Oil and Logistics Mega-thread: Post all discussion here

[Praetori]

Equipment is very much an integral part of the current supply system. A consequence of being out of fuel or supplies will translate into being out of vehicles and equipment, which is a bad forced relation.

That said, we never talked about two different things. The abstract supply system you talk about is still just supply capacity with negative modifiers if the region is cut off from the supply chain. The actual supplies is very much equipment, as the DD states. A division will face specific negative modifiers as well if it lacks tanks or trucks or infantry equipment.

You've got it backwards.
Supply is now, in all practical aspects, a function rather than numbers, that you don't see it and don't produce it is just abstraction, the effects of having supplies or not having them are all that matters (according to PDS). Equipment is another layer on top of supplies. When a division runs out of supplies due to being in a bad place or out of capacity (as in your carried 30 day supply, which is still not a supply-number, it's just days) you will get different issues such as ORG loss, negative modifiers and eventually increased attrition. This has nothing to do with equipment at all but emulates the things that makes a division work (food, ammo, fuel etc).
In addition to being out of supply capacity your division will ALSO get issues with equipment over time since you cannot receive more of it (thus you cannot replace that division's equipment losses no matter how much you produce). Equipment is also part of the logistics system but it's not the same as the supplies. The latter is simplified into something assumed to always be issued as long as you have capacity, once you don't have capacity the division is abstractly assumed to start eating and refueling from its 30 day carried supply before running completely dry. There are no individual numbers involved for supplies, just a "weight" of the division and on-map capacity in the network and (if demand is larger than capacity) the prioritization and eventually the clock.

I do agree that having supplies and fuel (and maybe even ammo) as equipment would be a much better way to handle it, but it's not the case right now.
PDS justified their decision in removing fuel as it's own part of the supplies by saying it's included in the production of vehicles instead. This latter part is what's hard to swallow and what the discussion was originally about.

When you wrote about adding fuel I simply commented that separating it from the supplies and adding it as an extra channel would create issues (as in the supply capacity function). Adding it as if it was equipment also brings some issues since it would then follow the equipment-mechanic and not the supply mechanic (which, as I wrote above, is a bit different and hits you sooner).

The best method would probably be to remove all supply penalties and JUST use the capacity system and then add supplies and fuel along with the equipment but to have a very high attrition cost for each of them according to division size, activity and terrain. This would however require production of supplies and fuel and thus the production system would need some tweaking.
Hopefully it's within reason to mod this if it turns out that the currently implemented system doesn't work in a credible way (but that remains to be seen).

 

[Axe99]

On the whole supply = equipment thing (which I ascribe to, based on what we've seen so far), keep in mind that you can be in mind, and fighting, and that equipment for land units will be consumed to represent the use of ammo and other combat-related supplies (ships won't do this, we're not sure about aircraft). In this context, supply is very much equipment.

We've also heard that vehicles moving, even in supply, will still consume equipment to represent fuel - another situation where equipment = supplies.

There is, however, also the stacking limit side of things, which, after it's been calculated, works pretty much the same as the stacking limit in EU4. If you're over it, you bleed a certain amount of manpower and equipment. This isn't a channel, though - it's a dynamically calculated stacking limit. As far as we know at this stage, it can handle as much throughput as its divisions are allowed (we don't know any more detail than this, ie how much of a unit's strength will be reinforced in a day) as long as they're under the stacking limit. We don't actually know the function on the throughput if the stacking limit has been exceeded - we just know that there's increased attrition.

Adding a separate fuel stacking limit to the supply stacking limit doesn't make a lot of sense (which is, I suspect, why Joppos (as far as I understand) isn't suggesting it) - it's the same infrastructure system, and to arbitrarily have two parallel infrastructures in place, one for supplies as equipment and the other as fuel, would be even less historically plausible than the current setup. Rather, the stacking limit is the infrastructure's capacity, and any supplies/fuel/equipment/ammo should be part of that threshold-based system - thus fuel as equipment, given the system we have, is the most sensible way to go by some margin, as far as I can see, based on what we know so far.

From a modder's perspective thinking about introducing fuel equipment, I wonder if different attrition values can be applied to different equipment types, or do all equipment types suffer attrition at the same rate. For example, I would like to have a high attrition rate for fuel while a unit is either moving or in combat, but ammo would only have a high attrition rate while in combat and not while just moving. I wonder if such distinctions are possible.

