Oil and Logistics Mega-thread: Post all discussion here

[Praetori]

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).

That depends entirely on what the attrition levels are like, and for what.

The main problem with how to view the issue is that a produced tank in reality represents a much larger investment than spares and fuel for one. If spares and fuel for a single tank is represented as being equivalent to a brand new tank (maybe even of a newer model) then we'll quickly end up with unrealistic and ahistorical figures in either losses or production. Even if we start dealing with fractions of a tank (either in production or on the attrition-side) things get weird.
If attrition for moving is x tanks per km then attrition+losses for combat should realistically be higher. The latter however must also be the result of enemy action, armor and piercing-values and possibly other effects so it's not a linear calculation and balancing that to plausible results doesn't sound very optimal at all or even easily understandable. A tank shot to pieces means not only the loss of the crew but also the tank, fuel and ammo in it. This somehow still equals a tank that has lived up it's usefulness due to attrition (or that ran out of fuel) and a good balance needs to be found.
Added problems is that this needs to work not only for tanks but for trucks, APCs, aircraft, subs, ships etc as well (the two latter is not even feasible).

In the end the effect is like you're being given a brand new tank full of fuel and ammo stuffed from the factory, drive it until it runs out of either and then have to get a new tank (or fractions of one).
If you choose to view the cost as back-payment for previous models then the logical issues are less than viewing oil cost as down-payment. But then it gets weird again if you for example choose to modify a division-template. Turning cavalry into a mechanized formation your back-payment in rares, steel and oil is to pay for horses and hay?

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).

All fine and dandy (besides the points I brought up earlier) but then what are the supplies? What do the jerrycans represent and why does attrition increase when you run out of it? The 30 day carried supplies clearly represents "something" that is needed to run those tanks. If it's not fuel/oils, ammo, small spares etc then what is it and why do I need it (other than food for the soldiers)? If it's only food then why is the supply footprint of the armored division larger than for infantry (with more manpower), and why the jerrycan?

In order for the logistics to make sense then the footprint for the armored division must be higher than for infantry as it works as a modifier for equipment replacements (tanks being heavier and harder to supply/move/replace than the infantry equipment).
But at the same time it doesn't only represent capacity to move equipment, it also represents something else (evident by being named supplies and having a 30 day carried quantity, expressed as time). It's not only food or other soldier consumables since that would result in the jerrycans needed for the infantry division would be higher than the armored formation (which then results in the strangeness as replacing, or supplying if that's how you view it, equipment in an armored formation would be easier than small-arms, logistics wise).

Viewing the jerrycans as consumables, fuel, ammo and everything else except actual equipment could be a bit more logical, if it wasn't for the fact that we then get free fuel, ammo and supplies from the civilian sector somehow, even if we are short on oil from 1936 to 1945 (this is the base issue introduced when they removed fuel need from the unit base stats but kept supply need). If we view the oil spent when building units as a cost then somehow exchanged into the supply-system it still doesn't make sense. And we haven't even started with planes and ships yet.

I can still understand the problems that PDS faced and why they chose to cut fuel as it's own base-stat from the units. What I don't agree on is the way they chose to replace it. It introduces logical and balancing issues on the land-side and huge issues when it comes to the navy. It's not like you're going to build fractions of a battleship to supply your existing ones with fuel and ammo.
I'm quite confident that PDS or modders (or me) will add equipment-types for all of it to make sense.

 

[Axe99]

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.

Agreed, but I don't think this is necessarily so hard (although I'm an eternal optimist, and that may be colouring my view). There are two sides to the calculations - loss of equipment and impact of the level of equipment on a units' capability (like there's hopefully a calculation on the impact of manpower on a unit's capability).

When the the equipment loss calcs is done, if a unit is moving, it loses fuel by the movement rate, it loses any equipment due to weather or terrain, losses due to combat damage and losses due to attacks made in combat (I'd probably have just a set 'if in combat, then ammunition is is available equipment * rate of equipment usage for ammunition in combat) and what-have-you.

