Another reason to change the costs of factory construction/repair in AE

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Another reason to change the costs of factory construction/repair in AE

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition >> Another reason to change the costs of factory construction/repair in AE

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Another reason to change the costs of factory construct... - 9/1/2008 1:00:18 PM

esteban

Posts: 618
Joined: 7/21/2004
Status: offline

We all know that in WitP it costs 100 supply and a few manpower/industry points to build a factory point, and 1000 supply to repair that factory point so that it is operational. I posted 2-3 months back that this should be inverted so that factory points were expensive to build but relatively cheap to repair because the other situation A) distorted the economy, B) it seems wierd that repairing a facility is far more expensive than building it and C) made it incredibly, unrealistically expensive to repair damaged facilites.

Now I have a new argument. I am finally getting into 1944 in a PBEM game (after having several other scenario PBEMs or campaign games that ended early because the other player quit) and it seems to me that between the way bombing damage is allocated on already heavily damaged facilities and the cheap construction costs of expanding facilities there is a "gamey" way for the Japanese player to protect a lot of his factories from Allied air power.

You do this by IDing key factories that are not that large (maybe 150 in size maximum) and paying to expand them and then do not repair them up after expanding them. So an aircraft factory or engine factory that is maybe about 80 points in size costs another 8000 supply and some industry and manpower points to expand. In my case, even with a huge expansion of Japanese aircraft productiona and a naval production plan that will eventually produce even the rather poor RO-class subs I have a huge stockpile of industry and manpower points. So effectively the only expense for me in expanding some factories is the supply cost, which is not that high.

The effect of doubling the size of a factory and then not repairing it is that it is VERY hard to significantly damage the undamaged part of the factory and therefore impact production from that factory. Because of the bombing damage model, once you get a factory/resource/oil facility about 40%-50% damage then diminishing returns really set in and you need repeated air strikes to get that factory to 60% or 70% damage--and forget about knocking it out entirely.

So for what is effectively several thousand supply points you can pretty much protect a key factory that is producing aircraft like the Grace, Frank or George or factories producing engines for those aircraft from Allied bombing. Obviously this tactic cannot be used to protect big 300-800 sized factories, it would be too expensive to expand those at 100 undamaged points a pop. And it can't be used to protect resource or oil centers that can't be expanded anyway. However, for small and mid-sized factories that are producing aircraft engines, aircraft and maybe armaments you can protect those at a rather modest cost.

So I would once again urge the AE developers to invert the costs of building a factory point versus repairing it. Make building expensive (you'd have to change the way expanding works so that each time you click the expand button you add 1 point of damaged capacity to the factory--otherwise you rarely have enough supply in the hex to pay for an expansion) and make repairing factories/shipyards/oil/resources cheap.

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RE: Another reason to change the costs of factory const... - 9/1/2008 9:27:15 PM

BPRE

Posts: 624
Joined: 10/16/2000
From: Stockholm,Sweden
Status: offline

Hi,

I did some testing on this in stock and found that expansion costs 100 supply, 10 HI and 10 Manpower per factory point. The manual is incorrect here as it states that it only costs 1 HI and 1 Manpower.

Regardless of the size of the factory you can only expand with 100 (which is mentioned in the manual too). Something that isn't mentioned in the manual though is that it won't allow an expansion unless you have enough supply to make it twice as big. I don't remember if it applies to HI and Manpower too but probably.
If it's bigger than 100 it won't expand more than 100 and use more more Supply, HI or Manpower than required for 100 but it's still checking.

Regards
BPRE

(in reply to esteban)

Post #: 2

RE: Another reason to change the costs of factory const... - 9/2/2008 12:57:55 PM

esteban

Posts: 618
Joined: 7/21/2004
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: BPRE

Hi,

I did some testing on this in stock and found that expansion costs 100 supply, 10 HI and 10 Manpower per factory point. The manual is incorrect here as it states that it only costs 1 HI and 1 Manpower.

Regardless of the size of the factory you can only expand with 100 (which is mentioned in the manual too). Something that isn't mentioned in the manual though is that it won't allow an expansion unless you have enough supply to make it twice as big. I don't remember if it applies to HI and Manpower too but probably.
If it's bigger than 100 it won't expand more than 100 and use more more Supply, HI or Manpower than required for 100 but it's still checking.

Regards
BPRE

I know, this is exactly what I said in my post above, that expansion of factories is cheap, but repair is expensive. It should be the other way around.

Otherwise you can use "gamey" tactics that I laid out above to protect many of your factories from bombing and the prices for doing so would be relatively cheap.

(in reply to BPRE)

Post #: 3

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