Taming Expansion of IJ Production

[okami]

ORIGINAL: treespider

Part of the problem faced here is the 20-20 hindsight of history...

-Everyone will implement a convoy system for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will allocate much more resources to ASW for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will try and optimize production for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will optimize supply logistics for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-If playing with PDU's players will concentrate on a few select airframes unlike their historical counterparts.

If playing vs the AI it doesn't matter because the AI is a bonehead anyway, however a human opponent will do these things.

So some suggested house rules for historcities' sake.

-Japanese ships moving resources can only be in unescorted single ship TF's until lets say for starters 1943.
-Japanese players should play with PDU's off.
-Japanese players may only expand factories once per year.
-Japanese units in China cannot have Accept Replacements turned off.

That's for starters....

So the Japanese players are forced to play stupid while the allies are not? Interesting? Let's look at 20/20 hindsight from allied side. No mining of bases in 1942 just because you know where the Japanese are going to strike. No flooding Burma with Indian Army units ever. All Dutch and British, and 3/4 of the allied Leaders must act like morons until 1943. No use of Australian Army units outside of Australia before 1944. One of your area commanders must be MacArthur and act like that baboon for the whole war. No effective use of ABDA. No use of the Sir Robin strategy to save units that were wasted at the beginning of the war. 20/20 hindsight favors the victor in this game much more than it favors the Japanese. Limiting Japanese expansion should be based on the gamey things of the engine itself. I have run tests and found that the Japanese do not play for rd aircraft. The 1000 supply points that the Japanese play for every plane from a non-rd factory is not payed by rd factories. Thus most rd factories come online with full production at no cost to the Japanese. A simple fix which would have a profound effect on the game would be to zero the counter when the rd factory goes online so that the Japanese player would now have to pay for all those new fighters. This is the kind of things that should be looked at not the 20/20 hindsight issues which are a plague to both sides.

[okami]

ORIGINAL: spence

IIRC during a discussion some time back a "knowledgeable person" said that there were some number of Japanese factories that were "given" to the AI to give it a fighting chance against the human player but which are still actually in the game when 2 humans play PBEM/H2H. How hard would it be to code the inclusion of these factories to the button that reads "Japanese AI" so that the only time they're included is when someone is playing against a Japanese AI?

Now this is the kind of things we should be looking at.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund
That means you think the only reason for the production system to be included in the game is so that the allies can have a target in the later stages of the war. Or in other words, its only there to punish the japanese player.

No it’s there because a fixed pool system for Japan would have been easier to implement than the current system. But Japan’s economy needed to be vulnerable to the advancing allies and short of hard coding reductions into the fixed pools system the only other option was to put the production on map.

That way if Japan was doing better than history the economy wouldn’t crash on some arbitrary date.

Had they done it for purely gamplay reasons then the allies would have the same kind of economy, but it does not. The reason it doesn’t is because it is a lot harder to implement, so they took the easy way out with the allies and gave them fixed pools which have been drastically reduced as each new mod comes out.

Were Japan’s economy easy to fiddle with like the allied one is, I have no doubt we’d have seen it corrected by now. But because it is a lot harder to tweak we are still stuck with the same fantasy scenario today as when the game was released.

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund
And again your beef seems to be with the ratio between japanese and allied production, not the japanese proction system in itself. and I agree, the allies should always produce more than the japs, but I dont want to see some hardcoded arbitrary cap on Jap production. Ive asked you already, but you never answered, why should the Japs not be able to reach 1943 production levels in 1942, if they capture all the resources undamaged and manage to get them all home? Why would it be physically impossible for the Jap industry to produce 1000 aircraft per month in 1943, when they managed to do just that in 44? I dont get the logic behind those arguments.

For the same reason the allies don’t have a lot of production early in the war, because it isn’t historical and it took a long time to ramp up production. The US was exporting excess resources throughout the entire war, yet it took until 1943 for their production system to ramp up to high levels of production.

