Oil and Logistics Mega-thread: Post all discussion here
- Thread starter Secret Master
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I find myself still trying to get my head around how this will work and I keep coming back to hay for horses, if you find yourself in poor supply your horses have effectively run out of hay but the supply of hay is not going to improve unless you retreat back to a location where there is enough hay.
Sending more horses is certainly not going to help even if they bring enough hay for themselves, the only solution is to find a place with more hay.
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Alright. Podcat just said there will be one. Just hang on. T.T
He said previously that he writes them after his lunch. So I wouldn't personally expect a podcat DD until after 3-4 CET
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I just had a thought this morning while I was... err... downloading 
What are the serious effects of the US oil embargo on Japan
Like... the entire reason for Japan going to war with the USA has been removed
No need for an attack on Pearl Harbor
The Kido Butai will run forever
(I dunno, maybe it's powered by super-strength clockwork engines that you just oil once when they're made)
What are the serious effects of the US oil embargo on Japan
Like... the entire reason for Japan going to war with the USA has been removed
No need for an attack on Pearl Harbor
The Kido Butai will run forever
(I dunno, maybe it's powered by super-strength clockwork engines that you just oil once when they're made)
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What are the serious effects of the US oil embargo on Japan
I've been wondering this myself, but in another context.
We know oil is required for specific military stuff: tanks, planes, ships.
But what about civilian goods? Will Japan feel a civilian pinch when the embargo hits?
Regardless of how the whole "oil powers things forever" shakes out, it occurs to me that Japan could probably fuel their conquest of China without oil because they won't need oil for infantry, artillery, or special forces. If the embargo comes too late, it won't matter because Japan will just switch to more small arms and howitzers over motorized units and aircraft.
After all, how many armored units do you really need to defeat China? How much air power? You need some, sure, but there are plenty of places in China where logistics reduces you to foot infantry and maybe some artillery anyway.
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I have been trying to figure out what I think about the new system.
I know it is a bad abstraction, particularly with respect to navies, but I am not sure what I would suggest given the direction that the developers are obviously going. I have played Hoi3 a lot more than most and have spent plenty of time under the hood modding. So, apart from the developers and those who have played the beta, I think I am in as good of a position as anyone to comment.
I for one, liked the Hoi3 flow system. However, it was flawed. The flaws even as late as TFH in my mind were still very serious. They were as follows -- 1) the flow could not cross territory of allies or those giving you military access. This would create illogical supply black holes when allies, advancing with you, happened to cut you off from your capital. This should have been fixed, but it never was. 2) There needed to be a way for the player to control the flows of supplies -- buildable and movable supply depots are the obvious solution and on map HQ's could have played a part. But this feature was never added. 3) The AI did not seem to understand the supply situation. If it sent 20 ARM into northern Norway and those divisions lost all of their combat strength because they were out of supply, the solution to the AI was to send more ARM divisions, not less. This was probably the biggest problem with the flow system, they couldn't teach the AI to anticipate what was happening or what was going to happen. I wish they would have fixed a system that was otherwise really cool, but I guess that ship has sailed.
As far as the new supply system is concerned, they are going with regional limits based on local supply, overflow from adjacent regions, and ports from convoys as limited by bottlenecks such as infrastructure and port size. These conditions will return a supply limit for the region -- a number -- that the AI can easily understand. They should be able to teach the AI to understand the regional supply limit and to avoid overloading an area with troops that it cannot hope to supply. This is a very legitimate reason for making the change they made, and should improve the performance of the AI which everyone should agree should be a top priority. I imagine this will improve the gameplay dramatically. However...
Abstracting the actual supplies and the actual fuel into the manufacture of replacement equipment is a very bad abstraction. It is so bad that I don't really feel like debating it anymore with anyone who might disagree. It is particularly bad with respect to naval units that don't require a steady flow of replacements. Under some circumstances it might approximate the same strategic decisions, but in many other situations absurdities will abound. Even in situations that are not filled with overarching absurdities, immersion will be destroyed by the illogical system -- tanks refueled and resupplied by more tanks.
Both supplies and fuel should be separate equipment items.
You could have land supplies, air supplies and naval supplies, but I am comfortable with the abstraction of a single type of supply that must be manufactured and stockpiled and is expended as your units consume them. There does not have to be a flow system. The stockpile could be reduced by the daily usage as calculated under the current system and supplies could be delivered to your units in the same way equipment will be. This would be a much better abstraction than the current system.
