Bullwinkle58 -> RE: Fortress Palembang: Problems and Solutions (7/11/2012 6:48:53 PM)
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ORIGINAL: treespider I think we are talking past each other...and I think there is a misconception - in stock if the refineries at Palembang are destroyed they do not produce supply, so they are not producing supply to repair themselves and it still needs to be brought in until a fair amount of the refinery is repaired. They don't produce supply to the extent they're damaged, but they produce supply in the undamaged portion. If there is 30% refinery damage the 700ish supply production is gold for effecting repairs on the 30%. I don't play the Japanese, so I don't know the destruction range, but I've never heard anyone here claiming they got 100% destruction even on a shock roll. I am apparently missing your point about late war balance, in that somehow the balance will be altered if refineries no longer produce supply. Yes the balance will be altered because a Palembang producing 600-1000 points of supply per day in 1944 is much different than a Palembang producing 0 in 1944. The Japanese will have a large supply source 100 hexes closer to the front that will not require as much shipping to move. As a Japanese player I would rather ship supplies 10 hexes from Palembang rather than 100 hexes from Osaka. That's true, but it wasn't my point. I wasn't discussing Palembang per se. In the late war it's probably in Allied hands, and they of course don't need the help. I was more talking about 1) the macro balance from day 1 of taking away total system supply if all refineries are modded and there is no corresponding bump up in LI or HI sourced supply (and refinery-produced supply is non-trivial IMO), and 2) that in the late-war the Home Island refineries are a considerable source of local supply to be used to repair strat bombing damage in the HI. IOW, castrating refinery supply in order to prevent a FP in the first weeks will affect the Japanese player a lot in 1945. Maybe more than some players who have never gotten that far realize. I see your point about Refinery repair utilizing HI points, but you're not going to cripple the Japanese economy by making them utilize HI points to repair the industry, and it has no relation to what I was trying to stress about the different kinds of supply that are represented by the "Generic Supply Point". This game is all about merchant ships, their capacity and the supply they carry. I agree that the orginal devs made supply be what it is because it can't teleport. Without that about half of the Allied war goes away; anti-economic warfare was the key aim of the Allies. And I also ack that the game has only seven, huge, crudely defined "buckets" in the model--HI, LI, Oil, Fuel, Supply, Armaments, Vehicles. (Yards are secondary.) Because of this there are oddities in terms of definitions. Why, for example, does production of two wings and a fuselage, a minor consumption of metal, energy, and labor, consume HI, while repairing a multi-square-mile refinery complex which consumes millions of tons of steel and uses massive castings, eats only "supply." Another example: a Quonset hut "kit" uses rolled steel, girders, portland cement plus manufactured items like doors and windows, but doen't use up HI either. In fact the model almost ignores Allied HI in toto. In Februray 1942 I have 563,000 HI points in the bank, am making 8300 per day, and have no use for them. Overall, my main objection to the economic model vis a vis history is that oil is not as critical to the Japanese effort as it should be. It's too easy to produce, too easy to move (magically in Asia), and too easy to convert into forms which can't be attacked. The whole of the Japanese expansion effort was aimed at securing petroleum. Lack of it was the single biggest factor in their mid- and late-war naval ops, aircraft usage, pilot training, and weapon mix decisions. Smart human players over the years have learned how to make it essentially a non-factor as they build massive air armies to use in 1945. In hindsight I think this is the single biggest economic boo-boo in the design. In contrast refinery-produced supply is a blip. My aim in suggesting HI could be used for all industrial repairs wasn't to illustrate that the buckets are crude--they are even as they're the best of any wargame I know--but that the model as a whole underplays the role of oil and makes the late-war a Frankenstein version of history. As it applies to the rest of the game - if shipping capacity were sucked up moving around all of those items that are not directly involved in fighting or surviving the pace of operations would certainly slow down. You might see situations such as Noumea where there were bottlenecks for shipping. Ships were stuck in harbor as floating warehouses because the items on those ships were not immediately needed by the troops on the ground. Or alternatively when one side lands at a base how much supply is brought along to support fighting and surviving and how much is brought along to lay new tarmacs and improve the wharves after seizing the base. A player might screw up and not bring enough supplies to support fighting if they expected light opposition...or they might not have enough shipping to immediately bring in the supplies needed to start improving the base. I personally, as an ex-supply officer, would like there to be more logistic complexity, but I know I'm in the minority. I would be fine with calling "supply" only food, clothes, ammo, and avgas and make HI stand-in for everything else and require it be transported. I think that would make playing the Allies a lot more fun, as well as soak up a lot of Japanese sealift currently used for forays into Oz and India. I'd also like to recognize the real world need to use up "something", either supply or HI, to repair damage to airfields and ports. Having it be free makes sieges both harder and easier, and goes against common sense. But knowing any change to the model is not going to happen (and also knowing that my suggesitons aren't going to happen either) I'd settle for forcing more HI to be eaten up doing things which take up heavy industry's output. Repairing refineries and engine plants fit the bill to me. And I would do this mostly to force oil to be used in larger amounts to run the war, and to make securing and transporting that oil a central concern of the Japanese player, instead of the sideline it is now in the face of Indian invasions and considerations of Pearl Harbor landings.
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