For a units stats, it's just a case of applying modifiers to whatever needs modifying (movement rate, soft attack, defence, what-have-you) when those stats are used - so if an attack is made, the soft attack strength can be calculated on-the-fly. There wouldn't be that many things that needed constant updating except things like movement rate.

In terms of UI, I'd also calculate the various stats when looking opening the unit up to view, and show how any equipment shortages is impacting on the stat in question in the tooltip.

It would be a bit of work (so if it's not like that or close to that now, our chances of it ending up like that aren't high), and I've no idea whether this is the approach they've taken or not, but I don't think it'd be that complicated to program or be terribly intensive in terms of calculations (on the HoI4 scale, not a "hello world" program), but I'd expect that they'd need to have the variable impact of different equipment levels on combat at least already in the game, as well as of motorised equipment on movement, and for different attrition rates for different types of equipment due to movement, so I reckon there's a chance. At least the game's in beta now, so we're closer to learning .

All fine and dandy (besides the points I brought up earlier) but then what are the supplies? What do the jerrycans represent and why does attrition increase when you run out of it? The 30 day carried supplies clearly represents "something" that is needed to run those tanks. If it's not fuel/oils, ammo, small spares etc then what is it and why do I need it (other than food for the soldiers)? If it's only food then why is the supply footprint of the armored division larger than for infantry (with more manpower), and why the jerrycan?

I've just had a thought - what if the 30 days was a bit like the invisible short-term stockpiles that factories have as well (ie, factories don't change production rates immediately after running out of a particular input, there's a bit of a lag because there are supposed to be some stores 'on-hand'). If that was the case, it could be that there is no "+1" that's separate, but rather the "+1" is the invisible stockpile of the same equipment in the n, as a 30-day buffer of what's on hand. It still doesn't necessarily explain the effects of being out of supply though.......

On the by, I agree with all your questions - the more I think about the two components to supply (equipment = supply and supply that exists in an abstract sense and requires no factories to produce) the more it actually sounds more and more complicated from a design perspective. I suspect we won't know for sure until we see the actual game in action, but I'm looking forward to trying to understand it better.

 

[HeilLoki]

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.

I guess there are different attrition rates, since there's "reliability" for planes, tanks etc. I guess/hope this is also related to attrition.

 

[Praetori]

I guess there are different attrition rates, since there's "reliability" for planes, tanks etc. I guess/hope this is also related to attrition.

For land units it seems so (see below). Improving other variant stats will however decrease reliability so up-armoring those tanks might not always be a good idea if you don't also add to reliability or plan on long and intensive production-series.

For vehicles etc I expect players to spend experience on improving reliability so that they can cope better with extreme cold.

For ships however the reliability apparently is not connected to attrition but instead the ability to resist critical hits.

Reliability - This stat is a little more complicated than the others. The other 3 upgrades all reduce Reliability a little while this upgrade counters the effect. Could also be thought of as "systematology" or "ship-shapedness", it's basically how well put together the ship is. A low Reliability makes the ship more vulnerable to critical hits in combat.

 

[lodgers]

Don't forget that equipment requires oil and equipment gets consumed.

Equipment represents repairs, maintenance, and refueling as well as replacement stuff.

1st, I wholeheartedly agree with KiwiNoob. I'm not sure why PDX didn't just do away with the stockpiles. That seems to be their main issue with people hoarding resources (my brother did it massively as Germans) What I like mostly about the new system is they did away with massive stockpiles and they made you build different types of factories/dockyards, plus you pay a changeover penalty where you lose production efficiency...That I love. The "oil for production" is a massive reach (in my opinion) as most production was coal for electricity/power and materials for the actual thing u were building such as aluminum (very energy expensive,BTW) and oil/fuel was for running your planes, ships and tanks. I also think they could tweek the requirements for production. How did the HE111 get into the Strat. bomber category with it being the same cost to produce as a B29 and only a little more than a S.E. fighter? I wonder how they will deal with the L.R. P51 etc.? I hope they fixed the hopeless field supply system in HOI3. Damn, that was a mess, you would have no idea why your equipment was running out of fuel but not supplies(or visa versa) and you'd be stuck frozen forever in one place slowly dying, and you stockpiles were completely full of everything. It got to the point where we'd build a infrastructure of ten all the way across Russia to Vladivostock and nothing would change.

