Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 2 - The Tools of War

[Cardus]

Other than liberty ships though I think we checked and there was no real improvement in efficiency for ship production. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though

Below you can see what mass production and practicals can make

At its peak, Willow Run produced 650 B-24s per month. By 1945, Ford produced 70% of the B-24s in two 9-hour shifts. Ford produced half of the 18,000 total B-24s at Willow Run, and the B-24 holds the distinction of being the most produced heavy bomber in history.[1][16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Run#cite_ref-Willowrun_1-0
The plant was built in a year and it was the biggest in the world. I miss the data for the initial production though.

By the spring of 1941, ground had been broken to build the largest airplane manufacturing plant in the world. This plant was designed to build a large four-engine bomber, the “B-24 Liberator.” The plant had 3.5 million square feet of space. At its peak in 1943, the Willow Run plant had 42,331 workers and by the end of that year it was producing 365 B-24’s per month…at the end of 1944, it was producing 650 each month.

http://savethebomberplant.org/save-a-piece-of-history/arsenal-of-democracy/



EDIT

I found the required data.

1942: 15th January; centre wing fixture ready for production. 18th February; centre wing leading edge for No 1 ship started. 19th March; pilot’s floor for No 1 ship completed. 23rd March Charles Lindbergh engaged as engineering research consultant. 31st March; first shipment of sub assemblies sent to Douglas. 15th April; centre wing for No 1 ship taken out of fixture. 15th May; first Willow Run assembled B-24 turned over to Flight Department. 12th July; first KD kit shipped to Douglas. 3rd October; centre wing No 59 assembled in 93.25 hours. 31st October; seventh B-24 delivered to Flight. 7th November; first shipment to North American. 8th November; first B-24 delivered to Fort Worth. 27th November; centre wing No 145 assembled in 37.83 hours. 23rd December; centre wing No 178 assembled in 19.17 hours.

http://www.rafb24.com/index.php/other-wwii-articles/4685-willow-run

This is about change requests

As the war progressed, field experience resulted in engineering changes being requested by the USAAF, these changes would affect the lives of the men who flew the B-24. Making changes reduced production. An agreement was reached that changes would be incorporated at certain intervals and that Liberators without those changes would be accepted by the Air Force until those time periods came due. The first aircraft in each new design group was designated the Master Change Ship and the groups varied in size from 200 to 400 aircraft

 

[Bobb4]

A rather interesting read on tank production which also shows how some tank designs only truly came into their own in 1944. The Hetzer being a classic example of a formidable tank based on a pre-1939 chassis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_armored_fighting_vehicle_production_during_World_War_II
Do not read if facts and figures bore you

 

[podcat]

Below you can see what mass production and practicals can make

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Run#cite_ref-Willowrun_1-0
The plant was built in a year and it was the biggest in the world. I miss the data for the initial production though.


http://savethebomberplant.org/save-a-piece-of-history/arsenal-of-democracy/

Agree. Planes and tanks are things that work well for being optimized for mass production. I just dont think the same thing applies very well to ships. except for say the liberty vessels which is really more of a special case.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Agree. Planes and tanks are things that work well for being optimized for mass production. I just dont think the same thing applies very well to ships. except for say the liberty vessels which is really more of a special case.

Agreed for the larger capital ships and cruisers.

But I think you should recheck the numbers and costs for submarine and escort production. They are very comparable to liberty production and it also wouldn't make sense game balance wise to let one side gain gearing from building convoys (liberty ships) but the other side trying to sink them not have the ability to gain gearing when building submarines.

With mass production possible for subs and escorts too (possibly after midwar techs), you could really have a strategic warfare of attrition and production rates and a more real battle of the Atlantic as well!

 

[podcat]

Agreed for the larger capital ships and cruisers.

But I think you should recheck the numbers and costs for submarine and escort production. They are very comparable to liberty production and it also wouldn't make sense game balance wise to let one side gain gearing from building convoys (liberty ships) but the other side trying to sink them not have the ability to gain gearing when building submarines.

