Army Tech Suggestions and Reserves Questions

[miketr]

I just want to clarify my understanding of the rules to make sure it lines up with the mods view.

Army Reserves
Army Mobilization and Reserves:
1895: Can maintain one reserve unit per 2 active strength units
1900: Can maintain one reserve unit per one active strength unit
1905: Can maintain two reserve unitsper one active strength unit
1910: Can maintain three reserve units per one active strength unit OR can bring units from reserve to active status in seven days.

Note:  for the 1910 tech, the player selects which variant he is researching.  He can research both variants separately if he wishes.

With 1895 reserves I can keep a max of 1 reserve unit per 2 reserve units or put another way 33% of my army maybe reserve formations.
1900 50% of army maybe reserves and so on.

As another thing I would like to suggest some additional tech for the future.

Reserves
1920: Can select the option not selected for 1910 Reserves
1930: No limit on number of reserve units

Air Tech:
Strategic Bombing
1910: Independent Area Bombing of cities
1915: Massed Area Bombing of cities
1920: Improved Navigation Aids, I
1930: Improved Navigation Aids, II
1940: Improved Navigation Aids, III and Logistical Infrastructure Attacks

Strategic Bombing doesn't give access to new units but the development of strategies to use hardware.  Despite what the cult Giulio Douhet had said during much of the early twentieth century Strategic Bombing was actually very cost inefficient.  Yah in WW2 the US 8th Airforce and British Bomber Command laid waste to most German cities and starting in 1944 cost the Germans 1/3 of their war production but the cost of the bomber campaign for the British and US was very high.  I don't have any firm numbers, because people debate them, but as a WAG even in WW2 we had to spend more money to 'destroy' a given amount of German production.  The biggest pay off was the destruction of the railyards, rolling stock, engines and coal to oil plants; with a lot of this damage done by tactical airpower not strategic.   

Nukes changed the dynamic of course.

Later precession guided munitions also changed the dynamic for conventional attacks. 

That or you have to be able to attack a helpless enemy that can't defend themselves with ground AAA and fighters.

So my suggestion is the way that strategic bombing works is that you have to spend a given amount of $ and have required aircraft, we work out some number of aircraft of given type required for X money.  At higher Strategic Bombing tech levels you have increased CHANCE of breaking even.

Something like this.

1910: Max Return 5%
1915: Max Return 20%
1920: Max Return 50%
1930: Max Return 75%
1940: Max Return 100% and accuracy high enough that bridges and railroads can be attacked allowing disruption of transportation in targeted province.

Anyways just as a point of discussion.

Michael

[Walter]

With 1895 reserves I can keep a max of 1 reserve unit per 2 active units or put another way 33% of my army maybe reserve formations.
1900 50% of army maybe reserves and so on.

Yes, that is about it, although I just do it as it says. For every 2 active divisions I have one reserve division. Considering that China has divisions of different sizes, I make sure that I apply that to units of similar size (so for example one cavalry division in reserve for every two active cavalry divisions and not one cavalry division in reserve for every two active infantry divisions).

Reserves
1920: Can select the option not selected for 1910 Reserves

I prefer the current rule. Either you research one tech or you research the other tech or you research both techs (separately). I do not see the need to make the non-selected 1910 tech a 1920 tech. That to me is just silly.

[miketr]

Reserves
1920: Can select the option not selected for 1910 Reserves

I prefer the current rule. Either you research one tech or you research the other tech or you research both techs (separately). I do not see the need to make the non-selected 1910 tech a 1920 tech. That to me is just silly.

The number of techs drops off over time, was looking for people to have something to do 1920 and beyond.

Michael

[snip]

It might be worth looking at moving reserve techs around. I think the Strategic bombing stuff will mostly come from the aircraft tech level. While the discreet tech is nice, I think it is an additional complexity layer we don't necessarily need.

[The Rock Doctor]

Strategic bombing's not a bad idea.  It's something we do need to consider eventually.

[miketr]

A interesting data point.

USAF Statistical Digest for WW2
http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-110331-045.pdf

Compare the aircraft available in a theater of operations and the losses by type in same period.  For example 1944 the attrition rate for heavy bombers vs. Germany looks to have been 71%.    A max of 5,629 heavy bombers (October) available vs. a loss of 4,021 for the year.

