China is crazy OP

[Foreign Alien]

It's obvious that the whole region is just a placeholder for a future DLC, I said this before the game was released and was rather surprised I got so much push back. It was one of THE major theaters of the war and it beggars belief that they would leave the ROC and PRC without their own NF's.

It's also the most played non-major country in the game, but for some reason Paradox decided to give Yugoslavia NF instead of fixing the region where China could push Japan out of Korea but still won't be able to get a peace conference.

 

[Porkman]

I'm still not seeing any value in adding a second layer of infrastructure to the game to unnecessarily complicate it that the single infrastructure doesn't already handle. If your province has like 3 infrastructure, it's got little to no rails in it. If it's got 10 infrastructure, it'd be considered heavily railroaded. Every divisions mobility, normal/attack/strategic redeploy is impacted by the infrastructure level of a state. The supply level and flow is impacted by the infrastructure of the states in the supply region. Perhaps supply regions should be decreased to state size instead of the multi-state entities they are now? I just don't see mechanically what adding a railroad layer does for the game that can't already be handled with the tools that currently exist..

This is what happens when you think that Europe = World.

In Europe, it makes sense to think that infra 0 to 10 is some nice continuum of mud trails to dirt roads to gravel roads to pavement to autobahns and double tracks... which is a fine heuristic for Europe.

In areas that are... NOT Europe. That model breaks down. When the rest of the world was colonized, the colonial powers built rails for resource extraction and really didn't bother much with developing the road network. So, in Burma for example, there was one North South Railway that went from Rangoon to Myitkyina and the Japanese control of that railroad was crucial to their ability to hold on there. Similarly, the Japanese advance in China kept to the rails and the comparatively more easy to travel Coastal plains. In the interior, there weren't rails and the terrain was against.

I'll dig out an old post and update it to explain.

"All developed areas had railroads" is not the same as "All areas with railroads were developed."

In Europe or America, infrastructure is supposed to represent a gradual buildup from roads to railroads to autobahns. If you have infra 15 you have 4 rail lines and an autobahn, while if you have 4, you just have a few dirt roads

In Asia, Africa, and the middle East, that infrastructure continuum didn't exist. Often, the railroad was built first, before any sort of road. The rails were built for the movement of troops and resources from the colonies. In places like China or Burma, forces had to stick close to the rails and couldn't go off for very long.

See this map...

The original proposal from the first of these threads was very specific. (See here for the thread from 2014)

Spoiler: The Basic mechanism

Railroads help with supply speed, supply capacity, and speed of strategic redeployment.

Roads help a little with those things, but mainly they help with tactical movement speed of units and partisan suppression a lot.

For rails, make it so there is level 0 to 4. This represents the level of rail infra in the province.

Let's say that each level adds
+100% to supply capacity/throughput (The amount of supplies that can flow over the rails),
+25% to strategic movement speed, (the speed divisions move when strategically redeploying,
+25% to supply speed (the speed that supplies travel over the rails.)


Next, roads. They help a little bit with everything. Give them values from 0 to 6, with 0 representing no development at all (highland New Guinea, the Sahara) So each level would be

+20% to supply capacity,
+10% to strategic movement speed,
+5% to supply speed,
+15% to tactical movement speed (the speed divisions move and attack at),
+10% to partisan suppression. (representing the difficulty of fighting guerillas when it's hard to get from place to place to place.


I know that sounds complex but it would work very simply in practice and result in a single set of values for each province.

Spoiler: Example 1: Pskov

So let's say that Pskov has level 2 rails and and level 3 roads.

So the level 2 railroad gives it

2 x 100% = +200% supply capacity,
2 x 25% = +50% strategic movement speed,
2 x 25% = +50% to supply speed.

It also has level 3 roads, the roads add
3 x 20% = +60% to supply capacity,
3 x 10% = +30% to strategic movement speed,
3 x 5% = +15% to supply speed,
3 x 15% = +45% to tactical movement
3 x 10% = +30% to suppression.

Now both kinds of infra combined result in single set of values like so,
(Effect from rails) + (effect from roads) = (net modifiers for the province)

In this case, Pskov has

200% + 60% = +260% supply capacity/thoughput,
50% + 30% = +80% strat movement speed,
50% + 15% = +65% supply speed,
0% + 45% = +45% tactical movement speed,
0% + 30% = +30% suppression.

These are all single values according to the game.

The next day it gets muddy. Mud reduces the effect of roads by half and of rails by 10%. (How much could be based on level of the infra as well, representing that Autobahns are less vulnerable to weather than dirt roads. But the important thing is that roads are affected more)

So the new values of the rails under mud which reduces them by 10%.

(.9 from mud) x 2 x 100% = +180% supply capacity,
(.9 from mud) x 2 x 25% = +45% strategic movement speed,
(.9 from mud) x 2 x 25% = +45% to supply speed.
You can see that they are only affected a little.

