Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: treespider

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ORIGINAL: oldman45

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

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ORIGINAL: oldman45

I think we went do a too complicated road. There are so many things abstracted in this game, a simple 1 fuel point per engine per mission would be a good starting point.

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ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

I just find it odd to use "fuel" for both 'light' products like avgas and petrol and 'heavy' products like fuel oil of the "Bunker C" variety.

Therefore I think the way it is in the game is ok - supplies represent the "light" products for land and air, while fuel represents the heavy stuff for ships and HI (with diesel and gasoline for subs and PTs being - ahem - disregarded).

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: treespider

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ORIGINAL: oldman45

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

To me the issue is that this is exactly what the PTO Allies did do. They went after the tankers with gusto from the summer of 1944 until they were all dead. This largely grounded the Japanese air training program, somewhat crippled kami pilots' preperation, and would have prevented any CAPs if the HI invasions had gone forward.

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There would have been no 5000 fighter CAP to stand up to B-29s in late 1945 as we see in AE.

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My point about the Allies was in response to your seeming focus on only the Japanese implications of a flying-fuel mod.

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The Allies would also have to haul fuel forward to fly in the course of their re-conquest march west. The ranges would be greater than any the Japanese player has to deal with. They get massively more ships, and xAKs can haul fuel, inefficiently, but my point was that there would be Allied penalties to op tempo as well. And, the Allies don't care about HI or the fuel production of same consumes, so they would get a "hidden bonus" to an extent if fuel were required to fly training missions. Their huge replacement pilot pools are free.

A fuel-flying mod would be thus be a mixed bag of downstream effects, differing relative to the two sides.

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ORIGINAL: treespider

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: treespider

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ORIGINAL: oldman45

No, its really not the same thing Treespider.

So an Allied xAK hauling 55 gallon drums of Avgas is different than pallets of Toilet paper or spare cots or bullets or spam?

the problem with specialized bits and pieces is everyone knows they are important...so why not throw everything at the ball bearing plant cause if you shut down the ball bearings the war industry grinds to a halt.

To me the issue is that this is exactly what the PTO Allies did do. They went after the tankers with gusto from the summer of 1944 until they were all dead. This largely grounded the Japanese air training program, somewhat crippled kami pilots' preperation, and would have prevented any CAPs if the HI invasions had gone forward.

Which is abstractly represented by the denial of "Fuel" to the Home Islands which is needed for HI production which is subsequently needed for Pilot production...thus largely grounding the Japanese air training program.

But it doesn't work. We see many AARs where the HI bank by 1945 is in the several millions, and HI banks aren't attackable by the Allies. There is never a shortage of pilots. If fuel were exposed on each airbase and needed to fly CAP the Japanese player would have to make a lot more difficult decisions.

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There would have been no 5000 fighter CAP to stand up to B-29s in late 1945 as we see in AE.

Is a 5000 fighter CAP possible? I thought there was a hard limit on the number of units. Or is 5000 simply hyperbole?

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It's not in collective terms. See rader's game vs. Greyjoy.

My point about the Allies was in response to your seeming focus on only the Japanese implications of a flying-fuel mod.

Which seems to be what the biggest complaint so far in this thread...that LI Production in Japan allows for supply production which allows planes to keep flying.

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Fuel supply was never a problem for th eallies. Fuel location and transport was. In both cases making fuel a requirem,ent to fly, either at continental or island bases, would affect tactics, op tempo, and target focus. It would shhift the war in most games to different, more historical flows.

The Allies would also have to haul fuel forward to fly in the course of their re-conquest march west. The ranges would be greater than any the Japanese player has to deal with. They get massively more ships, and xAKs can haul fuel, inefficiently, but my point was that there would be Allied penalties to op tempo as well. And, the Allies don't care about HI or the fuel production of same consumes, so they would get a "hidden bonus" to an extent if fuel were required to fly training missions. Their huge replacement pilot pools are free.

A fuel-flying mod would be thus be a mixed bag of downstream effects, differing relative to the two sides.

IMO (which we all have) there are a number of items that need to be addressed and aircraft consuming Fuel is far from the top of the list.

A number of mods address some of the issues...

1. DBB-C reduces cargo capacities.
2. My mod and now my and Vettims mod will increase the resource transportation requirements for the Japanese coupled with DBB-C's cargo limits

As to code changes the simplest would be to alter the spoilage formula and dramatically reduce the supply storage capacity in malarial regions on the map.

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ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

In my Downfall game I am successfully avoiding most of the HI cost for training pilots by the simple method of pulling pilots from the pipeline onto the map to fill out Kamikaze and/or Training units. Once on the map they can train up using only Supply, and at a faster speed than off-map training.

