Beginnings of an Economic Model (long post) (Full Version)

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Sapphire -> Beginnings of an Economic Model (long post) (12/15/2000 4:46:00 AM)

This is really a follow up to my earlier thread on how to handle production, but since that thread was generating a good discussion of production in general I thought a new one would work better for discussion of details. This will focus on pure production. Modelling technological change is harder, and I wouldn't mind too much if we forgot about it. Just have the historical ship, aircraft and tank designs and you can build them after their historical arrival date. Basically we need inputs, outputs, and a rule that tells us how much output we get depending on the inputs we use. We don't need a fully accurate model, just one that reflects the choices and constraints that existed in the real war. Example: if we were modelling the European Theater, I would say we needed to keep track of an input called "Exotic Metals" (or maybe it just came down to tungsten, I'm fuzzy on the details). Why? Because one reason Germany could not have built too many more jets than it did historically is that it didn't have access to very much of the special alloys needed to build jet engines. I'm not aware that there was any such issue for Japan or the US, so for WITP I think we can forget about "Exotic Metals." I suggest the following inputs: Labor, Capital, Oil, Iron Ore, and General Resources. Oil and Ore would be inputs for a process that produced Fuel and Steel (much like how PW handles Oil now), which would be inputs for other processes. Other candidates might be Rubber and Aluminum, but let's try to keep it as simple as possible. Basic question is, would breaking another input out of the General Resources category change the strategy of the game? Labor should come in several flavors: First is Draftable and Undraftable. A little chrome that might give a better sense of what's going on in the US homefront would be to have Draftable Men, Undraftable Men, and Women (Rosie), but you could just make women Undraftable workers and leave it at that. Second is education: Basic, Educated, and Skilled. The US really segregated recruits by education such that pilots and officers were much better educated than the infantry. I'm not sure where to draw the line--High School graduate or some college, but a little research could pin that down. Skilled represents technical skills in that particular industry, which are lost if they are switched to a different industry. Note: according to one source, the Japanese army went out of its way to draft the skilled workers that produced for the Japanese Navy! So basically we have a two by three matrix with columns representing draft status and rows representing education. Capital represents the factories and equipment. These are industry-specific: you can't build airplanes in an oil refinery. One question is growth: I suggest we have new factories appear as they were built historically, but give the player the option of choosing what type of factory they will become. But once chosen, it's set in stone (or concrete or whatever). Another option would be to have a process that produced factories in the future if you put give it inputs today so the player could trade between more units today vs. more units tomorrow. Outputs: I suggest Fuel, Steel, Supplies, Ships, Aircraft, Tanks and Land Units. Supplies will include light equipment for land units (rifles to howitzers, just not the tanks) as well as all the miscellaneous things needed to fight a war. Artillery may be worth it's own category. I'm not sure what kind of production function we want to use (Paul?). One possibility: each unit costs a certain number of industry points where industry points are a function of labor and capital (Cobb-Douglas?) and a certain quantity of materials. An example with made up numbers: an Iowa class Battleship costs 3000 industry, 5000 steel, 500 general resources, 200 fuel (used in building it, not sailing it!), and 300 supply. Let me go through the outputs. Basically everything is going to require Industry, General Resources, Fuel and Supplies, though how much of each will vary. Also the function that gives the industry points should be different: refining fuel is much more capital instensive than producing supplies for example. Fuel: Also requires oil, obviously. Steel: Also requires ore. Supplies: Just needs the basics. This should be more labor instensive than the rest. Aircraft: Also requires steel. It seems to me that the process of building a plane is similar regardless of its type or size. Some just cost more than others. So the number produced can be determined by the amount of inputs divided by the cost of the type. Changing types should be costly: PW's month shutdown seems about right, but that could be checked. Should be less for upgrades, more for changing types completely (bomber to fighter, etc.). Digression: it is possible to switch factories from bombers to fighters. I think it was GM proposed a new (dud) fighter just to avoid getting involved with the B-29. Tanks: Same process as aircraft. Ships: Very similar to tanks and aircraft, except different types should have very different steel requirements. Also might consider having the construction slips as an additional input, at least for large ships (see RevRick's post in the old thread). Land Units: A bit different from the others. Just draft workers, and presto! Well, not quite. Basically the officers are drafted from the educated workers and the enlisted men from the basic workers. Replacements should be almost all enlisted men (while plenty of officers became casulties in the fighting units, keep in mind how many officers never got near a fighting unit). New units need both. Also requires supplies (the equipment). Training requires fuel and supplies, but in my opinion units should be formed untrained and then the player can decide how much training they need before going into combat. There's a lot to hash out here--pilots, for example. One other thing I forgot to mention: everything should major should have a lag from the time production starts to when it's finished. One big build queue, essentially. How long the lead time should be for various things I'll leave to those with more historical expertise. I hope this gives some ideas, so have at it.



