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How to best record and interpret losses ?

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What I use

I haven't written up all my rules for interpretation yet, and this is a good place to introduce them. Bear in mind that my current AAR breaks the 50 % sortie rule for aircraft, because I started without a sortie rate rule and I want to keep it consistent throughout.

-- 1,000 men per manpower point

-- 50 % of losses are returned to the manpower pool (sick or lightly wounded men who recover), and 50 % are lost permanently (dead, captured, or permanently disabled).

-- about 150 tanks per armored division (feel free to figure out different numbers for each model, but this is a good average)

-- 100 tons per most resource and supply points (oil, coal, steel, supply)

-- about 20 tons per point for rubber (represents a whole group of specialized materials like silk, tungsten, nickel, copper, etc.)

-- an air unit in HOI at full strength is 100 planes, if you're at 50 % strength you have 50 planes.

-- exception -- an air transport wing is 250 planes, as it took at least that many to carry and drop a large unit like a division.

-- the number of aircraft that actually fly a mission averages 50 % of strength, so if you have 50 % strength then typically only 25 planes fly.

-- any aircraft shot down in combat are divided 50/50 into two groups: those that crash immediately (on enemy territory), and those that return to base but crash or are written off upon arrival. This fits with several sets of historical stats.

-- one transport flotilla (naval) is 20 ships of the approximate size of a Liberty ship (7,500 gross registry tons).

-- one convoy point is one ship.

-- one DD flotilla is 5 DDs

-- one sub flotilla is 5 subs

I am not sure what the HOI design guidelines were, I was told once that a sub flotilla is 6 coastal subs. There are still a bunch of technical issues I'm trying to resolve, so some of these may be tweaked, but this is is what I'm using for now.
 
I've heard that one infantry division consists of approximitly twenty thousand mens. What about tanks then?
 
I was under the impression that a DD squadron consists of 10 ships (What you recive if you order it to convoy duty)
 
Has anyone calculated what an IC point translates to as far as GNP is concerned or any monetary value? Or is it even remotely consistent from country to country?
 
I just got through doing a little calculation earlier today. A medium tank like a Pz IV or Sherman is worth about 4 IC in the Historical Statistics Pack, or about 8 IC in standard HOI.

That would make 1 IC worth maybe $5,000 in standard HOI.

Let's see what that translates into elsewhere:

-- Supplies for one infantry division for 30 days = $50,000
-- Infantry division = $3 million
-- Synthetic oil plant = $15 million
-- Basic fighter (1/3rd of wing cost is for ground staff) = $70,000
-- Improved tac bomber = $110,000
-- Long-range fleet submarine (5 per flotilla) = $1,000,000
-- Liberty ship (20 per transport flotilla) = $110,000
-- 1 point of provincial AA (2-3 battalions of light & heavy guns, searchlights, radar) = 45 to 450 IC = $225,000 to $2 million
-- Antiair brigade attached to infantry division = $3.9 million
-- Advanced battleship (Yamato) = $58 million
-- Prewar land warfare field testing = $60 million
-- Manhattan project (build first atom bomb) = $700 million
-- Capital to produce 1 new IC per day = $900,000 to $9 million

None of these numbers are entirely absurd, but they're also not necessarily right. Supply, prewar field testing, fighters and brigades are overpriced, transport ships, submarines, and the Manhattan project are underpriced.

Different nations paid very different prices for their production, e.g. the all-male mix of craft guilds and slave labor employed by the Germans was on average cheaper but also not as productive as the mass production by hired women factory workers that prevailed in the US and USSR. There's no way to get an absolute figure in dollars or man-hours for one IC. But I'd use $5,000 US for standard HOI and $10,000 US for HSP, just as a rough approximation.

You can quickly make yourself quite nuts trying to reconcile all the numbers. For example, between 30,000 and 45,000 Germans worked in submarine production. Figure 6 years to build 1,100 subs at an average of 150 IC each, that's about 0.75 IC per worker-year.

On the other hand, the Americans produced 96,000 planes in 1944 using 2.1 million workers. If the planes were somewhere between 14 and 21 IC each, that would be between 0.64 and 0.96 IC per worker-year.

So when you increase production in a province by 1 IC, you're adding maybe 270 worker-years of direct, militarily useful output per year. Since you have to give up 1 manpower point per new IC, and 1 manpower = 1,000 men, probably the rest of the worker-years involved are accounted for by basic industry, like steelmaking and transportation to support the specific war industries.
 
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No, the calculations I just gave are all based on the fact that it takes 8 IC in standard HOI to buy one medium tank.

We can be reasonably sure of that by comparing the cost of a motorized division to the cost of an armored division. The only significant difference is the tanks.

I agree, $5,000 per IC seems low in relation to total GNP. For that matter, there are some really odd things that occur because ICs sometimes stand for dollar amounts and sometimes stand for labor hours . . . for example, is it reasonable that it would take 570 IC x 0.75 man-years per IC = 427.5 man-years to create an infantry division?

The manpower for the unit itself is taken out of the pool when you start production, so there's another 10,000 x 95/360 man-years that go to training, but are 427.5 man-years enough for the additional training staff, the creation of the training camp (construction is a huge item in wartime), and so on? Doesn't seem like it. I think the labor here is very cheap (conscripts and a few "lifers" from the regular army) and there's actually more of it.

