Oil and Logistics Mega-thread: Post all discussion here

[Jeremy971]

I agree with the oil lobby.

But at the same time, I play to HOI3 and I know the stockpile system is shit.

It's to easy to trade and reach the 99k of oil if you play before 1939.

So a new system harder ? Why not ?

Their system is an improvement. Maybe not perfect but nothing is perfect.

 

[King Ari]

I could care less how the system works, or how historically correct it is... As long as it's fun

 

[Had a mom]

I could care less how the system works, or how historically correct it is... As long as it's fun

Well, most people are attracted to this genre because they think historical realism is fun.

 

[ringhloth]

Well, most people are attracted to this genre because they think historical realism is fun.

You mean like how Japan never needed to go to war for oil in HoI3 or 2, and so fuel wasn't particularly relevant? Yeah, fuel was realistic before, and HoI4 is a step away from that.

 

[Had a mom]

You mean like how Japan never needed to go to war for oil in HoI3 or 2, and so fuel wasn't particularly relevant? Yeah, fuel was realistic before, and HoI4 is a step away from that.

Never said that HOI3 was not realistic. What I'm trying to say is that I agree with you, in regards to oil, HoI4 is a step away from realism.

 

[Lightning Jack]

I haven't seen such spirited debate since they announced "no counters"

 

[ringhloth]

Never said that HOI3 was not realistic. What I'm trying to say is that I agree with you, in regards to oil, HoI4 is a step away from realism.

How can it be a step away from realism when it's not any less realistic?

 

[wingo]

SOLUTION!

I used to think the solution was to somehow work oil into the supply system but the supply system is the solution. The supply system does exactly what we need it to:

It has provinces/zones that produce supply and this then migrates to zones without supply. As long as a unit has access to supply they are fine - if they don't then they start to operate at reduced efficiency. Units in a pocket with supply can continue to fight.​

Replace supply with oil:

It has provinces/zones that produce oil and this then migrates to zones without oil. As long as a unit has access to oil they are fine - if they don't then they start to operate at reduced efficiency. Units in a pocket with oil can continue to fight.​

And taken one step further if this system is made generic to the point where new consumption resources can be modded in then it's pure gold:

It has provinces/zones that produce food and this then migrates to zones without food. As long as a unit has access to food they are fine - if they don't then they start to operate at reduced efficiency. Units in a pocket with food can continue to fight.
​

The best part is the supply system is already in game so would hopefully only require a moderate amount of work to make it generic and make sure consumption resources flowed around correctly.

So an infantry division requires 1 supply and 0 oil (to remain 'in supply')
An armour division requires 1 supply and 1 oil
A Battleship requires 0.5 supply and 3 oil
etc...

You'd need to be able to determine which consumption resources caused attrition though. Lack of supply would cause attrition and reduce fighting efficiency, lack of oil would just reduce fighting efficiency.

You'd then be able to trade your excess consumption resources to other players but I think the existing trade mechanics are perfect for this.

• Solves the oil problem
• No stockpiles
• Uses a system that is already in game and designed to do exactly what we need
• Can use the existing trade mechanics which would work just as well for consumable resources as production resources.
• Is highly moddable

Thoughts?

Excellent proposal. But it has a glaring flaw - since we can clearly see supply&fuel requirements for divisions (and no requirement for oil during equipment production) in old screenshots, devs obviously thought about a similar system. But in the end, something made them change it - maybe it was hard to balance, maybe easy to exploit, maybe it was not producing desired results (hint for Podcat - maybe you could shed some light about the older system and why it was replaced, some of us would like to read about your thought/design process )

 

[Had a mom]

How can it be a step away from realism when it's not any less realistic?

I though that's what you said in your previous post??:

Yeah, fuel was realistic before, and HoI4 is a step away from that.

 

[Sayd]

I agree with the oil lobby.

But at the same time, I play to HOI3 and I know the stockpile system is shit.

It's to easy to trade and reach the 99k of oil if you play before 1939.
...

But trading is just a balance factor, it could be tuned. For example SOV has much fuel, even with trading, so it could be easily tuned down. Same for USA and other major traders.

 

[KiwiNoob]

Excellent proposal

Thanks

But it has a glaring flaw - since we can clearly see supply&fuel requirements for divisions (and no requirement for oil during equipment production) in old screenshots, devs obviously thought about a similar system. But in the end, something made them change it - maybe it was hard to balance, maybe easy to exploit, maybe it was not producing desired results (hint for Podcat - maybe you could shed some light about the older system and why it was replaced, some of us would like to read about your thought/design process )

That sort of amounts to "The flaw is that maybe the devs have already thought about this and decided it didn't work". I don't really see that as a 'flaw', more of a huge assumption . We know they looked at some sort of oil mechanic but have no idea what.

I wholeheartedly agree with the second part of your post. It would be really great to get some dev feedback on the decision making around oil as well as their thoughts on the feedback and suggestions from the community.

 

[ringhloth]

I though that's what you said in your previous post??:

Sarcasm.

 

[Had a mom]

Sarcasm.

