Oil and Logistics Mega-thread: Post all discussion here
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Yes but that's not logistics as such and it's instant. Putting a corps or two ashore in Normandy requires no logistical effort on the strategic level other than the IC spent to build the units and their equipment in the first place (in current in-game terms).
Said units could be loaded on to transports and sent to Guam, Italy or France without as much as a cough (with the sole malus being the battleplan). Logistics wise there's no difference and IC wise it has even less bearing.
That's what bugs me with the current system. It's awesome in its conceptual design but the devs didn't take it all the way.
The hard choices are abscent when it comes to logistics. Do you keep with the Case Blue logistical plan and push for the Volga or do you send the panzers south into Caucasus. What happens if you change your mind twice due to the slow progress in the north? Will the operational potential gains of re routing that panzer army back north once again outweigh the logistical nightmare you create by doing so?
Will you attempt a landing in both Normandy and southern France by spreading the logistical naval strength between the channel and the Mediterranean or will it be better to delay one of them to ensure a full flow of supplies should enemy resistance or weather prove worse than anticipated?
Operations were not decided upon or changed on a whim without consequences in the logistical situation. Consolidating the entire net worth of supplies and logistics into the IC production of a single piece of equipment (independent of where it'll be used) and a supply cap per area makes for poor simulation IMO.
Now it might be great as a game mechanic for a PDS grand-strategy title, I can't really claim otherwise before the final game is released, but in relation to the changes from HOI3 to HOI4 I believe additional mechanics would have been good.
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I'm not offering any new solutions here. Just trying to point out the reasoning for the devs decision to get rid of fuel/supply stockpiles, most of what I said is just regurgitated from the devs themselves:
You don't need to take my word for it.
You even said yourself:
I agree (I think?), they appear to have "fixed" the stockpile problem - by getting rid of the general purpose supply stockpiles and replacing them with specific use equipment stockpiles.
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well for those that want realism
it is realistic that unit need oil in fact all units should have some oil cost
building infantry weapons and ammo needs oil for the electricity trucks transporting it..... tanks ships planes all need directly or inderectly oil to be produced soo
it is realistic that unit need oil in fact all units should have some oil cost
building infantry weapons and ammo needs oil for the electricity trucks transporting it..... tanks ships planes all need directly or inderectly oil to be produced soo
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I really think we have a baby being tossed out with the bath water. I always found the supply system flawed but awe-inspiringly awesome. It saddens me that it is being jettisoned instead of improved. The stockpile issue is a problem, but it could have been fixed in any number of ways -- lower caps, required investments, diminishing returns, etc. Sure, it was hard to understand how it worked, but I imagine a supply map mode could have been devised to better show the flow patters and bottlenecks. However, what was really broken and needed to be fixed was how your supply could not flow through allied territory and territory where your troops were given military access. It made the Balkan campaign impossible to recreate and often became a game breaker (if German Territory in Northern Greece could not trace back to Germany, Athens could never be taken). But if the system could be fixed so that German supply could somehow cross Italian or Bulgarian controlled territory, the game breaking problems could be avoided. Another example of this broken system showed up when, as the US, I pulled off a successful Torch, raced across Libya and attacked into Egypt to rescue the Brits after they had lost Alexandria and were trying to hold at Suez. As soon as the American's crossed the border into Egypt the North African version of the Redball Express went on immediate strike. No supply could cross into Egypt. I recognize this fix would be complicated as not only would supply need to be tracked but the nationality of supply too. For example, the Germans and Bulgarians would both be trying to tax the same throughput system. How would conflicts work? Would the controller of the territory get priority or the stronger ally? Still, I think they had something special, and I would have like to see an effort to improve instead of abandoning it.
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Well, I kind of half agree with you.
The general problem with the system is exactly what podcat said: any time you have a logistics screw up, there is nothing you as the player can do about it by the time units are starving for supply. You can't take a direct player action related to the actual supply mechanics to immediately begin solving the issue. Your panzers run out of supply before reaching Moscow? You're screwed. Sure, you can take actions before hand to prevent this problem (OOB optimization, division composition, techs, ministers, number of units in theater), but if you are out of supply, that's usually it. It's already out of your hands.
