Understanding underground workshops

[Col.Klink]

Hey folks. I've been trying to figure out if this is a good decision to take or not and I know that there are people on here who really understand the games core rules and all the numbers better than me so I was hoping someone could chime in and help me understand this trade off.

If you take the traditionalist path for manchukuo independence (not the Sun Yat-sen five equal peoples) you get the option to create underground workshops. This creates 3 new factories for you to use, lowers the cost of infantry equipment by 25% but at the cost of lowering infantry equipment reliability by 40% (i believe to 50%.)

Considering you'll have somewhere around only 10 or so arms factories by 1939/40 without taking this decision the 3 more factories is potentially huge. Then you get 25% more production to boot. I've found that by 1940 or so I've been able to make sure an army of 600k+ infantry is armed with 1939 gear while still having some aircraft and tanks using this decision

But the question is how much does that 40% reliability reduction actually increase my equipment attrition? Do I lose so much equipment that once the war is on the 25% bonus production is canceled out?

Thanks for any help in advance guys!

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

But the question is how much does that 40% reliability reduction actually increase my equipment attrition? Do I lose so much equipment that once the war is on the 25% bonus production is canceled out?

While I did not try that particular scenario, as I understand it, attrition is multiplicative. Meaning, that equipment lost = [attrition modifier]*(1-[reliability]). With Infantry Equipment having default reliability of 0.9 (except for the last tier, which is 0.8, apparently), you'll only need to drop its reliability to 0.8 in order to double attrition losses. In itself it says little, but lately I was playing a lot of Japan campaigns, and about half of my equipment losses were by attrition (more, for some equipment). So, I'm afraid, you'll also need to supply your infantry with maintenance companies (and prioritize their improvement) to balance that out somehow.

Edit: since I did not check that modifier, I'm not sure how licences will work with that one - maybe an option?

 

[Matoro_TBS]

In my opinion the underground workshops is incredibly strong modifier, and it just gets better and better more industry you have. You shouldn't be suffering from attrition on the important fronts (the Chinese coasts, Korea, Japan) and inner China, while being an attrition sinkhole, usually isn't very hard to take anyway. So the way I see it, as long as you try to avoid needless attrition, the workshops decision is very good and its production bonus very much compensates for the additional attrition.

 

[Col.Klink]

While I did not try that particular scenario, as I understand it, attrition is multiplicative. Meaning, that equipment lost = [attrition modifier]*(1-[reliability]). With Infantry Equipment having default reliability of 0.9 (except for the last tier, which is 0.8, apparently), you'll only need to drop its reliability to 0.8 in order to double attrition losses. In itself it says little, but lately I was playing a lot of Japan campaigns, and about half of my equipment losses were by attrition (more, for some equipment). So, I'm afraid, you'll also need to supply your infantry with maintenance companies (and prioritize their improvement) to balance that out somehow.

Edit: since I did not check that modifier, I'm not sure how licences will work with that one - maybe an option?

I didnt know that the attrition scaled that badly! Thanks for helping me understand the numbers and it actually explained something important.

The game I was playing just before starting this thread I invaded northern China fighting both the chinese nationalists and the japanese. I had absolute air superiority and the fighting tbh was light but things bogged down. Then I realized put of 240 heavy tanks I was supposed to have in the field 140 needed replacing. I was short 140 but the enemy didn't have the capacity to pierce my divisions armor rating. So did some digging and it turns out I lost all the original model 80% reliability tanks.

So I have since started over and spent my early army exp on making 100% reliability model before even starting production as a result i suffered far fewer losses in korea and now im about to try northern China again.

The fewer losses is important bc I really struggle to replace em, I went with heavy tanks bc fast moving motorized is so expensive, the supply terrain and enemy situation doesn't allow for deep encirclements anyway and heavy tank infantry divisions are actually cheaper supply fuel and ic wise to get that armor rating just high enough that the enemy can't pierce.

In my opinion the underground workshops is incredibly strong modifier, and it just gets better and better more industry you have. You shouldn't be suffering from attrition on the important fronts (the Chinese coasts, Korea, Japan) and inner China, while being an attrition sinkhole, usually isn't very hard to take anyway. So the way I see it, as long as you try to avoid needless attrition, the workshops decision is very good and its production bonus very much compensates for the additional attrition.

That 25% production bonus is indeed huge. Like it even compensates for the lack of resources for the factories within the country. 25% bonus production is better than 25% more factories in the end. It also means that I can effectively rival nationalist china in productive output by the time I go to war in 41. I learned not to go sooner bc Russia floods stupid volunteer divisions into the conflict.