Compared to the US the Japanese industry was archaic, it took them 4 or 5 times as long to retool factories than it took the US. And ramping up production was way harder for them as well because they were not very efficient.

Simply capturing some more raw resources should not translate to increased production capacity. They are two separate issues and should be addressed as such.

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund
No, because in history they didnt have the resources, manpower and infrastructure for it. But we are not doing a reenactment of history here, we are doing a simulation of it. And if the japs manage to bring home more resources in the simulation than they did in real life...what should happen then? Nothing?

See above, it wasn’t lack of resources that kept them from building more stuff, it was the time needed to ramp up production. If you look at Japanese resource stockpiles throughout the war, they declined from day one. Japan never got more resources than they started with, yet slowly they became more efficient at producing stuff. But it took a long time to ramp up.

Japan could have never produced 1943 levels of air frames in 1942, it was not possible. They could have probably achieved 10%-20% more efficiency perhaps, but even that would have been after tremendous effort.

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund
What do you mean "never worry about fuel"?

Japan made some very hard choices in the war due to fuel shortages. They even started using the fuel stocks aboard the Yamato as an emergency tanker for their smaller ships running the slot because fuel was so short. They also chose not to rebase the Yamato because the fuel cost would be too costly just for rebasing the ship.

My memory is very vague on the details here, so perhaps someone else can give better specific info. But I do know the Yamato was used as a tanker and a large capital ship was not rebased due to fuel shortages. I just can’t remember/find the source I read this in right now.

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund
See "simulation, not reenactment" above. What would have happened to Jap units and their TO&E if the allies had done a sir Robin until 1943?

You can’t call it a simulation if you don’t start from an point that the historical participants did. Japanese production is far too large in game pure and simple.

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Again, this argument is about relative production, not Jap production.

No it is not. It is about the fact the Japanese industry is too big in game, thus historical allied figures are dwarfed by Japanese over-production.

Jim

[Mike Scholl]

GENTLEMEN.   Please repeat over and over until it sinks in....   "The War in the Pacific was NOT an equal contest!"
One side used suprise and preparation to grab an early advantage..., and then the other side used an overwhelming force of material to take it back.   That's reality.  No amount of Japanese success was going to enable them to compete with the Allies in strength and material.  They knew it and acknowledged it with their basic war plan of grabbing a defensive perimeter and holding on until the Allies got tired of attacking.  Problem was the Allies didn't get tired of attacking them..., and blasted them all the way back to the Home Islands.  They did save their Emperor..., but that's about all they saved.

[Charbroiled]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

GENTLEMEN.   Please repeat over and over until it sinks in....   "The War in the Pacific was NOT an equal contest!"
One side used suprise and preparation to grab an early advantage..., and then the other side used an overwhelming force of material to take it back.   That's reality.  No amount of Japanese success was going to enable them to compete with the Allies in strength and material.  They knew it and acknowledged it with their basic war plan of grabbing a defensive perimeter and holding on until the Allies got tired of attacking.  Problem was the Allies didn't get tired of attacking them..., and blasted them all the way back to the Home Islands.  They did save their Emperor..., but that's about all they saved.

True....and WITP will never be a true "what-if" simulator until the developers add a political interface. The combat AI is hard enough, can you imagine adding a political AI for China, India, etc.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: okami

ORIGINAL: treespider

Part of the problem faced here is the 20-20 hindsight of history...

-Everyone will implement a convoy system for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will allocate much more resources to ASW for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will try and optimize production for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will optimize supply logistics for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-If playing with PDU's players will concentrate on a few select airframes unlike their historical counterparts.

If playing vs the AI it doesn't matter because the AI is a bonehead anyway, however a human opponent will do these things.

So some suggested house rules for historcities' sake.

-Japanese ships moving resources can only be in unescorted single ship TF's until lets say for starters 1943.
-Japanese players should play with PDU's off.
-Japanese players may only expand factories once per year.
-Japanese units in China cannot have Accept Replacements turned off.

