Matrix Games Forums

Quick question on a stock scenario (15)
Do you still have to supply the allied bases with oil.
I thought that it was on auto (Allied production On) but when I checked some bases it said that they required some oil!
Could someone direct me to the ref in the manual or the forum
Cheers

On the Japanese side oil is combined with resources to get HI points that fuel their whole production chain.  On the Allied side, there are various HI locations on the map (India, China, Singapore, Oz, the US left coast, etc) where resources and oil combine to create supply and fuel.  However, the lion's share of supply and fuel come from fixed supply points in the USA, Bombay, and Karachi.

In the early game it is usually useful to try and evacuate as many resources and oil as possible out of the DEI to help run the Australian industry.  Australia has plenty of domestic resources so shipping oil to Australia leverages your merchant marine since one point of oil will then be run by the factories there to create a point of fuel and supply. 

However, on-map production of supply and fuel is very much a "second-order" effect on the over-all Allied war effort. 

So you are saying that it is a waste of time sending oil from america or India to Australia

Not quite... You want to send about a tanker a month of oil from the USA to Eastern Australia and another tanker every few months to Perth.  (I'm not sure about how often Perth needs oil.)

I just made some calculations and get some numbers on US mainland production in stock scenario:

In USA mainland in stock scenario you produce 880 oil points /day than you need for your production.
Australia is 2400 oil points / day short for production.
India is 1855 oil points /day short for production.

It is VERY usefull to get out every oil point you can of Sumatra (+6000/day), Java(+1200/day) and Borneo(+4800/day).

Thanks for all the info - I took all the fuel/supply that I could muster out of PI but didn't take any oil.
Didn't even think about it. I didn't even think about oil for India either, so thats a useful bit of info.
I am now trying to build a tanker task force to take oil to Australia, but after this bit of advice I may well have to split it and carry on to India.
Cheers

Barb is right, though I wouldn't bother moving Oil to India. The Allies don't need to create HI points, so the only thing you need OIL for is to make supplies and fuel.

India should have more than enough of both, so don't bother moving Oil there.

Australia is another story. You need to build supply/fuel stocks there, so moving Oil is a good idea.

Moving it out of the SRA while you can is a great idea, even if for no other reason than you don't want the Japs to get it.

RE: India, you should in fact be thinking of loading supplies and fuel in Karachi and sending that to Australia while you can. You start with more merchant shipping up there than you need in awhile, and plenty of supply/fuel; you may as well start sending some to Australia loaded with valuable supply/fuel.

I largely agree with Q-ball and Barb.  I would recommend oil to Australia rather than India since Australia doesn't have any intrinsic supply/fuel sources like Karachi and Bombay.  My experience is that these sources provide plenty of logistics for the Allies in India.  Australia just gets the spill off from their resources, and the production of the small oil field at Perth.  They can defend, but there's no fuel for offensive operations in the Solomons or the DEI.  That's where a tanker of oil is more use than a tanker of fuel since the oil can be processed by the Australian industry to generate a point of supply plus a point of fuel.  
 
When you push things farther than that, then you start to run into places where the abstractions in WitP radically depart from reality.  Elsewhere in the Forum someone pointed out that Australia only had one refinery that was shut down for the duration shortly after the war started so the WitP industrial system doesn't fit Australia's WW2 reality.  Instead of working off of imported crude, Australia's economy ran off of imported refined petroleum proucts.  Also, the USA had a breath-taking share of world oil production in the 1940s and California by itself produced more oil than the DEI.  The US oil exports to Japan stopped in the summer of 1941 so the supply and infrastructure to provide much higher oil exports from the US would have been there if the US wanted to do it when the war broke out on 12/7/41.   

Q-Ball-A further question. When I load oil in the DEI, where do I send it?Darwin, Broome, etc.?

Or does it have to go to Brisbane, Sydney, etc.?

Thanks, Hugh Browne

Take it to cities which have HI and no Oil

A good start is to take it from the DEI to Perth and stockpile it there. Your tankers will be able to get back the the oilfields more quickly in order to suck more oil from those locations before they fall to the Japanese, and you can later then ship it form Perth to Melbourne and Sydney.

You need to stockpile it at a base that has either resources or oil, as a quirk of the game prevents you form loading oil at a base that has no oil or resource production (please, somebody correct me if it needs to be a base that has oil production and not just one that has only resource production).

Darwin isnt a bad idea either. Just be sure to build up the port.
Stock the oil there and distribute it to sydney and melbourne.

Amboina and there is another base near there, can't remember the name, are oil producers as well.

The problem with storing oil at Amboina or Darwin is that in a PBEM those ports are likely to be either captured by your opponent or blockaded so that you can't transfer the oil to SE Oz where it is needed. This is why Perth is my choice for a forward depot. 

I thought that oil might be transferred by the AI from Darwin to where it is needed in Australia?

ORIGINAL: khyberbill

I thought that oil might be transferred by the AI from Darwin to where it is needed in Australia?

Nope - what goes to Darwin STAYS in Darwin... the AI will NOT move oil or resources out in either CHS or stock WITP afaik... you have to move it by ship, which can be highly problematic.

Darwin is too far away from the industries in SE Australia to move the oil overland. This is why you need to ship it by sea. 

I have been shipping the oil from Darwin to Sydney because the port isn't under threat...yet. Now I will expedite the moving it all there. The only reason the oil is there was to deny my opponent the oil [:D]. I am able to bring enough supply/fuel in from the US.

Hi. I'm playing allies in the full scenario, latest mod and I've been taking out all the oil I can from DEI and shipping to Darwin.

At first (based on the manual) I expected the rail network to redistribute the oil from Darwin to the HI centres in Aus. Now - mid Feb 42 - I'm not sure that this is happening to any noticeable degree, despite the fact that all HI centres have zero oil.

Do I need to onward ship in tankers or will the rail network eventually relocate my oil stockpiles to where it is needed?

I've also been sucking out resources as fast as possible both for my own manufacturing and to deny my oponent and now have quite substantial reserves in both India and Aus. Given that this game is going to be a long haul and crippling Japanese manufacturing capacity will speed the inevitable, which is most valuable commodity to the Japanese war effort: the oil or the resources? If they don't need the resources I'm stealing away from DEI I will abandon this operation and reduce the training I'm giving to my opponents’ Betties and Nells.

ORIGINAL: turkey

Hi. I'm playing allies in the full scenario, latest mod and I've been taking out all the oil I can from DEI and shipping to Darwin.

At first (based on the manual) I expected the rail network to redistribute the oil from Darwin to the HI centres in Aus. Now - mid Feb 42 - I'm not sure that this is happening to any noticeable degree, despite the fact that all HI centres have zero oil.

Do I need to onward ship in tankers or will the rail network eventually relocate my oil stockpiles to where it is needed?

I've also been sucking out resources as fast as possible both for my own manufacturing and to deny my oponent and now have quite substantial reserves in both India and Aus. Given that this game is going to be a long haul and crippling Japanese manufacturing capacity will speed the inevitable, which is most valuable commodity to the Japanese war effort: the oil or the resources? If they don't need the resources I'm stealing away from DEI I will abandon this operation and reduce the training I'm giving to my opponents’ Betties and Nells.

As stated above - you need to move any oil or resources ship to Darwin by ship... the rail network will not move them (and in reality, there was no rail network connecting Darwin to the rest of Australia... at least part of the link was by road... this is reflected in Andrew Brown's maps in CHS, etc.)