The same should go with fuel. It should be manufactured with factories from oil. Oil, as a strategic resource, cannot be stockpiled, but fuel can be. If it is possible to stockpile too much, limits can be imposed or expenses added to make abuse of stockpiles impossible. Then each supply region would have a separate fuel limit as well, and again, the fuel would be delivered to your units in the same way as equipment. If you need fuel and don't have enough, movement is reduced. If you have none, you stop -- just like in real life.
This system would use the same regional supply limit, but you would just add a regional fuel limit too. Supply and fuel would be separately stockpiled and separately consumed as if they were equipment. The game would be improved as the troublesome abstraction of conflating supply, fuel, and equipment all together would be avoided.
I know it is a bad abstraction, particularly with respect to navies, but I am not sure what I would suggest given the direction that the developers are obviously going. I have played Hoi3 a lot more than most and have spent plenty of time under the hood modding. So, apart from the developers and those who have played the beta, I think I am in as good of a position as anyone to comment.
I for one, liked the Hoi3 flow system. However, it was flawed. The flaws even as late as TFH in my mind were still very serious. They were as follows -- 1) the flow could not cross territory of allies or those giving you military access. This would create illogical supply black holes when allies, advancing with you, happened to cut you off from your capital. This should have been fixed, but it never was. 2) There needed to be a way for the player to control the flows of supplies -- buildable and movable supply depots are the obvious solution and on map HQ's could have played a part. But this feature was never added. 3) The AI did not seem to understand the supply situation. If it sent 20 ARM into northern Norway and those divisions lost all of their combat strength because they were out of supply, the solution to the AI was to send more ARM divisions, not less. This was probably the biggest problem with the flow system, they couldn't teach the AI to anticipate what was happening or what was going to happen. I wish they would have fixed a system that was otherwise really cool, but I guess that ship has sailed.
As far as the new supply system is concerned, they are going with regional limits based on local supply, overflow from adjacent regions, and ports from convoys as limited by bottlenecks such as infrastructure and port size. These conditions will return a supply limit for the region -- a number -- that the AI can easily understand. They should be able to teach the AI to understand the regional supply limit and to avoid overloading an area with troops that it cannot hope to supply. This is a very legitimate reason for making the change they made, and should improve the performance of the AI which everyone should agree should be a top priority. I imagine this will improve the gameplay dramatically. However...
Abstracting the actual supplies and the actual fuel into the manufacture of replacement equipment is a very bad abstraction. It is so bad that I don't really feel like debating it anymore with anyone who might disagree. It is particularly bad with respect to naval units that don't require a steady flow of replacements. Under some circumstances it might approximate the same strategic decisions, but in many other situations absurdities will abound. Even in situations that are not filled with overarching absurdities, immersion will be destroyed by the illogical system -- tanks refueled and resupplied by more tanks.
Both supplies and fuel should be separate equipment items.
You could have land supplies, air supplies and naval supplies, but I am comfortable with the abstraction of a single type of supply that must be manufactured and stockpiled and is expended as your units consume them. There does not have to be a flow system. The stockpile could be reduced by the daily usage as calculated under the current system and supplies could be delivered to your units in the same way equipment will be. This would be a much better abstraction than the current system.
The same should go with fuel. It should be manufactured with factories from oil. Oil, as a strategic resource, cannot be stockpiled, but fuel can be. If it is possible to stockpile too much, limits can be imposed or expenses added to make abuse of stockpiles impossible. Then each supply region would have a separate fuel limit as well, and again, the fuel would be delivered to your units in the same way as equipment. If you need fuel and don't have enough, movement is reduced. If you have none, you stop -- just like in real life.
This system would use the same regional supply limit, but you would just add a regional fuel limit too. Supply and fuel would be separately stockpiled and separately consumed as if they were equipment. The game would be improved as the troublesome abstraction of conflating supply, fuel, and equipment all together would be avoided.
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Stockpiling is bad. It is always too easy for player to abuse. In all HOI 1-3 games and mods it was possible to stockpile so much that it you never ran out. If you start stockpiling you need to introduce stockpile mechanics, possibilities to destroy/capture stockpiles, all while teaching the AI to use it.
The idea that supplies and fuel are manufactured is good though. Essentially, it both should be non-stockpilable and non-tradeable. If your production matches your requirements, everything is fine. If you don't, the army's capability begins to slowly decay. A "no fuel allocation" option for Air/Sea could allow Germany to, for example keep army functioning at the expense of the bulk of the navy being locked in port.