With mass production possible for subs and escorts too (possibly after midwar techs), you could really have a strategic warfare of attrition and production rates and a more real battle of the Atlantic as well!

We'll see what you think after we go over naval production in a diary. I think it should simulate pretty well as is. The argument is if there should be gearing up at all for naval rather than just letting the US have the ability to build a lot of dockyards (and thus produce more liberty vessels) since it doesnt really apply for anything else in the way that it does for land. Except for US going crazy it doesnt have the same ability for mass production as land/air based stuff

 

[Bullfrog]

We'll see what you think after we go over naval production in a diary. I think it should simulate pretty well as is. The argument is if there should be gearing up at all for naval rather than just letting the US have the ability to build a lot of dockyards (and thus produce more liberty vessels) since it doesnt really apply for anything else in the way that it does for land. Except for US going crazy it doesnt have the same ability for mass production as land/air based stuff

Perhaps gearing isn't really right for naval, though there is a lot of precedence for sped up build times while at war, compared to peacetime naval construction.

 

[Darkath]

Agree. Planes and tanks are things that work well for being optimized for mass production. I just dont think the same thing applies very well to ships. except for say the liberty vessels which is really more of a special case.

Mass production could apply for convoys and escorts, maybe submarines.

As for destroyers, the Matsu-class of japanese navy was intended to be some kind of mass-production destroyer, with a design focusing on cost-effectiveness and build-time. 160 ships of this class were planned, but only 40 were built in the end (and that's a lot compared to other ever changing classes)

 

[Cardus]

We'll see what you think after we go over naval production in a diary. I think it should simulate pretty well as is. The argument is if there should be gearing up at all for naval rather than just letting the US have the ability to build a lot of dockyards (and thus produce more liberty vessels) since it doesnt really apply for anything else in the way that it does for land. Except for US going crazy it doesnt have the same ability for mass production as land/air based stuff

I agree with Alex. Regarding naval mass production please see this http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...KctAAAAIBAJ&sjid=enEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3357,2822785

 

[Cpack]

As looking at US destroyers classes,

the production time for a single destroyer seems to go from 9-16months (Benham, Sims, Somers) over 6-8months (Benson, Gleaves) to 2-3months (Fletcher, Allen M. Sumner)

 

[jasonf]

http://www.uboat.net/technical/shipyards/

There is a jump at 41 but this doesnt look like improved production of individual units, it looks like someone assigned more dockyard space to make more in parallel, because after that increases are not very big and can be explained by resource availability. I cant find any data on production time on individual boats so far

I thought, for HOI purposes, commission date - launch date was as good a measure as any of the efficiency of ship production (at least during wartime, when other factors didn't put a build on hold). In that case, the following website is probably a good a source as any for measuring how efficiency changed over time: http://www.navypedia.org/ships_index.htm.


And since it might be a little daunting to go through 1000+ U-boats, it might be useful to use the US captial ships as a comparison:

For carriers, the Wasp was completed in 12 months and the Hornet in 8 months during the gearing up stage. During the war, the first Essex class carriers took about 5 months, while the remaining Essex class ships took 4-5 months.
For battleships, the 2 North Carolina class BBs took 10 and 11 months during the gearing up stage. During the war, the S. Dakota class took (in order of launch date): 9, 8, 5, and 6 months, while the Iowa class took (in order of launch date): 6, 7, 4, and 5 months.
http://www.navypedia.org/ships/usa/usa_index.htm

So, there was definitely some improvement in efficiency in shipbuilding in the USA example for capitals, though nothing like the 80% reductions in build times you see with the smaller ships.

 

[thevaliant]

The tech tree for armour looks about as interesting as the instructions for cooking a tin of soup, I presume there is more to this.

I disagree - it's looks interesting and (something I prefer) not too complex. HoI3 was too complex with too much going on for my liking. What is shown suits me down to the ground.

