I would like trucks to be tracked separately. Infantry should be foot, semi-motorized or fully motorized. All this should be based upon the number of trucks allocated.
Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 2 - The Tools of War
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What is semi-motorised supposed to be? Foot is slow. Mot is fast, and semi, is?
Half the brigade reach the destination quickly on trucks while the other lag behind on foot
How having trucks being abstracted in a larger pool of "equipment" a failure of concept ?
Not every single thing can be represented in game, and although trucks would be a nice addition i don't think it is absolutely necessary to have them in game
Trucks were very important for both unit mobility and logistics - IMO important enough to be separated from generic equipment.
So, how exactly are you sopposed to handle a division that has 60% of the needed trucks traveling a few provinces?
I think having them abstracted as a more general "motorised division" equipment would allow sensible rules.
This is just great! At last the visual acpect is well done and looks very appealing, apart from bringing something extra to the game!
Well done!
Well done!
I'm not a supporter of the "motorized division = normal infantry division + trucks" but I think there really needs to be difference between an American "infantry" division in 1944 and the German "infantry" division. The difference is the level of mechanization and the amount of trucks.
The way I'd want it ideally would be for there to be two kinds of "logistics equipment" add ons for a division (pack animals and trucks) l
"Pack animals" represents whatever kind of animal would be appropriate for the terrain, so mules, horses, elephants etc. They wouldn't level up with tech and they'd help a division move a little faster over pretty much any terrain and improve organization regain. They would increase supply consumption and they wouldn't break down like machines do and instead suffer casualties in proportion the loss of manpower.
The second would be "Trucks," these would give a much larger boost to movement especially on good infrastructure. They would level up with the logistics techs and probably some stuff in the tank tree. They would increase fuel consumption and org regain by a lot. The trucks would suffer casualties and attrition in the same way that tanks would.
This leads to three states for a normal infantry division.
No special logistics attachment: Typical of Japanese, Chinese, Italian infantry divisions
Pack animals: German and Brits in the colonies, some Japanese divisions.
Trucks: American infantry divisions, late war allied and Russian divisions in general.
If 100% trucks give an infantry division a bonus of +2kph, than an infantry unit with 60% trucks moves at + (.60 x 2 kph) = +1.2 kph. Not difficult math.
I`m kind of sceptical about org. Trucks break and need maintenance. Animals just need rest. They are more cost-effective if your country has fuel but much harder to restore if break.
That is not how it should work, that is quite obvious. There either should be a mechanics that represents parts of divisions moving separately, or there should be a non-linear increase in time and fuel consumption, the less trucks there is, as Trucks need to make more then one run, which requires them to move people and supplues some distance, unload, return, pick up the rest that moved somewhat, and so forth.
There is a great math task about that, but the basic is that if you only have 50% of the needed trucks your trucks would have to ride ~1.5 times more per truck, (and use fuel and time), while only getting around 1/3 of speed up, and the less you have, the worse it becomes, at around 10-20% of trucks you might as well just not bother.
At the very least, the formula should be +X speed up*(100%-2*percentage missing), and their supply&fuel consumption should be roughtly
cons/(100%-%ofmissing).
A unit where heavy equipment (but not the general infantry squads) are motorised. So it goes as fast as a "light" infantry unit, faster than a "heavy" infantry unit but not as fast as a "fully motorised" infantry unit.
Motorised units that lose a lot of trucks (most likely are reinforced with manpower and equipment but not trucks) will prioritise the heavier equipment, becoming more like "semi-motorised" (although with slightly different general equipment).
It also seems logical, to me, to have "supply depot" units that are a little like garrisons, but have logistics elements (which, as Porkman suggests, could be truck or "animal" - in which I would include human porters and carts/waggons). The usual, or "general", scheme was that each unit was responsible for getting suplies from the previous one in the chain. So, supply depot units would use its assets to get supply from the source (or previous depot), combat divisions use their assets to get supply from the nearest supply depot. In such a scheme, the deployment of your motorised transport becomes crucial.
I like your ideas, but do you think Infantry Division + 100% trucks = 2kph is realistic?
German regulations:
Infantry division - 3 mph
Motorized division - 16 mph (day), 10 mph (night)
Armored division - 12 mph (day), 7 mph (night)
These speeds would be affected by road conditions and terrain of course.
Semi-motorized is really just motor transport at above division level generally, so a corps motor pool shared among subordinate units. This would apply to US and British units.
I would imagine that all divisional assets would be truck towed and foot travel could be on average increased by a couple mph at most.
Infantry division - 3 mph
Motorized division - 16 mph (day), 10 mph (night)
Armored division - 12 mph (day), 7 mph (night)
These speeds would be affected by road conditions and terrain of course.
Semi-motorized is really just motor transport at above division level generally, so a corps motor pool shared among subordinate units. This would apply to US and British units.
I would imagine that all divisional assets would be truck towed and foot travel could be on average increased by a couple mph at most.
Was there really any division in WW2 that had so many trucks you could move every single man and piece of supply, ammo & equipment at once? I seriously doubt that.
In all previous HoI games no fully motorized division moves faster then 8kph.