This, I think, is the key, and hopefully is the case in any event. I'd hope that artillery (as equipment) requires a higher proportion of reinforcement in battle than certain types of support company equipment, say, so all being well this'll be the case. What I'm hoping for is that we can set a base 'this much equipment will be used each 'tick' regardless', with varying rates of use adjusting that base level depending on circumstance (movement/combat/being over the stacking limit). I'm hoping that for divisions, which already have an equipment mechanic, this will be fairly straightforward.

The thing that I think might be trickier is ships and planes, which don't have pieces of equipment feeding into them, but I guess we'll see when we'll see.

 

[Alex_brunius]

keep in mind that you can be in mind, and fighting, and that equipment for land units will be consumed to represent the use of ammo and other combat-related supplies (ships won't do this, we're not sure about aircraft). In this context, supply is very much equipment.

We've also heard that vehicles moving, even in supply, will still consume equipment to represent fuel - another situation where equipment = supplies.

Can you find me a direct quote from a developer stating that units firing their weapons will lose equipment to represent ammo, or that units simply moving will lose equipment to represent fuel?

Because either of these statements would be new info for me that I have not read anywhere so far.

 

[tommylotto]

I am afraid all equipment types will attrition at the same rate. There are already several variables to attrition -- stationary (effected by weather and/or terrain?), movement (effected by weather and/or terrain?), exercising/training (effected by weather and/or terrain?), combat (effected by weather and/or terrain?), out of supply or over supply cap (variable depending how out of supply?). To allow each equipment type to attrition at different rates, we would need to be able to apply another variables for each of these variables for each equipment type. I think it is important. I'm sure it is doable, but not sure it will be done. I hope so though. It would be interesting to make fuel and ammo a consumable equipment type. I don't think it would be necessary to have a "supply" equipment. You could, but it is sort of already built into the existing supply area capacity and the 30 day buffer each division has. However, fuel and ammo would be good equipment types to add, but it would only make sense if different equipment types can attrition at different rates.

 

[Axe99]

Can you find me a direct quote from a developer stating that units firing their weapons will lose equipment to represent ammo, or that units simply moving will lose equipment to represent fuel?

Because either of these statements would be new info for me that I have not read anywhere so far.

I am fairly sure I've seen that written by a dev (wouldn't have posted it otherwise), not sure how easy it'll be to find. Hopefully it's in the supply DD, in which case no worries - either way, am off hunting .

 

[dalek1028]

Can you trade machines for machines such as 140 arty pieces for 70 tiger tanks?

 

[Alex_brunius]

I am fairly sure I've seen that written by a dev (wouldn't have posted it otherwise), not sure how easy it'll be to find. Hopefully it's in the supply DD, in which case no worries - either way, am off hunting .

I re-read the supply DD at least 3 times and couldn't find it

And as I wrote the impression I got from podcats quote from there is that it was only bad situations that caused equipment to be lost. "fighting" can be loosely interpreted both ways, but it just as well could mean only units that have taken damage, not simply firing their weapons.



@dalek1028 It seems you can give it to eachother via Lend lease ( if your both at war ), but trade was not mentioned:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...evelopment-diary-4th-of-december-2015.895033/

 

[Axe99]

I re-read the supply DD at least 3 times and couldn't find it

And as I wrote the impression I got from podcats quote from there is that it was only bad situations that caused equipment to be lost. "fighting" can be loosely interpreted both ways, but it just as well could mean only units that have taken damage, not simply firing their weapons.



@dalek1028 It seems you can give it to eachother via Lend lease ( if your both at war ), but trade was not mentioned:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...evelopment-diary-4th-of-december-2015.895033/

This is what I've got from the Supply DD itself, which sadly is suggestive but far from clear. I'll do a little more digging, but other than this and the Supply DD thread, quotes could be almost anywhere and I don't have the time to do a comprehensive search. That said, the parts I've quoted do have Podcat saying that "moving, training, fighting, being in bad weather or in bad supply means equipment needs to be shipped", so there's definitely a fuel (moving)/ammo (fighting) side to it, but it's not as clear as we'd like.

So, what is supply exactly?
Moving, training, fighting, being in bad weather or in particular in bad supply means equipment breaks down and this equipment needs to be shipped. The worse a supply situation is the longer it will take to send equipment and the more attrition you will take. So instead of a flow network we have a system being limited by bottlenecks.

So this means that the abstract "supply" of HOI3 is now instead requests for specific equipment instead which fits a lot better in with HOI4's equipment and production focus. 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).

yeah, which means that *how* to supply someone becomes more important. If you lose some resource you need (say chromium for advanced tanks) you might have to reoganize those divisions to be able to supply them.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Seems you might be right about movement at least yeah, @podcat did write that.


