Harshest occupation and logistics: Am I doing the math correctly?

[Secret Master]

If you look at the tooltips for supply, you will see a tooltip that talks about resistance strength:

The wiki tells me that resistance reduces local supply. If that is true, then partisans do not directly affect supply throughput. They can only affect throughput (that is, the 25% of previous infrastructure that is passed to other supply regions) by blowing up infrastructure like they blow up factories and what not.

If that is how it works, then that might explain why I can put the Soviet Union under the harshest occupation policy, use absolutely no suppression units in my non-front line regions, and still keep most units in supply.

This might also indicate a problem with the current system.

Partisans blow stuff up. This is a good thing. The damage they can inflict on factories and air fields and other stuff is significant. But I've twice been able to invade, and successfully defeat the Soviet Union (as Germany and Vichy) without caring about partisans in my rear areas. Yes, the Soviet Union lost its industrial base thanks to partisans blowing the factories up (certainly not optimal), but I kept the army in supply in both cases without too much trouble.

That seems to be incongruous with how much impact historical partisans had on the movement of supplies. But am I reading the tooltips and the math correctly?

 

[Secret Master]

An addendum:

Am I correct in saying that partisans can blow up only one thing in a state at a time? If they blow up a factory today, they can't also blow up infrastructure on the same day.

 

[Meglok]

1) This is my understanding also, local supply is affected, not throughput. Partisans only sabotage constructions, I don't think they sabotage infrastructure which would affect throughput.
2) I have never noticed resistance sabotaging more than one construction per day per state.

So your conclusion is the same I am coming to, there is no need to garrison supply lines back to the homeland. Break out the whips and harsh language. It sucks to be the loser. I'd rather get 100% from factories and resources and garrison my Western factories with MPs to reduce sabotage chances while I kick in the Soviet door and watch the whole rotten structure come crashing down.

 

[Wraith11B]

I would assume that your addendum is correct, because I would assume that they worked a dice roll to what the partisans target first, and it cools down for 24 hours afterwards?

I would venture that an update of targeting priorities for partisans is in order. It should be easier for them to blow up MSRs than a factory; this should be reflected with appropriate adjustments to the targeting choice. Further, the further they are from the FEBA or other troops, the greater chance to do significant harm to infrastructure.

 

[Secret Master]

1) This is my understanding also, local supply is affected, not throughput. Partisans only sabotage constructions, I don't think they sabotage infrastructure which would affect throughput.

If they don't even sabotage infrastructure, then it really doesn't matter.

If you are willing to accept losing factories over time, you can just ignore partisans. As far as I can tell, resource production is never affected by partisans, so if you just need the tungsten or oil or steel, just run harsh occupations.

Of course, it's not too expensive to run a proper occupation that kills off partisans, so...

 

[Rommel41]

There needs to be more manpower return for less harsh occupation laws. As of now, besides resistance itself, there is little question as to which laws to pick. Harsher laws offer serious returns via industry and resources. Relaxed occupation offers only reduced occupation costs.

If you could get some reasonable manpower returns, I'd be more likely to try other occupation strategies. Otherwise, harsh is king.

Edit: Didn't realize this was about the logistics impact. Oops. I didn't realize it didn't affect infrastructure. I have been repairing British roads for so long, I thought the partisans were doing it (which they should.) Historically partisans destroyed a serious amount of logistical capacity of the occupier. Even movies often use these acts as their primary display of partisan activity. Longest Day, The Battle of the Bulge, etc. Heck, it's basically what Force 10 from Naverone is all about!

 

[Bridger15]

I agree this is probably something that should affect supply throughput. I believe local supply is affected up to 50%, perhaps throughput should be affected up to 25% at max resistance?

 

[Meglok]

There needs to be more manpower return for less harsh occupation laws. As of now, besides resistance itself, there is little question as to which laws to pick. Harsher laws offer serious returns via industry and resources. Relaxed occupation offers only reduced occupation costs.

If you could get some reasonable manpower returns, I'd be more likely to try other occupation strategies. Otherwise, harsh is king.

Edit: Didn't realize this was about the logistics impact. Oops. I didn't realize it didn't affect infrastructure. I have been repairing British roads for so long, I thought the partisans were doing it (which they should.) Historically partisans destroyed a serious amount of logistical capacity of the occupier. Even movies often use these acts as their primary display of partisan activity. Longest Day, The Battle of the Bulge, etc. Heck, it's basically what Force 10 from Naverone is all about!

please, no more manpower.

I could be wrong about the infrastructure, but i don't think so. Damaged infrastructure is from battles in the states. I dumped all my old saves after the latest beta patch, but i don't remember having to repair infrastructure in a state more than once.

I'm going to try another game with Germany tonight. If the game doesn't go completely off the rails due to the latest beta bugs I will more pay attention to sabotage and note what happens.