Even with a thousand trucks in the division I'd guess you would have to make at least 2-3 trips to pick up everything. So removing half the trucks would increase it to 4-6 trips = a fairly linear increase, which is simple enough to understand and realistic enough for this purpose. Also remember that the rest of the equipment & men can start to be moved by foot, so trucks don't have to go the entire way back to pick them up.
It's not true that it keeps getting much worse. Looking at the other extreme case with a single truck moving an entire division it is still effective at least half the time (and using the other half to drive back empty or carrying wounded / PoWs ). This means in a real situation your single truck will likely always be useful 60% of the time or more.
And the rest of the division is not so much worse of compared to a leg division. I'm going to say that adding 10-20% trucks to a division makes sure they can use them where they add the most value, for example making sure a critical breakthrough can be sealed, or a critical batch of ammunition and reinforcements quickly reaches the AT battery that is under assault. The British extensively used the doctrine of semi-motorized divisions spreading out the trucks over all infantry divisions.
A division with 60% of the trucks needed is probably a good representation of most of the real motorized divisions during the actual war. Instead of a motorized division always moving 8kph tie it's speed bonus to truck strength. It may go up to 12kph with 100% trucks in good weather and good roads, but with only 60% trucks it's closer to the normal HoI2 and HoI3 speed of 8kph. If almost all trucks are knocked out from combat or CAS attacks the division slows down to the speed of leg infantry no matter how badly you need them to close that encirclement.
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I`s not linear increase, it is x/(100-%missing). Granted, the assumption that it takes multiple trips just means there is no multiplication of % missing.
If you have 10% of trucks required, you would need 10times the trips.
What I ment is, that division that lost most but not all trucks doesn`t have noticeable advantage over foot division, in terms of moving around, as it`s motorised component will not be able to move most of the division, so you might just ride the truck once and wait for foot soldiers to come, and not waist fuel moving them around. Supplies ofc. is another metter.
But at this point, you're doing semantics. I pulled some quick math out of my ass, but your calculations were fine. The point is that you challenged me to make a model for "not having 100% trucks," implying that it was impossible, and then you went and created your own perfectly viable method for calculating exactly that.
Yes, because, to me, 100% trucks for an infantry division is not enough trucks to move the whole division, it's enough trucks for the logistics and supplies of the division as well as some brigade level maneuvers. Turning an infantry division into a motorized infantry division is not just a matter of adding trucks, they have to train for quick maneuvers and rapid deployment. It shouldn't be difficult to upgrade infantry to motorized infantry, but it should be more than just adding equipment since doctrinally they fight differently.
I like the truck issue, but I think that an implementation of railroads and railroad junctions (storage possibility of supplies) is more important on a strategic level.
I also like the way TRP tries to handle and seperate it from infra, even it's just a compromise with the possibilites HOI3 has.
I also like the way TRP tries to handle and seperate it from infra, even it's just a compromise with the possibilites HOI3 has.
Love the fact that you will be able to redeploy obsolete equipment to reserve or different fronts or especially allies - this was one of my bugs in the original game and detracted from realism for me... assume we would still be able to convert existing tanks to TD's etc as well...
Very interesting...
A criticism I wish to level here, however is regarding the bit about having 4 variants per chassis. Please do not make the unit trees symmetrical - Pz IV should not have the same number of variants as Pz VI Panther, or Sherman, or Ha-Go. German industry had a very distinctive approach to design, so did US, so did USSR, etc.
Homogeneity, symmetry is attractive, but ultimately boring. Differences, quirks are what make it all interesting and distinct.
A criticism I wish to level here, however is regarding the bit about having 4 variants per chassis. Please do not make the unit trees symmetrical - Pz IV should not have the same number of variants as Pz VI Panther, or Sherman, or Ha-Go. German industry had a very distinctive approach to design, so did US, so did USSR, etc.
Homogeneity, symmetry is attractive, but ultimately boring. Differences, quirks are what make it all interesting and distinct.
Throughout the campaigns following D-Day, the majority of the Allies' supply was delivered via ports (including Mulberries) in Normandy by truck. On the Eastern front, the Germans hardly made use of Russian rail for the majority of their military campaigns; forward supply centres were eventually connected by rail, but not during the actual offensives. In 1914 the German army tried taking over the running of the French and Belgian rails for their own supply during the initial offensive. It was a total disaster. They got the physical infrastructure working again (if in a rickety way) but the organisation proved hopeless. The troops on the Marne desperately needed ammunition, but the supply details had to sort through piles of rotting meat, tinned food and spare uniforms to find what little there was...
During WW2 operations the railways just got so trashed and disorganised that it took months to rebuild and reorganise them. In "home" territory I can see high Infra (or, even better, "rail infra" as opposed to "road infra", but just "infra over 50" would do) giving some "free" transport of supplies to supply dumps - but not to frontline troops. The last "leg" of supply was, as far as I can ascertain, pretty much always done by the units collecting their own supply using their own assets.
Remember that you don't have to research them all - they are just possible research targets. In strategy games you the player get to decide what your own approach to design/upgrade/reuse is, and I think that is a good thing. Resource and time limitations will also factor into your decisions - as it did in real world history - and this is also, in my opinion, a good thing.