Russian economics

[squatter]

Bump ComP?

[Aurelian]

ORIGINAL: squatter

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

He's probably misinterpreting

2. To maintain historical production figures the Soviet player
needs to move at least half of the capacity of the factories being
relocated.

Yes, that's what I'm quoting.

If I'm misinterpreting, could you translate for me?

Seems to me to say that the Soviet player needs to evacuate half of those factories that would otherwise be overun to hit the historical production rate?

What it's saying is that you have to move half or more of your production if you want to stay at historical production. It doesn't say anything about being overrun, or in danger of such.

2. To maintain historical production figures the Soviet player
needs to move at least half of the capacity of the factories being
relocated. For example, in Leningrad there is a KV-1 factory
that begins the 1941-45 campaign scenario with a size of 29.
KV-1 factories have an expansion rate of one. The factory in
Leningrad was historically moved in mid-August 1941, which
at an expansion rate of one, should be up to a size of about 32.
The only other KV-1 factory is in Chelyabinsk, which initially
has a size of zero. Relocating the Leningrad KV-1 factory in
mid-August 1941 will result in a sharp drop in KV-1 production
as the evacuated factory cannot produce or expand until it has
been repaired. In order to maintain historical output, at least
half of the initial factory’s capacity (16 or greater) will need to
be moved from Leningrad.

[squatter]

???

"Factories being relocated" are being relocated because they are in danger of overrun. I have no idea what point you're trying to make Aurelian.

Am I being really stupid here?

Because everything you guys post from the manual just seems to reiterate what I am saying:

As the Soviet player, you only need to move 50% of any threatened industry to reproduce historical production rates. Ergo, if you move more than 50%, then Soviet production will be higher than historical.

What am I misinterpreting, exactly.

[heliodorus04]

The sentence "you only need to move 50% of threatened industry" is misleading.

The Soviets need to maintain 50% of starting factories to preserve historical production.

On one level, this means you can let half your production facilities fall into enemy hands and be fine (assuming you never move anything else).

On the strategic level, though, these two sentences aren't capturing the issue of strategic trade-offs.

Every time you move a factory, it gets damaged by a randomized amount (within certain limits, which are in the manual, and I think the probabilistic average was somewhere around 50-67% damaged when moving; it's in the manual).
So moving on from this point:

Every factory captured is permanently destroyed.  Those directly and permanently contributed toward the drop in production toward the idealized 50%.  Easy to calculate.

Now let's look at damaged factories.  They have a repair rate (which I forget) per turn, and IIRC it's somewhere around 1 to 3 points of repair.

Now we're into the realm of 'much harder to calculate the NET drop in production'

A factory with more than 50% damage can NOT produce.
A factory with 50% damage or less has a probability distribution for whether it will produce 0 to full possible capacity (I recall an older thread about these probabilities, which I'm not even going to bother to 'search for' (thanks Matrix!), and that probability is checked each turn.

So a factory with 50% damage on some turns will produce 0, and some turns will produce full capacity, and mostly it will be in between those two values.
Meanwhile that factory repairs each turn, changing (increasing) the probability that it will produce higher numbers of whatever.

So as the Soviet, you have to understand that production varies based on damage to factories, and the sooner you move factories, the sooner they start to repair, and the higher the cumulative total of (whatever) it will produce.

Moving factories is going to contribute to that 50% loss of production issue.  But in fairness, I would doubt that a moved factory has any chance, over the course of a 225 turn game, of producing less than 50% of its historical production.  It would have to incur major damage during the move, and then the repair rate would have to be 1 per turn, and then it would have to fail most of the probability checks when damage is less than 50 thus producing little or nothing.  Law of averages seems to me to indicate moved factories will easily produce 50% of their capacity or more over the course of a game.

[76mm]

I'm rather confused myself...so it looks like the Sovs need to move at least 50% of their industry to reach 100% of historical production levels. So does that mean that if they move 100% of their industry, they will achieve 200% of historical production levels?!

[squatter]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

I'm rather confused myself...so it looks like the Sovs need to move at least 50% of their industry to reach 100% of historical production levels. So does that mean that if they move 100% of their industry, they will achieve 200% of historical production levels?!

Something like what I've been wondering all along.

