Variant: no cost increase

[adam_grif]

Armour / Gun / Engine could have very small cost increases, I think reliability shouldn't though. Maybe even a slight reduction such that 2 levels of reliability cancels out 1 level of gun increase. So if you maintain net reliability it's still more expensive, but not as much as a lopsided huge gun stapled do a tiny tank, or something.

Edit: By cost increase, I mean take slightly longer to produce / the same IC produces slightly fewer per unit of time.

 

[AapoAlas]

Yeah. Well, you always have to be carefull when you swap out production. Even tho you get an 100% penalty for switching to a new variant, you still will notice the drop in production. I personally would probably rather slowly gear up production of the new equipment while at the same time slowing down production of the old equipment. That is very situational of course. During Peacetime i dont see a reason to not straight up switch, but when an war is on the horizon or already going on, i rather play it a bit safe and start them out in paralell and let the old stuff run out of production eventually.

That is actually quite a fascinating idea. I wonder how production efficiency works with increases or decreases in the number of factories working on a particular variant.

If there is no reduction in production efficiency from changing the number of factories building a particular variant then that means that it might be a brilliant idea to phase out from an old variant slowly. Except for the strategic resources, I presume? Man, I need to check this...

 

[robby73]

Will the upgrades be equiped on already existing tanks, or only on those that are not produced yet? Or do you have to make a new production queue?

 

[Quendallon]

You have to make a new production line for the variant, or switch the old production line to produce the new variant.

 

[GsusNSV]

That is actually quite a fascinating idea. I wonder how production efficiency works with increases or decreases in the number of factories working on a particular variant.

If there is no reduction in production efficiency from changing the number of factories building a particular variant then that means that it might be a brilliant idea to phase out from an old variant slowly. Except for the strategic resources, I presume? Man, I need to check this...

The production efficiency is recalled for every factory alone. So if you have a single factory with 100% and add 4 new ones (probably with 0% gearing for this equipment) then this line will 'loose' a lot of its gearing bonus. The bonus is probably the average of all factorys. (in this example it should fall from 100% to 20% gearing bonus.)

I believe if you reduce the number of factorys, the AI will remove the factories with the lowest bonus, so that it should increase the efficiency.

 

[lekim]

I think the idea of variants - you gather real life experience and tweak you tanks/planes so they function better. I don't really think it cost more IC to put a bigger radiator on a certain type of engine so it cool properly and therefore more reliable. It is a matter of practical experience. So actually current system is pretty cool.

 

[AapoAlas]

Will the upgrades be equiped on already existing tanks, or only on those that are not produced yet? Or do you have to make a new production queue?

No, a variant needs to be produced separately. Old tanks do not get upgraded with the new equipment at all, they are simply phased out through upgrades, I believe. This means that if you have a tank division with 100 Light Tank 1's and you upgrade to a variant, LT1.1, or a new design, Light Tank 2, and produce 100 of those to fill the tank division, then you will have 100 Light Tank 1's stored away that can be built into a new 100 strong tank division with outdated equipment. I don't think there's a way to currently convert those LT1's into anything, not even scrap them to build Tank Destroyers or anything out of the husks.

That is actually quite a fascinating idea. I wonder how production efficiency works with increases or decreases in the number of factories working on a particular variant.

If there is no reduction in production efficiency from changing the number of factories building a particular variant then that means that it might be a brilliant idea to phase out from an old variant slowly. Except for the strategic resources, I presume? Man, I need to check this...

There is some sort of efficiency loss from adding factories but it seems it might be capped to something like 10% or such. And as it should be strategic resources are of course consumed per factory working on a unit and not per production line so that is not a problem. If the efficiency loss is capped at something small then it might be useful to switch to a new variant gradually. When a new variant or type of unit is first researched, create a new production line for that unit and assign one factory from the old type's line to that. It seems that the factory even carries over some of it's previous efficiency so you might be starting with say 50% of your efficiency. While the efficiency goes up keep churning out the outdated model at a high rate to combat losses ramped up on the Soviet front. When the efficiency is finally up to par or close enough with the old model switch out all the remaining factories to the new model and enjoy your near 0% efficiency loss.

