The requirements to complete the 2nd five-year plan are way too high in my opinion, to where I think it's impossible to complete. They either need to lower it, give us more time, or add more factories in focuses on the states that need them. I spend so much time building in Moscow, Kyiv Industrial area, Saratov, and Minsk that there isn't enough time to complete the rest.

I actually managed to complete it once, but I don't remember how XD

Basically I always start with Reform Politburo focus and use that political power to get Andrey Andreyev and then Vasiliy Ulrikh, as those two will give you 5% more civilian factories for construction, which is qiute significant.

Then get 6 tractor factories and level up your industrialization as fast as posible, because you need it to change to war economy, which gives you even more civilian factories and bigger fuel capacity.

Also dont waste power to improve stability, as it wont help much. Rather use it to build steel mills, fuel storages and foreign investments in decisions.

You must also optimise your research to get excavation II, which should complete fuel requirement, and concetrated industry I, because there is one state I think that at game start cant fit enough factories. I do so by giving one slot to improve research speed and at least two to research industry. To do this in time you must smartly use technical aid in decisions.

Also dont underestimate border wars with japan, as winning them gives you political power and losing them takes it from you.

After you finish building civilian factories, build 4 fuel silos and fill rest of reqired factories in states by military and equipment factories, as they are much faster to build.

And dont forget to use Pripiska, after some 300 days use it as often as posible, otherwise you will never be able to finnish that plan.

I hope this will help you somehow :)

DawedwsCZ, thank you. I'm trying to follow your guidelines and see haw far I get. What I'm dubious is you advise not to bother with stability. When it falls below 50% production takes a hit

Ignore my previous comment. I almost made it , unfortunately Pripiska did not help. What I'd suggest is after the ministers to go for the Stalingrad Tractor Factory that gives 200 tractors a week.

Sorry to hear that. This probably isn't the right way to complete it, but its quite close. It happened so many times to me that I didn't finish it because one stupid factory was missing XD

Just completed this so pointers:

1. If you get the GOSPLAN fuel storage and the 2 focuses that make fuel silos you need 2 more silos. Start the first at mid September 1937 and second at October and they will complete in time to fill the fuel storage.

2. Convert 3 tractor factories and get the one from focus gets enough tractors but there might be value in getting some more so can change to Partial Mobilization earlier

3. Don't trade factories for rubber, or build any intelligence upgrades

4. Take the focus to get PP first and get the captain of industry to keep alive through the purges

5. Look at all the focuses and work out how much you need to build where. E.g., Saratov needs a lot and Kharkov gets all through focuses. Kiev Industrial Area seems to include Kiev as well

6. Concentrate on focuses that get civ factories first (and the tractors). Then head down Collective path to get the construction boost then return for the other things needed. Possibly throw in some stability boosts and PP generation. Use focus on peoples problems as often as possible. Make sure you have the 75 PP to take the foreign investment focuses as soon as the previous one finishes. You can be a little more flexible with GOSPLAN

7. You need one level of excavation

8. Concentrate research on Construction and you need the two concentrated factories researches unless you get lucky and gain building slots at Moscow. You can probably only afford one level of computer research.

9. Build /get from decisions civ factories until two short of what is needed. When you have the needed civ factory total you can build an artillery and a small-arms factory in each of these and mil factory if there are still gaps. Micro the order of building these so they all finish before 25th Dec (note you don't get the full year).

10. Use decisions and focuses to get the steel mills. These also count as factories so take that into account.

11. You should not need Pripiska

12. On the purge decision where you can introduce unrest in the Ukraine do not do that as it reduces your civ factory count.

The main difficult ones to meet are:

Moscow (because of limited building slots, 2 used by buildings that do not count as factories, and limited ability to build factories - you may even need a steel mill or tank plant to make the numbers)

Saratov (lots of factories needed so may need to build military in parallel to get done in time)

Total civs (civs are expensive so you don't want to over invest)

