Production

[emf]

Hello all, I have a question about production. As your production research goes up all units become progresivly cheaper to build, well should they also be made quicker? In my opionion it stands to reason that, as more effcient means of production are used to make it cheaper to build, then it should also be faster to build. I don't know any specific sources of info, however I remember reading that the U.S. was able to build Liberty ships as fast as 60 days. Perhaps with every increase of production, the time to build would decrease maybe by 1 turn. What say ya'll?

[Miech]

Should be nice, and more incentive to put chits in research, instead of the standard 'who can get IW 3 the fastest' method. Plus, people are more inclined to build ships that way:)

[Edwin P.]

I agree, a Naval Production tech that reduced the time to build a ship by 1 month per tech level (max 3 levels) would be appreciated.

Germany was turning out subs in only 3 months by the end of the war as opposed to 9 months at the war's start.

Why? Germany switched to using mass production techniques for submarine production. The subs would be manufactured in sections which were transported to the shipyards and assembled there.

Being able to turn out submarines or destroyers in only three months would dramatically change the naval war in SC2 - making it easier to counter the opponents strategy - if you had researched Naval Production Tech.

[Lars]

A bit complicated, but actually, what Germany (and everybody else) was producing quickly were all the lines they left the hell alone.

So perhaps you could cut the time on a Tank, Level 0, but there's no way you should cut the time on a Tank, Level 5.

Which means a player would just buy a Level 0, then upgrade it the next turn. Makes it sort of a moot point.

[emf]

I kind of agree with Lars. How about this then: Production goes up - cost and time goes down. Tech goes up - cost and time also go up.

[Ottosmops]

To a certain extent, the effect of faster production is already implemented through cheaper production.

Given the same MPP income and better production technology, you can build more units in the same time span.

[Lars]

Originally posted by emf:

I kind of agree with Lars. How about this then: Production goes up - cost and time goes down. Tech goes up - cost and time also go up.

Think it works well enough, as is.

You're opening up a whole can of worms there.

[Bill101]

While mass production could churn out material at a faster rate, training units for battle doesn't speed up at the same rate. Dividing the two would be a bit tricky!

I also think that if you can produce more units because they are cheaper then it works out the same as if you have speeded up production - because rather than producing one unit every (say) six months of a given type, you can now produce one every (say) four months. You still have to wait the same amount of time, but in the long run you've got more of them!

[pzgndr]

Another idea is the gearing ratio concept used in World in Flames. Production costs and delays for new builds could be reduced by some percentage (5-10%) based on the number of units already in the production queue.

[arado234]

Lars why wouldnt you get faster at producing a level 5 tank or for that matter a level 5 anything?Once the prototype is built you would just gear up production for that weapon.It wouldnt be as fast in some cases as a lower tech. weapon but it would certainly be faster as you acquired more skills at making the weapon.Knowledge usually equates into faster production in any item.

[Liam]

It's all about what is game balancing...

If it unbalances the game then NO way! If It balances the game, then by all means.

Assembly Lines were for Vehicles, Aircraft and Ships for WW2, it speed up production a great deal! No matter how advanced the unit is, it's only as advanced as the current "times"... Relatively...

Training Programs during the Mobilization period did increase.. War Preparedness would've meant the Manpower would've been trained on Obsolete equipment to get out there and do their job before the Equipment was even available! That's why a lot of Spitfires Pilots learned in Biplanes and some even running around with Paper Kites

Producing More units with decreased Cost does in a round about way reflect Cheaper and Faster... Though Not for the Germany pre-Barby.. UK Pre-Sea Lion. The USA Pre War Entry. I'd rather have 5 Fighters than 5 cheaper fighters, as ASAP! Kick some Butt rather quicker

Originally posted by Bill101:

While mass production could churn out material at a faster rate, training units for battle doesn't speed up at the same rate. Dividing the two would be a bit tricky!

I also think that if you can produce more units because they are cheaper then it works out the same as if you have speeded up production - because rather than producing one unit every (say) six months of a given type, you can now produce one every (say) four months. You still have to wait the same amount of time, but in the long run you've got more of them!