 

[lodgers]

American tanks were not destroyed because of using gasoline.

That is a myth.

Also, both gasoline and diesel are refined oil products.

I think what he means is the Sherman used Aviation gasoline (lower flash point than diesel) and they caught fire easily. That was mostly because they had thin armor as the flash point of gasoline and diesel are relatively close vs a high energy AT round.

 

[lodgers]

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.

Very well said KiwiNoob! This really needs to be addressed. I played with so many people who will use this exploit to ruin the game. It also really reduces the effect of strategic warfare to almost no use at all. The ONLY TARGET THE THE USA BOMBED THAT ACTUALLY HAD A REAL EFFECT WAS THE OIL FIELDS IN PLOESTI and other oil supplies! Aircraft production actually went up while we were bombing fighter factories, but near then end of the war most German planes didn't even fly due to NO FUEL! I told my brother this oil situation and he's not happy either. The rest of the game seems great.

 

[lodgers]

It seems like a lot of people have forgotten this is a grand strategy game and not a simulation. As a game design choice, the oil-for-output seems like a really clean idea with good feedback to a player's action, especially compared to the hindsight horrorshow that oil stockpiling seemed to be with HoI3.

Oil stockpiling wasn't that big of an issue. Countries should be able to stockpile a little crude oil for use later. This current system for HOI4 is far worse, now you effectively stockpile oil forever in your ships, planes and tanks when you build them and never have to worry as long as you keep rolling over your opponents with little losses. Check out KiwiNoob's posts.

 

[lodgers]

With the creation of this mega thread specifically dedicated to Oil, I've decided to copy my post from the supply DD:

The more I think about the lifetime fuel cost of a unit being included in the initial production, the less I like the idea. Take for example two nations constructing tanks. The first nation is engaged in high tempo active operations close to its own borders against an enemy equipped with plentiful high quality AT weapons. The tanks get constructed, loaded onto a train and unloaded a few miles from the front line. Then they drive to the front and engage the enemy, being knocked out within a few days. They only fill their petrol tanks once in their lifetime. The other nation is engaged in low density operations against an enemy who is behind in technology and lacking in good AT weapons. Those tanks could drive thousands of miles before suffering a catastrophic failure requiring the tank be written off. Spare tracks, replacement parts and servicing the engine keep it going without the need to have anything like a total rebuild, and even where rebuilds are necessary the armoured plates and basic frame of the tank are still fine. Those tanks could fill their petrol tanks say 50 times over the course of their lives. These example may represent the extremes, but if its averaged out, the first nation has to expend 25 times as much oil in production than its tanks would actually use while the second is able to drive twice as far as its fuel supplies should allow. Its a deeply flawed theory.

I can understand not wanting to have stockpiles. but I think there is a better way of handling fuel in HOI4 than has been illustrated so far. This would be to limit operations based on the proportion of fuel supplies to units that need fuel. For example lets say that 1 point of Oil allows 10 armoured or motorised battalions or 500 planes or 10 destroyers to operate without restriction. Each day the amount of oil is compared to the units/planes/ships that need it giving a proportion, lets call it 80% for this example.

For ground units it could simply be a matter of reducing the base movement of fuel dependent units where there is a shortage. So instead of moving at say 10kmh, the 80% fuel supply would limit movement to 8kmh.