That's for starters....

So the Japanese players are forced to play stupid while the allies are not? Interesting? Let's look at 20/20 hindsight from allied side. No mining of bases in 1942 just because you know where the Japanese are going to strike. No flooding Burma with Indian Army units ever. All Dutch and British, and 3/4 of the allied Leaders must act like morons until 1943. No use of Australian Army units outside of Australia before 1944. One of your area commanders must be MacArthur and act like that baboon for the whole war. No effective use of ABDA. No use of the Sir Robin strategy to save units that were wasted at the beginning of the war. 20/20 hindsight favors the victor in this game much more than it favors the Japanese. Limiting Japanese expansion should be based on the gamey things of the engine itself. I have run tests and found that the Japanese do not play for rd aircraft. The 1000 supply points that the Japanese play for every plane from a non-rd factory is not payed by rd factories. Thus most rd factories come online with full production at no cost to the Japanese. A simple fix which would have a profound effect on the game would be to zero the counter when the rd factory goes online so that the Japanese player would now have to pay for all those new fighters. This is the kind of things that should be looked at not the 20/20 hindsight issues which are a plague to both sides.

Please note that the house rules I suggested were all related to Japanese production as it is in the game. None of the house rules dealt with Japanese strategy and/or tactics unless the strategy or tactics dealt purely with the transportation of resources for use in industry.

Most of the AFB club is complaining that the Japanese are capable of much greater production than in history...I was merely pointing out that there are other factors in the industry model that need to be accounted for should a player wish to play a more historical game in regards to production.

Those factors relate to how resources are moved and how the end products are utilized. For example China was supposedly a big drain on the Japanese. However how many people shut off the replacements to China in particularly if not pursuing a China first strategy? By shutting off these replacements suddenly the Japanese have that many more replacements available for use on the rest of the map.

In addition PDU's favor the japanese because the US has a fixed production schedule for its aircraft and cannot adjust the way it receives replacemnt aircraft. I always play with the PDU's off...

[Andy Mac]

OK guys this is my last post in this thread so I will keep it brief.
 
AE is not changing Allied production i.e. its NOT on map.
 
Japanese production IS on map and will remain so there will be added complications caused by the new resource/fuel structure which we are still testing but fundamentally I do not expect massive balance changes from stock in this area - I suspect and expect there will be tweaks in what ways I dont know about yet.
 
I honestly believe that there is little point about getting irritated by this until we see how the new game plays out over time and at present we have not done the extensive testing required to say one way or another yet.
 
Andy

[tsimmonds]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

ORIGINAL: VSWG

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

I have no problem with them doing better than they did historically (within reason), but only if they start from and work with a realistic historically viable production system.

Well said! Of course the definition of a "historically viable production system" will always be subject of discussion, but are there really a lot of people around here who think that stock Japanese production is good as it is?

If they are playing Japan they do. [8D]

BTW, didja notice who started this thread?[;)]

[Ron Saueracker]

Just reduce the a,ount of resources etc available on map and voila, the Japanese production system will be held in check. At least AE has done away with the auto supply and fuel availability at bases with resources and oil.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Just reduce the a,ount of resources etc available on map and voila, the Japanese production system will be held in check. At least AE has done away with the auto supply and fuel availability at bases with resources and oil.

Well, yes and no on the fuel availability. Most of the big oil fields on the map, such as those in the DEI, had co-located refineries, so there is a lot of fuel available there due to the refinery output (assuming that the refineries are not all damaged).

Andrew

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: treespider

Part of the problem faced here is the 20-20 hindsight of history...

-Everyone will implement a convoy system for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will allocate much more resources to ASW for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will try and optimize production for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will optimize supply logistics for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-If playing with PDU's players will concentrate on a few select airframes unlike their historical counterparts.

If playing vs the AI it doesn't matter because the AI is a bonehead anyway, however a human opponent will do these things.