mdiehl -> (12/15/2000 5:24:00 AM)

Glad you're not trying anything too ambitious... (irony intended). This seems pretty darn unworkable, and there are so many relevant variables that the risk is that a bad assumption in one or two of them, or in the ways that you connect them, run can result in a nutty simulation. But for the sake of argument, I'll throw in a consideration. Production is much more than resources and labor. In 1939, something like 60-80% of the world's GDP was tied up in the US and Britain, even though these nations did not by any means have a monopoly on any particular resource, and were in the minority population-wise. One common mistake made by Pacific theater *board* games is to give the Japanese large economic credit (therefore "purchasing power" for new equipment, ships, &c) for conquering China, SE Asia, and other potential resource areas such as India. This is an error for a whole array of reasons, primarily having to do with indiginous levels of industrialization in subject nations, and with bottlenecks in Japanese production. Take, for example, road construction. In 1940, 12 Americans and 4 pieces of heavy machinery could lay road at several times the rate of several hundred manual laborers in China. Extend that disparity to mining, agriculture, wood products, and almost every other resource in SE Asian countries and what you discover is that *despite* having access to large amounts of raw material and labor (for example in Korea), Japanese extraction and production *outside of Japan* was handicapped by extremely high overhead costs. (All that manual labor produces raw materials at a slower rate than in industrialized countries. Plus that manual labor requires feeding, which requires more manual labor for growing crops, and also requires distribution infrastructure such as railroads and fuel, which requires more resources and manual labor &c). The simple cause for this disparity was the fact that the US/European colonial powers and Japan also invested very little in the infrastructure in colonies, preferring instead to use cheap manual labor at low production rates, export the raw materials to the home country, and produce the more valuable finished goods at home. (That's the basic colonial model). So taking French Indochina and Burma gave the Japanese access to more resources, but did not solve any of their problems with respect to manufacturing anything. The exception was oil. Taking the Oil Refineries, when these could be captured in not-too-badly-damaged condition, was useful because oil pumping and refining was an inherently industrialized process and did not require much manual labor anyhow. If the refinery was there & the Japanese had the experts to run it, production could resume in a hurry. (Unfortunately for the Japanese, the various oil companies made pretty sever hash out of the refineries, and Japan never realized production levels that they had anticipated.) Once in Japan, the conversion of raw materials ran into other very severe production bottlenecks. Apart from the fact that Japanese industries were, uh, not uniform in the degree of use of industrial-line production, there were shortages in machine tools required to produce the tools that produced the finished products. There were also shortages in the number of trained engineers who could design new and better tools, and shortages in machinests who could operate such tools to the relatively fine tolerances required for many kinds of modern military hardware.... hence various unresolved teething problems as with all of the Japanese attempts to manufacture a decent in-line engine, or to get higher HP out of their at-start radials. All that resource potential "outside of Japan" was there, but to get comparable production levels Japan would have required 5-10 years of unfettered peaceful access, and probably would have had to develop much more humanitarian and enlightened occupation policies than they actually used.