For aircraft, the limitation could keep planes from flying, so at 80% only 80% of planes at each base could operate that day.

For ships, I'd say that each hour spent in port allows them to spend say 10 hours assigned to a mission, to a maximum of 1000 hours before they have to return to port. With fuel supplies at only 80%, each hour in port would only allow 8 hours on mission, thus keeping them in port longer than would otherwise be the case. It should also be possible to mothball ships so that they can't move but don't count against the fuel requirements.

With a system like this, a nation with fuel shortages would have an incentive to reduce the number of fuel dependent divisions to improve the efficiency of the others, which the Germans did when they converted 2 motorised divisions back to infantry in 42/43. A nation with significant numbers of obsolete aircraft would have an incentive to keep them in reserve so that the operations of its modern aircraft were not impacted, modelling the retirement of older models that all major nations did, whereas the current system will have those old planes keep flying until they're all destroyed. The navy of a nation suffering from fuel shortages would spend more time in port than its opponents, better reflecting the problems besetting the Japanese and Italian navies.

I agree. Most of the war was fought by Germany trying to get more oil (Stalingrad/N. Africa, etc.)

 

[lodgers]

Yeah, so this also means that countries with large outdated armies, that will take huge losses and need lots of reinforcements, will need a shit ton of oil. Prepare for the new and realistic HOI were the Soviet Union is going to have oil shortage while Germany is overflowing of it. I have been following Hearts of Iron since HOI 1, this is the worst design choice they have ever made. It would be a lot better if they just left it out now.

You should never leave out oil in a strategy game. If that were the case the middle east Russia wouldn't matter at all, but look at all the fuss over them now.

 

[lodgers]

Don't make excuses or fancy back stories to try and justify the system.

When training an infantry trooper you don't feed him 4 tonnes of spam at base and then never have to feed him again. Consumables are different from production resources and should have their own system.

LOL, very true!

 

[lodgers]

I agree, but we all got to agree on that a small minor nation never can get huge oil from a major nation through trade, unless they trade everything they got.
Trade reduces the amount of oil a nation get, unless you produce loads of it, which then "fuels" your tank divisions.

Example Poland. Didn't have much oil production pre war, as far as i know. Thus reducing amount of tanks they produced which they instead bought from other nations.
If i want to produce loads of tanks, i need to trade something for that oil with other nations which makes me produce less of everything else.

The ONLY thing this new system changed was HOW you STOCKPILE oil.

 

[lodgers]

Not having to worry about oil in this kind of game is a capital crime against strategy buffs. Who has ever read a WWII book where fuel is not mentioned every 5 pages? Where the generals are not constantly thinking about fuel? Where the moves and countermoves are not constantly being explained by the availability of fuel? It was one of the primary limiters of when and where you could do what with your most powerful assets, armour, planes and navy.

It is just such a central part of what the war was about on the level that HoI is played, how can you play pretend Rommel without constantly worrying about what your fuel reserve will allow you to do?

I hope the storm this kicked up will make the devs reconsider. If it's too late to change things in a timely manner, then I hope it will be remedied in later patches or expansions. Because thinking about fuel is core to the HoI level gameply feeling historical. And atmosphere is really what makes these games so good for all the history buffs that play this kind of game.



I agree fully with this. But it needs another few bulletpoints.

-You can only stockpile a few months to half a years worth of fuel consumption.
-Army units should primarily use their own divisional fuel reserve, and refill when stationary.

To elaborate; fuel was one of the big failures of HoI3. That stuff I wrote above? Yea, HoI failed hard on that account. Availability was fairly static, which meant the world produced roughly the same amount at the beginning of the war as at the end. But since, unlike irl, armed forces were the only thing in the world that used oil you had years to stockpile the entire worlds production if you were good at trading. This resulted in unreasonable stockpiles where Italy somehow had 4 years of the worlds production of raw resources sitting somewhere outside Rome in what must have been a warehouse the size of a small nation. It was a ludicrous result and you had to use house rules for anything realistic to result.