 

[Secret Master]

Okay, so I tested it.

Over the course of two months, with zero suppression, and thus maximum partisans, throughout all of France, the partisans destroyed some infrastructure. But it was a pittance compared to the number of factories they killed.

So, partisans really like blowing up factories.

Something else to consider:

Partisans active in a state reduce local supply by 37% if they are at 100%. But this particular aspect of partisans doesn't carry over to other states (unlike growth). So, your front line divisions will rarely see diminishing supply effectiveness because of partisans, simply because there will be so much suppression focused on front line states that the partisan impact for states on the front is reduced to zero.

I suppose the good news is that partisans will annihilate the industrial base of occupied territories if you don't do something about them. The bad news is they won't hurt supply that much.

This is clearly a dilemma the Devs found themselves in. On the one hand, if partisans focused their efforts on infrastructure, you'd repair the damage with civilian factories in occupied states. If you have partisans target factories, you get to watch the industrial base disintegrate, but supplies still move to the front at full speed.

 

[AmpsterMan]

I think i would prefer destruction of infrastructure vs destruction of factories. Right now, after I get a certain number of factories, the amount pf things i produce become so large i can barely tell the difference of orders of magnitude.

However, supply bottlenecks can, and do, cause me issues from time to time and those are immediately noticed and rectified.

 

[Dalwin]

You have a good point about throughput versus the state at the front line. I also find security divisions less important in Russia than France.

There is another situation where partisans can impact supply, but it does not apply to Russia. I am speaking about ports. I find that Japan might want to use a few suppression divisions along the Chinese coast once they start pushing inland.

 

[Rommel41]

please, no more manpower.

Could you elaborate on why you don't think this would be a good idea?

As it stands, the only real source of manpower is the conscription laws. I would very much like to garner more manpower from occupied lands (heck, more from my core's even!) otherwise it's such a small gain over the course of the war as to be virtually negligent.

I feel like 500k over a decade, as a Germany flush with total victory in the west, is a little light. Being tempted with the prospect of doubling or tripling (as opposed to a few extra thousand), at the expense of industry and resources as currently set, would be a real decision.

@Secret Master thanks for discovering this! I think the scales of damage should be ranged on the target. 50% infrastructure, 30% civilian factory and 20% military factory (with varying degrees of success to off-set a predictable loss rate). This to illustrate how much more likely a target could be damaged (1000's of kilometers of tracks are easier to disrupt than a single munitions plant with guards).

 

[Meglok]

Could you elaborate on why you don't think this would be a good idea?

There is already a perceived issue with division spam that causes WWI trench warfare (although part of that is probably due to the idiot battle planner) and late game computer gridlock.

If the Conscription law percentages were lowered, monthly manpower gains lowered, and/or the Tension levels raised in economic laws that govern when you can increase conscription laws, then I might agree with you about raising the manpower that is available under certain conscription laws. As it is there is little need to add manpower in the middle to late game, I have yet to run out of it.

@Secret Master thanks for discovering this! I think the scales of damage should be ranged on the target. 50% infrastructure, 30% civilian factory and 20% military factory (with varying degrees of success to off-set a predictable loss rate). This to illustrate how much more likely a target could be damaged (1000's of kilometers of tracks are easier to disrupt than a single munitions plant with guards).

Don't know if this is something that can be modded. We can go into static modifiers and change the percentages of the set occupation choices, like your manpower suggestion. If you wanted to see the results you could change those yourself and run a test game. But I don't know if there is a mechanism coded to tell resistance to damage infrastructure in HOI4.

 

[Dalwin]

There is already a perceived issue with division spam that causes WWI trench warfare (although part of that is probably due to the idiot battle planner) and late game computer gridlock.

If the Conscription law percentages were lowered, monthly manpower gains lowered, and/or the Tension levels raised in economic laws that govern when you can increase conscription laws, then I might agree with you about raising the manpower that is available under certain conscription laws. As it is there is little need to add manpower in the middle to late game, I have yet to run out of it.



Don't know if this is something that can be modded. We can go into static modifiers and change the percentages of the set occupation choices, like your manpower suggestion. If you wanted to see the results you could change those yourself and run a test game. But I don't know if there is a mechanism coded to tell resistance to damage infrastructure in HOI4.

Part of the perceived division spam is also the AI building large stacks of small and cheap infantry divisions (often using essentially its garrison template) and it not building a much smaller number of proper divisions. It also has a problem with knowing when to stop building. There comes a point when you are better off halting all training and using your remaining manpower only to replace combat losses. The AI doesn't seem to realize this. It also likes to flood some combat zones and thereby devastate itself with attrition and supply shortages so bad that its units never get above 10% of their full org.

 

[Secret Master]

As it is there is little need to add manpower in the middle to late game, I have yet to run out of it.

I run out of manpower all the time.... before I shift gears to Service By Requirement.

