Patch 1.4 - Supply

[El Ciempies]

"personally i really like the idea of a priority level (from 1 to 3) for the units or the hqs.

in my fantasy world i call my mind. i like to see "Supply Depots" as something u can build on the map from levels 1 to 10 (each level means it can hold more supplies). so the AI just simply joins the capital to the supply depot in the fast shortest distance, then the supplies are moved to HQs( hqs are mobile supply depots) then to their units under them, so to make use of naval routes
u simply build SDs at a port and then at another port the AI would join the routes via sea, so on and so on and so on.

plus this makes supply depots very important targets for bombing or taking from your enemy, plus your supplies would be spread out over your supply depots not just your capital, so if u loose your capital u dont loose every thing."


I agree with this wholeheartedly. I even suggested this too awhile back in an earlier post in another forum.

Think about it -- you build one or more supply depots (again, as buildings from 1 to 10) in each of your theaters that, in effect, act as new capitols for supply purposes. You would pay supply tax and all to get supplies to these depots, but once there, they are there. In my view, you would start the game with a single supply depot, your capitol, that is treated as a "level 10" supply depot. If you were to build another single, level 1 supply depot in another province, then 1/11th of your existing supplies and fuel would migrate to this new depot.

These would also add to the realism of the game by adding a new strategic element to the game.

If nothing else, the Dardenelles, Suez Canal, and Panama Canal should be considered "dead-ends" for land-based supply. It would seem to me that this would be a rather easily implemented work around that would only require minor tweaking to the existing code.

I would also suggest that another possible work around would be to add an algorithem into the current supply engine that "breaks" the connection with the current land-based supply chain if too many low infrastructure provinces are crossed. If this land connection is "broken" by this calculation, then the units in question look for alternative means of supply (i.e., a better-suited line of supply) that could possibly originate in a friendly port. Again, I see this as being something that could be written and added to the existing code.

 

[winterharvest]

Supply Depot Problem

Will patch 1.4 improve how supply depots are assigned to provinces? For example, I am playing Patch 1.3 as USA. My troops in Konigsberg are being supplied from Djibo. That appears to mean that supplies shipped from Washington, DC to Konigsberg must be transported to Djibo, then back to Konigsberg. My troops in conquered Poland are prepared to invade the Soviet Union, except that they are out of supplies. I have supplies in Washington, DC and lots of convoy transports, but cannot keep my European forces in supply even though every port in Europe has a convoy going to it.

Is there a way to manually create a new supply depot and assign provinces to it? Or, is the relationship between supply depots and provinces a function of theatres or some other determinant?

 

[unmerged(3221)]

You are stuck with an unsolvable problem. You can reduce your troops there, use LW as commanders, have your highest skilled leaders at Army Group level to reduce the problem. Your supply limit there is the number of naval bases for that area, and that can not be overcome in HOI3.

The only thing that patch 1.4 changed was to use ally's supply instead of your convoys. But that created an even bigger problem in some areas because British forces in Egypt are forced to draw supply from Belgium, France, or South African provinces when these areas link up: almost no supplies will flow over land from South Africa to Alexandria or Cairo with this land connection. And Paradox has no solution to this problem with the current logistics model [see comments of pg 1 of this thread].

 

[mbabbs]

Is there a way of modding the game to reduce or remove the impact of a stretched supply network described above ? I'd rather mod this out than have a gamebreaker that isnt going to be fixed within the game.

 

[Cybvep]

Fixing supply issues should REALLY be PI's top priority. Such problems can simply kill our game experience.

 

[Viluin]

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9945/hoi317x.jpg

Apparently all of Italy is now being supplied from Berlin, and my entire stockpile of supplies and fuel seems to be creeping north towards Berlin (note the local supply in Cortona).

Uhm, what?