The roads, on the other hand are reduced by half. So that becomes.

(.5 from mud) x 3 x 20% = 30% supply capacity
(.5 from mud) x 3 x 10% = 15% strategic movement speed.
(.5 from mud) x 3 x 5% = 7.5% supply speed
(.5 from mud) x 3 x 15% = 22.5% tactical movement speed
(.5 from mud) x 3 x 10% = 15% suppression.

Now let's see the combined values again. When it's muddy Pskov would have

180 + 30 = 210% supply capacity
45 + 15 = 60% strategic movement speed.
45 + 7.5 = 52.5% supply speed
0 + 22.5 = 22.5% tactical movement speed.
0 + 15% = 15% suppression

This will allow for weather to slow down tactical operations but without hurting supply too much. It will make it so there are tradeoffs to fighting on terrain and building different kinds of infrastructure. It very clearly shows the difference between a railway in France and one in Vietnam. It's also easy to understand. If rails are shown on the map, then supply bottlenecks will be easy to find.

If I just say, "Line of infra 8 provinces to represent the rails," suddenly Central Burma has the same infra level as Metropolitan France which is insane.

Ok, so that was Pskov.

But what about an area in the USSR that's less developed, say Kamisov?

Spoiler: Example 2: Kamisov

This one has road value of 2 and a railway value of 1.

So the level 1 railroad gives it

1 x 100% = +100% supply capacity,
1 x 25% = +25% strategic movement speed,
1 x 25% = +25% to supply speed.

It also has level 2 roads, the roads add
2 x 20% = +40% to supply capacity,
2 x 10% = +20% to strategic movement speed,
2 x 5% = +10% to supply speed,
2 x 15% = +30% to tactical movement
2 x 10% = +20% to suppression.

So altogether, Kamisov is

100% + 40% = +140% supply capacity/thoughput,
25% + 20% = +45% strat movement speed,
25% + 10% = +35% supply speed,
0% + 30% = +30% tactical movement speed,
0% + 20% = +20% suppression.

Now, let's look at Changsha. This is a major Chinese city on the Jingguang railroad but it's not well developed.

Spoiler: Example 3: Changsha

It has a rail capacity of 2 and a road capacity of 2

So the level 2 railroad gives it

2 x 100% = +200% supply capacity,
2 x 25% = +50% strategic movement speed,
2 x 25% = +50% to supply speed.

It also has level 2 roads, the roads add
2 x 20% = +40% to supply capacity,
2 x 10% = +20% to strategic movement speed,
2 x 5% = +10% to supply speed,
2 x 15% = +30% to tactical movement
2 x 10% = +20% to suppression.

Add that together and we get...

200% + 40% = +240% supply capacity/thoughput,
50% + 20% = +70% strat movement speed,
50% + 10% = +60% supply speed,
0% + 30% = +30% tactical movement speed,
0% + 20% = +20% suppression.

Now, the final place we have is not Changsha, but Shaoyang, just a random province in China

Spoiler: Example 4: Shaoyang

It has level 2 roads.

0% + 40% = +40% supply capacity/thoughput,
0% + 20% = +20% strat movement speed,
0% + 10% = +10% supply speed,
0% + 30% = +30% tactical movement speed,
0% + 20% = +20% suppression.

Ok, now let's put it altogether and compare the 4 provinces

Pskov Kamisov Changsha Shaoyang
260% 140% 240% 40% supply capacity/thoughput,
80% 45% 70% 20% strat movement speed,
65% 35% 60% 10% supply speed,
45% 30% 30% 30% tactical movement speed,
30% 20% 20% 20% suppression

So, in practice, the Japanese would get confined to the rails as they wouldn't be able to supply too many troops away from them. They would also go much slower on an operational level as it would take them longer to resupply. Europe would go much faster as the rails are much more prevalent.

If I had more time, I'd make a mockup of the province map to show how this would look for a theater but I've spent too much time already.

 

[Fanstar1]

[QUOTE="Galithor, post: 22970940, member: 154568"
They could accomplish this now by simply tweaking the existing knobs in the game. VPs already do serve as points of control for improving your supply situation, but it could be made more important. If they decreased the importance of supply throughput from neighboring regions, and increased the importance of supply from VPs, then it'd make capturing VPs critically important for gaining the upper hand in any particular supply region. Fortifying major cities and holding them would guarantee you always have a significant supply advantage over the attacker in a region. Some regions would be really hard to attack from certain directions, because the VPs are mostly on the other side of the region, and you'll fight through the region consistently at a supply disadvantage until you take that city. Some regions would be very easy to attack, because the VP would be right on the border next to where you're going to attack from, so the defender can't afford to give an inch in those regions or risk being driven much further back.[/QUOTE]
wasn't supply lines a lot more important than that would suggest?