Oil/Res/Pop allocation

Mist · Post by **Mist** » Fri May 11, 2001 2:06 am

Hi! I would like to hear your opinion about allocation of oil, resources and population points in cities. Especialy in USSR. Because the main action takes place there. My opinion is that Moscow and Leningrad did not have oil fields and their resources points seems too high if compared with Donbas region. Donbas is not economicaly important at all in WiR.
Note:Steel production had decreased by 25% in USSR after Donbas was captured.
I have an idea to make new scenario which would start in January-February'43 and use Manstein's Lost Victories as one of the main historical sources. It is known that after successful Kharkov counteroffensive operation, Manstein had proposed the plan to regain initiative on southern front by luring Soviet troops to Donbas and cutting them off on Azov sea shores by strong blow from the north. Hitler did not agree because he was very afraid to risk by too valuable resources in this region and insisted on something less economicaly risky. I want to realise this dilema in WiR scenario to allow player to chose the direction of military operations. So, what were the reasons to set Donbas resources to that low value and why Germany is so independent on USSR resources? Could any of old timers answer me on these questions? Please!

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Fri May 11, 2001 2:17 am

Originally posted by Mist:
Hi! I would like to hear your opinion about allocation of oil, resources and population points in cities. Especialy in USSR. Because the main action takes place there. My opinion is that Moscow and Leningrad did not have oil fields and their resources points seems too high if compared with Donbas region. Donbas is not economicaly important at all in WiR.
Note:Steel production had decreased by 25% in USSR after Donbas was captured.
I have an idea to make new scenario which would start in January-February'43 and use Manstein's Lost Victories as one of the main historical sources. It is known that after successful Kharkov counteroffensive operation, Manstein had proposed the plan to regain initiative on southern front by luring Soviet troops to Donbas and cutting them off on Azov sea shores by strong blow from the north. Hitler did not agree because he was very afraid to risk by too valuable resources in this region and insisted on something less economicaly risky. I want to realise this dilema in WiR scenario to allow player to chose the direction of military operations. So, what were the reasons to set Donbas resources to that low value and why Germany is so independent on USSR resources? Could any of old timers answer me on these questions? Please!

Excellent point! The answer is, "I don't know."

The historic location of the resource centers is something that I don't know very well. I know the Donbass was important, so I agree there should be lots of resource/heavy industry there.

RickyB · Post by **RickyB** » Fri May 11, 2001 2:23 am

Originally posted by Mist:
Hi! I would like to hear your opinion about allocation of oil, resources and population points in cities. Especialy in USSR. Because the main action takes place there. My opinion is that Moscow and Leningrad did not have oil fields and their resources points seems too high if compared with Donbas region. Donbas is not economicaly important at all in WiR.

I don't know a lot of this, and one of the things we discussed was adding a new city in the Donbas area with high resources. I am not at home to access this right now though, but your idea fits in with what we have discussed. On the oil front, I believe that the oil ratings in Moscow and Leningrad represent refineries rather than actual oil production. I could be wrong about this but always had the impression that is what was going on.

I think part of the overall problem is representing so many different things as resources, where a shortage of one specific resource would be crippling in real life, but in the game it is only a problem if the overall total is reduced below a certain point. It is an abstraction that causes problems.

Barbos · Post by **Barbos** » Fri May 11, 2001 8:36 am

Great idea. In fact Germany has always been short in materials, and this naturally affected military output. Sure it would be nice to model it more adequately, not as approximately as it is now.

Mist · Post by **Mist** » Sat May 12, 2001 1:20 am

Great! Adding new resourcefull city in Donbas would change things to better. I would like to ask new question. Does having resources above 100 boost production to higher degree? If yes, everything ok and Germany will have a real profit from holding high resources. If not, then I think it would be better to decrease Germany's own resources to say 70-80. At least in certain scenarios.