[Desert Dave]

Since Industrial Tech

And Production are complementary

And synergistic,

One way to have BOTH what's... "historical,"

And what is broadly called "balance,"

(... since when are these mutually

exclusive terms? )

Is to have these VERY vital aspects

Of game play -> BOTH ways, IE,

Partly scripted, and partly random.

Which would also serve to mollify

The SC Cats what figure research is a bit too

Luck-driven, as is.

Also... Bill's suggestion

Of "gearing limits" would be an X-cellent

Way to truly & accurately replicate

Any given player/Nation's committment

To a particular hardware choice.

As we know,

GErmany's "dalliance"

With too many "hi-tech" toys

At the expense of a good and rugged

Assembly-line... of RELIABLE equipment,

Likely cost them the chance

To put the boot

On the neck of the Swan.

Say,

Instead of REFINING that X-tremely good tank,

The PzIV, short arm or long,

They diddled & dawdled and finally fooled

Themselves that Frederick the Great

Would pull some "wonder-weapon"

Outta thin ghostly air.

Well,

THAT was self deception,

But THIS is... the actual "trick."

Making a game that - somehow,

DIS-allows the player to do what

NEVER could have been done

In the first place, IE,

Due to "hind-sight."

SC2WaW does a tremendous job with "variants,"

And,

Will continue that salutary trend,

Albeit in some new! and different ways, I am

Pretty much certain. :cool:

[arado234]

Liam i think you could do it(It would be tough though).Just make it like some of the earlier suggestions that for evey prod. and ind. tech.level increase you would get a certian decrease in the time from production to the battlefield.You are right in that it cant get to out of control.

Desert Dave in Germanys case they were kind of forced into trying to make the far superior tanks

(although alot of the ideas were rather stupid)because of the Russians coming out with the JS series of tanks.The PZIV didnt have much of a chance against a JS1 or 2.Look what happened when they just kept on building ME109s and the FW190s against the latter P51s(I know they had lost alot of skilled pilots but had the german pilots been in a far superior aircraft it would give a pilot a much better chance).The only hope they really had was to make the ME262 to compete with the massive allied numbers of great fighters.I would think the same would apply with the tanks.Maybe not.

.In the end it was massive allied numbers that did the axis in and NO amount of better equipment(unless the bad guys somehow came up with enought atomic bombs)was going to win it.The more i read about the allied(the Amis.industrial might and the fact we had Ultra and Magic) im amazed the war went on as long as it did.

[Liam]

Well, I think when discussing wonder weapons, we mean Rockets-Battleships-AirCraft Carriers, Subs, etc... Which can be debated if they made a difference. Fighter Interceptors, Good Quality tanks, etc... are just fine, minus the Largest Artillery in the World-Massive Tiger Tanks that were given to breaking down, etc... The Glory Equipment! The Allies had their fair share of Secret Weapons that didn't work, Minus the A-Bomb I think that was one that did hit the spot.

The Axis went on so long because they were determined. There was also a lot of territory to retake, and once Blitzkrieg and the Quality factor of Allied equipment was up to par, it was a slow moving Juggernaut, but it was a forgone conclusion.

Axis equipment really did lag, the FW190 is almost on par with the P51, but not all Axis Aces wanted it, due to their preference for a more dogfighter, which is the doctrine of their Airforce, not just the inferiority of their equipment. I highly doubt they had much in inferior equipment by choice, just not the #s the US/UK/USSR had. Plus we have to remeber, any US-UK Service man would've jumped outta of a Sherman to get a Tiger or a Panther. Life expectancy wasn't too good there. Though the Germans had no protection against TankBusters, so add it up...

Production would favor the Allies, I think the USA more than anyone. the USSR did have a massive amount of Production also, of a lot of inferior equipment, but it was rugged for their Doctrine of war. Rugged and in a place where human life is less important than say the tank they're in.

If the USA/UK would've not minded losing 30% or %40, I think the war would've been over by '43-'44 range.