Fighting I guess still could mean casualties / equipment destroyed by the enemy instead of ammo.

 

[Axe99]

Seems you might be right about movement at least yeah, @podcat did write that.


Fighting I guess still could mean casualties / equipment destroyed by the enemy instead of ammo.

The impression I've got (and there were other posts, but can't find 'em) is that fighting is both casualties and ammo, although as per my previous post, we haven't had enough data to be entirely confident about what it's supposed to represent (and without me finding the post, we're just going on my memory, which isn't the kind of thing you'd want to bet the farm on). We'll see, one way or another. I'm mainly thinking about modding in ships at the moment (as I can collect useful data for that regardless of how HoI4's details turn out), but I'm still mulling over ideas for handling fuel and ammo (not least in relation to ships and aircraft) in the background, so following things fairly closely.

 

[Praetori]

This is what I've got from the Supply DD itself, which sadly is suggestive but far from clear. I'll do a little more digging, but other than this and the Supply DD thread, quotes could be almost anywhere and I don't have the time to do a comprehensive search. That said, the parts I've quoted do have Podcat saying that "moving, training, fighting, being in bad weather or in bad supply means equipment needs to be shipped", so there's definitely a fuel (moving)/ammo (fighting) side to it, but it's not as clear as we'd like.

The thing you have to keep in mind from Podcats answers are that PDS are trying to motivate (or soften the blow) the removal of fuel from the system (which was in earlier) by highlighting their reasoning behind how it's abstracted through production.
In the devblog on production there were some examples of tanks, artillery and aircraft produced and none of them had oil as a production requirement, this was added later, presumably when fuel use was removed from the base stats of the units. The interface that's been shown so far however has never showed any stockpiles for fuel or supplies so the initial mechanic is even less understood.
The supply system uses a jerrycan as the icon for supplies which makes the dev comments on fuel usage through production of equipment even less sensible.

Attrition of equipment hasn't been properly explained but in the earlier devblogs (like the one on training) there's no mention of any base attrition when doing nothing and none of the screenshots or terrain modifiers in uncontested territory is saying otherwise. When training or fighting it's specifically mentioned that you lose equipment (it's a part of the "price" to gain experience) but this doesn't seem directly linked to the supply-system as such. The logistics capability is only relevant (when it comes to equipment) for replacing equipment lost at divisional level. Being out of supply on the other hand is mentioned to increase attrition when it get's bad.

So from what can be gleamed you can lose equipment in a myriad of ways (attrition, training, combat) and replace it as long as you have decent free logistics capacity and equipment in-stock.
Supply on the other hand is a underlying mechanic (presented as the little jerrycan on-map) and being low (as in demand is higher than capacity) or out of it (start eating from the 30-day carried but invisible pool) creates direct issues such as org-loss, combat penalties and attrition. And that is independent from the equipment (as you can have a full stock of weapons and tanks in a division but still be low on the little jerrycans and thus the division is considered to be starving on either food, fuel, ammo or whatnot despite being fully "equipped").

So in a sense you don't pay anything for the supplies (other than investment in infrastructure, ports etc) and you don't produce them but they're still there. What you actually "pay" for is replacing equipment but it's got nothing to do with supplies or fuel now matter how hard they try to motivate it.

Podcat even writes that being in bad supply means more equipment breaks down, not that the equipment equals the supply but breaks down faster due to a lack of it.
That does sound like "supplies" being all the stuff that is needed to keep the equipment and men in good working order and fit for combat (from soap to ammo to food to fuel to spare-parts, wrenches and ball bearings) and not the other way round.

I'm sure they had good reason to do what they did but keeping supplies and waving the magic wand over the fuel seems odd since the end result is not intuitive and even outright strange for ships and aircraft.

Removing the jerrycans and just calling it logistics capacity and then add fuel, supplies, ammo and whatnot into the equipment (and part of production) would make a lot more sense IMO. With the added benefit of also making fleet and air basing a whole lot more realistic. The downside might be an increase in CPU cycles and requirements for modifications of the production-system to handle it but motivating against it by pointing at stockpiling issues makes little sense as we already have equipment stockpiles.

Fuel and supplies as equipment would also tie nicely into the trade and lend-lease mechanics (canned beef to the USSR anyone?).

 

[Axe99]

The thing you have to keep in mind from Podcats answers are that PDS are trying to motivate (or soften the blow) the removal of fuel from the system (which was in earlier) by highlighting their reasoning behind how it's abstracted through production.