So some suggested house rules for historcities' sake.

-Japanese ships moving resources can only be in unescorted single ship TF's until lets say for starters 1943.
-Japanese players should play with PDU's off.
-Japanese players may only expand factories once per year.
-Japanese units in China cannot have Accept Replacements turned off.

That's for starters....

But what's the point of playing WitP then?


WitP is game and not documentary that replays 100% according to what happened in history... [:)] the very first turn we play WitP we throw away history of real WWII and create our own... [:D]


Tactics and strategy in WitP game should not be constrained to WWII in any way IMHO!


BTW, please be 100% certain that I am all for realism of how certain weapons and units (ships, aircraft, tanks, guns...) behave in game (i.e. for them to be as close as possible in game to what they were in historic WWII)!


Leo "Apollo11"

[Andrew Brown]

I would just like to repeat something that I posted earlier in this thread - these discussions are not really helpful (to me at least) if we don't have production figures from WitP games to compare against real life figures (along with the context of the state of the game, of course).

Andrew

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: treespider

Part of the problem faced here is the 20-20 hindsight of history...

-Everyone will implement a convoy system for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will allocate much more resources to ASW for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will try and optimize production for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-Everyone will optimize supply logistics for the Japanese unlike their historical counterparts.
-If playing with PDU's players will concentrate on a few select airframes unlike their historical counterparts.

If playing vs the AI it doesn't matter because the AI is a bonehead anyway, however a human opponent will do these things.

So some suggested house rules for historcities' sake.

-Japanese ships moving resources can only be in unescorted single ship TF's until lets say for starters 1943.
-Japanese players should play with PDU's off.
-Japanese players may only expand factories once per year.
-Japanese units in China cannot have Accept Replacements turned off.

That's for starters....

But what's the point of playing WitP then?


WitP is game and not documentary that replays 100% according to what happened in history... [:)] the very first turn we play WitP we throw away history of real WWII and create our own... [:D]


Tactics and strategy in WitP game should not be constrained to WWII in any way IMHO!


BTW, please be 100% certain that I am all for realism of how certain weapons and units (ships, aircraft, tanks, guns...) behave in game (i.e. for them to be as close as possible in game to what they were in historic WWII)!


Leo "Apollo11"

I agree with you that this is a game and not a documentary...but it might be interesting to see what the Japanese can accomplish if they are constrained by the same logistics system they had historically.

Afterall by you're own words you are for realism of how certain units and weapons behave - why not the logistics system?

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

I would just like to repeat something that I posted earlier in this thread - these discussions are not really helpful (to me at least) if we don't have production figures from WitP games to compare against real life figures (along with the context of the state of the game, of course).

Andrew

Well we know from history the most air frames Japan produced in a single year were 13,811 in 1944. This image from PZB’s game shows an assembly of 3,295 air frames a month. Multiply that by 12 and you have a production of 39,540 a year. Or 25,729 more air frames a year than the highest level Japan ever achieved in reality.



I don’t really know what more you would need for proof. Japan's production is so far over the top, I’m actually amazed anyone would say they needed proof before they'd believe it.

Jim

P.S. Japan only built 76,320 air frames of all types for the entire war. 15,201 of those were trainers, so they only built about 60,000 combat air frames. We don't build trainers in WitP, so their production is so far over the top it's funny.

[witpqs]

I think what Andrew meant is that he needs some specific figures to work with so he can start to see how the model might be adjusted, not that he didn't believe it was happening. [:)]

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

I would just like to repeat something that I posted earlier in this thread - these discussions are not really helpful (to me at least) if we don't have production figures from WitP games to compare against real life figures (along with the context of the state of the game, of course).

Andrew

Well we know from history the most air frames Japan produced in a single year were 13,811 in 1944. This image from PZB’s game shows an assembly of 3,295 air frames a month. Multiply that by 12 and you have a production of 39,540 a year. Or 25,729 more air frames a year than the highest level Japan ever achieved in reality.