So if down the road people decide to go hog wild on heavy bombing expect to take losses, lots of them.  If memory serves in peace time between the wars I think the US military lost 1 or 2% of PILOTS yearly to accidents, not even talking aircraft.  That was odds are much higher, as a WAG 5% of the flying stock yearly.

Again from I read the cost of building the aircraft, training crews, munitions, fuel. etc vs. damage done to German war economy wasn't break even in WW2.  If course the Germans kept flying till almost the bitter end when they ran out of fuel.

Michael 

[Kaiser Kirk]

First,

I like that Mike's putting ideas up there.
If we all do that, we may improve things for everyone.

Reserves : 
I have agree that simply repeating the 1910 tech makes perfect sense to me. I don't see a reason to force that to 1920. It's an organization and quartermaster issue, not a real tech one. Further,  these restrictions on # reserves already seem a little odd compared to the historical structure of some of the armies.

Strategic Bombing :
That entire idea of warfare is a mixed bag. Plus, the results vary by the oppositions ability. The battle of Britain featured planes ill-suited for the task against the world's best fighter defense and failed. But the same planes - if used in a strategic bombing role- against Franco's Spain...

Further, the eventual success had a bit to do with the material mismatch.  Usually the large bomber raids were opposed by far fewer fighters. Yet a heavy bomber could 'cost' 4-5x a single engine fighters to build, took 4x the engine production, fuel, and 10x the crew. So had equivalent resources been placed in fighter defenses..well at Schweinfurt/Regensburg the 8th went after bf109 factories deemed critical, and 376 bombers in two waves were opposed by ~400 fighters. 60 Bombers (20%) lost, 58-95 (20-30%) heavily damaged, and 25-27 German fighters lost. There were also 459 allied fighters sortied for escorts near the UK, and they lost 5.
So...material wise, those allied bombers "cost" about  1504-1880 worth of single fighters. They met 1/4 of that value, and still had 40-50% losses. 

So I tend to wonder if you have 2 opponents and one devotes X resources to strategic bombing while the other devotes even 1/2 that to fighters....

So I'm not keen on the Strategic bombing results being dependent on the aggressor's tech, and not really tied to the plane characteristics, quantities or tactics of the various parties.
I can see some value to bomb sight, bomb design, t & turret development as a tech. The things that enable effective strategic bombers.

[miketr]

Kaiser Kirk,

You are correct that level of defenses was a key point. 

Vs. UK the Luftwaffe which wasn't a strategic bomber force but one designed to provide tactical air-support attempted a strategic mission, badly.  The Luftwaffe lacked a heavy bomber all together and their fighters were short ranged, Bf-109s had only a few minutes of combat time over London for example.  Pounding the British in submission from the air really was outside of the capability of the Luftwaffe.

British Bomber Command which did have true heavy bombers discovered that vs. heavy AAA and radar guided intercepts by defensive fighters was impossible to achieve useful results in a day time mission.   Night bombing greatly reduced losses but also at same time saw accuracy collapse. 

It wasn't till USAAF which had long range figher escorts, lots of them and mass numbers of bombers was able to get good results but the cost was huge vs. Germany.  Vs. Japan the B-29s could fly higher than the Japanese fighter defenses BUT again like Bomber Command accuracy was poor and it ended up being city busting missions.   

In general terms air power has the following missions.

1) Air Supremacy (offensive or defensive), fighters shoot down the enemy aircraft over a given area.
2) Tactical Support, aircraft fly missions to support ground forces.  Could be attacking enemy troops in the field, attacking logistics in the rear, whatever.
3) Strategic Bombing, direct attacks on enemies means of production and or cities to remove enemies ability to wage war.
4) Naval Warfare which could also be sub divided into its own missions.

Which suggests that we come up with a rating system for the above missions for aircraft types.  Plus a combat range factor.  Result is a chart like we have for army units.  For example.