The idea that supplies and fuel are manufactured is good though. Essentially, it both should be non-stockpilable and non-tradeable. If your production matches your requirements, everything is fine. If you don't, the army's capability begins to slowly decay. A "no fuel allocation" option for Air/Sea could allow Germany to, for example keep army functioning at the expense of the bulk of the navy being locked in port.
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Stockpiles can be easily fixed, if you don't have one big national stockpile, but every unit got some kind of individual "stockpile". Supply DD says that if a unit is completely out of supply, its effects aren't immediate. The same could be done with fuel. If a country runs out of fuel, it takes let's say a month for units to feel its full effects (slowly getting worse from day 1). This simulates a stockpile without having a stockpile and it cannot be exploited by the player. The AI won't have problems understanding this concept, since it is already included in the game with supplies. Not having access to oil for 2 days won't have any effects, so tiny "hickups" don't matter, which is reasonable. Running undersupplied for a year has a big effect though since all of your units that require fuel run with some ugly modifiers.
Here's the quote form the DD:
"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."
Here's the quote form the DD:
"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."
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Then put a limit on stockpiling, like 1-3 months worth. Anyway, now you can stockpile equipment (with their lifetime fuel included)...
Countries in WW2 were not producing just in time as it is now the trend, unless their stockpiles were completely depleted.
Non-tradable ? You remove a big part of what submarines or raiders could sink, gone are most of the the liberty ships and tankers !
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You mean like the 1 month "behind the scenes" stockpile that is confirmed in the game?
No, that seems to be tactical or operational supplies for units on the ground. I was thinking of a strategic stockpile for a country. I would have liked a limit of 6 months, but as some people fear it could be exploited I would have settled for something like 3 months.
Anyways, as no limits were announced for stockpiling equipment (with lifetime oil included), I can hardly see how they have solved the stockpiling problem other than replacing resources/supplies by equipments.
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It's amazing that they don't just solve the stockpile issue with a law of diminishing returns stockpile calculation...
Your Oil capacity would be determined by how much oil production you have, so Saudi Arabia, the US, SU, Venezuala could build pretty large stockpiles of oil (a few months worth), while Germany or Japan or China could not stockpile oil because they lack it....
Meanwhile, the ability to stockpile fuel would be based on IC capacity (maybe more for having civilian industry), so the majors could all build a good fuel stockpile but some of them would not be able to build a big oil one.
Make an equation that just tells you what your stockpiling efficiency is and have it gradually approach zero. So if it's 100%, you get 1 oil added to the stockpile when you acquire 1 oil. If it's 50%, that 1 oil only adds .5 oil. If it's 10%, .1 oil. Put it in a tool tip when you mouse over the resource and have the resource change color when stockpiling efficiency gets low.
The calculation would look something like this for calculating fuel capacity:
[((Civilian IC) x 1) + ((Naval IC + Military IC) x .25)] x 30 = Fuel Stockpile size without Attrition.
So Germany with 100 Civilian IC 20 Naval IC and 80 Military IC would have 100 + (20 + 80) x .25 = 125 = 3750 fuel in the bank before they start suffering an attrition penalty (the math, not the number is important)
Now the attrition equation which would only kick in once the max Fuel stockpile size was reached.
( Fuel Stockpile without attrition / (Current stockpile) x each unit of fuel acquired. = amount of fuel that enters the stockpile.
So let's say I'm Germany and I have 5000 fuel....
Well that means I get a 3750/5000 = .75 = 75% attrition modifier. I will only get 75% of each new fuel unit I acquire.
Lets say I have 10,000 fuel... 3750/10000. That's a 37.5% attrition modifier.
The math can be fiddled with depending on what a month's worth of fuel is.
Your Oil capacity would be determined by how much oil production you have, so Saudi Arabia, the US, SU, Venezuala could build pretty large stockpiles of oil (a few months worth), while Germany or Japan or China could not stockpile oil because they lack it....
Meanwhile, the ability to stockpile fuel would be based on IC capacity (maybe more for having civilian industry), so the majors could all build a good fuel stockpile but some of them would not be able to build a big oil one.
Make an equation that just tells you what your stockpiling efficiency is and have it gradually approach zero. So if it's 100%, you get 1 oil added to the stockpile when you acquire 1 oil. If it's 50%, that 1 oil only adds .5 oil. If it's 10%, .1 oil. Put it in a tool tip when you mouse over the resource and have the resource change color when stockpiling efficiency gets low.
