Hearts of Iron IV - 33rd Development Diary - Supply

[Kimberly]

From what I understand you will still be able to bomb infrastructure including resource producing regions and the production of said resources. That said, I imagine, if you managed to effectively cut off their oil producing regions you aren't going to ground their entire airforce anytime soon because the airforce fuel/oil is payed in advance. However the bright side is they won't be able to replace their loses of airforces quickly because they will incur a penalty to building new planes from lack of oil.

Plus, the attrition of planes should be significantly higher than it is due to accidents in reality, because wear and tear and fuel use is also being simulated. (I was happy to see that planes will have more accidents when operating in bad weather.)

 

[wotanbrunilda]

The hoi4 supply system is much better than hoi3.
There was no realistic store 99999 of each resource before the war

 

[Tharkun]

The hoi4 supply system is much better than hoi3.
There was no realistic store 99999 of each resource before the war

Two words: stockpile cap.
There, simple. No need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[misterbean]

Two words: stockpile cap.
There, simple. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Or you could even go one better and use the HPP system, where you start losing resources at a certain point because you have no more storage available.

 

[LostinSpice]

From what I understand you will still be able to bomb infrastructure including resource producing regions and the production of said resources. That said, I imagine, if you managed to effectively cut off their oil producing regions you aren't going to ground their entire airforce anytime soon because the airforce fuel/oil is payed in advance. However the bright side is they won't be able to replace their loses of airforces quickly because they will incur a penalty to building new planes from lack of oil.

Thanks. So it can be done then That's useful.

 

[Nicolas I]

Retrospectively, I think we could have seen it coming when it appeared in DD#6 that only 800 "infantry equipment packs" were needed to equip 12000 men instead of a normal 1 to 1 ratio. It was a sign they were ready to take some shortcuts to simplify the game. There was still fuel use and supply use in that DD though.

Fuel use disappeared in DD#18 and supply use was then downgraded to fit with the "supply limit" mechanics instead of actual supplies consumption.

 

[Centurion1973]

This also means that there is no separate fuel need as such in the game, this instead is included in production of replacement equipment which need Oil (all tanks, trucks etc). Before everyone chokes on their friday beer give this some thought. Being able to stockpile fuel generally leads to the same problems as all other kinds of stockpiling when it comes to hindsight, so by wrapping it into the actual production of equipment requests to units (also nobody would request a tank without diesel to run it, and if they did it wouldn't really be usable as a tank) everything clicks into place and player doesn't have to micro manage all movement, airplane rebasing etc to try to avoid fuel waste and focus on making sure they have access to a strategic Oil resource and replacement equipment and a clear path for units to be supplied.

/facepalm/

This better be a joke.

Lack of fuel will make this supply system even worse, than what we had in HoI3!

 

[Tharkun]

Let me understand this: the term equipment is just a replacement word for supplies? OR is it the same equipment that you stockpile (tanks etc) and use to build units? I think it's the latter.

If 1. SS-Panzer-Division 'Das Reich' has 100% strength, is advancing deep behind enemy lines without fighting and is 'in supply' (i.e. under the supply area limit), then it uses no 'fuel' under this system.
If it suffers casualties, no problem. Spend IC, build a few more tanks and your division can start rolling again. Spending IC has somehow become equivalent to fueling a mechanized offensive?

Suppose Germany still controls Ploesti which has the strategic resoutce called oil. Is there a limit imposed by Ploesti's capacity on how many tanks Germany can field at any given time? It's not clear if there is. I hope there is.

Can oilfields be destroyed from the air?

 

[Jazumir]

Yes and yes. Strategic ressources do have a quantity to them and can be bombed, afaik.

And yes to the rest as well. You dont actually have to spend IC if ´Das Reich´ suffers casualties if you have some of what it lost in your national stockpile. And if you lost ploesti a year ago, it will also be able to move as fast as if you didnt, as long as it is in supply. If you had some tanks stockpiled for it, before you lost Ploesti, you could "fuel" the division with those for a while and afterwards you just build them with a penalty attached to their buildtime.

 

[ringhloth]

Is there a separate combat penalty for out of supply, that is different than having equipment?

I think the way it works is you are always building a constant amount of tanks, ships, airplanes, etc. and constantly lose roughly that amount of tanks, ships, airplanes, etc. All losses are somewhat higher, to make the war more dynamic (which IMO is fine), so you always need a constant stream of resources to maintain a fighting force. If you stop producing tanks suddenly, then your tank divisions will slowly start to fight worse and worse, because they're fighting with less and less equipment. If implemented well, I think it will work better than HoI3, where resources didn't matter and fuel and supply were essentially ignored because they weren't something you could influence/

 

[Denkt]

I would say yes:

When a unit finds itself out of supply it has a short period of time where they can live off their own supplies, after that their situation will gradually get worse up to about 30 days when things get very bad. Being out of supply makes you lose organization, move slower, not fight as effectively and take a lot more attrition. Veteran players of HOI know that the best way to beat the enemy is to cut off their supply, encircle them and then destroy them, and this remains true in HOI4.