	Single Engine - Fighter
Tech Level	Air to Air	CAS	Strategic	Naval Warfare	Range
1906	1	0	0	0	75
1910	2	0	0	0	100
1913	3	1	0	0	125
1917	4	1	0	0	150
1921	5	2	0	1	250
1925	6	2	0	1	350
1929	7	3	0	1	450
1933	8	3	0	2	600
1937	9	4	0	2	800
1941	10	4	1	2	1,000

Before anyone goes nuts over the above chart with saying X aircraft had longer range at X date its just something I cobbled together in a few minutes.  I am not suggesting these be final numbers.  Just an example for people to consider the concept.  Someone would need to research aircraft range and come up with a reasonable average by date.  We also might want to scale on combat power that isn't a straight line.  As sure the 1906 aircraft are hopeless vs. the 1941 aircraft but in reality 1937 aircraft vs. 1941 designs were fairly outclassed.  So we might need a different scale.

Again just something to think about.

Michael

[miketr]

Some more perhaps useless factoids

Germany in WW2 had the following details.  These numbers are ROUGH so please bear with me.

Luftwaffe / Heer / KM   45%/45%/10% break down of German war economy. 

So roughly the German Air Force and Army got an equal share of the production total; please ignore the ammo budget a lot of which went to AAA.
At height of WW2 Germans had 350 divisions +/- (this is a very shaky number I admit but I am trying to draw generalizations here.

Combat Air Craft production share
Quad Engine 1.5%
Twin Engine 35.5%
Single Engine 63%

Despite producing nearly 90,000 aircraft the Germans never had more than 8,500 available and that was in late 1944 when the fuel shortage was really biting hard.  June 43 to June 44 a number of 4600 is perhaps a better one to go with.

So for the Germans we could equal 350 divisions to be 4600 combat aircraft in terms of production and combat power.  Once again lots and lots of hand waving here.

Michael

[miketr]

Going with the break down above.

Combat Air Craft production share
Quad Engine 1.5%
Twin Engine 35.5%
Single Engine 63%

Out of 4,600 aircraft it ends up with, roughly, 5 groups of single engine aircraft, 4 groups of twin and 1/3 of a group of quad engine aircraft.  Call it 10 groups, round up.  Projecting out the chart to 1941 that would cost $250 and 50 BP.  HOWEVER 350 divisions would cost $4,900 and 612.5 BP.  So we are looking at over an order of magnitude off in terms of cost difference between the number of Divisions compared to number Aircraft Groups. 

Now if we compare total aircraft production, 90,000 and break that down into groups we end up 182 groups and a cost of $4550 and 910 BP. 

Of course by 1943 the Germans had taken a lot of ground combat losses so in reality that 350 divisions might be 700 divisions if we count EQ losses.  I don't know, I would have to look at some other manpower and production numbers by date to get a WAG. 

But at least its not going to be over an order of mag off.

Michael

[Walter]

Having looked quickly around earlier, I remember seeing an average of ~ 17,000 men for a German Infantry division given on wiki. Now I am not sure if you have taken that into account but if you haven't then your figures are already being seriously twisted by the fact that you use division costs for units that are almost 50% bigger than the 'average' German infantry division so if you haven't then you are more likely to look at 238 standard sized Navalism divisions at a cost of $3332 and 416.5 BP instead of your $4,900 and 612.5 BP.

... but then there is also the fact that you assume that all those divisions are infantry divisions while there would be various divisions around that would be considered specialist units under our rules and those are cheaper with BP cost but more expensive with $ cost. I think that there would probably be a bunch of pre war economy army units around as well for which you only need to pay upgrade costs and not the full unit construction cost.

I also feel that your "So for the Germans we could equal 350 divisions to be 4600 combat aircraft in terms of production and combat power." is wrong. Your rough value of 45% of the German war economy for the Luftwaffe would be for 90,000 aircraft regardless of availability so 350 divisions should be equal to 90000 combat aircraft in terms of production and not 8500 or 4600. Otherwise you are saying that Luftwaffe is equal to Heer but 45% is not equal to 45% (at least that is how I see it).

[miketr]

Walter I want to say first of all you raise some fair and good points.

In WW2 not all nations armies were created equal or as you point out within one nation.