 

[Alex_brunius]

We'll see what you think after we go over naval production in a diary. I think it should simulate pretty well as is.

We will see, looking forward to the DD.

I had a very similar argument with Johan when he was posting Dev Diaries / early release of HoI3 and tried to motivate why convoys ( liberty ships ) didn't need to receive practical bonus in HoI3 ( even though transport ships and battleships did ). It seems that time the problem was that convoys/escorts were neither a building nor a unit game mechanic wise, and my impression was that it just was not worth the effort to implement practical gain for them separately.


IMHO everything that can be built in thousands ( Thus subs, escorts and convoys for Naval ) should have the same or similar gearing mechanics that tanks and airplane do since we are talking about the same amount of units produced (thousands).

 

[Cardus]

We will see, looking forward to the DD.

I had a very similar argument with Johan when he was posting Dev Diaries / early release of HoI3 and tried to motivate why convoys ( liberty ships ) didn't need to receive practical bonus in HoI3 ( even though transport ships and battleships did ). It seems that time the problem was that convoys/escorts were neither a building nor a unit game mechanic wise, and my impression was that it just was not worth the effort to implement practical gain for them separately.


IMHO everything that can be built in thousands ( Thus subs, escorts and convoys for Naval ) should have the same or similar gearing mechanics that tanks and airplane do since we are talking about the same amount of units produced (thousands).

I agree but please remember one matter is mass production and another matter is the so called "practical". I would say that mass production has a exponential gearing mechanism whilst practical has an arithmetic gearing mechanism.

Now I have two questions:
1) Can all hard stuff (as ammunitions, machine guns, etc.) be in game (at least potentially as option for modders)?
2) AOD converted DDs to escorts and merchant ships/transports to convoys. Potentially you can use this workaround in order to convert any unit into something else as ammunitions and rifles into hard stuff (non-food supplies if you allow that) and so on. Is that possible to get (at least potentially as option for modders)?

 

[SlinkyTWF]

Conceptually, I like it. I wonder how much it will make everything feel like a Gary Grigsby design though. And whether the factory concept will extend to training facilities for various types of personnel, particularly pilots. I'm thinking that if you design factories to work the same way as troop training, you can use similar code to manage each.

 

[Balesir]

I thought, for HOI purposes, commission date - launch date was as good a measure as any of the efficiency of ship production (at least during wartime, when other factors didn't put a build on hold).

I would go for the date the keel was laid down to commissioned into service, myself. That's the guide we used for AoD (with a bit of allowance for playability). There is a reduction over time, but it's very hard to tell if that is due to gearing or more to do with political and financial factors (like the depression before the war), prioritisation (especially of factory space for components built off-site) and allocation of resources. I'd be happy to have other factors affect maritime building - but 'planes, guns, tanks and trucks definitely benefitted from production streamlining.

Bit of an aside, but a wartime feat of "building a (Wellington) bomber in 24 hours" was replicated and filmed for TV recently. The program should be out there, somewhere; that kind of thing was all good propaganda.

 

[Cardus]

I would go for the date the keel was laid down to commissioned into service, myself. That's the guide we used for AoD (with a bit of allowance for playability). There is a reduction over time, but it's very hard to tell if that is due to gearing or more to do with political and financial factors (like the depression before the war), prioritisation (especially of factory space for components built off-site) and allocation of resources. I'd be happy to have other factors affect maritime building - but 'planes, guns, tanks and trucks definitely benefitted from production streamlining.

Bit of an aside, but a wartime feat of "building a (Wellington) bomber in 24 hours" was replicated and filmed for TV recently. The program should be out there, somewhere; that kind of thing was all good propaganda.

Did you read above? In the USA a wing was made in 19 hours!