Then my response is that no one has ever claimed that the HOI3 representation of oil was particularly realistic. Why all this fuss about HOI3 anyways?

 

[KiwiNoob]

SOLUTION!

I used to think the solution was to somehow work oil into the supply system but the supply system is the solution. The supply system does exactly what we need it to:

It has provinces/zones that produce supply and this then migrates to zones without supply. As long as a unit has access to supply they are fine - if they don't then they start to operate at reduced efficiency. Units in a pocket with supply can continue to fight.​

Replace supply with oil:

It has provinces/zones that produce oil and this then migrates to zones without oil. As long as a unit has access to oil they are fine - if they don't then they start to operate at reduced efficiency. Units in a pocket with oil can continue to fight.​

And taken one step further if this system is made generic to the point where new consumption resources can be modded in then it's pure gold:

It has provinces/zones that produce food and this then migrates to zones without food. As long as a unit has access to food they are fine - if they don't then they start to operate at reduced efficiency. Units in a pocket with food can continue to fight.
​

The best part is the supply system is already in game so would hopefully only require a moderate amount of work to make it generic and make sure consumption resources flowed around correctly.

So an infantry division requires 1 supply and 0 oil (to remain 'in supply')
An armour division requires 1 supply and 1 oil
A Battleship requires 0.5 supply and 3 oil
etc...

You'd need to be able to determine which consumption resources caused attrition though. Lack of supply would cause attrition and reduce fighting efficiency, lack of oil would just reduce fighting efficiency.

You'd then be able to trade your excess consumption resources to other players but I think the existing trade mechanics are perfect for this.

• Solves the oil problem
• No stockpiles
• Uses a system that is already in game and designed to do exactly what we need
• Can use the existing trade mechanics which would work just as well for consumable resources as production resources.
• Is highly moddable

Thoughts?

Just to add to the suggestion. Here is how it might work from a UI perspective:

 

[ringhloth]

Then my response is that no one has ever claimed that the HOI3 representation of oil was particularly realistic. Why all this fuss about HOI3 anyways?

Everyone is saying stuff essentially phrased "this is a step away from realism." A step away from realism heavily implies that it was more realistic at one point in time, which it never really was.

 

[JamesJameson]

Spoiler: Production

So we know that you don't need a resource to build something, but looking at this you can see you might not need a resource every game tick to get stuff built. This may be just a alpha thing, but I'm starting to think it's not. I think the general idea is that if you don't have stockpiles, but we know you do have a little behind the scenes stockpile. (I can't remember which DD said this but i'll look it up and edit it to say.) So I think its safe to say that everyone has a little bit of everything. Everyone is able to get there hands on a little bit of something, either from salvage or stealing, ect, ect. The other thing that is really important to remember is that you can't' produce everything. You are limited depending what country you are and what your division make-up looks like. So with a general idea that everyone can get a little of something then it makes sense you can still produce some stuff even without a resource flow right at the game tick. (hour in game, couple seconds real time). Don't like that?

Well then answer me this:
How many times will this list be empty when you are playing the game?
How many times was your production line empty in Hearts of Iron 3?
If you produce a bunch of ships, and then stop producing ships, do you think your opponent will stop producing ships as well? If they do wouldnt that still make it even? If they don't what do you do when you fight them?

I think it's safe to say that nobody has ever had there production line empty while playing Hearts of Iron 1, 2 or 3. Therefore, you will never have it empty in Hearts of Iron 4.

Also listen to this, "On the same screen as the Army Planner, you can also define if reinforcements, upgrades, lend lease or actual divisions have priority on equipment being produced." This is from the Army Planner DD.

Spoiler: Reinforcements

See Reinforcements?

Here is the Lend-Lease

Spoiler: Lend-Lease

Just cause it looks cool.

Equipment is produced by the player and can be stockpiled. Units will receive equipment if they are 'in supply'. Sadly it doesn't sound like equipment currently exists on the map at all which might have ramifications for sub warfare but we will see.

In Arumba's video he say's the choose to remove transports and make them like the convoys. If that happened or not I don't know but I can say that they would never make the game where you could not lose your troop on the transports. So combine that with the DD that talks about convoy's and subs, they you can be pretty positive that you can sink equipment.

 

[No idea]

It'd be good if someone could link me to all the AARs from 3 where their Germany run or Japan run actually ran out of fuel.

Yes, in HoI 3 you never run out of fuel. So what? What does it have to see with what we are discussing?

 

[Axe99]

Everyone is saying stuff essentially phrased "this is a step away from realism." A step away from realism heavily implies that it was more realistic at one point in time, which it never really was.

Plenty of us aren't saying that - my main concern is that the assumptions in the equipment/attrition/no fuel model put some mathematical relationships deep in HoI's gameplay model that are likely to lead to outcomes that are sub-optimal. I know there are people complaining about how it's changed from HoI3, but there are plenty of concerns about the assumptions used in the model on their own merits, independent of HoI3. Now, whether the issues or bigger or smaller than the issues HoI3 faced, we won't know until the game launches, but as far as I can see (and if course I might be wrong, but there's a reason I'm rabbiting on more than the usual over this issue) is twofold - one, because the mathematical relationships themselves are distortions rather than abstractions, and the other because the model that's being used has dropped from 4 variables to 2 (for fuel-using units, 3 to 2 for non-fuel using units), and less variables means less to balance with, which means a harder time balancing (particularly in the context of something as complex as modelling logistics and production for WW2 or a similar period in history).