 

[Adar1]

I'm very sorry, but not so convinced at all;

The improvement in airwarfare mode, miltary production and composition of land units are very good, but I have the impression that the Development Team missed it with the supply thing;

the stockpile- supply flow of the game was much cool, pretty realistic and awesome; to substitute with an equipment-only based supply systemt instead of ordinary supply + fuel + ordinary reinformencts/replacements sounds pretty bad, unrealistic and much flatty;

I find that the inland supply system was pretty good, and could have been be furtherly improved;

convoys: sorry but you simply should have worked on a better interface for convoys, allowing me to click at every convoy route to:
- change-modify the convoy,, instead of being forced to open the general convoy creation interface with all the convoy list to browse and get confused in, including the possibility to change the route; if I don't want to have the far East supplied through the Mediterranean, for example, but rather around africa for obvious reasons, so let me edit the route if I wish so; it's my convoy, my war;

-- allow me an option for manually set the time and time frequency of the convoy (want it more/less frequent, for example, in relation to the threat and the escort contingency; have it working from a certain time to time);

- allow me to set the lenght o f the route that should be escorted by a commissioned warship force; I may well wish my escort force to escort only up to a certain point and no more, or from a certain dangerous point and not from the beginnig of the convoy route;

- others;

I have the impression I'm not the only one to think this development a regression rather than a progress

 

[Had a mom]

/facepalm/

This better be a joke.

Lack of fuel will make this supply system even worse, than what we had in HoI3!

Yes, this is utterly retarded. How would it make sense to anyone that you need oil to produce tanks and aircraft rather than supplying it. I don't see the point of having oil included at all this point. It's just going to turn everything on its head and render the Germans and the Japanese unable to build anything that uses oil.

 

[Will Steel]

Ships run on fairy dust now, as @Axe99 rightly pointed out in the other thread. So do tanks and planes. No longer they need fuel to run, the cost is already deducted from the time when you build them up they only need more fuel when they need more equipment.

It is like buying a car where fuel comes built-in and you cannot refuel it. Your car will run infinitely until it is destroyed. And so you have to pay large amount of extra cash for a year's worth of fuel when buying the car. Once you lose it, you buy another one from the factory with a sealed prebuilt oil tank included.

I don't get this system and even more than that, I don't get the reasoning behind having this system implemented in the first place. This is probably the first HoI4 feature I am really disappointed about.

 

[DeclaredYuppie]

I like it.

 

[melens7s]

Ships run on fairy dust now, as @Axe99 rightly pointed out in the other thread. So do tanks and planes. No longer they need fuel to run, the cost is already deducted from the time when you build them up they only need more fuel when they need more equipment.

It is like buying a car where fuel comes built-in and you cannot refuel it. Your car will run infinitely until it is destroyed. And so you have to pay large amount of extra cash for a year's worth of fuel when buying the car. Once you lose it, you buy another one from the factory with a sealed prebuilt oil tank included.

I don't get this system and even more than that, I don't get the reasoning behind having this system implemented in the first place. This is probably the first HoI4 feature I am really disappointed about.

Agreed. I'd been really pleased with their work up until this point - they really seemed to be taking the time to fix all the problems with HOI3 and add some great new stuff to boot. It was looking so darned good.. and then this. It just doesn't fit with the well-thought-out material I was becoming pleasantly accustomed to seeing.

 

[Will Steel]

Agreed. I'd been really pleased with their work up until this point - they really seemed to be taking the time to fix all the problems with HOI3 and add some great new stuff to boot. It was looking so darned good.. and then this. It just doesn't fit with the well-thought-out material I was becoming pleasantly accustomed to seeing.

Exactly. I loved everything they had revealed. I was hyped and the hype train was going along at the full speed. Everything was on the right path, it looked like it was going to be perfect...Until I saw this.

I'll still enjoy the game of course, but not the supply system. This is a major hype-killer and a disappointment.

 

[rjohansen]

If I understand this, I hope am am mistaken: You could have the world largest fleet and the world largest air force and they could still operate as normal, even though your country has no fuel at all? The only negative is that you can not build new ships? Or new planes to replace those shot down?

 

[ozmono2005]

If I understand this, I hope am am mistaken: You could have the world largest fleet and the world largest air force and they could still operate as normal, even though your country has no fuel at all? The only negative is that you can not build new ships? Or new planes to replace those shot down?

You can still build ships planes and tanks to replace them, but you get a penalty to producing them.

 

[Caesar15]

If I understand this, I hope am am mistaken: You could have the world largest fleet and the world largest air force and they could still operate as normal, even though your country has no fuel at all? The only negative is that you can not build new ships? Or new planes to replace those shot down?

Yeah pretty much.