Ed Cogburn -> (12/15/2000 4:51:00 PM)

quote:

Originally posted by mdiehl: Glad you're not trying anything too ambitious... (irony intended). This seems pretty darn unworkable, and there are so many relevant variables that the risk is that a bad assumption in one or two of them, or in the ways that you connect them, run can result in a nutty simulation. But for the sake of argument, I'll throw in a consideration.
Oh, I don't think its that bad. Its easy to come up with detailed plans, programming them is another matter. [img]http://www.matrixgames.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img] The only thing I'd say at this stage, is the distinction between officers and enlisted, and the whole educational thing is overkill. For our purposes, whether the guy has been educated or not, doesn't matter. The important category is pilots. If you can fly a plane, bingo, you're an officer, so the whole educational thing doesn't make sense for the most important category. The more important thing is the capacity to train new pilots, and what general experience level do you want out of them (highly-trained pilots take longer to train then pilots with average training). As for the rest of mdiehl's post about Japan's industrial problems, these aren't reasons to avoid a detailed game production system, they are important factors to be taken into account when *designing* that production system. Perhaps all we need is a "industrial expansion parameter" that would allow the US, for example, to expand its industrial base quickly, as was historical, but to restrict Japan's expansion to simulate the structural problems of its industry?



Sapphire -> (12/15/2000 10:22:00 PM)

mdiehl--Well, I completely agree that most games give too big an economic bonus for conquering territory--they're trying to give an incentive to be aggressive and while I understand their reasons, they don't belong in a serious game like WITP. Territory gives resources, and that's about it (and getting it back to Japan is your problem). You are right about the need to play-test the whole thing very carefully. One bad cost can bollix up the whole thing. Ed--you may be right about education being overkill; I was hoping to recreate the Army vs. Air Force fights over pilots vs. officers, but it would make things easier to drop it. One disagreement though--the hard part won't be coding the economic model, it will be designing a user interface that makes it managable. A good interface will make it easy, but we've never seen what Matrix can do with a UI (GG's involvement does not inspire me with confidence on this front).



TbirdUSMC -> (12/16/2000 4:33:00 AM)

I belive that the economic model should include the number of people you draft for replacements should effect your Industrial output and that Gas and Stuff should also effect you industrial strength like say you have high loses of merchant shipping that it would effect your industrial strength with possible delaying ship production AFV production and aircraft production and that the more resources you get would increase you industry.



RevRick -> (12/18/2000 11:30:00 PM)

It's monkey wrench time: Re Officers vs. enlisted - notably in pilots. I seem to recall a sergeant flying mustangs who made a pretty good mark in history - named Yeager, I believe. Also, I wonder if what we are really talking about is simply the raw economic model as much as we are trying to find a determiner of the preparedness for the U.S. to face what was inevitable, and modify history along those lines..and I am not sure we can encompass that in a game which we could fit onto most of our computers. There are entirely too many variables. For example, the U.S. obviously had the capacity to begin to produce carriers, battleships, cruisers, aircraft, and increase the size of the Army prior to the war, because some of these were done. However, the political restraints on Roosevelt and those who KNEW that we were going to wind up in a war were horrendous. Just as we have people today whose minds have been made up since birth that they will never vote Demopublican even if the Republicrat is a yellow dog, there were pacifists who made such a hash of things in politics that any attempt to begin preparations for the war most felt was coming had repercussions far beyond the anticipation of oncoming necessity - such as the possibility that we would not have had Roosevelt as President if he had really pursued the course he wished to take as early as 1939. It's not just the raw productive date which governs. Does anyone have an idea for an elegant simple solution to determining just what the alternatives were? What was the production basis Grigbsy used, and how much did each item cost? ------------------ God Bless; Rev. Rick, the tincanman



Sapphire -> (12/19/2000 7:22:00 AM)

On Yeager, the question is, had he been in the Army, would he have been a 2nd Lieutenant? Comments? Does it matter? It seems like your talking about mostly before the war started. It's bad enough having to deal with technical and resource constraints; before the war there are diplomatic and political constraints as well. And then once the war starts the whole system for dealing with them goes out the window. I'd love to see it done well, but it's not a priority to me. Just start everything in Dec. '41 where it was. In PW, GG allowed you to change factories from one aircraft to another within predefined types (e.g. you could switch from P-39's to P-40's, but not to B-17). Ships could be delayed from their historical arrival dates due to various factors. Other than that, everything just came according to the historical timeline; I've gone into why I think we need more flexibility in another post. I agree that what we're trying to get at here is determining what the alternatives really were, which is hard given that most of them didn't happen. Einstein said that everything should be as simple as possible and no simpler. I think we're getting some good simplifications here--I sure hope we get to elegant.