The Japanese army in terms of equipment and strategy was in effect a late WW1 field army.  The Germans my example, had some gear that was cutting edge, the MG-36 and later MG-42 for example but they used the same small arms otherwise that the Kaiser's army did and even more horses and mules.  Most people agree that in terms of effectiveness the German Army was odds are the best of the war.  The Soviet Army of 1939 was horribly bad despite a huge equipment park but the Red Army of 1945 was very good.  Again with a nations army not all units were the same there were infantry divisions, motorized infantry divisions, mechanized divisions (some tanks), armor divisions (lots of tanks), name your flavor of specialist units and of course the lower end units like the Red Armies penal battalions, Germans VolksGrenadiers, etc.  Some units would have better gear but worse training and so on.   The US Army went to war with the most lavish equipment, etc, etc.

Anything we do is going to be to one degree or another a generalization.  I am going with the Germans because I know them best.

As to what to line things up with... its hard to judge.  For example the Germans fielded a max of 350 divisions +/- but as you point out size of divisions in terms of TOE let alone actual strength was all over the place.  The Germans fielded 12.5 million but by the end this included teens and old men wearing civilian clothes and just a arm band to identify them.  If we use our 25K per division we get roughly 500 divisions but again those were of all types.

Lastly to consider is that air power was a different animal than land units. It can help win a war but it can't win by itself, troops are needed to fight and occupy the land at the end of the day.  Also air units were able to fly over 1,000 miles away, attack and then return while land units range was much shorter.  That range advantage counts for a great deal, IMO.

Michael

Michael

[snip]

So long story short here, aircraft are undercosted relative to land units?

[miketr]

So long story short here, aircraft are undercosted relative to land units?

Answer hazy, ask again later...

It comes down to what combat effectiveness we assign to them.  For the Germans something like 90% of all aircraft were destroyed during the war.  The USAAF also took high losses but not that bad.  Land units even when units were 'destroyed' rarely was it a total wipe out.  Gear would be replaced or repaired and wounded returned to duty along with replacement manpower and gear. 

So one thought is to lower costs with the expectation clearly stated that aircraft tend to die a great deal and have to be replaced all the time. 

Some careful thought will be required.

Michael

[Walter]

For example the Germans fielded a max of 350 divisions +/- but as you point out size of divisions in terms of TOE let alone actual strength was all over the place.  The Germans fielded 12.5 million but by the end this included teens and old men wearing civilian clothes and just a arm band to identify them.  If we use our 25K per division we get roughly 500 divisions but again those were of all types.

I'm too lazy to look, but I would not be surprised that the 12.5 million figure is the total number of men fielded by the Germans in a period of 5 years (10 if the Spanish Civil war is included in those numbers). Part of that number would be to replace part of that number that got killed and another part of that number would be to replace part of the number that was used to replace part of that number that got killed, etc. Also have no idea how well organized the teens and old men were when it comes to divisions of if they were just given a weapon and thrown at the enemy without any proper organization.

So long story short here, aircraft are undercosted relative to land units?

I'm not so sure about that.

I'll throw some simple figures against Mike's although all aircraft are not equal so it is not really correct. With the Combat Air Craft production share percentages Mike gave, I coupled the weight of a plane to it for each category.

Single = 3200 kg (Fw190A-8)
Twin = 9081 kg (Ju-88G-1)
Quad = 17005 kg (Fw-200)

Using those weights and your percentages, I end up with an average weight per plane of 5495 kg. Applying that to 90,000 planes, you will get 494,534,700 kg = ~486,699 tons of materials needed for all those planes. That would be equal to 487 BPs, which is about 54% of the BP number that Mike gave using (I assume) our rules. So based on those values, I would say that BP-wise planes are actually too expensive in Navalism. Although I do not have any monetary cost values, I would not be surprised if the 4.5 billion dollar cost Mike gave is too high as well for those 90,000 planes (but that I admit is pure speculation).

Still in the end it is just based on the values of one nation. If you are going to look at the US, Britain, Japan, Russia and Italy, you are going to end up with completely different numbers.

Therefore my conclusion regarding this matter: Whether right or wrong, just keep the costs of army and air units the way they are now. There are probably no right values and messing around with them may only make things more wrong than they already are.