A Treatise on Naval Supply and Logistics in Victoria 3

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I've already commented on the reddit about how brilliant this post is. I really believe it would make a great addition to the game (with ways of making some stuff less micro-y). The only real concern I have is how will the AI be able to handle this. The consequences of what you suggest are dead-obvious when there is a diplomatic crisis or negotiations or even a war, but I'm not sure how dead-obvious it would be for the AI to see. For example, if there was a crisis about how to split up a certain region of Africa between naval powers in Europe, I'm not sure if there would be a way for the AI on one side of the negotiations to evaluate the impact if the player had a naval base near said region of Africa.

It is obvious from a human perspective that such aspects have to be considered, but with the AI... I feel like it is a situation where a human can tell what a horse is from a picture of one, but it would be extremely difficult to tell a computer to identify a horse from a picture.

I don't know, maybe Paradox already has a handle on this sort of stuff after years of experience of coding AI. I just hope the AI would handle it well.
 
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Good post, although I do have a few questions. What would happen to naval bases when attacked and/or captured by an enemy force? If a base is attacked, does it receive damage? If so, how much? How much does the damage hamper the base's functionality? How much would it cost to repair it? Additionally, what would happen if an enemy force captures a base? Would it it prevent you from being able to use it, and allow your enemy to use it instead? If so, this could make for some interesting warfare strategies. For example, you could prioritize capturing a crucial naval base so that your enemy won't be able to send their navy into a certain region.
 
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Good to see you here, memnon. These are superb ideas for guiding the scope of naval action and overseas possessions. And they're entirely in keeping with the kind of game that Victoria is -- or at least the kind of game that I hope it will be!
I have to suspect that the design is far enough along either for something like this to already be in the plan or to make it unlikely that all of even most of this model could appear before release. But if they haven't given much thought to a detailed model of naval supply and operations, may this be the centerpiece of the first dlc!
I'll just add that one slightly worrisome thing about the game -- but perhaps also something hopeful too -- is that Paradox has never done logistics well in any of its games. They haven't even really tried. I suppose the closest thing I could think of is the Transport Capacity system in HOI2. What is really good about your proposal here is that you've presented something that could work in the context of a game like Victoria. So let's see what happens!
 
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Great ideas!

here's a support on everything except this one:
An inability to build ships overseas;
You've already got replies on Reddit explaining why it shouldn't be a hard NO.

The reason why no big advanced warships were build in colonies was the lack of shipyards. And you've already explained why there weren't any (refering to ports and naval bases, but the same applies to shipyards):
These facilities should be expensive, and get much more expensive as they reach higher levels of development.
But if the British player decided that they, for some reason, want to build a shipyard for Dreadnoughts and Aircraft carriers in India or Kenya it should be possible (and expensive).
It didn't happen historically, but it shouldn't be impossible in the game just for this reason.
 
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I am not a game designer, but I believe in the principle that a good historical grand strategy game should attempt to place the same opportunities and constraints on players as national leaders experienced in real life. Properly modeling these opportunities and constraints will successfully direct most players toward plausible (though not always actual) historical paths. Games should model the costs and risks involved in ahistorical action, rather than structurally prohibit ahistorical actions.
Well said, I totally agree.
 
Well said, I totally agree.
I agree with the quote too to a point, but i think when you dive into this stuff there is a very real danger of over-correction via too much mechanical fuss. Any mechanic or set of mechanics that makes things meaningfully harder to achieve in game than they actually were in real life, is probably not a good game mechanic. I'm looking at you, certain implementations of the infamy and "total war" systems.
 
But if the British player decided that they, for some reason, want to build a shipyard for Dreadnoughts and Aircraft carriers in India or Kenya it should be possible (and expensive).
It didn't happen historically, but it shouldn't be impossible in the game just for this reason.
The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard began construction in 1908, in what was then a colony of the United States.
 
The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard began construction in 1908, in what was then a colony of the United States.

In this case it's a maintenance/repair shipyard rather than shipbuilding one. Essential part in making Pearl Harbor into a major naval base however.

But if the British player decided that they, for some reason, want to build a shipyard for Dreadnoughts and Aircraft carriers in India or Kenya it should be possible (and expensive).
It didn't happen historically, but it shouldn't be impossible in the game just for this reason.

