Cuttlefish -> RE: Prome wasn't built in a day (10/22/2009 7:26:25 AM)
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Without a staff, an army could not peel a potato. - Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett, USA, 1857-1935 --- 1/30/42 As January ’42 nears an end I’ve been evaluating Japan’s industry. Even in WitP I discovered (often the hard way) that there were many possible ways for the Japanese player to shoot himself in the industrial foot. AE no doubt has new and interesting ways for the Japanese player to do so. Before getting any further into the subject, though, let me thank those responsible for creating WitP Staff and bundling it with the game. I would much rather spend my game time planning attacks than manually tracking industrial statistics and the utility lets me do that, because it keeps track for me. Very nice! Anyway, certain early trends are noticeable. Supply and fuel are actually increasing in the Home Islands. Oil and resource stocks, however, are slowly eroding. It isn’t serious yet, but it will be. Actually, when I say Home Islands I really mean Honshu. WitP Staff reports that Hokkaido and Kyushu actually produce more resources than they consume; all of the shortfall is on the main island. I have been hauling oil and resources from Korea and Sakhalin Island (Toyohara on Sakhalin currently has more than 500,000 resources) but this has only slowed the rate of loss, not halted it. I just discovered that the small port of Kushiro on the south coast of Hokkaido now has a whopping 922,000 resources, enough to supply Honshu for months. But it’s a size three port, so loading ships there is going to be very slow. I have the same problem at the big refinery centers I’ve captured. Miri, for example, has fuel going to waste for lack of storage space. I have tankers there but they take forever to load. I need to look at my available hulls and maybe put a bunch of small tankers to work carrying the fuel from there to someplace like Camranh Bay, where larger ships could pick it up and take it to Honshu. The only trouble with that is that more convoys means more escorts and I am already stretched thin in this area. I also think that I need to divert some scarce naval support from military operations to industrial operations. Running an evil empire is not all a bed of roses. --- I have been slow and careful in fiddling with my aircraft production. For one thing, almost every change I make in airframes needs a corresponding change in aircraft engine production. In WitP it was “Am I making enough Nakajima engines? Then I’m good to go.” Now I find myself blundering through a veritable minefield of engine types. I produced Nates through the end of January. I now have 107 in the pool, so Nate production has been halted. Meanwhile there are enough Oscars in the pool to begin upgrading the Nates. I can’t complain about the job the Nates have done for me, though; they have been valuable workhorses so far. I have begun producing a modest number of Kates, and Ida production has been shifted to the much superior Lily. My Lilies are heavily involved in bombing Clark (from Aparri, now a level 5 airfield) and flak and ops losses are taking a slow and steady toll on them. When the Lily pool gets a bit bigger (it’s at 40 now) I will begin converting some of the Ida units. Zero production has been increased about 50%. Zero losses have actually been pretty light so far and I have over 100 planes in the pool already but experience tells me I will need a lot more planes than that before it’s all over. --- Tune in next week when we discuss string theory, quantum mechanics, and which Japanese merchant ship classes to convert to what. --- The points screen from 1/31/42: [image]local://upfiles/23804/2394C252BF09486286F93B4D9BC912EB.jpg[/image]
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