As for Production, the name sorta loosely implies both Speed and price... Though Strategic Abstraction means that MPPs translate into 2 tanks built in Summer of '40 instead of 1, that is Speed as well... Either way, whatever makes it a useable tech that is not unbalanced it's irrelevent to tweak it if it's working... Is it? What do you really get now??? I hate to say it but to roll the dice and get 5% off for Germany is still not worth it......but if it's better who knows

[Lars]

Originally posted by arado234:

Lars why wouldnt you get faster at producing a level 5 tank or for that matter a level 5 anything?Once the prototype is built you would just gear up production for that weapon.It wouldnt be as fast in some cases as a lower tech. weapon but it would certainly be faster as you acquired more skills at making the weapon.Knowledge usually equates into faster production in any item.

You would think so, wouldn't you?

But it doesn't work that way. New production line, new problems. Which requires changes to the line to fix, which slows things down, then new problems from the changes, which require another change, yadda, yadda, yadda...

Don't believe me? Go buy the first year production run of just about anything.

So welcome to my world. I'm sitting here updating 30 odd sets of blueprints today, some of them dating back to ten years ago.

[Konigs]

Back to the original comment about liberty ships, in Arm Chair general there is story of one that was built in 4 days. I think the norm was more like a week or two, but I agree, if Prod tech goes up, build time should go down. IE, we mass produced Shermans, but Panzers were not. Just my two cents.... see you....

[Lars]

Ah, a perfect example.

By the end, they were cranking them out in four days, but the first ones took considerably longer.

Then you had weak welds, brittle steel, etc. which lead to several of them breaking in half.

So they redesigned and switched to the Victory ships.

[arado234]

Lars eventually the bugs get worked out and production speeds up.I just checked Germanys production figures for their tanks and all of them had a big jump in production from the prototype.This was also during the allied bomber offensive.Who knows how many they would have produced if they werent getting bombed.

Konigs,Germany did mass produce their tanks(not to the degree we could)and guess who helped them,Ford and G.M.C.

The Opel company which mass produced Germanys trucks was started by G.M.C.When the Nazis took over in 1931 Ford/U.S.increased its stake in Ford-Werke Cologne.Dearborn C.O. stepped in to supply raw materials and parts not readily available.Between 1932 and 1938 germanys auto output increased nearly 600%.This tech.was also applied to their tank production.

As a matter of fact Henry Ford was awarded the Order of Merit of the German Eagle.

In 1934 Ethyl Gas Corp.owned jointly by Standard Oil and G.M.C.showed the Nazis in 1934 how to produce Ethyl lead and tetraethyl lead.This was done with Germanys I.G.Farben.Standard Oil also showed the Germans their hydrogenation process and all the other tech.knowhow in converting coal to oil.

Germany never went on a full war time production untill it was to late because they didnt want to bankrupt the country.Because of the help from Ford and G.M.C(and others)Germany was able to mass produce the weapons she had.

[Lars]

Originally posted by arado234:

Lars eventually the bugs get worked out and production speeds up.I just checked Germanys production figures for their tanks and all of them had a big jump in production from the prototype.This was also during the allied bomber offensive.Who knows how many they would have produced if they werent getting bombed.

Who knows how many they would have produced if they could have just made up their minds?

If you look through old threads, you'll see we've been through this before. If you look at German tank production, it was mainly III's and IV's. They had real teething problems with the Panthers and Tigers. There's a reason the PzkwVI hit the field before the PzkwV's.

All those different variant's. What a production and supply nightmare. Fun for the model builders though.

[arado234]

Lars the PZIV was first built in 1939.Thats why it came out first.They just added the longer barrel to it in 1942.Still the same basic chassies as in 1939.

Your comment about go buy anything in its first year production run is exactly my point.The next production run, the item in question usually improves.So why wouldnt a tank?

I never realised that in this game it doesnt matter how teched out the item(level 1 or 5) is,it still comes on to the battlefield at the sametime.