I don't think it would necessarily be that expensive to build some slipways and outfitting piers in India or somesuch, not any more than building a major naval base at least. It's rather the actual shipbuilding stage where the expenses and delays should mount up, since realistically you'd end up shipping all specialized parts (engines, and even more so armour plate and armament) there from the UK. It would be easier to just build the ship in UK where the existing shipbuilding infrastructure and economy of scale is in your favor and then move the finished ship to India.
 
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In Victoria II, what they did was make it so progressively more advanced ships required progressively more advanced naval bases to build - as in a normal port could build a steam transport, but a level one base was needed to make a commerce raider, a level two base to make an ironclad and a level three base to make a cruiser and so on.

What could be done is to expand on this tiered structure such that a base can build ships of its tier, but repair ships of one tier above it (except in the case that the ship has suffered a specialized form of damage requiring a larger dockyard/dry dock historically - and this is not an alien thing to Paradox - HoI4 has specialized damages like fire, engine damage, main guns destroyed, etc.), and refuel/resupply ships two tiers above it. In this way, a port that could only build say a torpedo boat can patch up a cruiser or resupply a battleship.

The problem with this scheme is that we still don’t know how exactly goods move in game. The reason why we had level five naval bases in Ceylon and New Caledonia in Victoria II is because all goods a country obtained went into a common pool that all states and territories drew from without distinction, such that to the AI, Ceylon and New Caledonia were no different than Portsmouth or Toulon. Now we’ve been told that there is internal trade in Vic 3, but how this will function is yet unknown. To simulate conditions in the way OP wants, there needs to be both a transport cost that scales up with distance, and an implementation of tariffs such that a good crossing a border also gets a cost increase attached to it. Hong Kong should not be able to get coal from Britain at the same price as Liverpool, nor should it get it at the same price as Guangzhou. I do not know if this is planned or not.
 
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In Victoria II, what they did was make it so progressively more advanced ships required progressively more advanced naval bases to build - as in a normal port could build a steam transport, but a level one base was needed to make a commerce raider, a level two base to make an ironclad and a level three base to make a cruiser and so on.

What could be done is to expand on this tiered structure such that a base can build ships of its tier, but repair ships of one tier above it (except in the case that the ship has suffered a specialized form of damage requiring a larger dockyard/dry dock historically - and this is not an alien thing to Paradox - HoI4 has specialized damages like fire, engine damage, main guns destroyed, etc.), and refuel/resupply ships two tiers above it. In this way, a port that could only build say a torpedo boat can patch up a cruiser or resupply a battleship.

The problem with this scheme is that we still don’t know how exactly goods move in game. The reason why we had level five naval bases in Ceylon and New Caledonia in Victoria II is because all goods a country obtained went into a common pool that all states and territories drew from without distinction, such that to the AI, Ceylon and New Caledonia were no different than Portsmouth or Toulon. Now we’ve been told that there is internal trade in Vic 3, but how this will function is yet unknown. To simulate conditions in the way OP wants, there needs to be both a transport cost that scales up with distance, and an implementation of tariffs such that a good crossing a border also gets a cost increase attached to it. Hong Kong should not be able to get coal from Britain at the same price as Liverpool, nor should it get it at the same price as Guangzhou. I do not know if this is planned or not.
I think it is 'planned' if not directly, then indirectly by the resource upkeep these structures will demand.
If the market areas are truly separate, then certain bases may be untenable (or too expensive) until the world economy matures.


The fact that infrastructure has upkeep is the biggest distinguisher between 2 and 3 and may help with some other nagging issues (like rail/fort spam) [Although the examples I point out are relatively off-topic, the logic applies to ports.]
 
I don't think it would necessarily be that expensive to build some slipways and outfitting piers in India or somesuch, not any more than building a major naval base at least. It's rather the actual shipbuilding stage where the expenses and delays should mount up, since realistically you'd end up shipping all specialized parts (engines, and even more so armour plate and armament) there from the UK. It would be easier to just build the ship in UK where the existing shipbuilding infrastructure and economy of scale is in your favor and then move the finished ship to India.
The really expensive part would be building up all the relevant industries (factories to produce engines and guns, ironworks for armour etc) in India. Shipyards shouldn't exist in a a vacuum.
 
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ship building facilities ought to be different then naval bases, naval bases were for operating them and for refuelling/short-term repairs, as of such they ought to require some maintenance in steel and coal/oil

shipyards are the ones building the ships from scratch, take for example the dreadnought (which is what the Vicky2 battleship represented), there are only a few countries that made them themselves: the UK, the US, germany, japan, italy, russia and austria-hungary (that list is really familiar), all of the rest bought them from one of the dockyards in these countries