I don’t really know what more you would need for proof. Japan's production is so far over the top, I’m actually amazed anyone would say they needed proof before they'd believe it.

Jim

Thanks Jim,

That is a start. But what about the other part of my comment? What does PzB control in the game vs what the Japanese controlled in RL? And what is the game date? Also, because I am not an expert on how production works (and I have not actually played WitP for well over a year now) - is that number equal to the number of aircraft actually produced, or it is the potential production if there are sufficient resources, oil, HI and engines?

Furthermore, while this is a useful data point, is this a normal result or an "outlier"? Or to put it another way - is it that the production output from the Japanese in the game is higher than it was for an equivalent extent of controlled resource extraction and production (i.e. equivalent areas conquered)? Or is it that if the Japanese do better than historically the production increase is greater than it should be? (or both, or neither?)

Thanks,
Andrew

[treespider]

Actually Jim according to World War II - A Statistical Survey

Japan's peak airframe production occurred in 1944-

Fighters- 13,811
Bombers - 5,100
Recon - 2147
Trainers - 6,147

Without the trainers that comes to 21,058. Throw in the trainers and airframe production - 27,205. Part of the question for these stats is what the trainers were composed of...

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

I would just like to repeat something that I posted earlier in this thread - these discussions are not really helpful (to me at least) if we don't have production figures from WitP games to compare against real life figures (along with the context of the state of the game, of course).

Andrew

Well we know from history the most air frames Japan produced in a single year were 13,811 in 1944. This image from PZB’s game shows an assembly of 3,295 air frames a month. Multiply that by 12 and you have a production of 39,540 a year. Or 25,729 more air frames a year than the highest level Japan ever achieved in reality.



I don’t really know what more you would need for proof. Japan's production is so far over the top, I’m actually amazed anyone would say they needed proof before they'd believe it.

Jim

P.S. Japan only built 76,320 air frames of all types for the entire war. 15,201 of those were trainers, so they only built about 60,000 combat air frames. We don't build trainers in WitP, so their production is so far over the top it's funny.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: treespider

Actually Jim according to World War II - A Statistical Survey

Japan's peak airframe production occurred in 1944-

Fighters- 13,811
Bombers - 5,100
Recon - 2147
Trainers - 6,147

Without the trainers that comes to 21,058. Throw in the trainers and airframe production - 27,205. Part of the question for these stats is what the trainers were composed of...

One other issue is that the peak production occurred in 1944. And this peak was a huge increase on production rates earlier in the war. That doesn't happen in the game where expansion of production can occur earlier than 1944 and the production rates do not increase so dramatically in 1944 as opposed to earlier years. So it can be deceptive to take the peak year production figures in isolation, I think. You need to look at overall rates for the entire war as well.

Andrew

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: treespider

Actually Jim according to World War II - A Statistical Survey

Japan's peak airframe production occurred in 1944-

Fighters- 13,811
Bombers - 5,100
Recon - 2147
Trainers - 6,147

Without the trainers that comes to 21,058. Throw in the trainers and airframe production - 27,205. Part of the question for these stats is what the trainers were composed of...

One other issue is that the peak production occurred in 1944. And this peak was a huge increase on production rates earlier in the war. That doesn't happen in the game where expansion of production can occur earlier than 1944 and the production rates do not increase so dramatically in 1944 as opposed to earlier years. So it can be deceptive to take the peak year production figures in isolation, I think. You need to look at overall rates for the entire war as well.

Andrew

Total Airframes
1939- 4467
1940- 4768
1941- 5088
1942- 8861
1943- 16693
1944- 28180
1945- 8263

Fighters
1941- 1080
1942- 2935
1943- 7147
1944- 13811
1945- 5474

Bombers
1941- 1461
1942- 2433
1943- 4189
1944- 5100
1945- 1934

Recon
1941- 639
1942- 967
1943- 1046
1944- 2147
1945- 855

Trainers
1941- 1489
1942- 2171
1943- 2871
1944- 6147
1945- 2523

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown
That is a start. But what about the other part of my comment? What does PzB control in the game vs what the Japanese controlled in RL?