And another question I forgot to ask while starting this thread. It is known, that German's invasion to Russia did not allow to consctipt about 50% of population of USSR beacause they occupied highly populated areas of European USSR. According to my calculations, WiR scenarios give no more than 25%(100 of 425 pop.points) of USSR manpower to cities which were historicaly occupied by Germans in 1941. I understand that simple redistribution of Ural manpower can destroy game balance, but WiR tends to be historical and. Was this discussed before? If yes, then what were the reasons to this distribution? Not that important. Just want to know people's opinion. Thanx!

Barbos · Post by **Barbos** » Sat May 12, 2001 10:33 am

I agree with Mist.

I think that the game should better model shortages on materials which in late period forced Germany to produce Pz IV's and StuG's instead of more powerful types.To do this just introduce concept of resources consumpton. This consumption while producing an AFV or aircraft must be proportional to its cost. Obviously, total amount of consumed resources cannot exceed total available resources. This would:
1. Make us optimally organize production and being put into tough conditions switch to cheaper models.
2. Make us fight for the resources harder (which responds reality).

Roughly speaking one must decide what he likes more: one Panther or 2-3 Pz IV's. Historically in early 1943 Guderian managed to persuade Hitler (who intended to switch all factories to Tigers and Panthers) to go on with Pz IV's. This prolonged existance of the Panzerwaffe.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Sat May 12, 2001 11:53 am

Originally posted by RickyB:
I don't know a lot of this, and one of the things we discussed was adding a new city in the Donbas area with high resources.

I've never heard of this before. I'm putting this on the issues list.

RickyB · Post by **RickyB** » Sat May 12, 2001 4:52 pm

Originally posted by Barbos:
I agree with Mist.

I think that the game should better model shortages on materials which in late period forced Germany to produce Pz IV's and StuG's instead of more powerful types.To do this just introduce concept of resources consumpton. This consumption while producing an AFV or aircraft must be proportional to its cost. Obviously, total amount of consumed resources cannot exceed total available resources. This would:
1. Make us optimally organize production and being put into tough conditions switch to cheaper models.
2. Make us fight for the resources harder (which responds reality).

Roughly speaking one must decide what he likes more: one Panther or 2-3 Pz IV's. Historically in early 1943 Guderian managed to persuade Hitler (who intended to switch all factories to Tigers and Panthers) to go on with Pz IV's. This prolonged existance of the Panzerwaffe.

That is a great idea, but probably not doable in WIR. The memory usage of the game is already very close to the limit, with some people already unable to get the game to run due to memory problems. This idea would require tracking extra information, increasing the memory usage to however minimal an extent. There would also be significant development/programming involved to balance the changes in a semi-historical fashion.

The key to creating a more realistic resource system remains tracking individual resources, which just is not feasible in this game, and possibly any game to any real depth. There are numerous resources required for a war effort, with a lack of one reducing your jet engines (a problem the Germans faced with the Me262), another limiting your steel production, etc. Worker shortages should also be modeled in this case, industry by industry. If the Germans don't use foreign workers, their military shrinks some and their output will be lower.

The game already represents in a decent fashion the extra resources involved in some equipment, with output dropping when converting the PzIV factory to Panther production. It will drop off. It is not great, but without immense detail being tracked, I don't know what could be.

RickyB · Post by **RickyB** » Sat May 12, 2001 4:54 pm

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:

I've never heard of this before. I'm putting this on the issues list.

Sorry, Ed. Don brought it up quite awhile ago, but it kind of fell by the wayside, and I see I didn't mention at all it wasn't a current discussion. However, I did already raise it agains based on the population changes being looked at. Seems reasonable to tie the two together.