 

[laslin]

Have a simple suggestion thinking it might work on current system without any major effort ,

how about make a option for player to "chose to cut" their land route connection between their theatres,
it wont help solve the problem german have in soviet since chosing the sea route dont bring enough supply in,
but at least u wont need to worry as italy trying to supply via land route all the way around medi to north africa.

another suggestion would be, give some bonus,at least some decrease on supply though dsitance penalty near port(based on port lv and supply needed in the nearby area), to signify port is helping transport a portion of supply into that area

these change wont be perfect,and dont match the simplicty of a complete supply system can provide,but since the current one is broken somehow, some effort to save the game-experience should be prioritirze,isnt it?

 

[dermeister]

Can someone briefly summarize the major problems with the current supply system?

I recently was defending Iraq as the UK against Italy invading from Turkey in an MP game, and supply was definitely a big issue for me.

That said, I'm not sure how this all comes to pass...

Is the supply AI just not directing the supplies as we want when there is a bottleneck?

I love the idea of this supply network system, and I would hate to see it yanked. Maybe we can all think of something that won't take too long to implement... Or at least some sort of short-term "patch-over" for 1.4. I would hate to have to wait between 1.4 and the expansion to have supply working.

That said, I think the supply AI should use as many methods of supplying as possible... Ports, allied supply, land-supply... Or, it can use a scoring method to determine whether to use the port or the land-bridge or both.

 

[unmerged(143223)]

You are missing his point, Joe. There are two scenarios.

1. You have no direct land access from your capital to a supply need. A supply depot is then created (via AI logic) along the supply chain to a port connected to that supply chain on both ends. One end is from your capital (source) and the other is connected to the supply depot that is created.

2. You have a direct land access from your capital to a supply need. No supply depot is created via the AI logic as your capital is the supply depot.

If you want to use ports in a simulation of scenario 1, when in scenario 2, the supplies would land in the port and go to the supply depot, as intended. However, your supply depot is your capital so the supplies just work their way back to your capital via the land route and would ignore your supply needs in the immediate area.

Are you sure?

On the supply map, you sometimes see these blue provinces where supply has been building up, for example because you've shipped away the units which the supply were intended for. I have no frigging idea, but it seams to me that those temporary supply depots are integrated in to the supply lines and redirected towards whoever needs them, instead of going back to the capital (or supply depot port).

If I'm right, that would mean it would be possible "add" supplies to an existing supply line via ports, just as it is possible with air transports.

 

[XHR]

Can someone briefly summarize the major problems with the current supply system?(...)

I think the main problem is that players do not have any useful methods to counter supply probs or the existing ones do not work the way which one wants them to work.

Probably it would help a lot if the measures a player can take to get rid of supply probs and get those divs moving again were more clearly defined and documented. And maybe Paradox should indeed implement a few more methods for the player to deal with it.

 

[unmerged(193029)]

Can someone briefly summarize the major problems with the current supply system?

Sure: it is broken beyond belief.

A relatively simple solution that would greatly remedy the issues with broken supply system would be to allow player to manually create supply convoys so they could originate in ANY owned port and have destination in ANY friendly port (owned, allied, puppet's), up to total port capacity, much the same way air supply works. More ports = more supplies transferred.

 

[Tortuga Power]

I love the idea of this supply network system, and I would hate to see it yanked. Maybe we can all think of something that won't take too long to implement... Or at least some sort of short-term "patch-over" for 1.4. I would hate to have to wait between 1.4 and the expansion to have supply working.

That said, I think the supply AI should use as many methods of supplying as possible... Ports, allied supply, land-supply... Or, it can use a scoring method to determine whether to use the port or the land-bridge or both.

Big +1, especially the part about allowing supply to be passed via any available method. I think supply should start with the scoring method, but even employ multiple or all methods if supply is still bottlenecked. It's not like logistic officers were like "nope, the infantry have to starve because we are already using sea transports, so we can't supply by land -- it's forbidden!"

A relatively simple solution that would greatly remedy the issues with broken supply system would be to allow player to manually create supply convoys so they could originate in ANY owned port and have destination in ANY friendly port (owned, allied, puppet's), up to total port capacity, much the same way air supply works. More ports = more supplies transferred.

As much as I love micro-management, that does not strike me as fun. I can foresee an entire evening wasted just working out supply convoys. Better would be to just fix the problem in the current system.

 

[dermeister]

Well this would obviously be for an expansion, but:

What if the supply network was drawn based on HQs?