As I mentioned in a previous post, it doesn’t matter. Japan’s resource stockpiles dwindled from the start of the war and never grew in any significant amount. Yet they still managed to increase production over time even though their available resources had dwindled. Ramping up production was the choke point, not resources to feed the industry.

As you can see from this list, they managed to roughly double fighter production each year until allied bombers crashed their industry in 45.

………………. Fighters………. Bombers………. Recon………. Trans………. Trainers
1941………. 1,080…………… 1,461.............. 639…………… unk…………. 1,489
1942………. 2,935…………… 2,433.............. 967…………… unk…………. 2,171
1943………. 7,147…………… 4,189.............. 1,046………… unk…………. 2,871
1944………. 13,811………… 5,100.............. 2,147………… unk…………. 6,147
1945………. 5,474…………… 1,934.............. 855…………… unk…………. 2,523

If you look at their total air frame production, you can see their best year managed to double production, but most years saw only about a 50%-60% increase over the previous year’s production.

1941………. 5,088
1942………. 8,861
1943………. 16,693
1944………. 28,180
1945………. 8,263


The ability to ramp up production should not be dependent on resources. Ramping up difficulties were similar across the board. US production also roughly doubled each year (they had the most modern production techniques so they were the most efficient of all nations), here’s their total air frame numbers:

1941………. 26,277
1942………. 47,836
1943………. 85,898
1944………. 96,318
1945………. 46,761

As you can see they significantly cut back production increases after 1943 after the air war had been won over Germany. And by 1945 they were back to 1942 production levels, they simply dominated by then and didn’t need the numbers anymore.

The problem in game is Japan can ramp up his production to about 1500 air frames a month by February or March of 42 and by the end of 42 he’s well over 2000.

Historically Japan didn’t even build more than 1,000 air frames a month until 1943. So by 1943 Japan has built well over 20,000 air frames for his 1942 production when historically they had only built 8,800 (6,000 without the trainers).

Gearing up industry to such high levels so fast simply couldn’t be done. It took a long time to gear up and doubling production each year was a major achievement. I doubt Japan could have done much better than they did historically even had they taken all of India and Australia.

Slave labor at those captured aircraft factories in India and Australia would have added some thousands of air frames a year, but no way could they have done better than perhaps 10%-20% more frames a year than they achieved historically.

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown
is that number equal to the number of aircraft actually produced, or it is the potential production if there are sufficient resources, oil, HI and engines?

You’d have to ask PZB, but most good Japanese players easily produce more than 3,000 air frames by 1943 without crashing their economies.

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown
Furthermore, while this is a useful data point, is this a normal result or an "outlier"? Or to put it another way - is it that the production output from the Japanese in the game is higher than it was for an equivalent extent of controlled resource extraction and production (i.e. equivalent areas conquered)? Or is it that if the Japanese do better than historically the production increase is greater than it should be? (or both, or neither?)

Production is far over the top from 7 Dec. 1941 onwards. Japan can sit and do nothing after taking the SRA and build hundreds of thousands more air frames than they historically did.

Your thinking is backwards here. You have to start Japan from an historically accurate point and allow it to expand a bit from there if they do better than they did in history. Compiling tons of data from flawed fantasy battles fought over the past years is worthless, because the Japanese economy is so far over the top it has no basis in reality to begin with.

What’s needed is to cut their production ability by about 75% of current levels. Start from there and try and figure out a way where at best they can do better than slightly doubling their production each year and you’ll have an historically accurate model.

Then you can tweak the different allied bases that have industry in them to allow some expansion but not so much that they out-produce the allies as they do now, which could never have been achieved even if Japan took everything west of California.

Jim