Naval repairs

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Kantismus
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Naval repairs

Post by Kantismus »

Hello everyone,

I have done a more observer like economic game with Peru today. I just wanted to check out how the AI behaves especially how balanced the war in Europe is. I have set the AI stance to unpredictable, volatility stayed at none increased economic difficulty to medium and turned the fog of war off. (sidenote: you get a lot of time to look what is going in in Europe playing as Peru because the numbers are so tiny and progress with 3.7 - 3.9 Mio people really slow.)

At the start everything looks fine. The events fired, Germany annexed Luxemburg and Belgium and was fighting the royal navy in the north sea. Austria-Hungary even managed to take out Serbia and Montenegro this time. Germany lead the kills statistic while Great Britany took the heaviest losses. Like Bundeswehr Bob already mentioned in his Great Britain let's play on YouTube it looks like the german ships are a bit overpowered in comparison to it's britisch counterparts. It maybe historical accurate i don't know and is not my real intention now.

But i assume having the better ships at sea turns out as a strong disadvantage. It becomes more and more clear as the ingame month passed by, Germany was unable to produce any landforces all the way from early 1915 to june 1918. There were three land productions to build when i stopped all three at 0%. They start with the second largest military goods production but their production of 200 was dwarfed by a daily demand constantly between 14.000 and 19.000 military goods per day. I would estimate global daily production of all regions together is not much higher then 2000 or 3000 units per day. Industrial goods availability was poor too. So Germany was unable to produce anything almost from day one. Other nations had similar problems but in much lower scale. Only Great Britain seemed to have the same problem. France, Austria-Hungary and Russia were able to build their armored cars most of the time.

I think the most obvious answer to the question why Germany has such a gigantic demand for military goods is they tryed to repair 30 to 40 caps at once. As a player i have already seen how repairing a damaged battleship lets skyrocket your demand. As a human i can deal with it, SR-AI obviously can't. Looking back to SRU 1936 this may also be an explanation why japan performs so poor against china almost every time. I have thought japan fails because their navy constantly shorebombs the hole coast of china and struggles to resupply their ships (and random shorebombing doesn't make sense at all and is just a waste of resources, simply poor AI behavior, but that's another topic). But their ships also get damaged by garrisons and nearby artillery.

leads to my final question here. Am i right and military goods use of naval repairs is really an issue? Can it be solved, tweaked, optimized so we can see more land production going on?
YoMomma
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by YoMomma »

To answer your last question, yes there are ways to mod the production of military goods, i dont have eperience with usage of troops, but im guessing you can mod this in the unit file.
In maps/data there should be a .WMData file where you can mod the resources.

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SGTscuba
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by SGTscuba »

I think the lack of rubber also doesn't help. It gets worse after a few years into the game. (AI need to build on it more in their colonies)
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Fistalis
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by Fistalis »

SGTscuba wrote:I think the lack of rubber also doesn't help. It gets worse after a few years into the game. (AI need to build on it more in their colonies)
I still dislike rubber as a resource...the resource hexes are so limited and concentrated in so few areas i think it hurts the game overall..
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ZEvans96
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by ZEvans96 »

I remember learning about in WW2 that rubber shortage in America, we had to have everyone turning in their rubber to be used by the military. So perhaps it's a more realistic resource to be in the game.
Nerei
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by Nerei »

Lets not forget the massive industrial investment into production of synthetic rubber that resulted from the 1941/42 US rubber shortage. Really up to Cold War rubber is an appropriate resource as it was critical for the industrialised world and was largely limited to the tropical rubber plantations. Particularly in SE Asia so Japan taking Malaya really did hurt.
After that point though manufacturing synthetic rubber became easy enough that it lost most of its value as a strategic resource and today something like 3/4th of all rubber is synthetic.
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by Fistalis »

ZEvans96 wrote:I remember learning about in WW2 that rubber shortage in America, we had to have everyone turning in their rubber to be used by the military. So perhaps it's a more realistic resource to be in the game.
I don't disagree with the level of realism it adds.. question is and has always been for me.. is it fun?
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Nerei
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by Nerei »

We could probably argue that rubber should be changed to represent more rare strategic resources such as gold, copper, zinc, Manganese etc.
That should spread it out more on the map and those resources are also somewhat important for an industrialised nation.
geminif4ucorsair
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Re: Rubber Resource

Post by geminif4ucorsair »

Fistalis wrote:
SGTscuba wrote: I still dislike rubber as a resource...the resource hexes are so limited and concentrated in so few areas i think it hurts the game overall..
While playing Japan, Soviet Union and some other non-rubber producing countries, have not had a problem with rubber availability.

One solution is simply buying in on world market, AND periodically building Synthetic Rubber plants (after gaining the Tech).

Rubber availability was a major issue once war broke out in Sept 1939, when vehicles were more plentiful and solid tires were not long the norm, as in WW One. Rubber prices worldwide skyrocketed, which pushed U.S. chemical industry to find a synthetic substitute. German had already started that process in the mid-30s and was the most advanced (had the most synthetic rubber developed industry in the world, by Sept 1939.

Players simply have to plan and think in these terms, especially when beginning SRGW. As you begin mechanization, player is going to demand more rubber (natural or synthetic)...its the real world.
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Re: Rubber Resource

Post by Fistalis »

geminif4ucorsair wrote:
Fistalis wrote:
SGTscuba wrote: I still dislike rubber as a resource...the resource hexes are so limited and concentrated in so few areas i think it hurts the game overall..
While playing Japan, Soviet Union and some other non-rubber producing countries, have not had a problem with rubber availability.

