Possible to remove supply system? 1.4 still broke

[petester]

This was never such a huge problem in HOI2. Surely someone has managed to figure out how to beat or remove this supply system?

I have the exact same problem as Italy. I played the December 41 scenario and by Feb/March all of my units are out of supply despite the fact that I control several ports. I think this is game breaking. This is RC 11 btw.

I have to disagree with all this... I think that while the supply system is not perfect, you are probably not playing realistically either... I have just played an rc11 Italy '36 game and have had none of these supply issues - other than what I would realistically expect.

Things you probably shouldn't do:
1) rebase your entire fleet in Africa. For some reason Ships use a lot of Fuel. Perturbing this is.
2) rebase a huge chunk of your AF in Africa. Ironically it also tends to use fuel.
3) Drive around the middle of the Congo with your Armd corps. After all, it would be so plausable in real life to drive around in the middle of Africa in 1940 with an Armd force & expect it to be supplied.

Things you should do:
1) Use smaller, ligher forces. Ironically, that is what happened historically... You have Cav. You have Militia. You have Inf. Use them.
2) Work Africa from the outside in, not the inside out. Everyone seems to think that it would be easy to drive from Egypt to South Africa - when in reality they would go from port to port... and then link up the areas...
3) Research the tech. These made a HUGE difference...

All in all... while the supply system is not perfect.. I think that there is more "user error" going on than game error...

There is so much of the "hey I drove 25 Armd divisions down a single dirt road 1000km inside Russia and for some reason some of them are not getting supplied anymore. Thus supply system Sucks!". Yea right.

 

[unmerged(84132)]

All in all... while the supply system is not perfect.. I think that there is more "user error" going on than game error...

There is so much of the "hey I drove 25 Armd divisions down a single dirt road 1000km inside Russia and for some reason some of them are not getting supplied anymore. Thus supply system Sucks!". Yea right.

Admittedly, play style does perturb the supply system. The other problem is that the players let the computer control naval supply routes. Athough, there are to major problems. One is that the majority of supplies come from one place, bogging down lines. Two is that you do not have complete control over what the supply system does,

Unfortunately, the second one will never get changed from what Paradox said because it places an unfair logistical disadvantage on the computer.

If I knew I was planning an offensive in to Turkey, I might reroute my supply train, to make an excess of supplies available. I might say, those troops chilling in southern France do not need as much supplies right now (as they are not using bullets and should be able to get food/clothes locally). Unfortunately, when you go over your supply limit, instead of the units you select getting supplies, nobody gets any supplies.

I am glad they atleast increased the throughput on capital and surround provinces cause atleast now I will not have max supplies and no one to give them to (but given my play style, I bet I can find a way where even that is not enough, alas, multiple supply bases will atleast not be in the vanilla).

 

[Sunfighter]

Have you considered editing the amount of supplies a unit can carry with itself? Like making it a number that basically covers the entire gametime?

SUPPLYPOOL_DAYS = 30, -- days of supply

 

[unmerged(181608)]

Maybe the supply system is WAD and its really hard to supply a large army in Africa? Also, in real life the Germans had supply problems in Russia... so thats to be expected. Do you want a system where you can't run out of supply? Cause thats not realistic at all.

With proper preparation and control of the sea and air, you should have no problem supplying your Armies...even in Russia. Which is why everyone is up in arms about it...

The Germans had supply problems in Russia for many reasons, that doesn't mean someone playing HoI3 who prepares properly and doesn't waste resources left and right can't properly supply themselves.

 

[jonnyincognito]

IRC, I've read that the game will draw supplies from the largest port in nonconnected territory, so that seems right if that's what it's doing. I know that the supply map shows arrows going all over the place, but I don't think that's actually accurate of whats going on. I have the same problem when I attack the british isles, thankfully it's on a much smaller scale than Africa! You might also open up bottle necks. I've noticed as Germany if I have an area where only one or two provinces are connecting a large group of units and territory beyond it, the supplies seem to bottle neck at this choke point. On top of that, make sure you don't have troops sitting in the supply line sucking up all the supplies. Move them somewhere else. If your front line divisions are out of supply, but three or four provinces down the chain there's six divisions sitting in the rear and they are in supply, move them! They are gobbling up the supplies meant for the front! Same goes with air forces and naval forces, as others have suggested. If they are in the rear eating up all your supplies, things wont get shipped forward past them. If you are finding that troops can't attack from a province, move them to another province. You can move them around in your own provinces if they are out of supply, you just can't move them into enemy territory. You might find that while he's not supplied in one, he will be in another. Open up more fronts as suggested by petester in his statement to work from 'the outside in'. What this does is allows you to supply those troops from other ports. If the areas aren't connected, they draw from the largest connected port. Also, I've read that you can supply with transport planes, although I haven't tried it...and it might have got the nerf in 1.4. Lastly, and this might take a while, make a mainland connection. Granted, this means Turkey is going DOWN, but lets face it they have it coming!

