Port Supply Exploit

[STABBY5]

Supply should just radiate off of rail ways. You dont need a special spot to offload trains. Supply hubs cause such odd things like having no supply because youve extended right next to the next one on the line but unless you take a year to build a supply hub adjacent to the enemies or just use planes to ignore the whole system, you can't really advance.

I still have problem with the supplies system for two reasons
1. It is a capital which produces supplies and then "teleports" them over rails. That oversimplification creates place for exploits. I think they should be produced in provincies with military factories and evenly distributed over hubs, according to demand.
2. There is no possibility to overstore supplies nor to empty hubs. Overstoring them could create fortresses. Like Hel reinforced area which was sieged for 24 days and Breslau, 82 days. Also, when Germans approached Stalingrad, Soviets withdrew food, animals and trains to not let them be captured.

I guess both problems could be fixed by real distribution system, but current mechanics are kinda OK

Yeah, this connection to capital crap needs to stop. Perhaps it should be all factories in controlled states that contribute supplies to its connected network. So if say you get evenly cut in half, you have two networks with 50/50 supply, instead of a single network with all your supply and half with none.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

Yeah, this connection to capital crap needs to stop. Perhaps it should be all factories in controlled states that contribute supplies to its connected network. So if say you get evenly cut in half, you have two networks with 50/50 supply, instead of a single network with all your supply and half with none.

Agreed. To quote myself:

Although IMO supplies should come from (routing wise, not necessarily actual production) industries, so an encircled area with industries can produce its own supplies can sustain itself but not those in the middle of nowhere, and a capital encirclement with say like 80% of the industry outside of the encirclement wouldn't have much of an impact.

 

[CSARebel]

Both supply hubs and ports distribute supply. So you can figure that the warehousing, garages, barns, etc...cost about the same. So if they both were equal then the cost would be the same. It doesn't make much sense that a port which also needs ship docking facilities and associated ship maintenance facilities is cheaper. Also, natural harbors are few and even those need improvements to handle larger ships.

There is no game reason related to supply for ports to be cheaper. It defies realism and doesn't add to game play in relation to supply. Game choices are suppose to be about choices that have to be carefully weighed. Historical game choices are the same, but with the added caveat that some amount of historical realism is involved.

I suspect the reason why Paradox has the cost of supply hubs so high is so they will not be spammed. I suspect the reason ports are so cheap it that they want ports built and improved, but I still suspect spamming of ports is not the outcome that Paradox is going for. And they haven't really figured out how to strike that balance.

I believe a large initial cost for the first port (say 20 CIC) and then a reduced cost for the second point (say 6 CIC), with an increasing cost for each point thereafter (3rd port point 7k CIC, 4th point 8k CIC) will maintain a balance between ports and hubs. Make existing infrastructure more valuable and worth fighting for. And seem more realistic while also providing difficult choices for the player instead of no brainer choices.

 

[Qwerlancer]

Very simple solution. Make supply hub like mulberry harbours. They can be produced with MICs. Requires Battleplan order to create them on map. They would be temporary(30-60days) and designed for operational usage. If you assign so many MICs on hubs of course you may spam them. But it would not be a optimal strategy.

 

[him_15]

I agree that the first harbour facility should be extremely expensive to build.

 

[PtY]

Would restricting new harbor construction to tiles with at least one victory point solve most of the problem? Existing harbors could still be upgraded even if they're not on top of victory points and the harbor cost formula could remain unchanged.

 

[FindFloppies]

Would restricting new harbor construction to tiles with at least one victory point solve most of the problem? Existing harbors could still be upgraded even if they're not on top of victory points and the harbor cost formula could remain unchanged.

That may be the compromise that works. That way they can't be built in every province along the North African coast.

Hmm, from Alexandria going west, places could *add* ports, ignoring ports already there.

El Alamein
Mersa Matruh
Still a huge gap Benghazi to Tripoli.
Gabes
Sfax is NOT a naval base, but it says you can build one there?

Or, if not tied to VPs, get a minimum distance apart, and maybe allow VPs to be the only override, i.e. can build x spaces apart, but can always build on a VP. No building every 3rd province, etc.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

That may be the compromise that works. That way they can't be built in every province along the North African coast.

Hmm, from Alexandria going west, places could *add* ports, ignoring ports already there.

El Alamein
Mersa Matruh
Still a huge gap Benghazi to Tripoli.
Gabes
Sfax is NOT a naval base, but it says you can build one there?

Or, if not tied to VPs, get a minimum distance apart, and maybe allow VPs to be the only override, i.e. can build x spaces apart, but can always build on a VP. No building every 3rd province, etc.

IMO that's just an artificial solution to an artificial problem. Historically both sides stacked about a dozen divisions outside El Alamein, but in game supply from Benghazi can't even reach Marsa Matruh which is definitely not right. The problem is more with the range of hubs.

 

[Morgoth_the_Constrainer]

IMO that's just an artificial solution to an artificial problem. Historically both sides stacked about a dozen divisions outside El Alamein, but in game supply from Benghazi can't even reach Marsa Matruh which is definitely not right. The problem is more with the range of hubs.

I agree. Instead of two motorization levels, we should be able to assign trucks (or, logistic columns with associated trucks, equipment, and manpower) to increase the range arbitrarily but with severely diminishing returns. The motorization of hubs should certainly require fuel. Fuel usage and truck attrition should scale quite substantially with infrastructure, resistance levels, bad terrain, and above all, distance. This would allow the US to do what they did historically on the Western front with gigantic quantities of trucks and fuel. It would also make North Africa pretty realistic. If you have the fuel and excess transportation capacity, you should be able to mass divisions in the middle of the desert, but it should be a massive drain on your resources.

 

[CSARebel]

IMO that's just an artificial solution to an artificial problem. Historically both sides stacked about a dozen divisions outside El Alamein, but in game supply from Benghazi can't even reach Marsa Matruh which is definitely not right. The problem is more with the range of hubs.

I am still a bit unsure exactly how supply flows through terrain. I assume certain terrain will restrict the flow of supply. this would make sense as mountains would be harder to supply to or through than plains terrain would be. Could a new terrain be created such as Coastal Desert that would be rather generous with the supply flow? The coastal desert was rather friendly to wheeled transportation as far as I understand. So it should be friendly to motorized supply I would think.

Supply would still be an issue as it should be, since the distances are so vast with little infrastructure. But this should simulate the reality of the North Africa Campaign more realistically.

 

[Gort11]

The problem I've encountered with supply in North Africa is that places that were ports in reality aren't ports in game.

I've seen Mersa Matruh referred to as a "fortress port", and if the game had a port at Mersa Matruh there wouldn't be a weird supply gap between Cairo and Tobruk. I always build a level 1 port there when I play the UK.

Likewise Gabes is a port in reality but not in the game. When I play as France, I always put a level 1 port there, and a supply hub in Savoy to supply the borders with Italy.

Over in China, there's a port called Huludao that China will encounter as it advances into the Japanese-held areas. There's no port there in the game, and it puts another weird supply gap there which leads to the AI stalling out due to lack of supplies.