Different types of supply and their effect in the game.

[Dalwin]

HOI has seen several different approaches to supply over the course of its four versions. The system in HOI4 is certainly not the worst we have seen but it does have some quirks and could stand some refinement.

As it stands now, much of the concept of supply is abstracted and most of the effects boiled down to a combat penalty. That is not a terrible foundation. It is simple and it is playable.

Not having supply all originate from the capital is a nice improvement. Local supply is a good concept but I think it should not be treated exactly the same as any other supply source.

Here are a few things that I think would improve it without requiring a completely new system:

1.) Low supply also reduces the rate at which replacements of both men and equipment are received. For this purpose, I think that local supply should be ignored. Local supply is fine for an ad hoc source of the abstracted commodities of food and fuel. When it comes to other things like ammo, vehicles, weapons and replacement soldiers local supply should be ignored, or at least local supply beyond your own major cities. This would go a long way to making blockades of islands possible among other things.

2.) The length of supply lines should have an effect. It should be a pronounced one. This is one major factor that makes the Russian campaign not feel real enough.

3.) Weather should also have a pronounced effect on supply. See above.

4.) We need some sort of abstracted fuel rule. Something as simple as a movement and combat penalty if you have too many fuel consuming units compared to your oil production would be enough. We don't need to dwell overly much on the details of delivery.

 

[Streydeymn]

I would also add some manpower requirements for supply chain. And add more with the length - in that case USA would not be able to deploy millions men in Europe.

 

[blusarge27]

I agree supply needs a bit of improvement, and I agree with all of the above.
On point number 2, the length of supply, if they were to go this route the choice of port for incoming supply from overseas would need a bit of refinement, or allow the player to choose the main port of supply. Or alternatively, have more than one. Because at the moment it automatically goes to one port, and from what I've noticed it prioritizes the highest level port, but then that's it. No matter how far away your units are from that port (even if they're closer to another port) it still comes from that same port making the distances it has to travel rather long.
In my last UK game I had units stationed around Delhi (building up in preparation for the Japanese offensive) and they were getting supplied through Calcutta and walked the length of India to get to Delhi. I've also seen units in France get supplied through Kiel (or maybe it was Wilhelmshaven) instead of any number of French ports.

 

[Dalwin]

I agree supply needs a bit of improvement, and I agree with all of the above.
On point number 2, the length of supply, if they were to go this route the choice of port for incoming supply from overseas would need a bit of refinement, or allow the player to choose the main port of supply. Or alternatively, have more than one. Because at the moment it automatically goes to one port, and from what I've noticed it prioritizes the highest level port, but then that's it. No matter how far away your units are from that port (even if they're closer to another port) it still comes from that same port making the distances it has to travel rather long.
In my last UK game I had units stationed around Delhi (building up in preparation for the Japanese offensive) and they were getting supplied through Calcutta and walked the length of India to get to Delhi. I've also seen units in France get supplied through Kiel (or maybe it was Wilhelmshaven) instead of any number of French ports.

I agree with that. They also need to allow some control over which ports get used for trade routes. Some of the current defaults are bad to the point of silliness.

 

[steve.bd]

And there should also a way to tell allied troops to consider supply. I had an "Allied Barbarossa" on my last game with a front with France/uk/usa/belgium/netherland/commonwealth troops where almost every single front supply zone was red

 

[Axe99]

All very good ideas Dalwin . There was a post in the suggestions forum a ways back with an idea about supply line length, such that the impact of an elongated supply line would initially be very harsh, but stabilise (up to the capacity of the infra) over time.

One of the tricky things about that, of course, is where to measure it from. The nearest core is one approach, but the Soviets had plenty of supply issues within the Soviet Union when retaking much of their territory, and it'd cause issues with colonial areas like Algeria or Egypt, and then there'd be the question of allied non-core troops. Perhaps "the nearest state that's been in friendly hands for X months with a minimum of Y infrastructure and/or a port"? Am not sure, that sounds potentially a bit complicated, just throwing ideas around.

Were it me, I'd also be keen if there was some kind of 'total supply line length' stat, as well as the need to build trucks to help manage that, that could be transferred via lend-lease. Having more trucks than necessary could help (but not totally) ameliorate the effects of longer supply lines, assuming the mud isn't turning low infra areas into swamps.

 

[fabius]

Dalwin's 1 and 2 I think could have a huge benefit on the gameplay by making operations have pauses to recover. Which would make more than Russia war play out more real.

I also like the idea of some abstracted manpower requirement for Armies tails, increasing as their supply chain gets longer. It'd be good to have some different doctrine effects too. Like Superior Firepower better supply but much higher tail needs.

 

[blusarge27]

Were it me, I'd also be keen if there was some kind of 'total supply line length' stat, as well as the need to build trucks to help manage that, that could be transferred via lend-lease. Having more trucks than necessary could help (but not totally) ameliorate the effects of longer supply lines, assuming the mud isn't turning low infra areas into swamps.