[hfarrish]

Here's a hypothetical to consider, if you feel like analyzing the German side too:

If the German player destroys the frontier army and captures a line from Leningrad to Kiev, and then holds firm a defensive line from that point forward indefinitely,
a) what will the output numbers be comparatively throughout the war
... b) (easy once you have "a") how many tanks does the German player need on the turn he establishes the line to keep par with the Russians until January 1946, if possible.  What is the maximum time he could keep par with the Russians assuming losses are 0 for both sides after the line is established?

Based on current game structure and the exponential strength growth of the Soviet army, this will not happen under any circumstances. German players need to knock the Soviets out of the war or seriously maul them by the end of 42 or they are doomed. The Soviets will simply stack artillery against the impenetrable line, blast you out, and then you will be chased all the way to Berlin in short order.

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

I'm rather confused myself...so it looks like the Sovs need to move at least 50% of their industry to reach 100% of historical production levels. So does that mean that if they move 100% of their industry, they will achieve 200% of historical production levels?!

I don't think so because factories all have a max size so if you move part of non HI/arms they will grow to same max size however many were railed out - though obviously the fewer you rail the longer it will take. In other words assuming you move the same factories as historical (non HI/Arms) you will and up at 100% historical production. You can't get more than historical other than in the short term perhaps.

For HI/arms you have to move exactly the same amount of factories to get 100% historical. As these factories never grow you can end up long term with higher or lower than historical depending on how how high historical losses of these factories there were. I suppose you can tell by checking your July '42 production against start levels for '42 GC which Pavel probably calculated to the last ton of supplies.

[Pillar]

ORIGINAL: hfarrish

Here's a hypothetical to consider, if you feel like analyzing the German side too:

If the German player destroys the frontier army and captures a line from Leningrad to Kiev, and then holds firm a defensive line from that point forward indefinitely,
a) what will the output numbers be comparatively throughout the war
... b) (easy once you have "a") how many tanks does the German player need on the turn he establishes the line to keep par with the Russians until January 1946, if possible.  What is the maximum time he could keep par with the Russians assuming losses are 0 for both sides after the line is established?

Based on current game structure and the exponential strength growth of the Soviet army, this will not happen under any circumstances. German players need to knock the Soviets out of the war or seriously maul them by the end of 42 or they are doomed. The Soviets will simply stack artillery against the impenetrable line, blast you out, and then you will be chased all the way to Berlin in short order.

Hmm.

My thought was that you could take Leningrad, release the Finns (hounds) and then bomb the hell out of Kharkov from behind the Dnepr. Then pocket and destroy any offensives and, if things go well, hit the Caucasus later. If they don't go so well, just continue to hold that line and destroy penetrations.

There is something odd if all they need to do is stack artillery to break and unanchor a whole line. That didn't work out so well in WW1. If they send armor through they should be pretty vulnerable to counterattack.

But I haven't run the numbers on any of this.

[Klydon]

The issue in your argument is you assume the Russians need to break through someplace and try to pocket Axis forces. The Russians get a pile of artillery together and get a nasty concentration of power in infantry corps, they can simply roll up to the line and drop the hammer. The Germans may kill 8-10K of Russians in that attack (maybe 10% tops of the Russian force), but in turn will absolutely get blasted for 4-5k in casualties and most of their artillery destroyed. That sounds like heavy losses to the Russians, except you just killed off roughly 1/2 a German infantry division in that attack. Do it say 6 times in a turn and you are killing a corps of German infantry a turn and they can't take those types of losses. 

[hfarrish]

Exactly right - and if you combine that with the current mechanics of using panzers to counterattack (by which you will take an unacceptable loss ratio attacking anything but tank corps), there is zero chance of holding a line late war longer than a few weeks.

[Pillar]

ORIGINAL: Klydon

The issue in your argument is you assume the Russians need to break through someplace and try to pocket Axis forces. The Russians get a pile of artillery together and get a nasty concentration of power in infantry corps, they can simply roll up to the line and drop the hammer. The Germans may kill 8-10K of Russians in that attack (maybe 10% tops of the Russian force), but in turn will absolutely get blasted for 4-5k in casualties and most of their artillery destroyed. That sounds like heavy losses to the Russians, except you just killed off roughly 1/2 a German infantry division in that attack. Do it say 6 times in a turn and you are killing a corps of German infantry a turn and they can't take those types of losses. 

Holy smokes, okay now I understand!