 

[unmerged(167745)]

We'll see what you think after we go over naval production in a diary. I think it should simulate pretty well as is. The argument is if there should be gearing up at all for naval rather than just letting the US have the ability to build a lot of dockyards (and thus produce more liberty vessels) since it doesnt really apply for anything else in the way that it does for land. Except for US going crazy it doesnt have the same ability for mass production as land/air based stuff

gearing would work right if you would stop making anything smaller than a light cruiser into a squadron sized 'unit'. britain produced hundreds of destroyers, destroyer escorts and minesweepers. not to mention the smaller vessels like the german 'E' boats (actually 'S' boats) or british mbt's (motorboat torpedo) plus the various landing craft variants etc etc. just look at the number of german u-boats (almost all of which were the crappy type7 pre-war model.) built. personally i like a deeper level of unit variation and flavour than the 'bog' standard.

btw im so pleased you listened to me about battalions as the basic building block of a division this will add greatly to being able to customize the run's of division (waves in germany) like 1st wave german divisions having 9 battalions (three regiments) of infantry where-as later divisions had only 6 (2 regiments.) hence on DDay the 352nd infantry (german) was one of the original 9 battalion divisions, quite a rarity by summer 44 in the wehrmacht and thus a very 'strong' division. this is going someway into persuading me that i may have to part with my cash earlier than i've previously stated..... give me more of this sort of warm fuzzy feeling to get my cash sooner

on a similar point you say the division is the smallest moving unit, this is a step backwards then since hoi3 had brigades as the smallest unit. i was hoping regiment sized units being the smallest to move, afterall you HAD brigades as the smallest moving and smallest to be built. now this is going to be battalions. i would have thought a 2 step smaller unit build and 1 step smaller on map unit move would be possible. i say this running hoi3 on a 7 year old dual core rig. the modern machines are more than capable of the extra computational loading given the right coding. even hoi3 is a small (very small) sized game in coding terms (not neccessarily in complexity terms) compared to similarly historic aged titles (those launched at around the same date). use extra time to code more (making the whole code larger and comparable to say 2014's blockbuster game -10% coding size) to make this happen if you can, trust me the customers will greater appreciate your efforts.

and guys please try and stay on topic with the original dev diary rather than running away with things they have not said anything about yet, poor podcat and dark reknown et al get frustrated by all the extra questions about say trucks production giving extra supplies when nothing of this was said in the dairy (and yeah im also one of those that DO NOT want this abstracted btw ( but supply will be dealt with later when we can hang them out to dry if they dont let us build millions of trucks (or semi mobile supply dumps) to offset historic fact (never enough trucks built, even by the usa)).

so far so good, keep it up.

 

[Balesir]

Did you read above? In the USA a wing was made in 19 hours!

Sure - but was it repeated for TV last year?

My comment was only because the TV programme is probably showing somewhere.

 

[Modestus]

I disagree - it's looks interesting and (something I prefer) not too complex. HoI3 was too complex with too much going on for my liking. What is shown suits me down to the ground.

Its slowly growing on me.

 

[jasonf]

I would go for the date the keel was laid down to commissioned into service, myself. That's the guide we used for AoD (with a bit of allowance for playability). There is a reduction over time, but it's very hard to tell if that is due to gearing or more to do with political and financial factors (like the depression before the war), prioritisation (especially of factory space for components built off-site) and allocation of resources. I'd be happy to have other factors affect maritime building - but 'planes, guns, tanks and trucks definitely benefitted from production streamlining.

I've always followed what TheBromgrev and the HPP crew use for our RPM mod, which is that launch = put in build queue, commission = place on map. Maybe the HOI4 will have a different enough dockyard setup to use the laid-down date, but we'll see. I've always found that there is much more variation due to budgets and politics in the time between laid down and launched than the time between launch and commission. It's probably because the hull is likely the cheapest part of the ship, so once you commit to the equipment, systems, weapons, etc., that go into it after the launch date, scrapping the project becomes very costly. Pre-war, there is also variation in the launch-to-commission time that is still likely due to budgets and politics, but that seems to go away more than the laid down-to-launch time variation once a country enters the war.

TheBromgrev's thread on all the logic concerning naval builds is here:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?529044-Naval-Plans-for-the-World-s-Naval-Powers