And all of the things you can do to fiddle with supply are, well, not related to actually managing the network. It's all indirect (like POPs in Vic2), which might be okay in some situations. But when you combine the lack of direct player intervention with the bizarre rules, it becomes a mess. And it's mess that is opaque to 90% of players. (Hell, my post above was about 30% stolen from other people, because there's stuff even I don't fully understand.)
The thing is that there are parts of the supply system in HOI3 that I love, too. But I'm not even sure how someone would fix the HOI3 systm without also making it a micromanagement nightmare or take up too many CPU cycles. Imagine you could set up depots and stockpile for offensives and give specific orders to supply specific units that might actually be obeyed. Sounds great, but it might bog the game down or give the game engine a heart attack.
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If every HQ would be treated as a both a requester/demand as well as a "source" with subordinates drawing from that pool then you'd have a tiered system and also a way to control the flow (3rd Division requires 4/2 supply/fuel, it's parent 30 Corps with a total of 5divs requires 20/10, it's parent 4th Army requires 120/30 etc depending on subordinates). It wouldn't fix the base problems but it would've given at least some control to the player (but then forcing players and AI to use HQs which is not really optimal).
One of the main issues you described, and indeed a bottomless source for numerous confused forum threads on the subject, was GUI/presentation.
There was really no way of knowing that your divisions were moving into a supply nightmare other than experience and true understanding of the supply-system combined with numerous mouse-over-hovering along multiple provinces to gauge the exact flow.
You also needed to know exactly the demands of each division you were operating both in depth and breadth and keep all those figures in mind when deciding on what to do. And a single allied corps doing a strat-redeploy in the operational rear due to some stupid shit AI shenanigans would result in them lifting their 30-day carried supply/fuel along each passed province and upset the whole things for weeks and at times even have supply backflowing in the system along some provinces.
Me personally found it at times a bit intriguing since it has some resemblance to how balancing all those figures works IRL but the lack of control soon turned it into a micromanagement hell and a chore which isn't really something you want in a game.
The fact that the only way to directly manipulate the supply-flow was through destructiveness (bombing or disrupting your opponents provinces infra and supply/fuel) and no way for the "victim" to be proactive or re-route the logistics effort was just painful, especially in MP.
IF a feature such as that has mechanics or part of mechanics that cannot be influenced directly by the player needs good and visible presentation and be as intuitive GUI-wise as possible so that you get a heads up that putting those 30 panzer.divs in Pripyat will be bad news. I suspect that this line of reasoning is behind the new supply areas in HOI4 but as someone else expressed it there are features in the HOI3 approach that felt more realistic, at least as concepts.
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I agree that a competent flow simulation would be more satisfying than an abstract system. Despite all the bad, there were definitely some aspects I really liked about the HOI3 flow system. I think it could be possible that out of the current supply area system some kind of equipment flow system could be built. Instead of flowing through a chain of provinces, equipment could flow through a chain of supply areas. It may not be as intricate, but it would defiantly cut down on the cpu load and in general make for a much cleaner system.
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Then again, having an equipment flow system based on the supply areas could just end up being redundant, depending on how the abstract system works. I don’t really like the idea of equipment instantly moving from production to the divisions, but I could see how supply limits could model realistic delivery rates if they’re done right.
More importantly - I need to figure out some way to get myself to stop posting in this thread, until there’s some real information to work with. I think I might be going insane…
Mods, plz ban me for my own sanity!
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Well for one the goal to make the impact gradual would mean that it's much easier realize how bad the future situation would be long before you actually reach Moscow, so instead of pushing on you can stop and decide on ways to mitigate the problem (including longer term solutions), before it actually is a big problem.
I think that one of the best way of empowering players to be able to take direct actions to immediately solve or mitigate the problem would be to give the player the ability to use or re-distribute their truck stockpile. You could both imagine being able to attach "supply truck" battalions in the OOB to key divisions giving them a bigger carried stockpile of supply/fuel, and being able to assign trucks en-masse to temporary support choke-point areas on the map. That should carry a big extra cost of both supply and fuel + efficiency loss making it an undesirable solution over long distances or long time.