RickyB · Post by **RickyB** » Sat May 12, 2001 5:02 pm

Originally posted by Mist:
And another question I forgot to ask while starting this thread. It is known, that German's invasion to Russia did not allow to consctipt about 50% of population of USSR beacause they occupied highly populated areas of European USSR. According to my calculations, WiR scenarios give no more than 25%(100 of 425 pop.points) of USSR manpower to cities which were historicaly occupied by Germans in 1941. I understand that simple redistribution of Ural manpower can destroy game balance, but WiR tends to be historical and. Was this discussed before? If yes, then what were the reasons to this distribution? Not that important. Just want to know people's opinion. Thanx!

Just my opinion, but I would guess it was a game balance item first, and close to actuallity also. I think the Urals, which didn't have the majority of the population, was designed to represent the manpower needed to keep the game going if the major population centers fell (pure game balance or lengthening in case of a strong Axis advance), and those men that were brought into the army through whatever means including refugees, etc. The lady I work with from Russia had her grandfather taken off of a train heading east at the start of the war, but he was living in Brest Litovsk and left the day before the war with his wife to move to another city not knowing a war was coming. Talk about a close call. Anyway, I think he is part of the 250 from the Urals population that really is from other sources, including cities in the game that are under-counted.

Barbos · Post by **Barbos** » Sun May 13, 2001 8:45 am

Originally posted by RickyB:
That is a great idea, but probably not doable in WIR. The memory usage of the game is already very close to the limit, with some people already unable to get the game to run due to memory problems. This idea would require tracking extra information, increasing the memory usage to however minimal an extent. There would also be significant development/programming involved to balance the changes in a semi-historical fashion.

The key to creating a more realistic resource system remains tracking individual resources, which just is not feasible in this game, and possibly any game to any real depth. There are numerous resources required for a war effort, with a lack of one reducing your jet engines (a problem the Germans faced with the Me262), another limiting your steel production, etc. Worker shortages should also be modeled in this case, industry by industry. If the Germans don't use foreign workers, their military shrinks some and their output will be lower.

The game already represents in a decent fashion the extra resources involved in some equipment, with output dropping when converting the PzIV factory to Panther production. It will drop off. It is not great, but without immense detail being tracked, I don't know what could be.[/QB]

I mean just two parameters that already exist in the game: resource assigned to any city location and cost assigned to a production item. The program should only compute total consumed resources and compare this to resources available. If the consumed amount is less then production grows normally as it does now. Otherwise it drops proportionally, nothing more. Probably such a routine being added to hard codes would
not demand much memory.

Ed Cogburn · Post by **Ed Cogburn** » Sun May 13, 2001 10:48 am

Originally posted by Barbos:
The program should only compute total consumed resources and compare this to resources available.

The problem is that "total consumed resources" is a factor that currently does not exist. The game would have to add tracking and updating code in many places in the game so that consumed resources are known at the time your comparison is done.

Resources in WIR and PAC are more than just abstract I believe. The "resources" concept was simply Gary's way of distinguishing between areas/cities of high industrial value, and areas/cities with no raw materials or industry.

This is one of those things where, if you look too close, you'll discover more flaws than you ever thought it would have.

Another example. In PAC Gary gave Shanghai 100 resources while the remainder of Chinese bases had no resources. This is, on its face, wrong. China has lots of resources, and they weren't all in one place. Shanghai must have been much more important than the other mainland Chinese territories for some reason, perhaps because it was already fairly well developed in terms of not just industry itself but also the infrastructure needed to support industry.

[ May 13, 2001: Message edited by: Ed Cogburn ]

Svar · Post by **Svar** » Sun May 13, 2001 1:03 pm

The way resources and oil are used in the game is really an abstraction. First they are combined with heavy industry to calculate the number of operation points to be distributed to the Headquarters(page 14 of the manual) each turn. Then you need to keep both numbers over 100 to keep your war machine running smoothly. The surplus doesn't gain you anything other than operation points. If either of them falls below 100, the readiness of your units could suffer (oil) or your production will drop proportionately (resources)(page 24 of the manual). At least thats the way it's supposed to work. Has anyone ever tested it?

Svar