 

[unmerged(84132)]

I never really had a problem in Turkey. Its when my army starts becoming so massive that almost every supply line becomes a bottleneck (basically when I own about 25-50% of the world).

If I am in India, why are my supplies coming from Berlin via land through Romania and Turkey, when I own everything in between? I own every major industrial center and port in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Basically my whole land supply lines turn in to a bottlenecks (which i usually turn every province in to 100% infra), which means all my units are out of supply.

Long before I get in to India, all my units in Spain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark are out of supply. If I do not take Britain before this, it will never happen because none of my units that can reach Britain have any supplies. Why my units sitting in Amsterdam, Paris, Copenhagen, etc cannot even find a couple days worth of supplies is beyond me. They sure are not using ammo, and food was readily available, even if rationed.

Even if they just turned on map cities in to full supply centers, it would greatly reduce map long bottlenecks (heck, even using sea lanes in addition to land lanes would greatly reduce bottlenecks).

 

[No idea]

Even though most people complain about things that are WAD, there still are quite real problems with the system. For example it is far from realistic to only have one supply dump in any given continous landmass. This makes no sense except for programing reasons. Also, shipping lanes should be possible to use instead of land routes if it is more efficient.

On the other hand I don't think the supply system broken even with its flaws. If you know it well enough, you can use it to your advantage.

This is exactly the “problem” of the supply system. It might be WAD, but it has some evident flaws (totally unrealistic) that need to be addressed.

About the OP problem, have you researched the supply techs (not only the one to make supplies in the industrial tab, but the ones in the theory tab) and upgrade the infrastructure in USSR?. Are your most skilled generals at army group level?. I guess you´ll have already done these things, but just in case.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

If you are annoyed by the supply system, just increase supply throughput by - let's say - 1000%.

 

[sam73]

What they should do for the expansion is seperate food/clothing/personal goods and munitions. While both are equally important supplies, both have completelly different implications for movement and battle.

I think this is a good point. Or at least, they should make the difference of supply compsumption between fighting and not fighting units much bigger. IIRC, 90% of the tonage tranported by the Germany logistic train during Barbarossa, was artillery shells. Obviously, these do not need to be transported in such numbers, all the wat to the front, when units are not firing them.

 

[son of liberty]

1.4 Still Broken?

So, is it just me or is supply still a problem? I started with the 41 scenario to get into the game. I have invaded China(the parts controlled by Japan). I control 3 large and several small naval bases, but after my fronts all "joined up" together my troops are bogged down. All my troops are now getting supplied from 1 naval base. Is there any fix for this?

 

[Alex_brunius]

Maybe the supply system is WAD and its really hard to supply a large army in Africa? Also, in real life the Germans had supply problems in Russia... so thats to be expected. Do you want a system where you can't run out of supply? Cause thats not realistic at all.

No we want a supply system that actually uses all available port capacity when there are divisions out off supply.

I had the exact problem as Japan in China. Captured their two large ports and worked fine until I connected them by land. Then supply only were shipped to one of the ports at a time. Curiously which one switched seemingly by random.

Later when I linked up with a third port and fourth Port it seemed to work better with most of them working most of the time.

Have you considered editing the amount of supplies a unit can carry with itself? Like making it a number that basically covers the entire gametime?

SUPPLYPOOL_DAYS = 30, -- days of supply

Shouldn't that mean that a single division will need roughly 10 years = 11000 supplies right at the start in 1936? So as Germany the first thing you must do is produce 440000 supplies to all your divisions.

 

[unmerged(193864)]

Providing supplies to allies

I Have a massive issue with supplies when in allied teritory.

