Japanese Production Bottlenecks

[Q-Ball]

nygiants59 made a comment in another thread that I want to follow-up on.

In the SRA, what should be repaired first, OIL or REFINERY? nygiants59 indicated REFINERY, as this is the bottleneck in the Japanese Production System. Looking at the tracker charts that appears to be the case, as the beginning HI burns more fuel that you refine at start, despite having alot of refinery capacity in the Home Islands. So, in the early stages, you need REFINERY to maintain your throughput. Yes or no? What are the stats on this?

OIL, however, is the essential ingredient. By repairing OIL first, you may not address the production flow problem, but you might be better off longer-term; we need to stockpile OIL anyway, for the inevitable end-game where we no longer get many OIL shipments. Once the OIL stockpile in the Home Islands is gone, Refinery capacity is irrelevant.

So I haven't settled on this. I do think it's clear that repairing Light Industry or Resources is probably a waste of time, as the supply pay-back is all the way in 1944 or so.

So, what's important: OIL or RESOURCES?

(Side Note: I have been capturing Oil and resources so far without a great deal of damage, despite not really attempting to kill engineers ahead of time. Is this your experience?)

[Marty A]

One thing i see in ae v witp is tankers. in witp these ships very important because only can carry oil. in ae most oil have refinery near same size as oil so fuel made right there. can carry fuel with anything. tankers not need so much anymore.

[erstad]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
(Side Note: I have been capturing Oil and resources so far without a great deal of damage, despite not really attempting to kill engineers ahead of time. Is this your experience?)

Yes

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: Marty A

One thing i see in ae v witp is tankers. in witp these ships very important because only can carry oil. in ae most oil have refinery near same size as oil so fuel made right there. can carry fuel with anything. tankers not need so much anymore.

I'm not so sure about that Marty A. In fact, I think TKs are much more important in AE.

Sure, AKs can move fuel, but when you are talking about using AKs to move fuel from the SRA to Japan, two problems:
1. They move fuel very inefficiently; how much fuel do you burn bringing 2000 fuel points to Tokyo?
2. You need AKs to haul piles of Resources.

Granted, I think all Japanese players have to get in the habit of never sending AKs to the Home Islands empty. If you are going to send it empty anyway, fill it with Resources, Fuel, something useful.

[Mynok]

Yes, tankers are absolutely vital. There was a discussion thread a bit back on this, and I recall some debate about whether to ship fuel or oil back to the homeland. What I plan to do is ship oil mostly with fuel as needed for fleet operations. There is a ton of excess refinery capacity in the home islands that needs to be producing fuel for you.

It is a little less efficient to move oil around but it is USELESS where it is if it exceeds refinery capacity. Fuel is useful almost everywhere.

[jwilkerson]

First of all we have to get used to the idea that it is actually "FUEL" which is most critical. Of course Fuel comes from Oil via refineries, so all of these are critical, but it is Fuel that the production system actually consumes. Mostly what we wil be carrying back to Japan will be Fuel. Most of the refinery capacity seems to be in the South, like at Palembang, Miri, etc. It might even be that we need to "import" oil into some of these places.

In WITP, I pretty much never repaired any resource or oil because the payback seemed to be so far out that I figured the Allied 4EB would be bombing the installations about the time I got them repaired. And in my games that reached late 43 early 44 this seemed to be the case. So I go into AE with the idea that repairing capacity still may not be a good idea, though I have not yet done the arithmetic to prove it.

But one needs to be very careful pulling fuel out of Japan, in fact it is probably a good idea to absolutely minimize the removal of fuel from Japan as you will wind up having to bring it back eventually.

I'd be happy to see this thread turn into an interactive discussion of these topics and I'll participate as my learning moves forward.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

nygiants59 made a comment in another thread that I want to follow-up on.