The calculation would look something like this for calculating fuel capacity:
[((Civilian IC) x 1) + ((Naval IC + Military IC) x .25)] x 30 = Fuel Stockpile size without Attrition.
So Germany with 100 Civilian IC 20 Naval IC and 80 Military IC would have 100 + (20 + 80) x .25 = 125 = 3750 fuel in the bank before they start suffering an attrition penalty (the math, not the number is important)
Now the attrition equation which would only kick in once the max Fuel stockpile size was reached.
( Fuel Stockpile without attrition / (Current stockpile) x each unit of fuel acquired. = amount of fuel that enters the stockpile.
So let's say I'm Germany and I have 5000 fuel....
Well that means I get a 3750/5000 = .75 = 75% attrition modifier. I will only get 75% of each new fuel unit I acquire.
Lets say I have 10,000 fuel... 3750/10000. That's a 37.5% attrition modifier.
The math can be fiddled with depending on what a month's worth of fuel is.
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On the stockpile fuel/supplies thing, under something like Tommylotto's (imo excellent) suggestion, factories are used to produce fuel, and it's fuel you stockpile. So unlike HoI3 (or 2, or probably 1 but memory and all that) you don't 'automatically' get fuel - if you want to stockpile a heap, you need to spend your factories building that instead of tanks, planes, infrastructure or what-have-you. Add in the 'no conversion' (as the synthetic oil plants we can build cover that off), and I can't imagine it would make a lot of sense for Germany to stockpile HoI3-levels of fuel prior to an invasion, unless they're were planning to use molotov cocktails rather than tanks and artillery as their main mode of attack.
For example (and it might just be me) I never, ever had 99,999 supplies in HoI3 (because, if I did, I would have not been building other things, and that would have been silly, and I'm not quite that silly) - normally, I'd get to about 10-15K or so (a solid reserve, enough to cope if the system started putting 1000 more a day into the network because of a new landing or the other reasons it'd do things like that). If we have to use factories to make oil, I'd expect rational players to do similar, as there's now a significant opportunity cost involved.
That said - keeping sensible limits on stockpiles is a good thing.
For example (and it might just be me) I never, ever had 99,999 supplies in HoI3 (because, if I did, I would have not been building other things, and that would have been silly, and I'm not quite that silly) - normally, I'd get to about 10-15K or so (a solid reserve, enough to cope if the system started putting 1000 more a day into the network because of a new landing or the other reasons it'd do things like that). If we have to use factories to make oil, I'd expect rational players to do similar, as there's now a significant opportunity cost involved.
That said - keeping sensible limits on stockpiles is a good thing
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You are right that Oil should definitely be separate. Only 3 people on the forum think it's a good idea to include it in production, the reasons against it are reasonable and numerous and if the mechanic wasn't flawed there would have been at least some sort of response from PDS. They wanted to sort out oil using an existing game mechanic but they picked the wrong one.
That said - Oil and 'supplies' should not be equipment. This would allow people to stockpile them and for oil especially this would mark a return to a broken mechanic. Stockpiles of consumable resources are bad. It also adds the pointless task of manufacturing them. If all your armies are going to die without supplies then it's not a meaningful choice for a player to decide to make supplies. It's just pointless busy work that you cant avoid.
- Production should be the things a player actually has choice over, I.e. tanks/ships/planes/infantry. Since the production of 'supply' is a no-choice it's better to abstract it.
- Making sure the supply is getting to the troops (and preventing your opponents supply from reaching theirs) is where the strategy (fun) comes in.
Oil should work in game exactly the same as 'supply' currently does. Produced at VP & provinces. Local supply + spill over + flow from capital. If your units don't get enough oil they slowly stop moving/flying/sailing. (Though unlike 'supply' they would not take high attrition or lose the ability to fight defensively). This would still be using an existing game mechanic so wouldn't be a giant stretch to make it work.
The abstraction of supplies and the way the new system works was a great move as it pushes the focus onto the logistics of supplies (which was the real problem in WW2) and not the production of supplies. As long as things are balanced well logistics warfare will be a lot of fun.
Stockpiles have been fixed. They have been removed which is hands down the best fix there could have been. The only concession I could see being fun and not re-introducing a game breaking feature is that factories, like units, will lose their efficiency over a short period of time once access to the strategic resource is lost instead of an instant whammy.
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