If my choke-point area can throughput for example 100 supply & fuel, lets say I throw 1000 trucks into it, and I can now throughput 130 supply & fuel, but the costs to deliver this that are needed to feed into the area is now increased to perhaps 160 supply & fuel.
These solutions I think would mesh very well with the HoI4 production system, and add depths and choices ( do I use my extra trucks to carry more infantry, or to carry more supply? )
And when speaking of making the system more gradual I suggested back in the HoI3 days that unit consumption should scale with how much supply they have left. That is at least in theory an elegant solution since the system can find an equilibrium for any size of force and infra ( but if you send 40 Heavy Tank divisions to Stalingrad they might get -95% combat, org regain and speed, but they also consume just 10% of the fuel and supply compared to their full demand so they still "get supply" ).
CPU cycles or performance I think is the least of worries. Consider that HoI3 will probably be almost 7 years old when HoI4 release, that both games have similar amounts of provinces and that HoI3 supply system with all it's complexity ran just fine (performance wise).
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On a sidenote: I lost between 341,242 and 526,432 hairs last night, when my chinese troops managed to encircle some jap divs but the 2 important corps (and only them!) went oos just in time for a whole week straight and thus kept me from finishing them. It´s a real tough fight against the japs as NatChi on hard so i was so excited to finally get something done and then this! Needless to say, i had to go all in to pull it off, and now my corps are all shaken - for nothing! But that´s kinda fun, too - i really felt like a really bad person, when i kept hoping they´d regain supplies on the next day and that the encirclement would hold that long... just one more day... *nailbite*
But i say one word, just one word: Transportplanesonsupplymission! Damn it - if i had thought of building just one of them...
But i say one word, just one word: Transportplanesonsupplymission! Damn it - if i had thought of building just one of them...
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To be fair, this is super historical for Nationalist China. Read about Xue Yue at the Battle of Hengyang.
The problem with supply trucks in a stockpile is that they weren't really used on a strategic scale. Red Ball express and that's it, even there it was temporary.
Supply is about railroads and prioritization around them.
It would be better if instead of "supply trucks" (which should definitely be a part of divisions), we could click on areas of the map where there are bottle necks and allocate IC to them. We should also be able to produce "Rail equipment."
To rephrase your example...
If my choke-point area can throughput for example 100 supply & fuel, lets say I throw 1 IC into it and a bunch of my rail equipment stockpile, it can now throughput 130 supply & fuel, but the costs to deliver this that are needed to feed into the area is now increased to perhaps 160 supply & fuel.
Though the example there doesn't quite work anyway because fuel no longer exists...
One of the most inexplicable, but strangely unquestioned things about all of the HOIs is that the supply mapmode and the infrastructure building process have been entirely separated.
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Indeed, which is why 99% of all supply still would be carried by railroad (normal infrastructure) and trucks only used for emergencies...
There are other historical examples of supply truck uses in bad infra (bad railroads), most prominently in North Africa where the Axis didn't have enough trucks to advance, and where the allies also made extensive use of trucks to carry supplies.
No more in HoI4 it seems:
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@ Secret Master --- If this is true, then why did the SOV apply their scorched earth policy so effectively?
Extract from a research paper, The Dissolution;
"The measures taken by the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1942 aimed not only at furthering the Soviet war effort, but also at harming the German enemy even at the cost of huge losses of life among Soviet civilians. The Soviet scorched-earth strategy included the deportation of millions of men, women and children; the resettlement and reestablishment of thousands of factories; the withdrawal of almost the entire railway rolling stock; the-annihilation of raw material depots; the removal of most of the agricultural machinery, cattle and grain stocks; the systematic destruction, burning and blowing up of the immovable infrastructure, inventories of all kinds, factory buildings, mines, residential areas, public buildings, public records, and even cultural monuments; and the intentional starvation of the civilian population which remained behind to face German occupation. It was basically a policy which unscrupulously used the civilian population as a strategic pawn. The extent and timing of this policy action is confirmed by so many sources that no real difference of opinion exists in this regard. What is strange is how scantily it has been covered so far in the scholarly literature."
