Before we get too caught up in new rifle and munitions we need to spend most of a turn building production, we can't even fully equip the army we have!
Yeah. And we're going to need even more production to bring out tanks, aircraft, ships, and so many other things eventually most likely.
I'm thinking that we'll try to advance and refine some designs (the Type B, tanks, the 40mm) this turn while making better testing facilities and minimal production advancement. We need production, but setting up the next stage of warfare is what we need to keep them reacting to what we do rather than the other way around.
Next turn, I'm thinking that we should focus on three major projects (Fighter Plane, Bomber Plane, Recruitment Facility) while using the remaining engineers to boost up our production (and make that airfield). It'll probablybe something like a split of 15 to 15 unless our Academy actually gets us some students.
Once we get around 50 engineers, after we get all the newbies and untrained to basic level, I'm thinking that we can set a dedicated force of 20 engineers to producing more production and design related facilities each turn, have 5 work on Special Projects (anything that is more than two decades ahead of the current time period as well as anything that we can't find a direct equivalent of but seems like it would be reasonably possible e.g. incendiary torpedoes that aren't coal based) with the remaining 25 used however we like.
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In relation to the current conversation about tanks:
Meta knowledge tells us that tanks are effective. It tells us how to deal with tanks. It also tells us that our opponents have access to the same resources and meta-ideas that we do. It's a matter of when, not if, they decide to make tanks.
The point of working the tank out now and deploying it is to keep them off balance and needing to react. The more they need to react to what we do, the more space we have to push further ahead of them until we are able to strike a decisive victory and begin damaging their infrastructure. Once we start doing that, we've basically won due to the small nature of our respective nations.
Yeah, we'll need to make a medium tank after our light tank. The light tank is going to be effective, but the only counter to their counters of the light tank is to beef it up until it can begin to shrug off their AT equipment.