Merchant marine?

[Prufrock451]

How will shipping and merchant marines be modeled in the game? Will it be abstracted to "one ship=50 money" or something like that? Or will ships be required to move around strategic resources? Please tell me yes. It's one thing if US submarines sink ships in the Sea of Japan and cost the Emperor some money. It's another thing entirely (and it must be, if the game's to have any real accuracy) if those ships are sinking Japan's supply of oil from the East Indies, coal and steel from Manchuria, and rubber from Malaya...

 

[L G]

i would hope it would b like that 2, but that would b gettin a little 2 graphic for the game i would bet.......

 

[unmerged(6473)]

the game should model the transport of raw materials / commodities instead of "money". The economics of total war are a question of production, not finance. This is the case for centrally planned economies, anyway. There should be iron, oil, coal, grain, rubber, and things like that.

 

[unmerged(3168)]

Yeah I hope that there are plenty of reasources in this game and shipping them to your factories might even go as far as seeing your conveys (computer controlled) moving over the ocean like the settlers in do in EU.

 

[unmerged(485)]

Originally posted by Kiith
Yeah I hope that there are plenty of reasources in this game and shipping them to your factories might even go as far as seeing your conveys (computer controlled) moving over the ocean like the settlers in do in EU.

If they only move like settlers do in EU - that is without regard to whose territory or waters they are moving in - then it does no real good in game terms. If you can't stop the enemy shipping then why have them.

 

[Ivio]

Originally posted by Kiith
Yeah I hope that there are plenty of reasources in this game and shipping them to your factories might even go as far as seeing your conveys (computer controlled) moving over the ocean like the settlers in do in EU.

Yes, and then you should see litle periscope and trail of torpedo

The simpliest way is to player designet convoy ruts whit cargo they cary, assigne trade fleet tonnage to that convoy, military ships to escort cpnvoy and thats it.
Then enemy can see your convoy on convoy list and place submurin factors on that convoy route.
On some screen you should see how many resources you get from that convoy and what damage submarins do.
Simple as that and yet intresting

 

[unmerged(2005)]

Frgive me for bringing up World in Flames again, but I believe its treatment of merchant shipping is both realistic and minimizes tedious micromanagement.

You assign convoy vessels to a sea area. For one convoy point, one resource can be transported through that sea zone. Thus, in order to transport e.g. 7 oil points from the Dutch East Indies to Japan, you will have to place 5 convoy points in every sea zone that has to be crossed (IIRC three in total). Deploying convoy escorts to these zones reduces the threat surface and submarine raiders pose to this line. If raiders should succeed in destroying two convoy points in the South China Sea, then only three oil resources will make it to Japan.

As you can provide air for convoys in coastal sea areas, you should be able to have the upper hand in naval logistical warfare, but in the Atlantic Gap, you face a more difficult task and if not deploying precious CVs there you are usually at a disadvantage. From 1943 onwards (or womething like that) the Allied Escorts become ever more efficient, accounting for decoding etc.

The Battle of the Atlantic (and elsewhere) can severely hurt the British war effort and also lend lease and resource shipping to a beleaguered USSR can be seriously hit (and obviously taking Murmansk, Archangel, Persia and Vladivostok completely isolates Russia, each conquest making resource transportation yet more difficult).

Escorting convoys also binds a significant part of the Navy, thus there being less available for offensive operations.

Personally, I am not quite convinced about the need to simulate a complex resource model. Oil and generic other resources should do the job. Food might be an interesting addition. Otherwise things might get too complicated and result in too much micromanagement, which might work in a turn-based game, but less so in a RT game. Manpower should also be another "resource".

Oil is used for plain consumption and transported to factories just as other resources. A possible food commodity would be nice chrome, but not vital. In an RT game things have to be kept moderately simple. The alternative is to have a economic and logistic AI which takes care of resource allocation, but I am skeptical about this being in the game, hence my reluctance.

 

[unmerged(3168)]

You really do like World in Flames don't you Clemens , a good Australian made game don't you know

I know where your going with the convoy system covering sea zones, you assign escorts and they assign raider/subs. But HOI is a computer game and I'd like to see a bit more depth to the resource model. The battle of the Atlantic was the Germans best chance to cripple the British after 40 and was the main reason that Japan had such problems with their war machine.

I would concede that you do not need a large number of resources to get a good resource model, perhaps food, raw materials, finished goods and oil are a few basics that come to mind.

I'd prefer to see the computer control the resource model, as I'd be more interested in securing provinces that contain these materials

Just a small side note would you think that Manpower would work in a similar way to EU, with each province contributing x to the total? or do you mean to have manpower as a shippable reasoure ie troop convoys?

 

[unmerged(28)]

Originally posted by Prufrock451
Or will ships be required to move around strategic resources? Please tell me yes.

Yes

/Greven

 

[unmerged(485)]

Re: Re: Merchant marine?

Originally posted by Greven


Yes

/Greven

Excellent. Do you build X amout of merchant ships and that automatically takes care of the movement of goods or do you form them up into convoys and actually move them across the seas?

O.K. now get over to the CK forum and give us some answers there.

 

[L G]

i would like 2 b able 2 form them into convoys personally

 

[unmerged(6780)]

Originally posted by Kiith

...
Just a small side note would you think that Manpower would work in a similar way to EU, with each province contributing x to the total? or do you mean to have manpower as a shippable reasoure ie troop convoys?

How about having each province/group of provinces have a finite manpower resource that can only be used in that province/area? That way, to use the Commonwealth as an example, the UK could raise divisions in the UK until those provinces were exhausted, but in order to utilize the manpower pool of the Dominions, divisions would have to be raised abroad and shipped to where the Commonwealth player wanted them. Want to get the Canadian army to the UK? Gotta ship them over. Want to send some Australians to Egypt? Raise them in Australia and ship them out.

 

[Prufrock451]

Greven-

Woohoo! You just sold another copy of the game.

 

[unmerged(6657)]

It will be very cool to have to move specific resources around, as this will add to the strategy of which islands and provs to capture during wartime. Also, this will make it more realistic when putting ships in trade lanes to prevent the movement of the raw materials. Hence, the US can wait off the coast of Thailand to sink ships that are carrying rubber. Very cool indeed.