German comments about the SOV scroched policy include;
"It has been our experience that the Russians remove or destroy systematically all of the food supplies before retreating. The urban population of the conquered cities thus will either have to be fed by the Wehrmacht or it will have to starve. Obviously, by forcing us to provide additional food to the Russian population, the Russian leadership intends to worsen the already difficult food situation of the German Reich through a reduction of the domestic German food supply. As a matter of fact, the present food situation permits us to feed the Russian urban population from our own stocks only if we reduce the supplies to the Army or if we lower the rations at home."
Other sources such as Military History Online confirm these reports.
Putting political correctness aside = neither the GER Wehrmacht nor local residents were able to 'scrounge any kind of living' from captured SOV supplies.
This may explain why players with focus on history are cocerned about the gameplay logistics and supply.
Perhaps they desire a system based on facts and reality.
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I'm not talking about the historical reality.
I am talking about how HOI3 models it, and the misconceptions that particular person has about the HOI3 supply system.
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I'm not talking about the historical reality.
I am talking about how HOI3 models it, and the misconceptions that particular person has about the HOI3 supply system.
Your post in para (2) reads like a statement and appeared ambiguous.
In any case, these historical references detail the deadly effects of SOV scorched earth policy.
I am new here. been playing the series since HOI 2.. agree with your point..
general approach to logistics should consider it's high role in WWII and strategic depth it could add to the game. The capital serving as the primary stockpile is nonsense for me. what if i want to use some indirect approaches in my strategy?
so, imho supply system must play strategic role in the game.
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This seems to be mostly fixed in HoI4s system. If you check the development diary here we can see both "local" supply and "incoming" supply seems to be added together, and reading the text reveals that if Capital is occupied "next best area" is picked instead.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...iron-iv-33rd-development-diary-supply.891122/
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Up to a point. Rail was only part of the logistics system (although a very important one).
The problems that arose for the Germans for example weren't all centered around railroad issues but the problems were instead systematical and went all the way from planning/management to the industry, backhaul and front-line forces. Rail capacity was an issue throughout the war but mostly because the lessons learned (but ignored) from the Polish and French campaigns were not remedied.
The major choke-points in the supply system could have been avoided by spreading the flow of supply in time. For example, Barbarossa was known and planned but preparations on the logistics side were very late even though (from a high command point of view) it was evident that the campaign would probably require more of everything compared to the optimistic calculations. In the same way it was pretty evident in late 1941 that major offensives would be needed in 1942 (and indeed the operational planning was in full swing). Yet there was no major efforts made to prioritize production of long shelf-life supplies needed and transporting those out ahead of time as to make better use of the logistics system when throughput demands were lower.
If you estimate a need for a Army Group of say 1000 tonnes of ammunition daily you make sure to increase ammo production as much as the coal production will allow your factories to run during winter and then transport as much of it as close to the front as possible when capacity allows it, this will create less issues with logistics capacity in the spring as you won't be forced to send all the ammunition during a short period in anticipation of battles to come. The Americans well understood this and and basically crammed any excess in everywhere the logistics-system allowed 24/7 to get it as close to where it might be needed as possible.
All of this above is simplifications of course but it's interesting in that it's really about strategic decisions more than anything else. Good leadership, research, prioritization ahead of time and proper planning can make effective use of even limited logistic resources. The prime example being the Berlin Airlift which at it's peak delivered well over 6000 tonnes of supply per day by air alone (that would be the equivalent of daily supplying around 10 WW2 divisions in combat).
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I was going to make a snarky comment along the lines of "So, they sucked at logistics," but I actually somewhat agree with your post.
What I'd like to point out in the larger context is a lesson I took, indirectly, from Tooze. He delves into the topic of rolling stock in Wages of Destruction, as well as the problem of infrastructure, although he is more focused on production and moving assets around for production. But one issue that comes up again and again is the dilemma of production versus general infrastructure.
