Matrix Games Forums

The USA starts the game with 20 oil production. Is this enough?
Put a couple 5 CVs and or 5 DDs out to sea.....10 oil.
3 Subs.....3 oil.
Fly plane and intercept 6 oil.


You can see that they have nothing to ship out and neither NZ or Australia have any oil. Should the the US start with higher production?


In my Let's Play on YouTube it is May 42 and the Allies are out of oil. This should be a Japan problem, not an Allied problem.

You get +40 in July. Its explained in game notes, why is that the case for USA

I know about the +40 in July. They also get another +40 in October and even more later on.

The only reason the US should be running out of oil is if this is game mechanic to stop the US. If that is the case another method needs to be figured out. When I have 6 CVs and an air unit I should be able to run them around and have oil to ship to allies, merchants I agree probably might not have them that I understand.

I’m not sure of the exact historical circumstances but I’d be willing to bet that shifting logistics to constant ship use on an unplanned front did not happen overnight. Especially since resources teleport in this game to where they’re needed, it’s really not that long a shot to pair up game rules with reality. As it stands, I can park the entire US fleet in India and fight with it there before mid 1942, which is already quite a stretch of the imagination.

It's for game balance representing the unpreparedness of the USN and the Allies.

The historical reason - They didn't have enough tankers.

I like the oil shortages. As player we have to make choices. You don't use fleets for nothing. When they go out ports, it must be for a reason.

For me it is part of the fun. Oil management.

In War in the pacific, you had infinite oil in the US, but moving it to australia to be able to use the fleet here in high intensity operation was a pain due to long distance and never enough tankers.

Here the oil stockpile is abstracted and accessible from everywhere but limited in size. It produce a similar feeling. I understand this simplification.

I like it too otherwise Japan will be blocked a little too soon.

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

In War in the pacific, you had infinite oil in the US, but moving it to australia to be able to use the fleet here in high intensity operation was a pain due to long distance and never enough tankers.

Here the oil stockpile is abstracted and accessible from everywhere but limited in size. It produce a similar feeling. I understand this simplification.

That is correct. I don't want to burden players with micromanaging tankers. That is the whole point of WarPlan. Keep the game deep in strategy but simple to manage with some things abstracted. It's all based on user experience research. I personally don't like micromanagement games.

I popped up a fantasy strategy game I bought for really cheap on steam last night. I didn't even play it. It was endless pages of stuff. Items, magic items, spells, armies, heroes, resources, cities. But each had several pages themselves. It was too much information. I mostly got the game for research for my next game. This was a smaller developer.

But games like Civilization are fairly easy to pick up without reading the rulebook despite the complexity. They do a good job of hiding it by not showing you what you can't do. So the complexity builds as you play. By the end of the first game you get it.