A needed fix for allied production

[Lanconic]

The allies are locked into historical replacement rates.
That is unfair, because the German is NOT.

The truth is that the allies could have easily quadrupled ALL their plane production.
They didnt need to. So they didnt.

The game should allow the players to boost their production.

[jomni]

Looks like the same complaints with WitP production system.
Japan has a fully manageable economy while the US uses historical replacement.

But the game is all about bombing a country and damaging economy and production.
So the production of the defender should be modeled to see the effects.
The attacker doesn't get bombed so he just gets historical replacement, i've gotten used to this concept in WitP.

[sprior]

Plus, if the allies HAVE to boost production then in games turn they should lose.

[Lanconic]

ORIGINAL: sprior

Plus, if the allies HAVE to boost production then in games turn they should lose.

Really =)

Well in one game it is 1/44 All the German units except night fighters are
TA152C The good one. All the night fighters are HE219-5
again the good ones.

The allies have no bombers left. When they try they get shredded.

So tell me....how did the allies 'deserve' to lose?
What exactly, did they do wrong?

[kaybayray]

My thoughts on this topic...

Yeah I was a bit surprised in the original game that the Allies were not able to control production in the same way the Axis is. However the Allies do have some ability to modify the Aircraft of squadrons. You can change the Airframe of any squadron to fill it with that of your choice. But then you are limited by the quantities being produced and deposited into the pool. So you cant really build the Air Force from the Allied perspective that you can from that of the Axis.

I didnt realize that WITP was modeled the same way. I dont really understand that. It seem intuitive that both sides of a Strategic game would have overall similar capabilities with respect to control of Economy, Production, R&D and Force building. Unless of course that was the major point of the game that a particular side had to overcome a particular set of constraints. Perhaps this was the mindset of the original developers. The idea that the Allies overall production plan with Mandatory Targeting constraints was the obstical that had to be overcome to defeat the Axis.

But I dont know....

Later,
KayBay

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Lanconic

ORIGINAL: sprior

Plus, if the allies HAVE to boost production then in games turn they should lose.

Really =)

Well in one game it is 1/44 All the German units except night fighters are
TA152C The good one. All the night fighters are HE219-5
again the good ones.

The allies have no bombers left. When they try they get shredded.

So tell me....how did the allies 'deserve' to lose?
What exactly, did they do wrong?

so, somebody is gaming the system, why should the other side have to follow along ?

on the list of things I want, is to be able to add start dates to different devices, somebody is reseaching planes, with engines and parts, that are not "made" yet

but, part of that is already taken care of

[Kriegsspieler]

ORIGINAL: kaybayray

My thoughts on this topic...

Yeah I was a bit surprised in the original game that the Allies were not able to control production in the same way the Axis is. However the Allies do have some ability to modify the Aircraft of squadrons. You can change the Airframe of any squadron to fill it with that of your choice. But then you are limited by the quantities being produced and deposited into the pool. So you cant really build the Air Force from the Allied perspective that you can from that of the Axis.

I didnt realize that WITP was modeled the same way. I dont really understand that. It seem intuitive that both sides of a Strategic game would have overall similar capabilities with respect to control of Economy, Production, R&D and Force building. Unless of course that was the major point of the game that a particular side had to overcome a particular set of constraints. Perhaps this was the mindset of the original developers. The idea that the Allies overall production plan with Mandatory Targeting constraints was the obstical that had to be overcome to defeat the Axis.

But I dont know....

Later,
KayBay

Personally, I think the reason is pretty obvious. In both this game and WitP, Allied production for the theatre in question is but one aspect of a global war. For Germany in this game and Japan in WitP, however, this WAS the war. Germany had to devote production to fighting the Russkies, of course, but once one factors in the proportion of the overall economy devoted to that theater, pretty much everything else is present in this game. So giventhose circumstances, it makes sense to let the Germans have more control over their production for some interesting alternatives.

And anyway -- it's not as if giving the Germans control over production really tips the balance very much.

[Golden Bear]

Part of it is also that the Germans tried out many different sorts of experimental planes and then could almost immediately get them into combat. So the possibilities exist in the first place for the LW player or AI to distort things to an extreme "what if" situation.

OTOH, the Allies were generally winning the war - I know it can be debated - from '43 on and, beyond the need for a long range fighter that generated the P51, didn't put strong emphasis on new innovations. They concentrated on bulk. This led them to being caught in bad positions - an example being their armor where they realized when it was too late to change things that the Sherman was a bad liability to German armor.

But when they needed to generate solutions they did. Sticking to aircraft, they developed the Hellcat and Corsair because of the pounding they took from the Japanese.

My feeling/opinion is that if the air war over Europe got uglier they would have come up with a response. We just can't know what it would have been because they were not exploring the alternatives.

...back to the LW side having the capability to distort production steeply from historical... I feel that the difficulties of working withing the German bureaucracy of the time is not modeled strongly enough. The LW player should see a promising build up of super fighters suddenly stopped as all the planes get converted to bombers or get scrapped because one of the many competing layers of bureaucrats had a different idea and more "pull" than the LW player.

Is the "what if?" for the LW side thus based upon the assumption that the German bureaucracy will not interfere with plans? It seems that way to me. That is an enormous benefit to the Axis side!


Carlos

[KenchiSulla]

ORIGINAL: Lanconic

ORIGINAL: sprior

Plus, if the allies HAVE to boost production then in games turn they should lose.

Really =)

Well in one game it is 1/44 All the German units except night fighters are
TA152C The good one. All the night fighters are HE219-5
again the good ones.

The allies have no bombers left. When they try they get shredded.

