Didn't see anything about this in the DD or forum, if it has been posted sorry. How do you change a civilian factory to a military one?
Converting civilian factories to military factorys
- Thread starter Revan sith
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I believe there's a button in the construction screen, or the province screen, IIRC. but I'm not entirely sure. I do, however, know that it takes some time to do so.
Open State menu, click on factory. Www videoen has shown it, just not the actual conversion.
Conversion - old data, so caution - needs half as much IC to change to MF as building a new one from scratch.
In the factory construction screen at the bottom you can see the conversion button. Johan (or daniel) actually showed it at some point in World War Wednesday aswell.
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As of WWW10, it costs 3600 IC to make a new factory and 3000 IC to convert a factory.
Too small?
3600 IC / 15 factories / 5 IC per factory = 48 days for new factory
Research and Nation Laws can reduce that further.
Well, 3600 IC is basically a 2-year payoff time for a new factory, which does seem a bit short. I think the payoff for IC in HoI3 was 4 years?
However, 3000 IC for conversion is crazy. Actually, now I am wondering if it's a typo. I mean, for 100% cost you can get a new factory, or for 83% cost you can get a new factory and lose a factory of a different type. That's not exactly a deal. You'd have to value the factory you were losing at less than 17%. 300 would make more sense.
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You are correct that it is a no brainer to build a factory instead of converting one. But the way factories are being modeled, I see a lot of non-expanding nations (UK, Italy, USA, Finland, Romania, etc) hitting their max factory limit by 1941 and then needing to focus on conversion in the second half of the game.
Doesn't it seem a bit backwards though? I thought the whole point of the system was to model the conversion of industrial capacity towards military ends. You take a factory making tractors and set it up to make tanks. Instead, it seems that civilian factories that until the declaration of war were making consumer goods can turn on a dime and make concrete and machine tools to build new factories, but if you want to convert them to military goods, it's best to wait until the country is "full", since it's almost as expensive as building from scratch.
I was under the impression that the mobilization laws made it so that low mobilization made civilian factories cheaper an military ones more expensive, so there is that.
Building IC in HoI3 was for most nations a bonus or optional you generally started with a lot more industry then you could ever hope to build. Whilst in HoI4 you start with a much smaller number of factories and have to build more factories to expand your industrial capacity.
Conversion does look a little expensive, but then depending on circumstances those values can change. For example the UK or US will definitely start with a economy law (or whatever they are called) that makes building military factories more expensive then civilian. Also the UK has a national focus that reduces the cost of converting factories which makes the whole situation a bit less of a no brainer.
Well, to be honest, that is another sore point for me. I thought the late 1930s was mostly about trying to recover from the depression by finding a use for the industrial capacity that you already have, not a time to double or triple your overall industrial capacity just in time for the war.