As the US i have sent a force to hold Belgium and Holland in 1940.

I have Brugge, Amsterdam and Deen Hauge with large volumes of US troops. What a pity then the tiny logistical capability of the Belgians (based in Africa) and the Dutch (based in Indonesia) are now feeding my army.

The US transport system which can supply every allied soldier in Europe sits in Boston whilst the army starves.

Why is it not possible to send supplies to France, Belgium and Holland?????
Particularly when i have divisions there.

It is frustrating that the port capacity exists, the convoys exist and the troops still starve

Imagine D-Day if the US were immediately stopped sending supplies to Europe because Oh!!!! that port belongs to France and we dont ship to foreign ports.

This is a game killer.......please paradox fix this issue.

I have a suggestion on how. On the diplomacy screen create 'send aid' as a diplomatic action, which will create a convoy to a foreign port

 

[kreppert]

the biggest thing i have against the supply system is that i cant move supply in the pacific from 1 island to another without going back to then main land. this is not right. you should be able to move troops of an island. and then move all the supplys they had to there new location.

you supply line should not just leave a west coast of usa port to its destination. it should go to like pearl first. and then to the next port in the line.

supply should also be able to move in the easiest way. the one that uses the least ship. if your supplys left west coast to pearl. you would not alway need and escort. but from pearl to all the other port it would.

i dont know if it can be programed, but you should have the option to move supply from 1 island to another. it would be nice if the system could see supplys that are in areas not supporting troop and auto move them either back home, or to a base that needs supplies.

and in my usa game i am sending supplies to phillippine for my troops there, but i have no import/ export on the production screen.

 

[Surt]

I have to disagree with all this... I think that while the supply system is not perfect, you are probably not playing realistically either... I have just played an rc11 Italy '36 game and have had none of these supply issues - other than what I would realistically expect.

Things you probably shouldn't do:
1) rebase your entire fleet in Africa. For some reason Ships use a lot of Fuel. Perturbing this is.

Fleets are in ports, ports are where supply get shipped, if I station my fleet in Tripoli but the supply depot is in southern Egypt, is it WAD that the fuel is send to Alexandria to the depot and _then_ back to Tripoli, instead of directly from Italy to Tripoli.
Also fleets that doesn't move use a lot less fuel than a fleet that patrols.

2) rebase a huge chunk of your AF in Africa. Ironically it also tends to use fuel.

Agreed, you can get fuel or supplies only in so huge amounts over African camel roads.

3) Drive around the middle of the Congo with your Armd corps. After all, it would be so plausable in real life to drive around in the middle of Africa in 1940 with an Armd force & expect it to be supplied.

I don't mind that the last piece of road is red hatched, if all ports are used and the supplies aren't first shipped(by road) to the other end of the continent and then back.

Things you should do:
1) Use smaller, ligher forces. Ironically, that is what happened historically... You have Cav. You have Militia. You have Inf. Use them.
2) Work Africa from the outside in, not the inside out. Everyone seems to think that it would be easy to drive from Egypt to South Africa - when in reality they would go from port to port... and then link up the areas...
3) Research the tech. These made a HUGE difference...

Agree.

All in all... while the supply system is not perfect.. I think that there is more "user error" going on than game error...

There is so much of the "hey I drove 25 Armd divisions down a single dirt road 1000km inside Russia and for some reason some of them are not getting supplied anymore. Thus supply system Sucks!". Yea right.

"User errors" or "User frustration" are closely related, if you can see that your overseas supply only use 1 port (largest or closed to depot) and you got 4 others that are just lazying about gets you frustrated as user.
That a unit 1 province outside a port with a possible convoy should get supplied from the other end of the continent would be OK, if no other unit is missing supply, but if the depot is nearly empty and units are OOS then at latest should additional ports be used (there are some other considerations such as can we protect the convoy, but there is no hint about that).

