Factory construction and conversions

[sevsquad]

The synthetic plant build seems way too expense at the moment, the WWW the players seem convinced that there output is not worth tying up your civilian factories for so long. They seem to need balancing to make them a viable option to build.

Historically they were an incredibly bad deal, basically the only countries that used them extensively were ones that didn't have any other options. Like Japan and Germany.

 

[Katarian]

I doubt isolation will be the best law for building civilian factories because it need a massive amount of consumer goods, best law is probably civilian economy, or maybe even a more mobilized law.

Yes isolation will require more consumer goods, but it looks like it will make building a civilian factory faster/cheaper then converting one from a military factory and back again. I'm not sure how up to date the wiki is, but it is showing Undisturbed Isolation (not sure if that is what the US starts on) as 40% consumer goods but with a 45% bonus to building civilian factories whilst Civilian Economy is 30% consumer goods and 10% bonus to building civilian factories. That is quite a bonus to building factories rather then bothering to double convert.

 

[Denkt]

Each factory is by its own then it comes to efficiency. If you add 14 new factories to a line, then the efficiency will be averaged between the factories so a single efficient factory will not make the other 14 factories efficient.

 

[Secret Master]

The synthetic plant build seems way too expense at the moment, the WWW the players seem convinced that there output is not worth tying up your civilian factories for so long. They seem to need balancing to make them a viable option to build.

I think I saw that when Daniel traded for oil he used 3 Civilian factories for 30 oil. Which seems a good deal.

Whereas, it looked like he would need 15 Civilian factories sacrificed for something like a year to make 1 Synthetic plant which once it was completed, would give you a drip of oil. Which doesn't seem like a good deal.

This actually makes sense, though.

The point of using synthetic plants is to give you more of these resources when it would be impossible to trade for them (or impossible to trade for enough).

Hell, we could use the same processes today to make synthetic oil for fuel, but even when unleaded gasoline was $5 in the US, the cost of synthetic production couldn't compete with importing it.

Well, that and, for Germany, when you have a plenty of coal and a process to turn coal into oil, and you know you will not be able to import enough oil, then turning your coal into oil makes sense even if the cost is absurd.

 

[Katarian]

Each factory is by its own then it comes to efficiency. If you add 14 new factories to a line, then the efficiency will be averaged between the factories so a single efficient factory will not make the other 14 factories efficient.

Well that is true, but if that was aimed at me, I ignored that because it is basically the worst case possible and anyone who is actually thinking about whether it is worth double converting a military factory is considering the best way to use their factories and won't want to totally ruin a lines production efficiency in such a manner.

I just used one military factory as a basic example and when playing there will be far more variations to consider. If you want to have 15 military factories on a line then you would have to consider the case of converting 15 military factories to civilian, building more factories and then converting 15 back to military and putting those 15 military factories into a line with 0 production efficiency against just using 15 military factories on a line to build up production efficiency whilst using your existing civilian factories to build more factories. When actually playing the game most nations, probably the US with their massive industry excepted, will fall between the extremes of converting 15 military factories and using 15 military factories on a line to build up efficiency.

 

[scroggin]

Civilian Economy makes it's easier to build civilian factories. Actually thinking about it the US will be on an even better Economic law (Isolation) for building civilian factories so it might not be worth converting military factories for them.



It will depend on when you are getting into the war, countries that go to war early will have more to consider about production efficiency then a "safe" late comer like the US. Long term it will be better to build more factories but that has to be balanced by how much danger your country might be in. Technologies will also play a part if you for production efficiency improving ones early, and some countries focuses might make it viable to research those techs earlier then their historic dates.

The UK is also a safe late comer . As long as they have a good navy they are safe on their island and only risk the fall of france by not having a decent army before 1941.

 

[Denkt]

15 civilian factories can build a military factory in 48 days without any output modifiers or constuction modifiers so this number can be much lower. Thus in a year 15 civilian factories can build about 7,5 military factories but this don't take acount for the military factories consumer goods needs and resource needs but at same time 48 days is pretty long time so 7,5 military factories per year is probably not that far from what you can expect.