In the SRA, what should be repaired first, OIL or REFINERY? nygiants59 indicated REFINERY, as this is the bottleneck in the Japanese Production System. Looking at the tracker charts that appears to be the case, as the beginning HI burns more fuel that you refine at start, despite having alot of refinery capacity in the Home Islands. So, in the early stages, you need REFINERY to maintain your throughput. Yes or no? What are the stats on this?

OIL, however, is the essential ingredient. By repairing OIL first, you may not address the production flow problem, but you might be better off longer-term; we need to stockpile OIL anyway, for the inevitable end-game where we no longer get many OIL shipments. Once the OIL stockpile in the Home Islands is gone, Refinery capacity is irrelevant.

So I haven't settled on this. I do think it's clear that repairing Light Industry or Resources is probably a waste of time, as the supply pay-back is all the way in 1944 or so.

So, what's important: OIL or RESOURCES?

(Side Note: I have been capturing Oil and resources so far without a great deal of damage, despite not really attempting to kill engineers ahead of time. Is this your experience?)

That's a good question. My thought on that is that oil should be repaired and sent to Japan. I don't really expect to ever repair refineries, but we'll see.

[jwilkerson]

Well, my understanding is the oil needs to go to the refineries and fuel needs to go to the HI consumers, so oil needs to go to those refineries which cannot naturally get more oil than they can refine. Like doesn't Palembang have more refineries than oil? In my game it is 1020 refinery and 900 oil. So I should be bringing 120*10 oil to Palembang each day to absorb all of the refining capacity. So about half the refinery (2198 in my game) capacity is at Palembang and I suspect the bulk of the rest of the capacity is in the home islands. So we do need to take some oil to the home islands, but we also need to take some to Palembang.

[erstad]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

Well, my understanding is the oil needs to go to the refineries and fuel needs to go to the HI consumers, so oil needs to go to those refineries which cannot naturally get more oil than they can refine. Like doesn't Palembang have more refineries than oil? In my game it is 1020 refinery and 900 oil. So I should be bringing 120*10 oil to Palembang each day to absorb all of the refining capacity. So about half the refinery (2198 in my game) capacity is at Palembang and I suspect the bulk of the rest of the capacity is in the home islands. So we do need to take some oil to the home islands, but we also need to take some to Palembang.

Oil should move overland from Djambi to Palembang. I haven't had to ship any oil. There's an excess of oil versus refining in Sumatra, depending on damage, of course.

[Remenents]

All these topics on oil and fuel for the Japanese really makes me respect those players that play them. They seem to be way to difficult to understand/learn. I will just stick to my "simple" Allies. [;)]

Anyway, you guys really have my respect though. I would hate to see what you could do as an Allied player. [:)]

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: erstad
depending on damage, of course.

Yup, that's what makes any "plan" about what to do somewhat theoretical. In my current game, I got 99% of the Palembang refinery capacity intack, in an earlier test game, I got 1% of it intack.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

So about half the refinery (2198 in my game) capacity is at Palembang and I suspect the bulk of the rest of the capacity is in the home islands. So we do need to take some oil to the home islands, but we also need to take some to Palembang.

As you noted earlier, it is "FUEL which is most critical". Even so, sending Oil to Palembang sounds so much like "Coal to Newcastle" that it's almost the poster child for explaining just how vastly different the AE production system is from WitP.

[stuman]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

Well, my understanding is the oil needs to go to the refineries and fuel needs to go to the HI consumers, so oil needs to go to those refineries which cannot naturally get more oil than they can refine. Like doesn't Palembang have more refineries than oil? In my game it is 1020 refinery and 900 oil. So I should be bringing 120*10 oil to Palembang each day to absorb all of the refining capacity. So about half the refinery (2198 in my game) capacity is at Palembang and I suspect the bulk of the rest of the capacity is in the home islands. So we do need to take some oil to the home islands, but we also need to take some to Palembang.

It is a darn good thing for the Japanese that Palembang is relatively isloated. Having almost half of my refinery capacity, and about a third of my oil in one place makes me nervous.