand - if you feel like it, PM me because of the latter part...