I don't think the game needs more manpower. I certainly don't see the lack of manpower as a flaw in occupation policies as such. I point it out, though, because as veterans of HOI3 will remember, you could gain a small but significant amount of manpower from occupied territories (also leadership) if you ran collaboration government. If you go into HOI4 with that mindset, you waste all the opportunities to profit from resources or factories.

Part of the perceived division spam is also the AI building large stacks of small and cheap infantry divisions (often using essentially its garrison template) and it not building a much smaller number of proper divisions. It also has a problem with knowing when to stop building. There comes a point when you are better off halting all training and using your remaining manpower only to replace combat losses. The AI doesn't seem to realize this. It also likes to flood some combat zones and thereby devastate itself with attrition and supply shortages so bad that its units never get above 10% of their full org.

The AI has been doing that since EU1.

I'm beginning to think that there is no way to program an AI that will keep a reserve of manpower AND also know when to splurge. I can just see an AI that keeps a reserve of manpower end up losing to me, because its sitting on 1.5 million manpower and 5000 infantry equipment, yet only has 12 divisions in the field.

Looking at the beta patch, the AI is getting better with division templates, but it seems to duplicate and then modify templates. So, it will have four infantry divisions using an 8 width template, four more with a 12 width template, and so on. The USA was really bad with this the last time I tag switched in 1944.

 

[Malkiot]

If they don't even sabotage infrastructure, then it really doesn't matter.

If you are willing to accept losing factories over time, you can just ignore partisans. As far as I can tell, resource production is never affected by partisans, so if you just need the tungsten or oil or steel, just run harsh occupations.

Of course, it's not too expensive to run a proper occupation that kills off partisans, so...

I don't even do that. I straight up ignore partisans. I accept a straight loss of ~25% of captured factories. It doesn't matter though since my previous industrial base was already enough to beat the opponent, losing 25% of ADDITIONAL IC isn't really a hit.

Creating garrison forces and managing them just isn't worth the bother, imo.

 

[Dalwin]

I run out of manpower all the time.... before I shift gears to Service By Requirement.

I don't think the game needs more manpower. I certainly don't see the lack of manpower as a flaw in occupation policies as such. I point it out, though, because as veterans of HOI3 will remember, you could gain a small but significant amount of manpower from occupied territories (also leadership) if you ran collaboration government. If you go into HOI4 with that mindset, you waste all the opportunities to profit from resources or factories.



The AI has been doing that since EU1.

I'm beginning to think that there is no way to program an AI that will keep a reserve of manpower AND also know when to splurge. I can just see an AI that keeps a reserve of manpower end up losing to me, because its sitting on 1.5 million manpower and 5000 infantry equipment, yet only has 12 divisions in the field.

Looking at the beta patch, the AI is getting better with division templates, but it seems to duplicate and then modify templates. So, it will have four infantry divisions using an 8 width template, four more with a 12 width template, and so on. The USA was really bad with this the last time I tag switched in 1944.

I think the first part of that (manpower reserve) would be easy to program.

You only need a lookup table where you have set a preferred army size for each nation. This is cross referenced with its manpower value, again weighted per nation via a table.

Now you get situations like my army is big enough but I still have lots of manpower so slowly build a few more of my most effective units only. Or my army size is small but I have manpower so build a ton of whatever I can get quickly, etc.

The template issue is much harder. Even though I prefer variety to determinism, is variety good if all the choices are bad? Right now we would be better off if each nation simply had a table which said in this year use these templates and build them in a preset ratio. Some variability could still be programmed in. I know it would be a bit of a copout to put the Ai templates on a script instead of having it think for itself, but tbh it seems that it would be a big improvement in this regard as things now stand.

 

[Peter81]

Looking at the beta patch, the AI is getting better with division templates, but it seems to duplicate and then modify templates. So, it will have four infantry divisions using an 8 width template, four more with a 12 width template, and so on. The USA was really bad with this the last time I tag switched in 1944.

The problem is that you would need to program an AI that stockpiles a lot of currently unneeded equipment (for example artillery) if you want them to upgrade all their infantry divisions at once to use frontline artillery. I'm guessing that you would run into computational complexity issues if the AI needs to plan this way ahead. So it's cheaper (concerning computational time and space) to incrementally upgrade those templates.

 

[Dalwin]

The problem is that you would need to program an AI that stockpiles a lot of currently unneeded equipment (for example artillery) if you want them to upgrade all their infantry divisions at once to use frontline artillery. I'm guessing that you would run into computational complexity issues if the AI needs to plan this way ahead. So it's cheaper (concerning computational time and space) to incrementally upgrade those templates.

Even for the human it is often better to copy a template rather than modify the original if new equipment and/or lots of divisions are involved. This allows you to gradually integrate the new gear a few divisions at a time instead of either waiting a long time to build up a stockpile or going a long time with many divisions being only partially equipped.