Sapphire
Posts: 31
Joined: 9/28/2000
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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.
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Beginnings of an Economic Model (long post) - 
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?
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