The proper fix is of course to properly model the world economic system, but we don't want to do that. Instead I propose a fairly easy and elegant abstraction of what the world powers did do. Namely create some rather modest strategic oil reserves, oil reserves that were adequate for their current military size. There are numerous economic, practical, and political reasons for why oil reserves were not bigger. But suffice to say the were no bigger than a few months to half a year of full war and as such the easy way of solving things is simply to create a soft cap that is proportional to the size of your armed forces. Note that if stocks are replenished by new production, or you refrain from launching big naval/armour operations, stocks will obviously last longer.

This way you don't have crazy stockpiles at the beginning of the war, and nations have stockpiles reasonable for their country size.

This would result in situations like Japan being forced to invade Indonesia for oil after the allies embargo them, or face their convoys, navy and airforce grinding to a halt. Under the current system they will not face that kind of historical issue. Their Navy not going to sit down and worry about when and where it can move. The only issue will be it will have to construct less naval assets, but it only needs those naval assets to fight the allies. So now the logic is you need to fight the allies so you can get resources to fight the allies? Why fight the allies then? You just loose so much of the historical feel to it, it's not historical decision-making re-enactment, it's just gaming the game then.



The second point is to make units, particularly armoured divisions, use this divisional stockpile of fuel up when on the move and then have to wait to get refueled. This would force gameplay where the player has to position his forces, wait for them to get ready, and then launch an offensive knowing that it will only have so much steam to go before having to stop to refuel and reorganize. This will force players to think real hard about the possibilities and limitations of his forces, as well as see the war have decided thrusts and counterthrusts. Organization is a large part of this, but often the armies, and especially late war germany, found themselves in situations where their powerful armour units were very capable of sustained and heavy fighting locally, but were unable to exploit a breach or launch proper offensives because they simply did not have enough fuel for a long thrust through enemy lines. The result was long lulls as they gathered up enough stockpiles to launch larger operations, for example the battle of the bulge.



Sticking oil/fuel to production takes away from what it's role really was. And it was a role very distinct from other raws or equipments. It was a decisive operationally limiting resources that defined what could and could not be done, when it could and could not be done, and how and how not things had to be done. It is such a individually decisive factor that ignoring it as a vital and decisive unit consumable is just crazy, because it was in and of itself one of the things generals spend sleepless nights thinking about. Having it as a production resource is just pointless, you might as well just roll it into rares and energy.
Because having it as a production resource creates all these super wierd ahistorical and alogical results, like losing a tank army meaning you now need more oil because you are building more replacements. When logic dictates that losing a tank army means you now have more oils since all them tanks aint using it no more. If you want to abstract oil usage, then sure, but moving it to a construction resource is just a terrible solution that makes little to no sense. Oil is a consumable resource, use it as a consumable or ignore it completely.

I whole heatedly concur. I think they could fit fuel/oil into their logistical units making divisions that have these logistics units need to refuel/resupply far less often.

 

[Atlantians]

Dude...

 

[lodgers]

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?

Great idea! I hope PDX implements it.

 

[lodgers]

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

No counters?

 

[lodgers]

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 ).

I totally agree. This oil at production will allow a massive exploit early in game and allow the dreaded stockpiling of oil in actual equipment now.

 

[lodgers]

I was looking at this picture that and thought that it should not be to hard to mod in more equipment. Seems making, "Ship Spare Parts" is a very much a possibility.

Or better yet...repair parts

 

[lodgers]

.....and you missed, that we were told that if Fleet and Aircraft do not have enough supply then they can't do missions. (which sounds like an abstraction, but also an effective way of representing a fuel shortage).

Do you actually need oil to make supplies though?

 

[lodgers]

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 wonder if they have fixed the issue of your allies coming and landing their stinking planes at your small front-line airfields, WITHOUT permission, and draining your supply and repair in that area?