 

[AapoAlas]

The production efficiency is recalled for every factory alone. So if you have a single factory with 100% and add 4 new ones (probably with 0% gearing for this equipment) then this line will 'loose' a lot of its gearing bonus. The bonus is probably the average of all factories. (in this example it should fall from 100% to 20% gearing bonus.)

I believe if you reduce the number of factorys, the AI will remove the factories with the lowest bonus, so that it should increase the efficiency.

Yeah, you are correct at least for the most part. I was trying to check the latest WWW for clues to how the system works in detail. At the early parts of the stream (20-30 minutes in or so) there's a point where Daniel increases the number of factories producing infantry equipment twice in a short amount of time. There you can see that the first time he increases the number (by 3 factories I believe it was) his efficiency does drop. The second increase however does not seem to affect the efficiency anymore. This lead me to hypothesise that there may be a cap to how much the efficiency can drop from adding new factories to a line.

EDIT: The second increase in factories did, likewise, drop the efficiency. The first drop was from 65% to 52.3% and the second from 52.5% (increased in between when day changed) to 47.1%. This means that the 3 and 2 factories added respectively did have some starting efficiency if the resulting efficiency is simply the average of the individual factories' efficiency numbers. Respectively this would've meant that the 3 factories started with 9.967% efficiency and the 2 factories with 12% efficiency. What these efficiencies are remnants of I have no idea.

 

[Finski]

Having capped efficiency loss would have been too open to exploits anyway. Build up efficiency with one factory, wait till it's 100% and then add the other 14 for circa 10% loss would be game-breaking.

 

[Number 7]

variants already have a cost - the efficiency you lose by swapping over to it. its not as much as starting a new tank, but you do lose some iirc. it is a cost that should be considered. i imagine your choice of industry techs will also greatly affect how you consider this, ie - if you deploy new variants or if youy "Save up" to deploy better tanks the moment they are researched and then leave them on the production line for the entire duration of their life to keep efficiency maxed

 

[Sotahullu]

variants already have a cost - the efficiency you lose by swapping over to it. its not as much as starting a new tank, but you do lose some iirc. it is a cost that should be considered. i imagine your choice of industry techs will also greatly affect how you consider this, ie - if you deploy new variants or if youy "Save up" to deploy better tanks the moment they are researched and then leave them on the production line for the entire duration of their life to keep efficiency maxed

The big plus for variants is exactly that you don't lose all of the efficiency you have got at that point. You don't necessarily need to research a new tank but rather improve existing ones and that can be good thing for most people who field big armored formations.

Also, you can just lend-lease the older tanks and you get actually some experience for it. I'm so gonna mass produce early tankettes with Italy and lend-lease them to everyone

 

[LeibSSolmai]

An increase in resource cost doesn´t really make sense at all, you dont´t built another vehicle at all, you just tweak an already existing a little bit.

Just take an example from reality: German Pz. III, there was a version with the 5-cm-KwK 38 L/42 and another one with the 5-cm-KwK 39 L/60.
The only difference between them is that the L/60 is 90 cm longer, that is hardly any difference in used resources for 21,6t tank. On the other side the new cannon was able to penetrate 69 mm of armour instead of 55 mm (25% increase!) the gain/loss ratio is so big that noone would care in any way.

Now to compare it with the game mechanics: they saw while using the KwK 38 that it has not enough penetration (ingame: they gained combat experience) then they had the idea to make the gun longer to increase the penetration (ingame: they used the combat experience to make a variant).


Even if you upgrade the engine or the armour, compared to the base costs of the tank it is just to small a difference to make an impact. Even if it would increase the cost, who cares if his tiger tank costs 3 steel per tank or 3,02 steel per tank?