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ORIGINAL: treespider

But I digress...

The real concern seems to be the late game the Japanese are able to put up a bunch of fighters in the air because they are not burning Fuel but using supply.

So lets say hypothetically we cause the aircraft to burn Fuel...how much should they burn?

The Japanese in DBB-C can theoretically produce c.7900 Fuel points per day in the Home Islands. Don't you think players will simply start to create large stock piles of fuels points in the HI to compensate?

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: treespider

But I digress...

The real concern seems to be the late game the Japanese are able to put up a bunch of fighters in the air because they are not burning Fuel but using supply.

So lets say hypothetically we cause the aircraft to burn Fuel...how much should they burn?

The Japanese in DBB-C can theoretically produce c.7900 Fuel points per day in the Home Islands. Don't you think players will simply start to create large stock piles of fuels points in the HI to compensate?

I can attack those.

I don't play DBB yet. I assume those fuel points must still come from Oil, which had to be hauled to the HI on scarce tankers. If I sink the tankers before the endgame, by historic use of my subs for example, there won't be 7900 fuel points per day, and a lot less air defense for the HI. In contrast, now, with the LI model, the HI make supply from local resources and planes can fly while isolated from the rest of the map forever, unless the Allies take out either Resources or LI. I've done a strat bombing campaign into mid-1946. Trying to swat down LI is really hard to do.

In summary, the difference with a fly-fuel model is the petroleum resources are geographically distant from the HI where they will be needed at the 11th hour. LI is right next to Resources in Japan. Supply is a closed loop.

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ORIGINAL: Puhis

It is no longer possible to shut off LI.

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ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

Air missions should use Fuel as well as Supply

I fully realise that there are no future functional code changes planned to the game engine, but I'm still going to try anyway.

Hypothesis:-

If there is one single thing that this game needs it is for air missions to use fuel as well as supply.

Why? Well AvGas is a product of oil refineries, so it's factual. Secondly, it would drastically reduce the operational tempo in general and thirdly (most importantly) Japan would be faced in-game with what was it's most crucial problem in reality. Which as of right now it isn't. It can keep thousands of planes in the air right up to the finish.

The problem is structural. In fact, AVGAS is supply points in this system - refineries produce supply explicitly for that reason.

At root, a better system would be if we had a breakout of "supply" as three items

munitions (ammo for short) - which is 90% of what is used (by weight) when fighting
fuel (POL for short - the formal military meaning - all petroleum products) - which is the majority of what is used by motorized units when
moving - and by ships
general supply (supply for short) - everything else - including food, spare parts, name it - this is a small requirement for all but draft land
units - but it is universal - and pretty much independent of if a unit is fighting or moving - it always needs general supply

I even proposed that for WITP - compared to UA - but it was too fundamental to get included.

The other thing that needs to be present for economics to make real sense is more kinds of "resources"
The ancient paper "War in the Pacific" by SPI had "northern Resource points" and "Southern Resource Points" - an attempt to say that you cannot just
import resources from one place and get all you need, period.
I prefer to separate out things like coal - which is the MAJORITY of what Japan imports (by weight) - and which is also important economically (coking coal is a fundamental requirement to make steel - steel is the second most important limit on wartime production after oil - the total amount of steel you can make is limited and hard to grow rapidly - and your choices of what to do with it are critical - you can build rifles, tanks, warships, bridges, railroads, steel frame factory buildings - the list is long) - and coal also is a fuel used for most electrical power and many steam powered industrial operations. Not to mention a fuel for some ships. So coal alone accounts for a significant majority if imported resources. Then there is iron ore - the second biggest thing needed by weight. But both are worthless without other minerals - I represent them by copper - but one might use another term. All these are different from oil. And there is important critical stuff - I represent it with rubber - but it includes antimony - you can't make ammunition without it. Finally there needs to be some sort of agricultural input - a place that generates food or cotton (for guncotton as well as uniforms) - ought not to be creating the same thing as a place making coal, iron, other minerals, etc does. That way you value a location for what it makes, and cannot substitute that for what you must get somewhere else.

We are not going to see this stuff in WITP/AE or derivitive products.

The real problem with air units is they do not need enough supply points. They pretty much fly almost for free. Since supply is defined in tons, supply for combat missions ought to include the weight of bombs! It does not. It does not even matter how much you fly. Only the use of drop tanks increases your supply costs - a little.

I do not believe this would be massively difficult to code, and the effects would be very well contained, just confined to how many planes take off for XYZ air mission. There ought to be no bug leakage into other areas unless the code really is borked beyond belief.

Discuss ...

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ORIGINAL: treespider

So give us a number how much Fuel should be used for 2 Babs flying a recon vs 27 Zeros on CAP vs 48 Sally's?