[Lars]

Originally posted by arado234:

Lars the PZIV was first built in 1939.Thats why it came out first.They just added the longer barrel to it in 1942.Still the same basic chassies as in 1939.

First off, you misunderstood my post. Go re-read the Mark numbers again.

Second off, exactly my point. They made a heck of a lot of IV's. And a heck of a lot of variants based on that chassis. The reason? They didn't change the chassis.

Your comment about go buy anything in its first year production run is exactly my point.The next production run, the item in question usually improves.So why wouldnt a tank?

It does. As long as you make the same model tank.

I never realised that in this game it doesnt matter how teched out the item(level 1 or 5) is,it still comes on to the battlefield at the sametime.

In this game, you pay in mpp for the unit, and in mpp and time for the tech, so it all works out.

[Lars]

dbl

[arado234]

Lars im not sure what your getting at about the Mark #S.From what i read the Mark IV came out prewar and by wars end they made about15,500.

The Mark V 1943(about.6500 built)

The Mark VI one and two 1942(about 1900 built).

They were able to build quite alot of Mark IV's

because like you said they didnt change the chassis plus the fact it came out in 1939 helped.The Tiger came out in late 1942 and the Panther in 1943(when Germany was starting to loose and there was the urgency to rush the tank into prod.before it could be properly tested. This im guessing would be the main reason for so many problems with the tanks)If the Tiger and Panther came out in 1939 when Germany was winning and wasnt being forced to get them onto the battle field im sure the tanks would have performed alot better.

If you load all your tech.into tanks and get lucky you can have a level 5 tank very early on in the game which in reality would enable you to workout the bugs, im guessing.Upping your production tech.would just enable you to make them faster.

As far as the Mark V goes when the model G came out it was considerd the best overall tank of ww2.

[Liam]

Arado, and the rest....... I think we're missing the point, look at the MPP cost to spit out a Mark.V Panzer. You pay out the rear to get those Mobile upgrades as well... PLUS, we're missing the fact, 500 Panthers, is equivelant of 2500 Mark IVs at least! So you don't need to spend the extra 2 months cranking out thousands, a few hundred does the same job. You're saying that it's not relative, a Level1 SC Tank, or a level4 SC Tank. Quality and Quantity, and you pay much more for the Lesser tanks which don't fight as well, dreadfully in fact!

If Germany had focused only on tank Production they'd of been mauled, there are many techs that they couldn't afford to neglect and when they did, such as Long Range Fighters for Battle of Britian, Improved Encryption for the Strategic War, etc... they lost thousands and thousands of troops, tanks and AC because of it!!! Because of the WonderWeapon... A nation as modest industrially, should've gambled in the right area, and aicraft and Tank prototypes can be a gamble... Often with Bugs and issues a tank or AC may be delayed for years until full Production can commence. Though the Germans were highly efficient without Ford or anyone else.

Originally posted by arado234:

Lars im not sure what your getting at about the Mark #S.From what i read the Mark IV came out prewar and by wars end they made about15,500.

The Mark V 1943(about.6500 built)

The Mark VI one and two 1942(about 1900 built).

They were able to build quite alot of Mark IV's

because like you said they didnt change the chassis plus the fact it came out in 1939 helped.The Tiger came out in late 1942 and the Panther in 1943(when Germany was starting to loose and there was the urgency to rush the tank into prod.before it could be properly tested. This im guessing would be the main reason for so many problems with the tanks)If the Tiger and Panther came out in 1939 when Germany was winning and wasnt being forced to get them onto the battle field im sure the tanks would have performed alot better.

If you load all your tech.into tanks and get lucky you can have a level 5 tank very early on in the game which in reality would enable you to workout the bugs, im guessing.Upping your production tech.would just enable you to make them faster.

As far as the Mark V goes when the model G came out it was considerd the best overall tank of ww2.

[Lars]

Originally posted by arado234:

Lars im not sure what your getting at about the Mark #S.

The Mark V 1943(about.6500 built)

The Mark VI one and two 1942(about 1900 built).

Ever wonder why the Mark VI came out before the Mark V?