That way, the player is drawing the supply system; each HQ acts as a depot. Subordinate HQs act as sub-depots for the units under, and so on.

The depots would especially STOCKPILE supplies... Like, major supply dumps. This way people would keep their HQs back and stop using them to fight.

This way the STAR flag on the units can be used to also prioritize supplies from the upper HQ dumps.

 

[unmerged(161537)]

I think supply is the biggest problem in the whole game!

The solution from "El Ciempies" sounds very good!

What is the problem coding that?

I play HoI 3 a few time but then i think it gets boring or i get frustrated because my supply network collaps. The reseons a mostly very dumb things.

Why is it so difficult to transport ressources from Port to Port?
Or why can you not make your own depots like in reality?
You can assign them manually when the AI can not handle it, would be a solution!

I hope that the supply system would be much diffrent! i hope HoI 4 do it better!!

 

[unmerged(193029)]

As much as I love micro-management, that does not strike me as fun. I can foresee an entire evening wasted just working out supply convoys. Better would be to just fix the problem in the current system.

This is not nearly as much work as it sounds: you usually wouldn't be able to run more than 5 or so additional convoys because you'd be hitting the port capacity limit (either where supplies/fuel are outbound or inbound).

It should be comparable to setting up airborne supply chain, just like what we have to do now, but without having to spend huge amounts of IC on improving supply situation when cheaper alternatives are avaliable (transports; just as in real life ships are considerably cheaper per tonnage of cargo that can be carried).

The upside of this change would be that convoys could carry additional supplies so your offensive would not come to a halt just because braindead AI decided that shipping supplies by land around entire Mediterranean or though provinces that had their infrasttucture pulverized is the ONLY[/b[ way to ship them.

This wouldn't require revamping of the entire supply system, existing code behind the supply system could remain exactly as it is now, the only change required would be lifting of restrictions pertaining to manual setup of supply convoys. Sure, computer would come out behind yet again but one can hardly blame players for being less stupid than a machine and actually being able to figure out how to optimize supply delivery.

 

[Alex_brunius]

This is not nearly as much work as it sounds: you usually wouldn't be able to run more than 5 or so additional convoys because you'd be hitting the port capacity limit (either where supplies/fuel are outbound or inbound).

There is no port limit for how much you can send away from a port, only on how much supplies/fuel it can recieve.

 

[El Ciempies]

Alright, this may be too much, but I'd like to ask the basic question: In HOI3, just what is supply anyway? It's not fuel, and it's not replacements, so I'm assuming that it has two basic elements -- food and ammunition (with spare parts being a very distant third).

Now let me make another assumption -- a soldier eats as much as a sailor or an air corpsman, more or less, correct? So the only valid reason for differences in supply requirements between unit types that I can see is ammunition requirements. And to a degree, this makes sense.

But then again, this only makes sense if the unit in question is actually engaged in combat, correct? In other words, an idle unit and one fighting for its very existence should not have the same supply requirements.

I'm not really going anywhere here, but I've discovered that it can be challenging for the USA to keep a full garrison and Pacific Fleet in Hawaii fully supplied. This is mainly due to the port capacity of 44 daily units of supply, which I find to be questionable.

There is only so much port capacity and basing upgrades that can be done.

 

[unmerged(160894)]

i play as japan. my units in the most northern borders with SU are suplied from indochina!! how realistic is that? unfortunately it remains unsolved

 

[unmerged(28220)]

El Ciempies: If nothing else, the Dardenelles, Suez Canal, and Panama Canal should be considered "dead-ends" for land-based supply. It would seem to me that this would be a rather easily implemented work around that would only require minor tweaking to the existing code.

This. Supply may still be 'broken' wrt Africa (and probably South America if anyone decided to conquer the both continents) but if you can possibly make it so these places are cut off in terms of land supply it will cause much rejoicing for many players.

 

[unmerged(161537)]

I think i wait fpr hearts of iron 4

with this issus i personaly can not play

A few bugs are ok in so an big game but the supply system have to be nearly perfect

only "port supply" would change a lot