In all my play time I haven't noticed a shortage of small arms while using the workshops, even when the fighting gets heavy but I wanted to see if I was just lucky, was surviving on captured equipment or what.

It seems the production of 3 additional factories and 25% bonus is so much that they by far outscale the losses. Modernizing the army with top tier infantry gear is much easier with it. It also probably helps that I don't just push the whole front and focus with a few attack divisions conserving my overall force strength rather than throwing it away in a grinding war of attrition.

 

[Harin]

Attrition is applied to the different types of equipment, say infantry kits and guns, but it also is effected by rounding.

One thousand infantry kits will not not see a rounding up, but that support artillery of 12 guns will. This means that instead of losing a fraction of a gun, you will lose a whole gun. This makes attrition for types of equipment with smaller quantities higher than the reliability figure would suggest.

Spoiler: Attrition from Wiki

Land units[edit]
For land units, the average rate of equipment loss per hour for each type is

where P(loss) and P(per type loss) are respectively ATTRITION_EQUIPMENT_LOSS_CHANCE (0.1) and ATTRITION_EQUIPMENT_PER_TYPE_LOSS_CHANCE (0.1) sourced from defines.

To be specific, when

; otherwise for high reliability equipment a base attrition applies regardless of the number of equipment:

.

So for 100% attrition and 0% reliability, about 12% of equipment will be lost per day. At 80% reliability, 100 days of training (enough to go from Green to Trained, or halfway from Trained to Regular) will cost about 14.4% of equipment.

Note that a loss is calculated for each type of equipment independently so the total losses of all equipment scale with the number of equipment types. This will happen if your divisions use captured equipment or several variants of the same equipment class. Also, the base attrition is relatively large for units using equipment in small quantity, e.g. support artillery company (12 artillery) and heavy self-propelled anti-air battalion (8 armor).

To minimize equipment loss from attrition, it is enough to keep reliability of variant equipment types above

. This means 0% for 10 or under, 16.7% for 12 pieces, 58% for 24 pieces, 80% for 50 pieces, 95% for 200 pieces and so on. Therefore increasing reliability through variant equipment and using maintenance companies matters the most in large divisions using expensive equipments, like tanks. Also note that normal artillery has 50% reliability while rocket artillery has 80% reliability.

 

[Col.Klink]

Attrition is applied to the different types of equipment, say infantry kits and guns, but it also is effected by rounding.

One thousand infantry kits will not not see a rounding up, but that support artillery of 12 guns will. This means that instead of losing a fraction of a gun, you will lose a whole gun. This makes attrition for types of equipment with smaller quantities higher than the reliability figure would suggest.

Spoiler: Attrition from Wiki

Land units[edit]
For land units, the average rate of equipment loss per hour for each type is

where P(loss) and P(per type loss) are respectively ATTRITION_EQUIPMENT_LOSS_CHANCE (0.1) and ATTRITION_EQUIPMENT_PER_TYPE_LOSS_CHANCE (0.1) sourced from defines.

To be specific, when

; otherwise for high reliability equipment a base attrition applies regardless of the number of equipment:

.

So for 100% attrition and 0% reliability, about 12% of equipment will be lost per day. At 80% reliability, 100 days of training (enough to go from Green to Trained, or halfway from Trained to Regular) will cost about 14.4% of equipment.

Note that a loss is calculated for each type of equipment independently so the total losses of all equipment scale with the number of equipment types. This will happen if your divisions use captured equipment or several variants of the same equipment class. Also, the base attrition is relatively large for units using equipment in small quantity, e.g. support artillery company (12 artillery) and heavy self-propelled anti-air battalion (8 armor).

To minimize equipment loss from attrition, it is enough to keep reliability of variant equipment types above

. This means 0% for 10 or under, 16.7% for 12 pieces, 58% for 24 pieces, 80% for 50 pieces, 95% for 200 pieces and so on. Therefore increasing reliability through variant equipment and using maintenance companies matters the most in large divisions using expensive equipments, like tanks. Also note that normal artillery has 50% reliability while rocket artillery has 80% reliability.

I hadnt realized that due to rounding small equipment stacks get hit harder. That also explains why even as germany i just can't seem to ever produce enough artillery for an army that uses artillery as its backbone and is in the middle of a large offensive. That 50% reliability is killer!

It also means that it can be theoretically cheaper in the long run to field tanks or self propelled guns than artillery bc you can get their reliability to 100% and ultimately thats what this thread is trying to explore. The balance between the cost of building the army and the cost of simply maintaining the army on campaign.