A way to better-abstract ammunition?

[Znail]

This is the point of the article- abstracting without adding in munitions factories or new techs.



Morale and ammo are two very different things. ORG is lost when moving- if that accounts for ammo, then the men are randomly firing their rifles off onto the sides of the road as they march. Nor does air superiority deprive tanks and infantry of their ammo when it prevents them from concentrating. And because low supply/attrition reduces ORG permanently, then there is no way for hungry troops to stockpile their ammo- they keep firing it without orders to attack and eat the shell casings, I guess.

The ammunition individual soldiers and tanks carry are limited, it's the ammunition stored in ammo dumps that are the key. Those take time to move up when a division moves as you want to secure the area first. Fighters strafing your supply convoys does reduce the amount of ammunition you get.

 

[Michael Gladius]

The ammunition individual soldiers and tanks carry are limited, it's the ammunition stored in ammo dumps that are the key. Those take time to move up when a division moves as you want to secure the area first. Fighters strafing your supply convoys does reduce the amount of ammunition you get.

But that affects resupply/recovery rate, not how much ammo is available with the men in combat. The only way for men to lose ammo is to shoot it or drop/lose it. In a prolonged fight, the speed of resupply can be decisive. But that's not how it would work with ammo/ORG lumped together.

 

[Emren]

The main problem with division spam is that support troops are grossly outnumbered by the combat troops. IRL, support troops outnumber combat by a factor of no less than 6. Ten to one is more common, and 30 to 1 is equally common for major powers. So it should be set up so that units with less support are vulnerable to snowballing, while those with lots of support are able to avoid it.

I honestly don't think there is much gained by modelling supply personnel as such, for the same reason that we don't really model the labor force. This is all handled abstractly by the conscription laws and focuses, which I think works quite well. If you were hypothetically able to make decisions to understaff your supply personnel to free up more bodies for combat troops, it follows that it comes at the price of undersupplying your combat divisions, leading to org penalties. So in all cases it would be a sub-optimal decision, and one that the AI should be ruled to never do (and yes, the AI doesn't manage its conscription laws optimally, either, but that's a different discussion).

 

[Vlad123]

the important thing is not HOW you get this, but get it! The important thing is to fight the AI division spam that slows down even those with a NASA PC! Not because Hoi4 is a game from the future, but because the load of all those divisions would make even a quantum computer sob!

 

[seattle]

If you want to simulate ammo consumption, then look at major mods. There are some very smart solutions out there.
I believe it was in Black ICE, where they have ammunition as as production item that is required by all units.

The trick is: ammo has extremely low reliability and thus simulates fairly accurately that it is consumed in prolonged combat.

 

[Bunnytob]

Last I checked, BICE does not currently simulate ammunition (just has a bunch of different weapon types). I want to say that it's Endsieg, but I think that it's food that I'm actually thinking of in that instance (which isn't doable in vanilla for obvious reasons).

 

[Louella]

representing stuff as manufactured items with low reliability doesn't always work well - you still run into the thing where attrition caused by movement consumes the items, and the attrition isn't always consistent, so there are anomalies.

I still think a thing that works in the same way as fuel would be best. Munitions factories don't have to be explicit, they could be simply as strategic resources on the map, the same way that most oil is.


What would be great for mods though, is if you could define consumption of stuff in the unit definition files. Like, some lines in a unit definition file like:
consumes = { ammunition_equipment = { combat = 1 movement = 0 static = 0} } that could create units that consume all sorts of stuff.

 

[Bunnytob]

Just have ammo be generated as (Constant) + (Multiplier) x (MIC).

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

Just have ammo be generated as (Constant) + (Multiplier) x (MIC).

Bearing in mind, that the removal of Fuel from Supply has Ammunition as the primary item of Supply ....
Perhaps your above formula would be a good way to counter the "unlimited" supply generation that currently exists.

It's worthy of a Suggestion.

 

[George Parr]

The main problem with division spam is that support troops are grossly outnumbered by the combat troops. IRL, support troops outnumber combat by a factor of no less than 6. Ten to one is more common, and 30 to 1 is equally common for major powers. So it should be set up so that units with less support are vulnerable to snowballing, while those with lots of support are able to avoid it.

I have absolutely no idea where you got these numbers from. They aren't even remotely close to being true.

During WW2, American divisions - and they were by far the heaviest in terms of logistical and administrative tail - consisted of between 60 and 70% combat personal, the lower number being the armored units, the higher the infantry. The remaining 30-40% made up the logistics and HQ. When taking the whole theater of operations into account, it was about 40% combat troops to 60% tail. But that obviously has little meaning when discussing divisional setups, and is very far away from your numbers anyway.