Ed Cogburn -> (12/19/2000 11:52:00 AM)

quote:

Originally posted by Sapphire: In PW, GG allowed you to change factories from one aircraft to another within predefined types (e.g. you could switch from P-39's to P-40's, but not to B-17). Ships could be delayed from their historical arrival dates due to various factors. Other than that, everything just came according to the historical timeline; I've gone into why I think we need more flexibility in another post.
Yes, as has been discussed in both PW and WIR forums, these two games were *not* grand strategy games allowing different starting conditions and what-if possibilities, they are simulations of the Pacific Theatre and the Eastern Front of the European Theatre respectively. What many of us want out of WitP *IS* a grand strategy game.



C3I2 -> (12/20/2000 5:19:00 AM)

Yes indeed, what I like to see is a game that encompasses why the war started. Japan in the WWI was on the 'other' side, taking german colonies in the east. In WWII, they occupied French Indochine after the fall of France. This in turn was one of the main reasons that you had a restriction of Oil sales to Japan from the US. Now if you have a fleet that runs on oil you have some tactical benefits and some strategical drawbacks from that. Not to meantion the need for oil in your industry as a whole. But coal was still a viable option for ships in these days, you had to make a choice that is all. Now, the idea (and it was not the only idea) was to take oil from the Duch colonies in the Pacific to replace the US oil they needed but did not get. Yet another country over run by the German war machine. They had reason to belive that the US would use this as a pretext to get involved in the Pacific in their own intrests. The strike on Pearl was intended to make that so costly that it was not done. This in short. Any grand strategy game that you want to be intresting to play as Japanese, should at least include: periods prior to Pearl, a decent economic- and political-system. === http://www.combinedfleet.com/ (Because its a nice site, IJN oriented) The history prior to the war, ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. Minimum required reading to understand it from a political and economic perspective. http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/7/0,5716,109547+4+106451,00.html http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/7/0,5716,109547+10+106451,00.html



mdiehl -> (12/20/2000 10:41:00 PM)

Well, if you take away the causus then you have no belli. If pre-war Japan was something other than a rigidly hierarchical authoritarian state with an ultranationalist, expansionist program and an ideology of contempt for non-nationals then the most likely solution is that the US and the kinder-gentler more democratic Japan join forces and co-establish a Pacific Rim alliance. In this alliance the US and Japan pressure Britain into setting a timetable for withdrawal from Chinese ports and granting Indian and Burmese independence in return for joining the fray against Germany, Italy and the Chi-coms. The US agrees to a withdrawal from the Phillippines, Japan from Manchukuo, and trade flourishes. In the Mediterranean, the Italians and the German DAK are dismayed as Ark Royal, Illustrious, Formidable, Enterprise, Yorktown, Hornet, Wasp, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu and Soryu show the Continental Powers just what Mahan meant by Sea Power. After all, that was the direction that US foreign policy was heading anyhow. If there is a Wacky War scenario I can also already imagine the Axi-philes whining when the US gets to restrict metal imports to Japan in the 1930s, if China unifies in the 1920s, if Singapore turns out to be a real fortress, if the Phillippine Army units get trained and are adequately supplied, if the P-80 gets reliable engines and drop tanks in 1941 and shows up as a combat deployable unit in 1942, ... you get the picture.



C3I2 -> (12/21/2000 5:35:00 AM)

Its simple, you got some pre war political options that the US can use. These carries a penalty, the penalty is more heavy the earlier you use them. Heavy use (early), could mean that Japan could attack the Duch colonies and the US would be unable to declare war. This would mean that Japan could prepare better and do a better strike at Pearl (among other things). Yes, the US ability is hidden to some extent, so you have to guess what the optimal time to strike is and you do want to strike to deal damage in a 'surprise' attack. As you obviously are used to playing the US, I guess you can imagine what having 6 months less to beat Japan in the war can mean for you as a gamer. - As for research and units, they should be flexible and you could try to rush projects, but it should not be completely under player control. They use of randomizing metodes is a must. You should not be able to count of having A-bombs at a certain date for examples. The same goes for engines in planes or whatever. Set a default date, randomize the results based on that date. Then ad some player control, so you can try rush R&D by using your reasources (or even strip some resouces who knows). This makes for a challanging grand strategy game.