I like the HoI3 supply system because its more realistic than previous version, that supply moves to the units, that it cost something to move it, that there is a limit to the amount being moved are all good features that mostly function.
However it breaks down when you supply Africa from Rome/Berlin over Bosporus instead of by ship, when there is a single depot for an entire continent, when ports are used totally illogical ie. sending the supplies to a depot far away while units close by doesn't get any.
The user(Me) can't understand how much supply/fuel is used to bring enough for one unit at Omsk from Berlin (that must be distance 2-300 from Berlin) its something like (0.1-tech+partisan+weather)*300 that's 30 supplies or so per unit??? but there is nowhere you can see that.
A unit in Tripoli supplied from Berlin over Bosporus would be distance 500 or so, limiting the entire continent to 5-10 units, supplied over convoy from Trieste the distance would be around 50, ships were just so much more efficient than rail, which was much more efficient than roads.

 

[unmerged(53301)]

Things you probably shouldn't do:
1) rebase your entire fleet in Africa. For some reason Ships use a lot of Fuel. Perturbing this is.
2) rebase a huge chunk of your AF in Africa. Ironically it also tends to use fuel.
3) Drive around the middle of the Congo with your Armd corps. After all, it would be so plausable in real life to drive around in the middle of Africa in 1940 with an Armd force & expect it to be supplied.

Things you should do:
1a) Use smaller, ligher forces. Ironically, that is what happened historically... You have Cav. You have Militia. You have Inf. Use them.
2a) Work Africa from the outside in, not the inside out. Everyone seems to think that it would be easy to drive from Egypt to South Africa - when in reality they would go from port to port... and then link up the areas...
3a) Research the tech. These made a HUGE difference...

All in all... while the supply system is not perfect.. I think that there is more "user error" going on than game error...

1) My fleet was in Taranto
2) I sent all planes to Italy proper
3) I had not made it into Egypt and my men were still out of supply. I then did an amphibious invasion of Alexandria with approx 2-4 divisions and they went out of supply almost immediately.


1a) While I don't contest the validity of such tactics the problem lies in the computer choosing to only supply your forces from one port when there are several to use. Such a strategy won't do too much in this situation methinks.

2a) Not a bad strategy but why should I have to change what I want to do because of a poorly designed game mechanic? And once you link up the areas everything will get messed up. Also I feel it kind of exploits the AI because it creates so many fronts and the AI has shown it can't handle that many.

3a)I had the 1940 level of the tech. I checked the provinces my men were on everyday and for some reason ZERO supplies were making it to anywhere on the front.

 

[petester]

1) My fleet was in Taranto
2) I sent all planes to Italy proper
3) I had not made it into Egypt and my men were still out of supply. I then did an amphibious invasion of Alexandria with approx 2-4 divisions and they went out of supply almost immediately.

3a)I had the 1940 level of the tech. I checked the provinces my men were on everyday and for some reason ZERO supplies were making it to anywhere on the front.

There is something else going on here then. Post your savegame so we can have a look.

Units on a amphibious assault almost immediately go out of supply. I believe that this is WAD & this makes sense as it takes at least a day to unload enough supplies on shore. My units always returned to supply a day or so later and then were then able to operate. Remember that they can't re-supply after that until they capture a port & have only a set # of internal supplies & if you don't capture a port before these run out then you are f#$@. Akin to dropping off starving troops on an empty shore... and expecting them to be effective.

As Italy, I was able to supply all forces in Africa. I was able to then supply an invasion of England (travelling around Africa as Gibraltar was in UK hands). After a set # of weeks I had to shift a lot of my Armd forces out of the UK & back to France as they were draining too many supplies. I had Armd Corps fully supplied in Finland. I had Forces inside the middle of Russia - all in supply. So... I reiterate, that not being able to simply supply units in Libya is not normal - and something else is occuring. Whether this is that the UK has destroyed your port

Oh... One other poster mentioned that you should capture Turkey/Yugo and thus create a continuous land link between Africa & Italy. Bad Idea. Supplies for Africa will then start to travel by land instead & this WILL chug your supply lines. Unfortunatly from previous comments I have seen, this is WAD and was much too difficult to re-write as part of the patch, but may be addressed in the future. It would be "nice" to use multiple ports & it would be "nice" to be able to direct supply convoys, but it isn't a 5 minute fix...

Oh... The issue with supplies drawn from the owner country & inability to resupply that country is also unfortunate & I suspect this will be addressed in the future. But you can play this both ways - ie, moving your units into an Ally also means that this is a less burden on you. So it works both ways.