Edit: updates having completed a couple of times without using Pripiska

I have completed the 2nd year plan the other way:
1) At the start look where the foreign investments give you factories, if it is not in the provinces required then restart.
2) Immediately at the start do the 150pp focus and hire captain of industry guy.
3) Build civs in provinces with high requirements and low starting number of factories like the Saratov, Gorky and 3rd one starting with letter B. Try to rush collectivisation of Kulacks as it does give you a bonus to civ construction speed.
4) Farm pp and army exp in conflicts with Japan by leaving only 6 best divisions in both Vladivostok and Chita. Do not attack (attacking over the river gives too big debuffs) untill Japan starts the war with China, after which they leave the border with no units (at least the border near Chita) and you can start farming pp with attacks.. Maybe land-lease some equipment to Mongolia (even though in all my attempts to play they never lost defensive border skirmish).
5) Always click the foreign investment decisions. Pray that it gives factories in the right areas. Maybe you can alter the provinces with save scamming, but I didn't try that I restarted the whole game.
6) After the first round of Gosplan and Foreign investments descisions (they do go on a cooldown) you would have enough pp to appoint STZ as industrial concern giving you +200 tractors. If you appoint it early on you would only need to convert 2 of your factories to tractors to accomplish the plan.
7) Do the civ factories focuses first then do the rest of 2nd 5 year plan focuses. You would only need to take Gosplan heavy industry twice, the rest of the steel mils will come from focuses.
8) Research excavation 1, this will cover oil and steel requirements of the plan.
9) Start saving PP to start to mobilise the economy so that the mobilisation finishes at least 10 days before the end of the plan as it switches -10% fuel capacity to +5% fuel capacity bringing fuel capacity from 900k (if you done Gosplan fuel capacity and oil focuses) to over 1m required.
10) Do the pripiska focus and use them. If you go do pripiska immideately it won't work, however it seems to start to work sometime after there is less than 1 year till the end of 2nd 5 year plan.
11) Do not forget that besides civs artillery and small arms factories also count towards the cap in the plan even though they cost less than half a civ.
It took me 4 tries to accomplish the plan, but USSR is still currently bugged because it takes "red officers purged" debuff at the break of any war giving it -125% org (making any and all of your divisions have 0/0 org, yes 0 max org) and giving -8000% to max army exp which you need to get rid of that debuff. This -8000% to max army exp debuff makes it impossible to get rid of the debuff since the cost of "Hire new officers" decision quickly outpaces the max amount of army exp you can have.

The "-8000%" to max army xp seems to be a mistake. It should read -80.

If you hover over the army exp it will say -8000% max army exp because "Officer purge". It will decrease with time and focuses but still it is a BS lvl of debuff.

Originally posted by SoF_Villain:

If you hover over the army exp it will say -8000% max army exp because "Officer purge". It will decrease with time and focuses but still it is a BS lvl of debuff.

Except it doesn't decrease it by 8000% but instead by 80 points. And it isn't all that important since you can still get the 50 xp you need to decrease the army purge penalties. All it stops you doing is collecting 100 xp which would let you accelerate WW2 doctrine research.

Separately from that is whether it is too difficult to reduce the officer purge penalties because train officer escalates too quickly.

i converted my military's factories into civilian: it worked!

Originally posted by scrills:

i converted my military's factories into civilian: it worked!

Interesting to see that there are multiple different strategies for meeting the target

Originally posted by mk11:

Originally posted by SoF_Villain:

If you hover over the army exp it will say -8000% max army exp because "Officer purge". It will decrease with time and focuses but still it is a BS lvl of debuff.

Except it doesn't decrease it by 8000% but instead by 80 points. And it isn't all that important since you can still get the 50 xp you need to decrease the army purge penalties. All it stops you doing is collecting 100 xp which would let you accelerate WW2 doctrine research.

Separately from that is whether it is too difficult to reduce the officer purge penalties because train officer escalates too quickly.

It also locks you out of good military academy's which may be by design but feels bad

Originally posted by SBLBeelzebub:

Originally posted by mk11:

Except it doesn't decrease it by 8000% but instead by 80 points. And it isn't all that important since you can still get the 50 xp you need to decrease the army purge penalties. All it stops you doing is collecting 100 xp which would let you accelerate WW2 doctrine research.

Separately from that is whether it is too difficult to reduce the officer purge penalties because train officer escalates too quickly.

It also locks you out of good military academy's which may be by design but feels bad

True, so grab the first 2 you want before the purge reaches there. The third one you probably can't because it depends upon doctrines you won't have.