Sapphire -> (12/22/2000 3:21:00 AM)

You don't have to convince me a grand strategy game would be fun, but I think it's clear that WITP is not going to be that game. After all, some of the scenarios described don't include either a War in the Pacific or a Struggle against Japan! A good grand strategy game would have to include the entire world, and allow for a very broad range of possibilities. And normally a broad range of possibilities can only be simulated by a single system if it has a high level of abstraction (which we know WITP does not). Sounds like what you need to do is get Matrix thinking along those lines for their next project...



RevRick -> (12/22/2000 4:08:00 AM)

Actually, it is really simple. All we want is the equivalent of the Grand Unified Field Theory applied to wargames replicating the first half of the twentieth century CE on a computer. That can't be that hard, can it? Oh, by the way, make sure it operates on a Pentium 100 or better and with less than 16 megs of RAM. That ought to do it. How about a point system for production following Dec. 7. We know what was in production before the war started. We would also know (through the game) roughly how many points would be allocated to Pacific Theater. Each LCU cost so much, each air unit, each ship, etc. etc., and you only have so much capital with which to work to purchase the units to prosecute the war. So, you "buy" each one - with limitations as to availability of productive capacity - (remember shipyard limitations), and they are put into production to be withdrawn as completed after the construction/training/commissioning time is completed. Might also have only a certain number of "points" separate from production available to upgrade such things as AA protection, change tanks and divisional outfits, change aircraft (not to mention aircraft production in given plants, refit/overhaul/repair ships, etc. Ideas, anyone? ------------------ God Bless; Rev. Rick, the tincanman [This message has been edited by RevRick (edited December 21, 2000).]



C3I2 -> (12/22/2000 4:17:00 AM)

I think its doable within a Asiatic setting only, it is not as fun as íf you combine Europe and Asia, but then finding 4+ players is often hard. Haveing a high detail in units and so on, do not preclude a grand strategy concept, well at least not in a computer game. The same goes with having non, GS senarious. Infact I would probably play those first to learn the ropes of troop disposition and such If I played it my self. As I have learned other game system by parts, playing the Civil war in Spain or the Japanese campain in china only (in the old days). Any game were you can divide one playerside is also good, its easier on the players and you can teach a new guy the ropes. - As for not having Grand Strategy scope, I find games when you know at what date Sov. will declare war or you know when you have the A-bomb and can adapt to to that, rather boring. The same if you have a fixed troop/ship reinforcement scedule regardless of what have happenend in the game. Then I might play a battle of Midway only, in another scale (other game) and let that decide who won the war. It for sure would be more 'realistic'. In that scope the fixed units (OOBs) are ok for example. - As for the name, I do hope it don't mean they don't design a good game with many variants. I also hope you can play the Japanese side, the name could be interpreted as if that is not possible. But that name might help selling it in the US who knows.



sulup -> (12/29/2000 1:16:00 PM)

In War In Russia, you were able to witness what was going on in North Africa and outside France by clicking on the HQ's in italy and france. A simple model like this should at least be implemented in WITP. Example - Random factors could make Rommel get lucky and take Egypt. This might have an effect on the performance in Burma fronts. Japan would also have to leave sufficient enough forces in Manchuria in case Russia decided to attack somewhere round 1945 or whatever. If Germany does well in the atlantic war, then ships from the pacific would have to go to atlantic to make up losses. Vice versa, if Japan sinks lots of US MCS then ships would be taken from the Atlantic and so on. The model outside the Pacific doesn't have to be very complicated but I think it should be there to show that the whole world isn't just the "pacific" and that the German performance in Europe might've been been felt in the Pacific.



moore4807 -> (12/31/2000 12:54:00 AM)