For example, if Germany has a shortage of rolling stock, she could hypothetically produce more rolling stock to alleviate that problem. This will take away production from other areas, but it would help move stuff to and from the front. This could also work with trucks and horses. If you don't have enough trucks and/or draft animals, you take them away from other segments of the economy and produce more at the cost of fewer things being produced by the economy (tanks and planes).
That is a different problem than either the infrastructure being overloaded or partisans bagging your logistics train. In these cases, producing more trucks, rolling stock, or draft animals doesn't actually solve the logistics problem because either the roads are still bad, the railroads are the wrong gauge, or partisans are still active. Germany cannot "produce" her way out of this problem no matter what other sacrifices she makes. Sure, she can invest in infrastructure and send units to suppress partisans, but telling Toldt or Speer to add another 100,000 trucks to the production queue won't end partisan problems or turn the mud into autobahns.
I don't see this as an either/or issue. It's clearly a yes/and issue. Germany in particular faced acute problems in both categories. The US, thanks to massive production and a more advanced automotive industry, didn't have to suffer for lack trucks as long as she was willing to devote steel to the problem (which she had the resources to do). The Soviets might have had to make harder choices in their production in 42 and 43 if they weren't getting rolling stock and trucks via Lend-Lease, but even having all the trucks and trains they needed would not have helped as much if the rail network had been compromised too badly by further occupation of the country. (Gotta have those rail hubs)
HOI3 tried to mimic this through the supply tax (instead of costing trucks, it cost supply to move supply, which amounts to the same thing since supply costs IC too) and supply throughput. There was also the horses strategic resource that boosted throughput, as well as some strategic modifiers to simulate some things outside of game rules (or to give buffs to certain countries).
In HOI4, throughput seems to be clearly an issue. But perhaps I am missing something. Is there a supply tax of some kind in the game?
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And that's exactly my point. IF a player is given the tools to always be able to make his country not suck at logistics he/she is going to use it and thus unbalance the game.I was going to make a snarky comment along the lines of "So, they sucked at logistics," but I actually somewhat agree with your post.
The thing with German logistics is that it was hampered due to systematic problems caused by leadership and the fact that they were the aggressor in wars that wouldn't have been possible to conduct if all the facts were in the open and preparations were invested in well ahead of time (battleplan revealed, world tension rises by X no matter if you attack or not).
Battleplans is one thing that really strikes me as a good feature to simulate this. Given enough time with allocated resources on a battleplan then supply and logistics stockpile for that particular operation shouldn't really be a insurmountable problem within the scope of that battleplan (unscheduled enemy resistance aside and given enough techs and planning). Then again, assigning units to a battleplan too early should increase the possibility of your opponent to anticipate or even learn of your objectives.
The thing with Barbarossa for example was that the actual operation was hidden by the Axis leadership for such a long time that the actual people who should've been in the know were informed too late for effective objections to be raised or measures taken regarding logistics. This led to entire panzer-armies who, on paper, should have steamrolled around the sides of Moscow ran out of steam and momentum (supplies, spares and reinforcements) just shortly after capturing Smolensk.
Now had the Germans had a logistics-system (and leadership) that had anticipated the possible ramifications of performing a strategic ambush without getting the logistics wizards input first then other measures could've been taken to alleviate some of the issues that appeared. The same can be said of the Japanese actions in the Pacific. The Allies correctly analyzed the empires deficiencies in certain strategic products (oil non the least) and indeed crippled their entire war effort with well aimed action and operational maneuvering that basically meant the IJN was bleeding their endurance away just trying to enforce the tactics that they originally planned.
Mechanics should mimic this historical behavior in one way or another but still leave players with the option to act differently.
HOI3 only had techs and stockpiles. The rest was impossible for the player to influence (other than as an opponent and by destructive means) and that meant that the possibilities to act differently (based on supply situations) of both the AI and the players became limited and thus the differences were in what techs you went for and what divisional composition you used (rock-paper-scissors on the tactical/operational level).
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