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dpn

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Jul 7, 2010
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Hi all,

I'm playing my first game of HOI3, although I'm a long time EU3 player so some of the concepts are familiar. I'm using the Steam version with SF.

I'm playing as Germany and attacking the SU and I seem to have an enormous fuel consumption, it's 6686 per day, with 2687 returned. I'm running at a loss of -4249 each day, which seems rather a lot, and I'll be out of fuel in about four days.

I did an audit of my forces: my navy (mostly sitting idle) consumes 20, my airforce (all idle in Berlin) consumes 120, and my Armour and Motorised corps (9 H Arm, 7 M Arm, 6 Mot Inf on the Eastern front, and 3 L Arm in India and Africa) are taking up 195. This seems to bring my fuel to a total of 335, which is quite far from the 6686 the game says I'm consuming.

:wacko:

I'm confused, where's my fuel going!
 
Presuming they're stockpile figures, the 6686 is the fuel that leaving your stockpile and entering the supply network...winding its way to the front lines. The 2687 returned is the surplus fuel being pushed back out of the supply network to your capital stockpile. Any fuel/supplies not in your capital province aren't counted as part of your stockpile. Open up your supply map mode and check the provinces around your capital - you'll probably see a province or two with thousands of fuel in local supply. That's where your fuel is going. Eventually it will be used or returned to the stockpile.
 
There is a tremendous lag time in the supply chain. A province sends a message to the capital, we need 400 fuel to supply this armored corp in our province. The fuel starts toward that province one province a day. Multiply that by distance from capital, number of supply requests, etc. Now move your units 2 days later to a newly captured province. You should begin to get the picture. Most of your fuel is sitting in trucks heading from or back to your capital during a campaign. The only real solution to let the supply chain settle down is to stop moving and attacking. Otherwise you just have to make sure you have adequate supplies in reserve to cover your operations till winter, assuming you slow down then. One thing that does help is to use convoys to skip land shipments whenever possible. Even skipping 10 land provinces helps.
 
And don't forget that units do not just request their daily requirement. They request that the province they occupy be stocked with a 30 day supply. This can cause some serious short term spikes in the demand being placed upon your logistics network and stockpile. As said before, the key is simply to maintain a decent stockpile that can handle such spikes without being depleted, since eventually the unused excess does return to the stockpile.
 
These tremendous spikes in fuel demand will very often happpen when a complete armoured corps has been strategically redeployed. Or when several wings are rebased to a base where there has been not a single plane before.
 
Ah, I see, thanks for explaining it. It still seems a bit odd that it's sending 6k into the network per day but I guess there's not much to be done about it if that's the way the logistics network works.

I was mostly using my tanks/mob inf to surround the enemy and cut off their supplies as I approached Moscow and Stalingrad

It's a shame that you can't set up secondary supply depots in a similar way to how you organise your armies (i.e. in a hierarchy) as that would be useful to get them stocked pre-invasion.

Also is there any way of transferring foreign supplies around? I've got 20k oil and supplies in Liverpool, but no way to get these home other than transferring at a rate of 64 per day. It would also be nice if I could set up a supply convoy between India which has 70k/12k and my beachhead in Australia, it seems silly to be sending supplies all the way from the German mainland! I'd also like to transfer some fuel to Japan, as they seem to be struggling!

I guess it's good to see the logistics modeled but the lack of control seems somewhat frustrating.
 
I guess it's good to see the logistics modeled but the lack of control seems somewhat frustrating.

The primary source of this is deliberate, i.e. a way to keep you and the AI on something closer to even footing when it comes to logistics. Think on it: you already have a huge advantage over the AI due to your ability to apply imagination and adaptability to tactical and strategic issues. There is just no way an AI that can run on a PC can keep up with a human in such pursuits. How much worse if the AI's handicap were extended to logistics because you were given a bunch of tools for control and flexibility that the AI was not smart enough to use anywhere near as well?
 
(..) Also is there any way of transferring foreign supplies around? I've got 20k oil and supplies in Liverpool, but no way to get these home other than transferring at a rate of 64 per day. (..).

Liverpool seems to be the depot that is responsible for the landmass of the British Isles. If the supply AI keeps 20k fuel and supply in that depot, it thinks it's needed. You have probably quite a lot of mobile forces in England and many planes and ships based there. Any surplus fuel and supply would otherwise be transferred back to your main depot without incurring transfer costs and at a very high rate without any visible convoy!
 
Check your leaders too. At corps level, specially for your pazner corps, put guys wih logistical wizard trait always. Even better if the have offensive or panzer leader trait (which shouldn´t be a problem as Germany. If needed, get Superior Firepower to make fewer divisions with more brigades). And army group commander skill also reduces supply use (the only level that does that).
 
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