Heres a passing thought- I am stealing several ideas from everyone here so feel free to take credit where appropriate. 1) Using current scoring for ships, tanks planes, etc. Ship keels, Tank bodies, and plane frames are produced at bases using base cost and engines /firepower /defense systems are modifiers to cost/time production. This allows variables and limits for drydock/ways and repairs/improvements. Once player sets it can be automanaged by computer base commander for ease. 2) Each new base must start from a Camp,(with limited options) and built to become either a Fort or a Navy Base. It will have a varied area population to draw from, creating manpower pools (military / civilian / technical) and economy (food supply, general supply, and materials for population)with a 5% penalty for each class lost in economy/manpower pools. Pools operated under conscript / forced labor are an additional 50% penalty. Each base area produces a quantity of supplies and materials and surplus can be shipped (ground, rail, or air)to other bases (minus shipping costs and delay penalties for each type) 3) Base Commanders become important because thier ability to direct the above (with our help of course!) Poor commander= poor performance in weak areas, Good commander= surplus in materials, supplies and manpower pools in strong areas. If base economy goes bad- economic penalties occur, hurting the base production and population levels. (population moves to where jobs are) 4) Training is by service class and type-ie; Army, Navy, Marine- , Basic Infantry, Advanced Infantry, Basic Flight, Advanced Flight, Artillery, Maintenance/repair, Engineering, UDT's(SEALs), Paratrooper, Rangers, Raiders, General Staff College(for improving Staff skills) are examples and this occurs at bases after training quarters are built at bases. 5) Technical advances should be left to players by choices, I propose grading the levels and allowing Allied or Axis forces the new advancements by meeting a points schedule. This could be done by creating more bases and/or labs at bases using the technical pools each month. New research would take away the option at the base for upgrades and forces a strategic decision for the player of sending all of your techs into one super base for tech advances (more realistic) 6) Supply at each base should come from a seperate "supply pool" for that base. it should be stocked with ships, rail, and planes as the player/computer sees fit and to/from shipping routes should be listed as add/delete by the player. To account for combat/danger zones in the shipping lanes, a 15% sunk/destroyed chance modifier for each turn the player attempts to get supply from or supply the base under seige (15%+15%+15% etc.) 7) As opposed to specific names of components (Merlin, Allison engines etc.) TypeI V-1 is base unit with basic frame, engine, and weaponry (say a P-40A) . This unit can still recieve upgrades in the field once new upgrades are announced. Parts must be shipped to field units so it isnt an automatic upgrade across the board + adds to shipping problems. After one upgrade announcement in Frame, Engine and Weaponry the plane starts manufacturing a Subsequent Version of this(P-40B). You can add upgrades on existing planes continually thru maintenance/repair (Making it a P-40C)and field repair can even modify/improve it before a new class designation is announced. (say P-40B has 4 .50 cal. MG, it's field upgraded to 8 .50 cal.) still a P-40B but better firepower) Each fighter/ bomber would need a capability chart for wing & fuselage loadings, but I dont feel it would be hard to chart and could be done quickly with books available today. ( could you imagine modifying B-17's into gunships to escort your bombers? Twin or Quad .50's AND 40 mm Bofors could do a lot of damage to lightly armored Jap airplanes.) I see this as a map window with bases folder-tabbed for each specific component and its subject. Color coded as noted by others before to signal problems. Well thats it, feel free to add to it make it better.



VictorH -> (1/4/2001 9:24:00 AM)

Wouldn't the Economic model be an integral part of the overall balance of the game? Waiting until late in the design process to work out an economic model would be a serious error. Using history we know what was produced and how much labor/raw materials were used to do it. The trick would be to allow modifications to the decisions made using those resources. For instance how many Yamato class battleships could the Japanese have built and what other factors in their economy would have been decreased. Also, how long did it take to build one? Would more shipyards and more workers have allowed them to be built sooner? What else in the economy would have suffered due to those production changes. What I'm trying to say is we know how many people, and resources were available and how many were added or lost as territory was conquered or industry was bombed, the trick is to figure out what the inputs are for each weapon class. [This message has been edited by VictorH (edited January 03, 2001).]



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