Peever
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Joined: 3/17/2002
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A Second Look At Convoys
In thinking about the resource requirements of Focus Pacific I proposed have a huge convoy fleet that was unloading a massive amount of resources into Japan daily. I made some guestimates about what it would take, but I wanted to get a better understanding of what is involved. War in the Pacific is a logistical simulation after all. Yes you get to fight once in awhile but the real heart of this game is moving supplies and fuel around so that you can fight. MacArthur can’t fulfill his promise to return to the Philippines if there isn’t a massive logistical system getting all the supplies, fuel, men, and planes from the US across the ocean. So if you want to know what it would take to have a massive logistical system then read on.
In this example we’ll use the convoy route from Port Arthur to Fukuoka located on Kyushu. As we can see there is about 14 hexes between the two ports depending on the route the ships take.
The goal will be to ensure that there is a convoy unloading 40,000 tons of resources into Fukuoka from Port Arthur every single day.
Ship Class:
There are a ton of different classes of Aks and AKLs that Japan has. In this exercise I’m not looking for maximum efficeny. I’m simply going to pick a class that is abundant and nearby to get the convoy system started.
In nearby Nagasaki we can see a nice selection of ships with an endurance of 9,400 points which seems suited for this convoy. We want a ship that can make it there and back without having to refuel all the time so let’s find ships with an endurance of this amount or higher.
After shuffling things around we now have our first convoy ready in Fukuoka. It is made up of 9 Aden class ships with a total load capacity of 45,360. This meets the 40K convoy requirement. (This requirement stems from my original problem of needing 240K of resources into Japan every day. I just divided that up into six convoys for simplicity. I also wanted to make sure that the resources could be loaded and unloaded in a single turn. We’ll find out if that’s true now.)
The settings for this task force are; mission speed, direct route and absolute threat tolerance. Nothing can stop these convoys.
Here is where there are after one turn.
Farther than I thought. Perhaps my original time guesstimates were too high.
After running the second turn the convoy traveled a nice distance up the Yellow Sea. Two things to note; my original guess of 5 days’ transit was too high, and this fleet has no escorts. In my game I’m using some PBs as escorts due to all the subs. Some of those have cruising speeds lower than that of the cargo ships. That would explain the time difference. This means I’ll start another convoy with these slower escorts to compare.
I created convoy Bravo with the same 9 ship set-up as Alpha with the addition of one PB (Kiso Class). This escort has a cruise speed of 9 which is one knot slower than the AKs.
On December 11 convoy Alpha has arrived in Port Arthur. It took only three days, two less than my original guess. This is good because a faster turnaround is better and will require less total ships.
Convoy Bravo on the bottom of that picture doesn’t appear to be affected by the slightly slower escorts. More good news. An additional thing I realized is in these tests I’m using “Direct Route” for the task force setting and in my game I’m not. In my game the ships are sailing around that little island Saishu To instead of sailing between the island and Korea.
Back in Port Arthur we tell convoy Alpha to load up with resources and sail back to Fukuoka.
Important Reminder: As we can see in the picture below convoy Alpha did not get a “full load”. Resources will not take up the entirety of the total capacity of the ships.
That’s why it is important to have your resources convoys larger than what you need to have room for this slack. In this case 45k of capacity only results in 42k of actual usage.
It is now December 14 and convoy Alpha sits empty in the port of Fukuoka. It took 6 days to complete the round trip and deliver a load back to Japan.
This means you will need at least 6 Aden class Aks convoys running on this route. Seven convoys would be better because refueling will cost OPS points and slow the ships every once in a while. Seven convoys would require 63 of these AKs for this one route. A little higher than my original guess of 50.
Ship class, escorts, sub attacks, port size, naval support, and additional port activity are all variables that can and will throw these estimates off. If you have convoys running from both Port Arthur and Fusan into Fukuoka then you could put the port over capacity and create a backlog of ships. Not the worst problem as you just direct them to another nearby port, but it is something to keep in mind if the goal is to completely unload six 40k convoys every single day.
While this testing was looking solely at (a now outdated version) of Focus Pacific the concepts can be applied to any scenario and to both sides of the fight. From my experience in game to this testing I now have a better understanding of how complex the situation is for Japan and the extent one needs to go in order to meet Japan’s needs.
My advice to other people looking to play Japan for the first time, or anyone wanting a better handle on their logistics game, is to actually sit down and plan out what you need. I had just been winging it up to this point in the game, adding a new convoy here, another one there, all without looking at the big picture. Find out what your total requirements are be it resources, supplies, oil etc. Look at the port capacity for shipping and loading/unloading at your port(s) of departure and destination. Gather up the ships you need and break them down (if needed) into manageable task forces that can work with ports.
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Sanderz here is a link to the region file I'm using: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53970901/BigBabes_ExtendedMap.txt
< Message edited by Peever -- 7/30/2016 3:26:29 PM >
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RE: I've Made a Huge Mistake - Japan Focus Pacific - 
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