One solution is simply buying in on world market, AND periodically building Synthetic Rubber plants (after gaining the Tech).

Rubber availability was a major issue once war broke out in Sept 1939, when vehicles were more plentiful and solid tires were not long the norm, as in WW One. Rubber prices worldwide skyrocketed, which pushed U.S. chemical industry to find a synthetic substitute. German had already started that process in the mid-30s and was the most advanced (had the most synthetic rubber developed industry in the world, by Sept 1939.

Players simply have to plan and think in these terms, especially when beginning SRGW. As you begin mechanization, player is going to demand more rubber (natural or synthetic)...its the real world.
Problem isn't whether or not the player can overcome the rubber issue.. it's the AI who isn't exactly strong on building up it's resource production or B lining for techs it needs to fill those gaps in production.

The player can easily corner the market on rubber and roll over whomever they want rather easily at that point. There are some systems in place to prevent the player from completely cornering the market but you don't have to do so completely.. just enough to hamstring the AI. Since lack of rubber leads to lack of military goods and repairing and building units requires mil goods. Add to that the AI isn't exactly great at prioritizing what it should use it's resources on in the instance of a shortage and we get what we have. AI using all its limited resources repairing Battle ships while it's land forces are rolled over etc..(which was generally the OPs main point of his post if i'm reading it right)



This wasn't AS much as an issue in 1936 given how far on the tech tree synth rubber was..and how much production was already in place(AI still didn't build what it needed but the issue was not as pronounced). With SRGWs earlier starts the AI's lack of capability in resource management is far more pronounced when it comes to rubber.

Anything changed/added to the game should always come with the question.. but can the AI compensate/use/deal with it.. and many times the answer is no. Which leads to a huge reduction in AI capability.. steam rolling an incompetent AI i'm sure is fun for some.. but that's what difficulty settings are for.
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Kristijonas
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by Kristijonas »

I too still believe adding rubber was a huge mistake. I could think of tens of other materials that were of similar importance that could be added in its stead. In other words - rubber IS an industrial good. Why add a separate mechanic to it making it awkward? I'm all for more resources but only when they make sense. Water as a resource was nice. I hope at least if the next SR game will take place in the future it will have water back. The way it is now I understand they did not have the time to change rubber to something else... But at least they could compensate by making it abundant and redundant to avoid silliness.
Battleship repairing sounds like a huge AI prioritizing problem to me! I hope it can and will be fixed somehow. I'm not 100% certain but I'm willing to make a guess that DURING the wars, countries DID NOT repair their ships unless they were just minor repairs (basically, covered by resupplying) - it usually takes a lot of time to repair big ships in real life, even to this day it can take months or even years if the damage/wear is extensive. During wars effort is usually strategically allocated to support the current positive resolution of the conflict and countries usually don't plan to stay at war for many years.
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by GIJoe597 »

Kristijonas wrote:... DURING the wars, countries DID NOT repair their ships unless they were just minor repairs (basically, covered by resupplying)...
Fun Fact;

The 8 Battleships the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor;

Pennsylvania
Maryland
Tennessee
California
West Virginia
Nevada
Oklahoma
Arizona


Three were repaired within weeks, (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee), three others where eventually repaired and served during the war.

Nevada - On D-Day, shelled German emplacements behind the Normandy beaches.

When the U.S. invaded the Philippines, the Japanese sent three naval forces to ambush American troop ships. One of them, with two Japanese battleships, came up the Surigao Strait, where West Virginia, Tennessee, California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania (all allegedly had been “sunk” three years earlier at Pearl Harbor) were on shore-shelling duty, together with Mississippi.


Six of the original eight were returned to duty, only two, Arizona and Oklahoma were "lost".
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SGTscuba
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by SGTscuba »

And don't forget the Warspite, the battering that lady took during the wars and was still in commission until the end of the war. (and then refused to go to the scrapyard quietly!).

Some of the other QE class also had the same things happen.
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Kristijonas
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by Kristijonas »

Well without knowing how extensive the damage to the ships was it is hard to judge. I really know nothing about it but presumably the Japanese used um, freefall bombs instead of torpedoes so the damage could have been relatively superficial to steel ships, no? Perhaps some of their weapons and parts of the top plating needed changing and that's it?
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Re: Naval repairs

Post by GIJoe597 »

The Japanese used both Bombs and Torpedoes. In fact, it was thought the harbor was too shallow for torpedoes. The Japanese attached wooden "fins" to their torpedoes which prevented them from diving too deep and hitting the bottom. It is said, they studied the British attack on Taranto in 1940, due to it also having a shallow harbor.


The real strategic mistake was attacking ships at anchor in a shallow bay. Had these attacks been at open sea, in deep water, they would have been much more effective. None of the ships could actually "sink" enough to be lost. Their masts and superstructure protruded above water even when sitting on bottom. The two lost were because the Arizona's powder magazine exploded and the Oklahoma capsized instead of settling down. Incidentally, the Oklahoma was also eventually re-floated in Dec of 43 and towed into drydock. All weapons and such were removed for salvage/reuse and the hull made watertight again. She sat idle until 1947 when she was towed to San Francisco for scrapping.
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