In WW1, the AEF in its entirety consisted of about 53% combat troops, while divisions had close to 80% combat troops and 20% tail. For Desert Storm American divisions had about 50% combat troops, while later on, with divisions being more of a nominal thing and brigades being the core element, it was still at about 40% combat personal. So even in this day and age the tail of a unit has a tough time being twice as large as the actual combat troops, and it was very much the other way round back in WW2.

 

[Michael Gladius]

I have absolutely no idea where you got these numbers from. They aren't even remotely close to being true.

During WW2, American divisions - and they were by far the heaviest in terms of logistical and administrative tail - consisted of between 60 and 70% combat personal, the lower number being the armored units, the higher the infantry. The remaining 30-40% made up the logistics and HQ. When taking the whole theater of operations into account, it was about 40% combat troops to 60% tail. But that obviously has little meaning when discussing divisional setups, and is very far away from your numbers anyway.

In WW1, the AEF in its entirety consisted of about 53% combat troops, while divisions had close to 80% combat troops and 20% tail. For Desert Storm American divisions had about 50% combat troops, while later on, with divisions being more of a nominal thing and brigades being the core element, it was still at about 40% combat personal. So even in this day and age the tail of a unit has a tough time being twice as large as the actual combat troops, and it was very much the other way round back in WW2.

Individual infantry/armored divisions, yes, but you're forgetting the presence of the Quartermaster Corps, Corps of Engineers, Signal Corps, Chemical Corps, and a host of other formations which were not organic to divisions and were comprised of purely non-combat personnel. Factor those in, and suddenly it's much closer to my 6-to-1 ratio.

 

[Michael Gladius]

I honestly don't think there is much gained by modelling supply personnel as such, for the same reason that we don't really model the labor force. This is all handled abstractly by the conscription laws and focuses, which I think works quite well. If you were hypothetically able to make decisions to understaff your supply personnel to free up more bodies for combat troops, it follows that it comes at the price of undersupplying your combat divisions, leading to org penalties. So in all cases it would be a sub-optimal decision, and one that the AI should be ruled to never do (and yes, the AI doesn't manage its conscription laws optimally, either, but that's a different discussion).

I see it as being the same reason as why we have ground crews for aircraft- why not only count the pilots, and assume the rest is abstracted? Convoys (both ships and trucks) should become a thing, and consume LOTS of manpower to reduce the available manpower for combat.

 

[Znail]

Individual infantry/armored divisions, yes, but you're forgetting the presence of the Quartermaster Corps, Corps of Engineers, Signal Corps, Chemical Corps, and a host of other formations which were not organic to divisions and were comprised of purely non-combat personnel. Factor those in, and suddenly it's much closer to my 6-to-1 ratio.

But you are talking about USA now, they are not the best example for efficiency. Other countries cared more for support to boots ratio.

 

[Emren]

I see it as being the same reason as why we have ground crews for aircraft- why not only count the pilots, and assume the rest is abstracted? Convoys (both ships and trucks) should become a thing, and consume LOTS of manpower to reduce the available manpower for combat.

But nothing (or very little) is gained by this simulation. Recruitable population is obviously focusing on combat troops, sailors and airmen. If you increase the places you use manpower, then you should also expand the recruitable population, not only to balance out the demand, but also to adjust for the fact that many more people could constitute your recruitable population. The end result is a more complex simulation, but not necessarily a more accurate one. And as I said (or at least, that was what I tried to convey above), you'd never, ever want to reduce your "tail" except when you've maybe already lost, and as such the more complex simulation does not create additional strategic dilemmas for you to solve.

 

[Harin]

Here are some numbers for the US tail to tooth ratios.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/mcgrath_op23.pdf

Table 2 on page 18 shows that in WW2 the US needed just over 6,000,000 men to field 89 divisions resulting in 4 service troops to 1 division soldier. Since many division soldiers were not combat soldiers the tail to tooth ratio is even higher. This is the LOWEST count I have ever read. Most resources show the the US had about 7,700,000 men to man 90 divisions, which would increase the ratio much higher. Even with that many men, the US had severe combat soldier shortages by the end of 1944.

The US had two other manpower drains, besides support. First, of course, was their main mission of production. The Soviets and UK made the deliberate decision that the best contribution the US could make was production. The second manpower drain was the US Army Air Force, which kept growing to eventually number over 2,000,000 men. These two drains changed US Army plans of creating 212 to 334 divisions to the "90 Division Gamble" in 1943.

The UK had 2,900,000 men to man about 30 operational divisions. There were also about a dozen skeleton sized divisions that had been reduced to just a few thousand men each to keep the 30 operational divisions on the line. That is close to 100,000 men per division, so the UK tail to tooth ratio is most likely close to 4 to 1. Even with this ratio, the UK was facing even more severe manpower shortages than the US by 1944.