So tell me....how did the allies 'deserve' to lose?
What exactly, did they do wrong?

Lanconic, this is something that will get fixed in a future patch, I am sure.

Also, why would you want to do that? Because you can? Because you need to win? I approach the game semi-historical, meaning I restrict myself in ability to boost research. Ofcourse I tweak production and at the moment I am working to move forward the deployment of JU88G and the FW190D. Also I plan on NOT researching the ME262 and just build a limit number of them to fill a historical number of Groups.

It would be nice to be able to fiddle with allied production in a limited way though. Perhaps something like that is possible. But then again, I dont believe the allied need that......

[Dixie]

The thing is that as the German player you KNOW that certain aircraft types are going to be great.  There was no guarantee of that during the war, especially for types that were still in the early stages.  

[Howard Mitchell]

ORIGINAL: Dixie
The thing is that as the German player you KNOW that certain aircraft types are going to be great.  There was no guarantee of that during the war, especially for types that were still in the early stages.  

Me 210 and He 177 anybody?

The Allies especially tended to order multiple designs where possible in case one was a dud. The Halifax and Manchester were ordered close together, and given the doubts about the Vulture engine the former changed to Merlins before the design was even finished as a means of risk reduction. The USAAF developed not only the B-29 but also the less revolutionary B-32 in case the Superfortress failed.

As Dixie says, in the game you know exactly what an aircraft is capable of, no chance that you will put all your effort into the Ta 152 only to find that crippling engineering difficulties mean it's delivered two years late and isn't particularly good when it finally arrives.

[Nikademus]

Any time you can manipulate production in a wargame...bad things usually result. It sounds like the dev team though has a handle on it.

[Nicholas Bell]

It would seem to be a fairly simple task to code a random chance for a German aircraft's deployment time to be INCREASED occasionally to reflect the many inefficiencies of the Reich.  A well-oiled machine it was not....

Is the "what if?" for the LW side thus based upon the assumption that the German bureaucracy will not interfere with plans? It seems that way to me. That is an enormous benefit to the Axis side!

IMO all of GG's games over the years have had a definite Axis "slant" to them.  He's a pretty reclusive guy - I have not seen anything directly attributable to him since around 1993 when he participated in the Pacific War Genie newslist (or whatever it was called) - so it is really impossible to know exactly what is going on in his head.  I've read everything from being accused of being a closet Nazi, a panzer-pusher (boardwargamers know what I mean - and I don't know if being one of these or a closet Nazi is worse [:D]!) to a more recent apologist thread about Gary wanting to more "explore the possibilities of what might have been", than what happened.  While there certainly is no argument about their being plenty of room for improvement in the Axis camp, it seems the possibility of improved Allied performance/decision making of it's own accord or in response to better Axis performance does not exist for the Allies in GG's mind - or at least his programs.

[Lanconic]

All of you have completely missed my point. Why are there no MORE allied planes?
Because they were NOT needed. If they HAD been needed they would have gotten them.
Including if needed the B-29.

If they needed 15k more escorts, they could have been provided.
It was within the allied capability.

THAT is my point.

[KenchiSulla]

[&:] What do you mean? Was that your point...

You lost me bud..

[Golden Bear]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

[&:] What do you mean? Was that your point...

You lost me bud..

He's just trying to say that if the LW had continued with greater level of resistance, the Allies could/would have put in more resources - more units, newer aircraft, etc. This doesn't happen within the game.

What does happen is that if the Allied player doesn't keep increasing their points they will suffer a sudden loss at the end of the month. For the player this could mean that more resources are being allocated but you aren't going to get to use them!

The potential difficulty comes for the LW player. If they are doing well, they (based on readings of action reports in the past) can just crush the Allied bombing efforts and the AI doesn't have any solution. More interesting would be for the Allied AI to swarm them with yet more units and better equipment.

Based on history, it is a war that the Axis is going to lose. If I had done it (hah!) the goal would be to see how long the LW player can prolong the battle since they are doomed ultimately to being overwhelmed.

Playing as Allied vs. AI I'm fine with how things work out. The new weapons of the LW arre a challenge and it is up to me to be clever about countering a changing situation.

Carl

[KenchiSulla]

Alright, thanks for that. I understand the point. I still wonder about the allied ability to bring in more forces. This would have weakened them at the pacific front and the war there was still raging.

In game the allies don't really run out of planes and pilots, right? (I don't play allied)

[Nikademus]

Replacement airframes was never an issue. Replacement pilots, life expectancy and morale were the issue. Is he saying that the Allied side is running out of B-17's? Never saw that in the original game, and i'm legendary for my lack of thorough raid planning. Ask Speedy. [:D]

[Nicholas Bell]

Maybe Harley could have an Allied option to say, double the US aircraft replacement rate at the cost of victory points.  Sudden death would have to be loosened up a bit for that, but I'm not keen on having the game end and not being able to finish it off anyway - even if I've lost on points.

There's no doubt that the US had plenty of production capacity.  By 1944 they were cutting back on pilot training because they had 10,000's more than they could use.  How many thousands of aircraft never left CONUS - thousands upon thousands.  Morale, that's another story.  Truman was very worried about support for the war against Japan by the summer of 1945, which may have played a part in the decision to use the atomic bomb.  And I have no doubt it would have been used against Germany if it had been holding out.  And why the game ends in 1945 not 1946.  (not to say a non-nuclear optional extension wouldn't be interesting!)

[bigmilt]

I don't know where you guys get production could be doubled or quadrupled - all the plants were going 24/7 with
workers being required to work 48 hours in a week. there was a labor shortage you know even with all the rosie the
riveters going strong.