An Officer issue I can't explain.

[Didz]

[Forgot to mention I'm playing with the TFH expansion and no mods]

I've come across an issue with Officer recruitment in my AAR that I can't explain.

To me it looks like a bug, but I may be missing something obvious which is why I thought I post the details here in case someone else can spot what I'm missing.

The basic issue is that Soviet officer ratio seemed to be stuck at 83% despite the fact that I had dedicated 10 leadership points to Officer Recruitment.

To try and confirm that I was getting new officers I decided to go through my saved games for the previous six months of game play and analyse the number of serving officers v officer need to confirm that I was getting new officers and that the need was dropping. [The detailed figures are in my AAR for STAVKA June 1940: Production and Intelligence]

The overall findings were that....Yes, I was recruiting new officers. In fact, the need for officers had been reduced by about 3,000 in the last six months. But that was much less than it should have been, because oddly, the demand for officers had risen by 3,400 over the same period.

So, basically I trained about 6,400 new officer in six months, but over half of them went to new postings that hadn't existed at the start of the year.

Why?

Well the obvious explanation was that I had built a lot of new units over the same period. But the problem with that explanation was that I knew that in January 1940 I cancelled all scheduled division in the production queue, and switched my IC to priortize upgrades and the replacement of my existing light tanks with medium ones. So, there should have been little if any new units produced.

So, I checked.....and sure enough only 8 new units had been produced in the last six months.

1xAC; 3xART; 2xCAV; 1xENG; 1xHQ; 1xMOT (Total New Officer requirement = 800 Officers)

So, why had my need for officers gone up by 3,400 over the same period?

I have no idea. But the only other thing I noticed is that because I was upgrading my Tanks the number of Armour Regiments had risen from 1 to 25 over the same period. So, is that what increased my need for officers, even though these regiments already existed and had officers.

Interestingly, the number of Light Armour Regiments remained constant at 13 from Jan to June. So, I'm assuming that when I scheduled the Tank upgrades in 1939 the number must have been reduced. But what happened to their officers?

Has anyone noticed?

Do they get sent home?

Or do they get put back in the officer pool?

Hopefully, they don't just get sent home otherwise every unit upgrade is going to cost trained officers.

Does anyone know?

P.S. as an after thoght I've just loaded a saved game, checked the number of officers in the army and then ordered a whole load of unit upgrades, just to see if the number of officers changes.

It didn't, so the officers were not sent home. BUT! The number of officers needed didn't drop either, which means that when those upgrades are complete they should already have their officers, and should increase the officer need again.

 

[marxianTJ]

Officer requirements are built into the type of land unit you're building every new brigade will require a certain number of officers to function at 100% efficiency (hence the officer ratio).

Now, HQs are also land brigades and ALSO require officers. So if you decide to build a bunch of corps or armies or army groups, or theaters, you're going to decrease your officer ratio % and increase the number of officers you'll need to achieve 100% officer ratio (or 140% for that matter). However if you delete some HQ units you'll decrease the number of officers needed and thus can cause your officer ratio to go up (for example as the USSR if you delete every HQ except STAVKA on Jan 1st 1936, you'll end up with 140% officer ratio).

Also land combat decreases your officer total very slightly as some officers and NCOs unfortunately become casualties.

 

[browd]

Also, officers are released back into the pool of available officers when a unit is put back in the production queue for upgrade (like your light armor to medium armor). The officer needs associated with the upgrading units is disregarded while they are in the queue.

 

[Didz]

Officer requirements are built into the type of land unit you're building every new brigade will require a certain number of officers to function at 100% efficiency (hence the officer ratio).

Now, HQs are also land brigades and ALSO require officers. So if you decide to build a bunch of corps or armies or army groups, or theaters, you're going to decrease your officer ratio % and increase the number of officers you'll need to achieve 100% officer ratio (or 140% for that matter). However if you delete some HQ units you'll decrease the number of officers needed and thus can cause your officer ratio to go up (for example as the USSR if you delete every HQ except STAVKA on Jan 1st 1936, you'll end up with 140% officer ratio).

Also land combat decreases your officer total very slightly as some officers and NCOs unfortunately become casualties.