 

[Number 7]

The big plus for variants is exactly that you don't lose all of the efficiency you have got at that point. You don't necessarily need to research a new tank but rather improve existing ones and that can be good thing for most people who field big armored formations.

Also, you can just lend-lease the older tanks and you get actually some experience for it. I'm so gonna mass produce early tankettes with Italy and lend-lease them to everyone

yeah, i just meant you lose SOME of the efficiency, not all of it of course i can imagine there being some nations (SOV) who might just see high efficiency of "good enough" tanks as fine for example. more numbers the better. but it just means it seems like variants will be some good decision making on when to use them and when not to

 

[Denkt]

In the long run you are always better of going for the best tank because efficiency will grow back to the max and even a fewer but better tanks are often better so you may go + even as soon as you switch.

 

[electriccat]

yeah, i just meant you lose SOME of the efficiency, not all of it of course i can imagine there being some nations (SOV) who might just see high efficiency of "good enough" tanks as fine for example. more numbers the better. but it just means it seems like variants will be some good decision making on when to use them and when not to

And I think one of the best times to use the upgrade points like that for the variants is as they are going onto the production line. So your first tank might not have them but your new 1938 model will have some. That way you are going to be hitting the efficiency drops anyways why not.

I think the only time you are going to do a lot of variant work with an existing model is when you know that particular class is going to be in service for an extended period without a research based upgrade.

 

[AapoAlas]

And I think one of the best times to use the upgrade points like that for the variants is as they are going onto the production line. So your first tank might not have them but your new 1938 model will have some. That way you are going to be hitting the efficiency drops anyways why not.

I think the only time you are going to do a lot of variant work with an existing model is when you know that particular class is going to be in service for an extended period without a research based upgrade.

Or when there are no better models anymore which might happen with long MP games...

 

[kalauer]

I dont see why better variants should nessesaierly cost more. Its not like you can put an 88mm gun on an pzII or something like that. You cant put an 2000hp engine into an tank with an 500hp engine aswell. The changes of variants arent so drastic that they will affect production cost on such an scope that it would affect it in HoI IV. Infact, sometimes a variant got cheaper to produce due to optimized designs and optimized production of componments, irl.

It will cost you alot of experience to create an variant that doesnt tend to break down all the time. Then there is the production efficiency loss of course, which will infact make each of the new variant more expensive untill the efficiency goes back to 100%.

I would agree on resources, simply because the numbers are so small and integer that an increase would be too much.

But we saw in the last WWW that a light tank takes 9 IC to build. Why should the maxed variant not cost 9.5 or 10? True, the disrupted production line is simulated. But in general, when it is a better version of the original product, you need to put more work in it. If it wasn't so, better versions of things had only development costs. Does this sound right?

Remember we are just talking about different properties of the product. Improvements in production technology/efficiency are modeled elsewhere. So you know from field experience that e.g. the exhaust gas of the engine should be cooled better to improve performance or the gun breech should have better sealing. Fine, implement it in your variant. This does make it harder to built it. In general, that is. I would agree that there are modifications that can be applied without increasing production value, idk, switching from rivets to screws or what. But there are definitely modifications, especially to armor and reliability, that increase the effort. Permanently.

Both is true: Improvements without and with increase of production cost. Assuming that all the variants are just about "moving a screw two Inch left" seems weird.

 

[Katarian]

But we saw in the last WWW that a light tank takes 9 IC to build. Why should the maxed variant not cost 9.5 or 10? True, the disrupted production line is simulated. But in general, when it is a better version of the original product, you need to put more work in it. If it wasn't so, better versions of things had only development costs. Does this sound right?

I wouldn't disagree with that too much. More resources would be too much given it takes as much steel and oil to build a Light Tank II with no penalty as it does a Light Cruiser I or Destroyer II with no penalty and increasing the steel needed would push them up to the same as Heavy Cruiser I (that is all from memory so might be wrong). A little more IC needed to build wouldn't be a big difference. Though now variants are far more expensive in experience costs to design that could be a good compromise rather then also making them more expensive to build.