Question on Japanese R&D

[Q-Ball]

I have read somewhere on this forum that aircraft factories that have ANY damage cannot contribute to R&D. In other words, if your Frank factory is (45) x 167, it does nothing for R&D. It needs to be fully repaired. Obviously partially repaired factories do produce planes.

Is this true on R&D, or do you only need to have repaired lines operating to potentially move availability dates? (and I know you need at least 100 lines going regardless).

Thanks in advance for clarification on this!!!!

[n01487477]

I think Uamaga and I had a discussion about it in John's AAR here ...


Still not tested by me ...

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[Uamaga]

You likely have read that in one of my posts. I still stand behind it - till somebody proof me wrong of course . [:)]

However I don't think you need 100 "lines" (accumulated size of factories) build up. What you (imho) need to get one month of availability date speed up is 100 development points (or prototypes as I like to think about it). Single factory of size 30 once fully build up is able to deliver about 30 dev. pts. a month. So in less then 4 months of work it should get you a month of speed up. In theory having 2 such factories should give you 3months of speed up after about 5 months of work (60x5/100=3). The whole problem is however get these factories fully built. They repair in slow, randomish way and there is nothing one can do about it except keeping bases they are in with over 10k supply and hope...

In case one would like to make a test case please note that number of dev. points reserched by a (built up) factory is not linear with factory size. Factory of size 30 gives (about) 30 dev. pts. but factory of size 320 will deliver only about 36-39 (taking from memeory) dev. pts. a month. Talk about diminish return... Hard to belive? - Make a test case and proof me wrong (I did't do it yet)! [:)]

[Yamato hugger]

If this game works like every other Grigsby game has worked up to this point (USAAF, PacWar, others), and I have seen no reason at all to not believe it doesnt, what happens is this (or close to it):

At the start of every month the R&D factories for each type of aircraft are totaled and divided by 100. Fraction are lost (thus 99 factories does nothing for you). This number is reduced by a factor depending on how far out the production is (meaning the further away from the arrival date, the more this number is reduced). This number is multiplied by a number (I would guess 0.1 for 10%, but thats just an educated guess) and this is your percentage of advancing production 1 month. Thus:

100 factories 2 months from the date they are to arrive would have a 10% chance of advancing a month, where 12 months out it may have a 1% chance. 300 factories 2 months out would have a 30% chance, ect.

If you want some good insight on how the production system (probably) works, read the rules to PacWar. They are layed out pretty well in that game (better than in WitP manual anyways) and since all the combat routines in that game work exactly as they do in this one, I would be VERY surprised if production was different.

I believe PacWar is a free download from Matrix (pretty sure there is a freeware version somewhere because I put it on my XP years back and didnt have a floppy drive on it at the time, and the version of PacWar I have is on floppys).

Edit: come to think of it, the "write protect" in that game was to name the first word in some paragraph on some page in the manual, so you might actually have to have the manual. I THINK they took this write protect out when it went freeware, but wouldnt bet my life on that.

Uamaga, have you actually seen an aircraft type that had less than 100 factories advance? I have not.

[Uamaga]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger
[...]
Uamaga, have you actually seen an aircraft type that had less than 100 factories advance? I have not.

No, I haven't either. Not diregarding this as an argument completely but usualy in-game a player going to invest in R&D of an aircraft is going to do it in mass way to get greater benefit from the investment. For test-case scenario to observe a speed-up effect of single factory (even much bigger then 100) one would have to run h2h test for over three months. I'm afraid that is more then one can endure. At least it is true in my case. [:)]
When planning for a test case I thought about setting 10 factories in (0)x30 state and ran them for over 10 days which should be enough to notice a month of speed up in a/c replacement panel. Then counter-test with 10 factories with (1)x30 should provide no speed up no matter how long it will be run...
Still it is a lot of work and still it may not convice you as there would be more then 100 factories total...

In fact I planned to closely monitor R&D during my current PBEM game, unfortunately the decisive results here will be available not before mid 43' (assuming EUBanana will be kind enough to not crush my empire before that time!). But even then the results will be decivise for me but not necessary good enough to be presented as a proof so maybe I eventually kick my back to set up that test case anyway. Until then - with all the respect due - I gonna stick to my description... [:)]

[Q-Ball]

Thanks guys for your replies, I think that helps, though I'm still not 100% on how R&D works frankly. I'm in a comfortable state now with almost all aspects of Japanese production except this one (well, and how many armament points a reinforcement uses, but even that I think I fleshed out).

[Mynok]

I frankly could care less about whether I get a plane a month earlier or not. I invest so that I have as many factories ready to go as possible when the plane arrives.