Oh... Splitting of supplies into food, ammo, clothes, etc was also mentioned. Bad idea. Better to leave everything generic - every layer of complication would cause more computer processing ability (ie, LAG) and the AI would have to be written to take advantage of it, which is not easy... Not to say I think that the gameplay would not be improved when we would have the ability to ship shirts, and boots - yea thats exciting - I look forward to that micromanagement....

 

[Shootist]

Does anyone know how to remove or mod out the supply system? My new 1.4 game as Italy 1938 has ground to a halt as usual in 1942, and I'm determined to finally finish a damn game.

All my troops all over africa say they are getting supplied from the one level 10 port in Egypt, which of course means that my whole african army is out of supply and can't do a thing. It also means that me spending every single IC since I started the game on ports was completely pointless, since the supply AI still doesn't seem smart enough to use the closest port

My forces in german occupied Russia are in the same boat, they cant get their supplies from Berlin. I loaded up Germany and confirmed the few million hungarians and germans in Russia are also eating nothing but rats and grass. They're stalled too and are all slowly dying of out of supply attrition.

Japan is fine for supplies, but that's because Nat China joined the Comintern in November 1938, a couple months after the game started. Then the USSR ate manchuria and korea.

This was never such a huge problem in HOI2. Surely someone has managed to figure out how to beat or remove this supply system?

I just finished a run at the '41 scenario as Italy on Normal.

No supply problems as Italy. Have taken Egypt, the Holy Land, Iraq, Persia and retaken Ethiopia. Am currently fighting Russians on a line from Baku to Batumi. Supplies appear to be delivered through Alexandria, Tobruk, Tripoli and Tel Avi (Red Lines in the supply map).

 

[Slan]

Oh... One other poster mentioned that you should capture Turkey/Yugo and thus create a continuous land link between Africa & Italy. Bad Idea. Supplies for Africa will then start to travel by land instead & this WILL chug your supply lines. Unfortunatly from previous comments I have seen, this is WAD and was much too difficult to re-write as part of the patch, but may be addressed in the future. It would be "nice" to use multiple ports & it would be "nice" to be able to direct supply convoys, but it isn't a 5 minute fix...

Europa Universalis 3 comes to mind. One of the expansions introduced the ability to build Centers of Trade. (For those of you who don't know EU3, CoTs are an integral part of the tradeing system and are worth a lot to have them. If there are not too many of them...) That instantly caused the AI to go haywire and build CoTs everywhere (spending a lot of money on it), and it ruined the whole economy. (OK, I may be exegarating a bit here...) So changing a seemingly tiny bit of the system (like allowing to send supplies on every possible route for example) could cause huge problems. (And for all we know, they are experimenting with these huge problems right now...) No, it is not an easy fix.

 

[Boozdeuvash]

The situation is desesperatly simple : Hoi3 is a game allowing you to experience the command of a country during ww2 with a reasonable amount of realism on the mechanics side (not on the historical side). That means, if the italians were unable to supply a large army (i think they had 250.000 top at some point, thats 25 divisions), then you should not unless you really work on it (infrastructure and tech boosting). If you complain that you cannot supply 500.000 men through threee thousand kilometer of everchanging sand dunes, then you have it wrong.

On a more practical side, if you have 3 ports that can supply 500.000 dudes but the provinces immediatly beyond that can ferry stuff for only 200.000, then the game isnt broken, your grasp at logistics is. You may want to invest in a couple of transport planes so you can specifically supply your offensive troops, its not THAT expensive.

 

[womble]

They've made a significant step forward in allowing (or even forcing/preferring) the supply source to be a port where supplies are being landed now (rather than some random boondock province with no other value, as it used to be).

I think supplies landed at other ports are probably still supposed to come to the supply source before being redistributed; if they're accumulating at the ports where they're landing (and not just because the infra can't shift them out as rapidly as they arrive) then there may be a problem.

Edit: p.s. even in 1.3 it was entirely possible to conquer the vast majority of Africa. I think I completed my conquest by about end-42. There were a lot of supply problems, especially when my supply source moved from Egypt to Morocco at the time I was crossing the northern border of S. Africa. I wasn't fighting the Portugese, but Belgium, France and Britain all had forces there that needed subduing. I've only fought in Abyssinia in 1.4, but once I took the aircraft away and disbanded the Eritrean Militia, it was just a walk in the park. The Somali/Libyan militia will be disbanded next.