I like the idea of trucks being used to help with the supply chain. As you said, something along the lines of having surplus trucks could provide a supply throughput bonus depending on how many you have available. Were you thinking of actually having a separate supply truck equipment or just using the in-game motorised?

Another idea to go alongside that might be using transport planes to make supply drops, like we had in HOI3. It could even fit into the air mission system we already have. Where you can set them a mission to make supply runs to an air region. And if you control an airfield in that region then you would get 100% of their supply capacity (whatever that value might be), assuming you don't lose any planes to enemy fighters. But if you don't control an airfield then your planes are having to para-drop them and you maybe lose something like 30-40% due to miss-drops falling into enemy hands or something.

 

[Louella]

We need some sort of abstracted fuel rule. Something as simple as a movement and combat penalty if you have too many fuel consuming units compared to your oil production would be enough. We don't need to dwell overly much on the details of delivery.

I had a thought about this, mainly relating to air and sea units, because I could more easily see mod commands that I thought could work with those, anyway, that's not important right now.

What my thought was, that there could be a condition, that compared the amount of oil that a country had access to, with the size of its deployed navy, and if the navy was larger, and the oil supply was small, then there would be a penalty to naval range.

Similar for aircraft. Count number of deployed aircraft, count amount of oil country can access, alter aircraft range to suit.

I couldn't quite figure out the has_resources condition though, like, the UK had 270 or so oil, importing 240 of it i think, but the has_resources only seemed to see the amount of oil that the UK was producing, not the amount that it was importing. I might have been doing something wrong though.


Anyway, something like that might work, but there is a couple issues that might need examining, like: how do you handle things where a country might have a very large navy, but small airforce and army ? They'd have a different fuel consumption than a country with a large airforce but small navy.

 

[Malickhoi]

For supplies, we need fuel to be represented, as a minimum, even with the same level of abstraction as the actual supplies in game.
Each state would produce x fuel, each motorized unit would consume y fuel (trucks, tanks, planes, ships). If not availabe in the current state, some would be sent from neighboring states. This already works with supplies.

Also, I find the naval transport solution is quite efficient to carry resources, supplies and units.
This has already been discussed, but in my opinion this solution could be adapted to land transport, using trucks & trains to carry supplies / resources / units being SR.

Logistical strikes could destroy trucks, just as convoy raiding destroys convoys.

This would bring the game one step closer to a great WW2 simulation...

 

[Louella]

Weather should also have a pronounced effect on supply. See above.

Might be straightforward.
common/static_modifiers.txt has the weather and some other effects.
like, mud is:

weather_mud = { # on Province
attrition = 0.7
army_speed_factor = -0.5
army_attack_factor = -0.4
}

Resistance has this as one of their effects:
local_supplies = -0.5

So, throw in the local_supplies = -something into the different weather entries, and maybe that would work ?

 

[Axe99]

I like the idea of trucks being used to help with the supply chain. As you said, something along the lines of having surplus trucks could provide a supply throughput bonus depending on how many you have available. Were you thinking of actually having a separate supply truck equipment or just using the in-game motorised?

I'm just throwing ideas around, but I'd probably stick with the current truck equipment, particularly for supply line extension. Depending on how complex it wanted to be, some kind of non-oil dependent rolling stock would also be good, but that'd be a whole 'nother level of detail, and probably best to expand things iteratively.

Resistance has this as one of their effects:
local_supplies = -0.5

So, throw in the local_supplies = -something into the different weather entries, and maybe that would work ?

Nice work . If it's already there, there's a good chance it'll work for the weather effects. I suspect the main difficulty isn't the supply penalty, but getting the AI to cope with it.

 

[Louella]

I If it's already there, there's a good chance it'll work for the weather effects. I suspect the main difficulty isn't the supply penalty, but getting the AI to cope with it.

It doesn't throw out an error, and it seems to show up ingame. Though I don't have any convenient saved games with the right weather to check everything though.

Something to try out anyway.

 

[fabius]

What about an abstracted Army builder.
Different doctrines open different slots giving different bonuses.
Slots such as supply need manpower and trucks.

Could provide some interesting choices of whether to divert more trucks and equipment to the tail, or front line units.

 

[REDDQ]

Good ideas. Although if we get a brand new fuel rule, would having oil required to produce equipment still be necessary?

 

[Dalwin]

Good ideas. Although if we get a brand new fuel rule, would having oil required to produce equipment still be necessary?

IMO, absolutely yes.

I see the goal here to cut back on the over proliferation of tanks in the game vs history, as well as eliminating the ease with which such large mechanized forces function normally deep within enemy territory. I want to re-establish some of the inter-arm balance such that infantry becomes more important, as it should be.

Setting oil to be maintenance only without it being a production item would effectively require going back to a stockpile system and this is not something that I want. In addition to that, if oil was not still used for production then oil poor countries could easily build a large stockpile of aircraft. All they would have to do is limit how many they deployed at once. They might be forced to use a smaller force but it would have virtually unlimited replacements.