Podcat's words were (more or less) "the abstract supply is now specific requests for equipment" - that sounds less like broad motivational speak and is a far more logically cut-and-dry statement. Podcat's not one to say something that isn't, so I'd be surprised if he was bending the truth here.

On the '30 day' supply thing, I do agree there's a bit of design inconsistency here (if what Podcat says is true, but if what he says isn't true, then we lose about half the available written data we have on HoI so far ), but it's also not entirely clear how the 30 day thing works.

That said, it sounds like there's actually n+1, where n is the number of types of equipment in a division, types of supply for each division, where all the types of equipment are one form of supply (n), and then there's generic, implied supply (+1) that's automagically produced (I'll refrain from suggesting it's made of fairy dust ) and represents whatever n doesn't. Fuel, at this stage, is included in the n, and ammo probably is, but it looks like food is in the +1.

If I understand the rest of your post correctly (a bit buggered now), then I fully agree - rather than an "n+1" model where there will always be some confusion as to the balance between the n and the +1, why not just make it an n model, where the different n's have different types of impact on a unit's capacity (for example, being out of supply affects movement, but if this is the same effect on all units, it'll probably slow infantry more than it should, and slow fuel-dependent units less than it should - but if we had fuel, and fuel hurt the movement capacity of motorised units when out of supply, it would be more intuitive, as well as transparent and a good deal more intuitive).

 

[Secret Master]

Millions of years when stored properly (which is difficult above earth^^), it may however draw water ( especially when ethanol is added - which was not relevant in WWII) which needs to be removed and the octane ratings need to be rebalanced when low chain constituents vaporize.

I thought it might be more complicated that "crude oil has an infinite shelf life."

 

[Praetori]

Podcat's words were (more or less) "the abstract supply is now specific requests for equipment" - that sounds less like broad motivational speak and is a far more logically cut-and-dry statement. Podcat's not one to say something that isn't, so I'd be surprised if he was bending the truth here.

That was not my intent. Podcat tried to explain the reasoning logic, that doesn't mean what he wrote wasn't true. But neither does it say that logic was either.

That said, it sounds like there's actually n+1, where n is the number of types of equipment in a division, types of supply for each division, where all the types of equipment are one form of supply (n), and then there's generic, implied supply (+1) that's automagically produced (I'll refrain from suggesting it's made of fairy dust ) and represents whatever n doesn't. Fuel, at this stage, is included in the n, and ammo probably is, but it looks like food is in the +1.

Well the problem with identifying n as fuel and ammo is that it doesn't really add up with the production. What we get is the strangeness of 1936 Pz1s being cheaper than 1945 Tiger despite the fact that a Pz1 after 9 years of service is guaranteed to have used 9 more years of fuel and ammo than the poor Tiger. The only "logic" there would be if the "cost" in oil and resources for producing the Tiger is somehow back-payment for the fuel and ammo used by the Pz1 and that the Pz1 had little or no down-payment when built.
That's the only way you can make "n" make sense and it requires the Tiger to actually replace the Pz1 (and that is basically the result of what Podcat wrote, that the equipment production cost emulates supply). If "the little panzer that could" somehow survives though the calculation falls flat on it's face and that's when it gets weird.

If "+1" is instead seen as a function rather than a number and includes everything from fuel to ammo then the only thing we need to worry about is breaking down the derivatives of logic behind where it originated from. The problem with this is that it kinda grinds against the equipment logic which is handled differently.
The jerrycans for supplies (+1) might indicate that the art department has a different understanding of this "logic" compared to what Podcat presented. If fuel is oil and part of "n" then why is the first impression (and supply penalties) indicating that it's actually "+1". It can of course be part of both. After all a vehicle requires both fuel and oil to work, but not ships or planes apparently.

 

[panzerzombie]

I thought it might be more complicated that "crude oil has an infinite shelf life."

Really it has infinite shelf life, but only under ideal conditions ( which are really hard to obtain in RL), the complicated part is the container which will leak eventually and a longlife non-leaking barrel is probably not worth the effort costwise.

How would you think it had been shelved inside the earth all those million years ?

edit: in short under the usual conditions in RL the answer is NO

 

[OctaviusAntonio]

I actually did not know that various types of refined fuel had a shelf life until I did some zombie apocalypse related research. Apparently, even today, fuel doesn't last that long once it has been refined. It makes the silly stockpiles from HOI3 all the more galling.

I'd be okay with a stockpile system that attritions out fuel.

Incidentally, what is the shelf life of crude oil?

