I did some testing that confirms my suspicion that it is the puppet issue you are in fact refering to. You mentioned setting up England as a puppet and how this leads to small amount of resources remaining at the resource depot and that gave me an important clue.
Sorry Pang. You mis-read me completely. I did mention setting up England but that was only after discussing the resource depot of a British Isles controlled entirely by Germany, and that German owned depot never depleting (and that remaining being huge amounts).
Next I mentioned setting up England to reduce the size of remaining German owned area (the Scotland area only) to eliminate most of the very rich energy and meal producing provinces in England TO SO ELIMINATE EXCESS RESOURCES as a possible cause for the stockpile never zeroing. And that stockpile would then be at Glasgow - which is NOT a puppet of Germany but serves the remaining German owned provinces in northern British Isles.
I appreciate you trying to help; and here are the pertinent details. The German owned provinces are Aberdeen, Dunfermline, Glasgow and Edinburgh only. Rest of British Isles is England and the very northern "useless" provinces given to Portugal. The German area produces daily 34 energy, 13 metal and 1 rare. The stockpile reads:
A) Auto-convoy using 395 merchantmen manages to reach steady depot with always about 70 metal, 0 rares and 3214 energy remaining.
B) Manual convoy and throwing 700 merchantmen at the problem, I can fairly quickly get the energy down to 717 (which I discovered is the minimum size it will go, and then can be maintained at that by using 500 merchant men. If less, stockpiled energy increases again. If more merchantmen, energy also increases again. In short, 500 merchantmen is about the "optimum convoy size" for avhieving best possible minimum result with a permanent state of always about 20 metal, usually 0 rares, and 717 energy. That is a problem!
Please compare this to next door conquered Ireland (including the British part). The total island produces daily 16 energy, 1 rare, and 7 metal. But the resource convoy from there (let's use Belfast) is only 7 merchantmen (the minimum) and the resource depot is ALWAYS empty. This depot works perfectly!
Compared to the Glasgow "problem depot" if 7 merchantmen zero 16 daily energy at Belfast, then the Glasgow depot should zero with about 17 merchantmen removing the 34 energy accumulating there daily. But instead it takes hundreds (even 1000) merchantmen and they can only ever achieve a minimum depot stockpile of 717 energy always remaining. Does this make it clear?
The problem has nothing to do with puppets. Puppets - while all you say is right - is a completely different situation. I am discussing "problem depots" and "bug depots" which are owned (or controlled) by the conqueror - and not liberated puppets. Further, the problem depots are generally the same regardless what country player chooses to be. In short, there are numerous depots that player owns those provinces (after annexation) that never zero regardless of convoy size. But it does seem that quite a few could be explained away with the fact that they have oil there. In short, if oil is there, it must be preventing the energy and metal from totally removing. Usually the rares do fully zero.
My problem is never having some oil that won't remove from say a place like Alexandria or Aden because ships call in there all the time (and its good, I suppose, that extra oil is there). NOTE: Aden and Alex only mentioned as possible example, IIRC... have not yet checked back files. My problem is countless hours spent over a full game changing convoy sizes in a futile attempt to get all the energy, metal and rares out of Alexandria or Aden. Because - until that is done - I don't know if I can turn down convoy size. The whole quest is to find the minimum convoy size needed to zero depot of resources (agreed?), but problem depots befuddle that.