So if you convert 15 civilian factories into military factories and then use these to build military factories you could have 15 new military factories in about 2 years after the conversion is finished and 30 military factories in 4 years (but be careful because of consumer goods needs). But I think it is clear that you will get a long term advantage if you do convert.

In the early game military factories are rather weak because of low efficiency cap and early stuff will be pretty useless 5 years after the start (some exceptions are support equipment and motorised)

Dockyards are pretty interesting to build early because they do not need any consumer goods and 15 civilian factories can at least build 8,5 dockyards per year but more realistic you can build over 10 dockyards per year with 15 civilian factories. Use these early dockyards to build convoys and as the war comes closer switch over to warships as warships do become obsolete but convoys do not.

 

[Katarian]

The one problem I have with your logic is that you haven't taken into account long it takes to convert a factory. By my reckoning it takes 53 days for 15 civilian factories to convert a military factory to civilian (I'm going to assume you made a mistake in your post and want to convert Mil -> Civ rather then Civ -> Mil) so it will take 800 days for 15 civilian factories to convert military factories to civilian factories. So without any modifiers it will take 4 years to breakeven. Obviously you can throw more civilian factories at the conversion process.

The UK is also a safe late comer . As long as they have a good navy they are safe on their island and only risk the fall of france by not having a decent army before 1941.

The UK will also need up to date planes to defend the British Isles, and armies to defend Africa in early 1940 even if ignore helping France.

 

[Denkt]

I know about the cost. The importance here is that the economy laws now effect how much you have to pay to convert factories. I have only seen the values for the Partial Mobilization which reduce the cost of converting (both ways) by 10%. So maybe civilian economy reduce the cost to convert military factories to civilian factories by 30% and then you can may get a minister that make it even cheaper so maybe you can convert at half the price. So 400 days which is a bit high because you most likely have a greater output then 5.

If you are going to convert you are probably going to stay at peace for 5+ years, nearly all 1930s equipment will be obsolete at 1940, so here everyone is rather equal and at 1944 you have the same situation again.

UK can very well convert most military factories to civilian thanks to its navy. If it get away with it UK will have a very strong 1940 equipped army.

 

[Alexander Suvorov]

Each factory is by its own then it comes to efficiency. If you add 14 new factories to a line, then the efficiency will be averaged between the factories so a single efficient factory will not make the other 14 factories efficient.

In the first episode of the single player WWW as Japan, when Daniel assigns new factories to his infantry equipment line going from 3 factories at the current efficiency cap to 10 factories. with 3 factories he was getting 15.75 per day. That's 5.25 per factory per day. His cap was 50% efficiency, he was at 50% (he shows the tooltip). after he assigns the extra 7 factories his bar doesn't budge and he is getting 51.76 per day. That's 5.176 per factory per day.

I suspect that 0.074 infantry weapons have been stolen. but I don't think his efficiency was average when he added the 7 factories there. of course they are playing a hot build it might have changed since previous builds or it might not be correct in that video so I am not going to go so far as to say you were wrong.

 

[panzerzombie]

In the first episode of the single player WWW as Japan, when Daniel assigns new factories to his infantry equipment line going from 3 factories at the current efficiency cap to 10 factories. with 3 factories he was getting 15.75 per day. That's 5.25 per factory per day. His cap was 50% efficiency, he was at 50% (he shows the tooltip). after he assigns the extra 7 factories his bar doesn't budge and he is getting 51.76 per day. That's 5.176 per factory per day.

I suspect that 0.074 infantry weapons have been stolen. but I don't think his efficiency was average when he added the 7 factories there. of course they are playing a hot build it might have changed since previous builds or it might not be correct in that video so I am not going to go so far as to say you were wrong.

And I assume that - in the beginning of the game, before unpausing - all available ( but not yet assigned) factories are treated the same as the already assigned ones.....so meaning as if all of the factories have been producing since ´35 or whenever.

 

[Alexander Suvorov]

And I assume that - in the beginning of the game, before unpausing - all available ( but not yet assigned) factories are treated the same as the already assigned ones.....so meaning as if all of the factories have been producing since ´35 or whenever.

That might be the case, I had not thought of that possibility.