brian brian -> RE: Questions about factories (10/17/2014 9:24:39 PM)
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In my opinion it is best to think of factories in clusters, or pockets. Where any factory has a valid rail path or convoy point path to a resource and another factory, they are all treated the same by the rules. Players can deny resources to one factory cluster or another, however, when they make decisions about having convoy points at sea in a given impulse, though that is far more of a theoretical construct than practical one. It is a challenge to sort out all the possible rules issues. It gets sticky when convoy points are being used to transport declared Lending, or in the fixed Trade Agreements. It is not explicit in the rules what to do if the only convoy point connecting a resource to a factory, making it an eligible bombing target, is also currently the only convoy point that could fulfill a Trade Agreement; all judged that impulse only. I'm sure MWiF's code had to make a decision on that. The cardboard player is allowed control only over where the convoy points are, but can't say Lille or Paris is idle just because the Germans have one more factory than total resources. Once the turn ends Partisans can appear and change the valid rail connections to resources or factories, the player can still make Return to Base decisions for Convoy Points and change things again. There are only two penalties in the rules for not moving resources on Convoy Points - specific ones for Japan or the USA breaking their Trade Agreement; and the loss of some resources, somewhere if you promised to lend X amount of resources but then can't deliver some or all of them. And Convoy Points must be used for this if they are at sea, before they can be used for your own resources. Say a Murmansk convoy is wiped out in Nov/Dec 41 (Arctic zone has no Allied CP at end of turn), and the Axis control Syria and Iraq but the CW had loaned one resource to the USSR. The CW could then declare that it lost one of their resources in Malaya, even if they had no convoys in the Bay of Bengal or the South China Sea. However if they had a convoy in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, they would have to move a resource from India to the USSR (or via CP in the East Med from Cyprus or elsewhere the East Med might connect to), and could not use those CP for anything else. Only the state of the board during the Strategic Bombardment Phase, and Production Phase matter in the rules. (Playing with the Construction Engineers optional does give a conquering power the option of simply never fixing a captured Red factory likely to be easily exposed to enemy action). This idea of factories in disparate clusters affects the CW, Japan, and any otherwise cohesive land Major Power with enemy units occupying their Home Country, or a Major Power with disjunct aligned minors with factories, or disjunct areas with a captured red factory. Perhaps using those clusters a little more in a new improved production interface could simplify things both for the players, and the programming logic, rather than matching each single resource to a single factory, or declaring some individual factory idle. But an idea that reads simply might not be so simple when writing a computer program, and just reading the FAQ on these issues should reveal to anyone a lot of complicated decisions Steve likely had to make for all this.
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