Yep! understood all that and I checked my unit production for the first six months of 1940, and I created eight new brigades (Soviets call them regiments) each requiring 100 new officers. So, my officer need should have gone up by 800, not 3,400. I think the difference is the result of 24 Armour Unit upgrades being completed in the same period. If these also needed 100 new officers each it would account for the difference.

The issue is that these Tank Regiments already had officers before they were upgraded, which would not be a problem if as Browd says.

Also, officers are released back into the pool of available officers when a unit is put back in the production queue for upgrade (like your light armor to medium armor). The officer needs associated with the upgrading units is disregarded while they are in the queue.

But tried to confirm this last night by loading a saved game an scheduling loads of units for upgrade, and as far as I could see the officer need never dropped by a single man. Which is a bit odd as the number of units of the orginal type dropped reducing the number og Light Armoured Brigades in my army. But the officer need remained unchanged.

Is there likely to be a delay in the officers being returned to the pool?

 

[Oof]

Also, officers are released back into the pool of available officers when a unit is put back in the production queue for upgrade (like your light armor to medium armor). The officer needs associated with the upgrading units is disregarded while they are in the queue.

What kind of upgrades are we talking about? Did you upgrade L-ARM to ARM? Cause in that case units will end up in your production queue and the officers will be temporarily be returned to the pool till the unit is finished. If you upgraded your L-ARM to the newest L-ARM model the unit remains on the map and the officers remain with their unit.

 

[Didz]

What kind of upgrades are we talking about? Did you upgrade L-ARM to ARM? Cause in that case units will end up in your production queue and the officers will be temporarily be returned to the pool till the unit is finished. If you upgraded your L-ARM to the newest L-ARM model the unit remains on the map and the officers remain with their unit.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

I upgraded all my Tank Regiments fromT28 light tanks to BT7M medium tanks. So they dissappeared from their divisions and appeared in the production queue as upgrades. Then the upgrades were completed in the period jan-Jun 1940 and it looks like they added 2,400 officers to my officer need.

Which would be fine if as you say the 2,400 officers had been returned to the pool when the upgrades had started. But I tried to test that yesterday and as far as I an see, no officers get returned to the pool when a unit is removed for upgrade. Unless for some reason it happens after a certain period, but that seems unlikely as it would be pointlessly complicated to programme.

 

[browd]

it's not that officers get returned to the pool (i.e., your pool of officers is not increased), but the number of required officers should go down. In the tooltip for the officer ratio, it tells you how many officers you have, how many you are training per day, and how many officers you need to maintain a "proper" ratio (100% coverage). It is the latter number that should go down when you remove units from the map and put them in in the upgrade production queue, with the result that your displayed officer ratio should increase (perhaps by only a single percentage point, depending on how many units are being upgraded vs. those remaining on the map).

Now, if that all happens at the same time that other units are coming out of the production queue, or you happen to be creating new HQs at the same time, the effects of taking units off the map for upgrade will be obscured by those other actions.

 

[Didz]

it's not that officers get returned to the pool (i.e., your pool of officers is not increased), but the number of required officers should go down. In the tooltip for the officer ratio, it tells you how many officers you have, how many you are training per day, and how many officers you need to maintain a "proper" ratio (100% coverage).

Got you.

I was fortunate to have kept a saved game of the situation at the end of every month of gameplay, and so, I was able to go back to December 1939 and confirm exactly what happened.

In December 1939, I had 37 Tank Regiments equipped with L Arm (MT28's), and all of those that were part of a Tank Division (e.g. 2 x LARM + 1 x Mot.Inf) were scheduled for upgrade to the new medium tanks (BT7M). That was a total of 24 out of the 37 Tank Regiments.

I was then able to load the saved game for January 1940, one month after the upgrades were scheduled, and to see what had happened.

Prior to the scheduling of the upgrades the figures were:

LARM = 37: Officers = 51,011: and Officers Needed = 70,300.

After scheduling the upgrades the figures were:

LARM = 13: Officers = 54,241: and Officers Needed = 67,900.

So, it confirms that 24 x Tank Regiments were withdrawn from service for equipment upgrade, and that the count of 'Officers needed' dropped by precisely 2,400 (e.g. 24 x 100).

The increase in officers available had nothing to do with the upgrades but was just because 3,230 new officers were trained during December 1940.

So, that makes sense now, and I understand where the 2,400 increase in Officer need came from in June 1940. It's basically the same 24 regiments going back to active service.