Ie, this discussion is less about HoI3 and more about how HoI4 is going to work. I won't restate all the examples again, but there are plenty where the assumptions in the model raise issues (so many I literally can't think of them all at once, although my memory might be partly to blame). That said, I do think the devs will have made the choice for a reason, and it'll be the best reason they had at the time. Whether they ran out of time to develop the model they wanted, or couldn't get the AI to play nice with an 'all flow' model of fuel supply (which I could see being a little tricky), they'll have had a sensible reason, but from a pure abstraction perspective, the current model doesn't do a great job, and from a gameplay perspective it removes strategic depth and player choice, so my tip is that the devs had to make a compromise, rather than that the model in the dev diary is their view of a perfect system (although it might be, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that ).

 

[mursolini]

You mean like how Japan never needed to go to war for oil in HoI3 or 2, and so fuel wasn't particularly relevant? Yeah, fuel was realistic before, and HoI4 is a step away from that.

In mods, you sure do, because the game actually allows you to have oil shortage. Vanilla was just poorly balanced. Sigh, I`m pretty sure the reason for infinite oil supply was already discussed.

 

[No idea]

It really depends on how the stockpiling of equipment is going to work. And how much its possible to stockpile tanks/how much they improve each model.
Oil for land troops is trucks, tanks, sp art, sp rocket art, truck rocket art, TDs and thats about it. Then ofcourse planes.
Tanks have numerous models making them hard to stockpile from the start of the game since i assume theres going to be some major advances to how good they are. Trucks on the other hand doesnt suffer from this they only have one model and could be stockpiled in large numbers from what we have seen. However they suffer from the fact that they also need rubber to produce.

Depending on the stockpile sizes when you start losing tanks and you do not have much oil your production drops. So that mean less produced tanks. Which after you have run through the stockpile (this is where the size of the stockpile becomes important) start not being able to supply the tanks to the front units. Lack of Tanks as its an equipment will lead to lack of combat stats, which imho would also be the case if they had lacked fuel. Its not 100% elegant but it seem to work in theory for land units, more or less imho. Ships are a way bigger questionmark.

I agree knowing how equipment stockpiling works is important (and it will be especially important depending on the gap between new and old tanks, planes...), as we can get a system where oil stockpiling (like in HoI 3) has just changed to equipment stockpiling.

But there are also some other potential problems that will come due to the indirect (instead of direct) use of oil for units. Kiwinoob did a good summary:

"Just to try ad summarise some of the points raised on other threads here (and feel free to add to the list):

1. Ships especially are unbalanced by this as they don't suffer 'attrition'. Japan could build a hundred battleships pre-war using oil imports from the SU or US then when war breaks out and they are cut off - no biggie, BB's don't use oil.
2. It's unbalanced post-battle. The country that performs well and has lots of planes/tanks/ships left no requires no oil even though they still have lots of planes/tanks/ships. The country that performs poorly now requires lots of oil (for replacements) even though they no longer have any planes/tanks/ships.
3. Capturing a countries oil supply wont have a dramatic effect for potentially years as anything already produced is free to run for life. Players will abuse this and use equipment to effectively stockpile oil. Japan loses virtually all of it's oil production? Oh well - business as usual for their navy, airforce and armour divisions
4. It kills the idea of a naval reserve. Why bother keeping a reserve in port when one of the main advantages of it was that it conserved fuel? With that gone there is no reason not to have the whole fleet as big as you can possibly make it sailing around.
5. The amount of oil needed should reflect the standing size of the force not how quickly it's destroyed. If a country has 1000 active tanks they should use 1000 tanks worth of oil. At the moment if they have 1000 tanks dying slowly they only need 500 oil, if they have 1000 tanks dying quickly they need 2000 oil. Even though the whole time the number of active tanks remains the same.
6. Because planes/tanks/ships (especially ships - running theme ) don't require oil to run large countries could produce units and then give them to small countries even though those countries couldn't realistically use them. I like the idea that New Zealand can field a fleet of Battleships imported from the US even though we have nothing but sheep to fuel them with but it's not very realistic. (NZ is a good example because we had ok 'supply' but it was only for infantry/cavalry units. We had practically no oil in the grand scheme of things)
7. You cant plan ahead. You cant build 10,000 tanks as Greece and then invade Romania to get the oil to run them. It means pre-war oil production is vastly more important than capturing or maintaining oil production during the war."

Not to talk that a sucessful army, with plenty of tanks, planes, ships and mechanized forces, will need less fuel than a beaten, half destroyed army with almost no tanks, planes and ships. That is simply ridiculous and goes against reality (not just realism, which I agree that it is too much abused as an argument).