Crude oil has an infinite shelf life im pretty sure since its basicly what comes out of the ground and is only slightly cleaned up to take out things like water and acid. With crude oil you still need to crack it at a refinery into the different types of oil products.

 

[Axe99]

Well the problem with identifying n as fuel and ammo is that it doesn't really add up with the production. What we get is the strangeness of 1936 Pz1s being cheaper than 1945 Tiger despite the fact that a Pz1 after 9 years of service is guaranteed to have used 9 more years of fuel and ammo than the poor Tiger. The only "logic" there would be if the "cost" in oil and resources for producing the Tiger is somehow back-payment for the fuel and ammo used by the Pz1 and that the Pz1 had little or no down-payment when built.
That's the only way you can make "n" make sense and it requires the Tiger to actually replace the Pz1 (and that is basically the result of what Podcat wrote, that the equipment production cost emulates supply). If "the little panzer that could" somehow survives though the calculation falls flat on it's face and that's when it gets weird.

If "+1" is instead seen as a function rather than a number and includes everything from fuel to ammo then the only thing we need to worry about is breaking down the derivatives of logic behind where it originated from. The problem with this is that it kinda grinds against the equipment logic which is handled differently.
The jerrycans for supplies (+1) might indicate that the art department has a different understanding of this "logic" compared to what Podcat presented. If fuel is oil and part of "n" then why is the first impression (and supply penalties) indicating that it's actually "+1". It can of course be part of both. After all a vehicle requires both fuel and oil to work, but not ships or planes apparently.

The thing with the way that equipment = supply works is that the Pz I can never survive until 1945 unless that unit is never used (in which case it not costing much sounds fine, as it's been parked in Kiel since 1939 or the like, but never moved around or been used in action). When a unit moves, or fights, it uses up equipment, which is then replaced by new equipment of the same type, but assuming that Pz Is are no longer produced, the fuel use for moving translates into Pz Is being replaced by Pz IIs and so on through the years - so a Pz I that drives around Germany in circles will, over time, transform into a Pz II, and so on, as the refuelling brings in new equipment (this is one of the issues I have with the system - because all of the 'n' supply use involves new equipment, we won't have older equipment in existence for as long as it was historically unless they're parked and not used).

That said, because of the way it looks (ie, we don't know for sure) this works for land units but not aircraft, we'll have the odd situation of most of the land units using pretty up-to-date equipment (because as they move, the old units are replaced by new units at the rate of fuel usage), but the aircraft often being appropriately old models (as it's unclear whether they use fuel in an 'n' sense at all during use).

I agree that the +1 and the n could both include components of fuel, but if that was the case, having two overlapping systems for fuel use is likely to be less transparent and easy to understand than one and I'm not sure that'll work out as the best design decision going forward. That said, if the +1 includes fuel, we have the odd situation of that element of the fuel function not requiring oil nor synthetic refineries, but rather being related to infrastructure, victory points, city size and the other things that add to local supply.

 

[Jazumir]

Off from what has been discussed here recently to another aspect of the topic:
How about something like supply-use ranges in general (also for modders) - maybe it would be interesting to set the rate of ´ammo´ a specific tank uses during attack not at, say, 3.2, but to "between 2.6 and 3.6", instead? Effectively, even for supply in the current system, that would mean, that being well below the ´stacking limit´ for an area gives sort of a gurantee for not being hit by occassional ´hic-up´-OOSs as they might realistically occur in such a situation within, when logistics are streched to their limits.

Again: Maybe player only option, as sort of a difficulty setting?

 

[guillec87]

crude oil has an infinite shelf life under the conditions where it stands... but the moment its pumped you must clean it from water, acid, etc... I really don't know if that affects it too much, because is not oil what you store, but fuel... and fuel has a shelf life of no more than 5 years

 

[tommylotto]

(for example, being out of supply affects movement, but if this is the same effect on all units, it'll probably slow infantry more than it should, and slow fuel-dependent units less than it should - but if we had fuel, and fuel hurt the movement capacity of motorised units when out of supply, it would be more intuitive, as well as transparent and a good deal more intuitive).

So, not only do we need different attrition rates for different equipment types, but we also need different consequences (maluses) for being short of different equipment types, not to mention, shudder, a lack of certain equipment types need to effect different division types differently. For example, Tanks need to attrition at a different rate from fuel while training. Being short of fuel has a different impact (different maluses) on a division than being short of tanks. Finally, being short of fuel effects an armored division different than an infantry division. I hope, but doubt, that all that would be the case. If it did, it would end up being a very complicated system.