I think the meaning of an IC is fairly elastic. It really represents whatever is scarcest in the production process for a given item, and that varies from item to item. So maybe you can say it represents anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000, and from 0.75 to 7.5 man-years, depending on the situation. Sometimes more money and less manpower, sometimes the reverse.
 
Thanks for the input Math Guy. I always place a high value on anything you have to say regarding calculations.

It seems that there is no way to reconcile an IC value in terms of unit costs to a countries GNP, as the GNP value is woefully low. In 1936 the US GNP was 193 billion dollars. As you've established an IC to be worth anywhere between $5,000 and $50,000, to attempt to get the US GNP value is impossibly unrealistic.

$5,000 x 911 IC = $4,555,000 x 365 days = $1,662,575,000 GNP

or

$50,000 x 911 IC = $45,550,000 x 365 days = $16,625,750,000 GNP
 
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Bear in mind that a lot of the economy in HOI simply isn't represented in terms of ICs.

-- Every country gets free convoy points. The UK gets 30 a month, which are worth 675 IC or an extra 22 IC per day. That's a substantial portion of the UK economy.

-- Ports repair damaged ships for free.

-- Food production isn't modeled but even in 1939 most countries in the world were agricultural economies.

-- Consumer goods represent such a small part of the HOI IC economy that there must be "invisible" civilian production as well. In 1940 Germany used 40 % of her steel output for civilian production, but in HOI by that point Germany is only using 12 % of ICs for consumer output.

-- Most of the transportation industry (strategic movement, loading and unloading of cargos in ports, operating the rail lines and roads represented in the game by infrastructure points) involves no costs.

-- Base construction, warehouses for supply, airfield construction, are not represented. Huge numbers of rear-area troops with their vehicles and associated maintenance costs simply don't exist in the game.

So rather than try to start with the whole GNP and then divide it into the number of ICs, which you can't do because of all the invisible parts, I think it makes more sense to find the costs of individual items and arrive at a dollar value for one IC that way. What is nice is that if you do that, the prices for different items (subs versus planes) work out fairly consistently in dollars-to-ICs or manyears-to-ICs. For example, giving up production of submarines (165,000 IC and 30,000 to 45,000 people over the whole war) will not allow Germany to catch up with the US in aircraft output (1.3 million to 2 million IC and 2 million workers for 1944 alone).

Even then you have to allow for a range and not get too hung up on finding an ideal number . . . but the "right" answer is likely to be closer to $10,000 and/or one manyear per IC (at least for the major powers) than some higher figure.
 
Was just curious to place a numerical value on it for AAR purposes, and you've certainly done that. As far as GNP, then we can just assume that IC's represent roughly 1/3 of a national GNP.
 
This lack of a search function is getting to me...

A while back Mithel and I attempted to assign a monetary value to an IC, and then to use that to determine the IC value of a division. The thread was called 'Value of an IC' but seems to have been lost in forum land.

Looking at straight federal budgets, $100,000 fit quite well for all the major powers, even the USA, however it didn't work so well when trying to reconstruct the actual cost of a division. A value of $40,000 - $60,000 fit better.

Also another issue is that we are trying to solve a 3 variable problem with only two equations. If you assume that HoI unit IC values are correct than you can quess at a IC to dollar value, or an IC to manhour value, but it can be a bit of a catch-22.

Your point on a bottom up approach verse a top down approach is well taken, but I believe it is possible to meet in the middle. What about arriving at the dollar cost for a division, and then 'fudging' in a friction cost?

The cost of one submarine would be something like this: cost to employ labor + material cost + manufacture cost + crew training cost + industrial friction cost + 6 years of repair cost + replacement parts cost + initial munition cost. Total cost could certainly go as high as $2-4 million per boat, which would put a flotilla of 6 boats as high as 400 IC. Of course if you buy your submarine and promptly lose it within a week you have overpaid by 2x.

Another idea would be to include friction in supply instead of initial cost. Have a flotilla of submarines cost 100-200 IC and raise supply by .04. In HSP that would make a submarine take 0.22 supply/day. A flotilla deployed in 1939 would cost a total of 1600 IC by 1945, or about $50 - $80 million.

Thanks,
Grendel
 
You could do that, but the monetary value of the IC wouldn't translate into say unit cost. In 1936, Germany's GNP was 93 billion RMs. Not sure what Germany's beginning IC is off hand, but it's around 300. So, one IC would be 849,315 RM. A Panzer IV would then cost something like 6,794,520 RM which is not even close.

Or take the US for example. The US GNP in 1936 was $193 billion. Calculating from the GNP one US IC would be worth $997,338. A Sherman would cost $7, 978, 704 when it in fact cost roughly $45,000.
 
I am thinking that the GNP is not a good basis on wich to calculate the value of an IC. Rather it should be the state budget that forms the basis.
I.E. The local carpenter is usually not contributing to the defence of the country and if he is then he is almost certainly payed by the state.

Edit: Ah one should always read the entire thread before posting. I can see that grendel2 already has considered the point of my post this.
 
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