In WW1 the US only needed a 1 to 1 ratio of support to division soldier, but that was because they were coming to one theatre, Europe, that had been built up logistically for years before the US arrived and from which they borrowed heavily. In WW2 the US was deploying from thousands of miles away to logistically hostile areas on multiple fronts. This resulted in much higher ratios in WW2.

I would not like to see the game add something that requires constant player input or micromanagement to simulate the very real manpower problems the allies faced due to the tremendous distances they had to move supplies. Still, since this huge manpower necessity existed, it could probably be put in the game without player input. It does explain why the US and UK had so much trouble getting a second front open, much to Stalin's constant bewilderment.

Idea: On the manpower window, where it shows army manpower being used, replace the total manpower number with two new lines, one called "Divisional Manpower" and the other "Support Troops". It could be counts the game does automatically without any player micro. Since the game already calculates supply lines, it may not be to hard to determine how many tiles a division is from its capital. Divisions on cores, or home tiles, would use the least support, maybe even zero (?), while the ratio of support troops increases the further the division moves from its capital. Crossing oceans might cost twice as many support troops to reflect the very real issues the US had in deploying just 90 divisions world wide.

I am sure there are better ideas to model manpower and still not require player micro. I am just tossing something out to show it does not require player distraction to model the real problem involved in launching armies across oceans during WW2.

 

[DaleDVM]

Earlier somebody mentioned that a system like this would lead to snowballing. I would argue that the opposite is true. I think that all supply should be taking distance from the capital into account. Therefore divisions based in your own core regions should consume less supply. This benefits the nations that are defending and hinders those on the offensive.

The further away from home a division is should increase supply usage by a certain percentage. This should be based upon the infrastructure bottlenecks that the supply is forced to travel through. Better infrastructure means more rail and more efficient throughput of supplies. This could also consume some fuel but keeping in mind that most bulk long distance transport in this era was moved by rail/transport ship which used coal not oil in most cases. Oversea supply should be used where practical and safe but should also incur penalties/losses in regions where your do not maintain naval superiority.

I agree that supply should have a greater effect on the number of divisions a country should be able to field. Having your supply levels tied to your industrial capacity would be a great way to stop small nations from endlessly spamming divisions they would not be able to support.

Finally on the idea of ammunition. I like it. It would add realism to the game and yes it should be tied to the number of hours your divisions are in combat. Where general supply should be used to support divisions whether in combat or not. They are not the same thing. Artillery, and to some extent armor, should use higher levels of ammunition like many have mentioned on this thread. Also attacking should consume somewhat higher amounts of ammo compared to defending.

Having ammo usage tied to different types of tactics would be a perfect situation. With a toggle you can put on your divisions/armies directing the levels of ammunition usage you want to allow. This toggle would make it so only certain tactics could be used depending on how well supplied your divisions are. More effective attack and defense tactics would obviously consume more ammunition.

IMHO it would be best if general supply would be tied to CIC and ammo to MIC making it relatively easy to balance the two without having to actually assign specific factories to the task.

I think using attrition to model ammunition usage is a very poor model... especially when you can capture massive amounts of infantry equipment from nations you conquer.

The manpower ideas above would be great to incorporate as well. As an abstraction you could model the manpower usage by dropping available manpower as you expand your industrial capacity both MIC and CIC. Then when the USA is using large amounts of supplies fielding units far from their country they will need a disproportionate number of CIC and MIC to keep their divisions in the fight and hence not have as much available manpower for divisions.

 

[Louella]

ammunition use by naval units might also help alleviate some of the problems with naval combat - i.e. submarines staying endlessly on station.

 

[Vlad123]

another nice idea, it would be if there was a basic chance to capture enemy equipment, instead of being 0, something small like 5 or 10% or 25% so the supports at maximum level you can have 50% Often in case of blindings (or advanced rapid) huge quantities of enemy equipment were captured and reused (the Germans were masters in this, indeed most of their equipment was often captured and reused enemy equipment)

 

[Alpha2518]

another nice idea, it would be if there was a basic chance to capture enemy equipment, instead of being 0, something small like 5 or 10% or 25% so the supports at maximum level you can have 50% Often in case of blindings (or advanced rapid) huge quantities of enemy equipment were captured and reused (the Germans were masters in this, indeed most of their equipment was often captured and reused enemy equipment)

You could easily set a flat rate for encircled enemy forces adjusted to their strength. Round down because if you get 19.4 captured tanks your not going to have .4 of a tank.

 

[Michael Gladius]

But you are talking about USA now, they are not the best example for efficiency. Other countries cared more for support to boots ratio.

Who?