Questions about local supply

[midget_roxx]

Is there a good resource for understanding the supply mechanics in Hoi3? I've checked the wiki but it's barebones about technical details. The problem I'm trying to diagnose, is the UK seem to have perfect supply in India despite me owning all of the ports. I've captured the ports and waited about 2 months after the 15 days of supply they have as a buffer but still full supply.
I loaded up as UK to see what their supply routes are and there are no green/red lines going to India. Does it get produced locally and distributed from home provinces rather than the 'teleport to capital, then ship out' model that Hoi2 uses?

 

[Kovax]

The game creates a supply depot for any detached land mass. The supply system (usually via convoys) will then dump supplies and fuel into that depot, and the entire connected landmass will then draw from that depot in the same manner that your core regions draw from your capital. As long as there are supplies left in the depot, and the units can trace an unobstructed line to that depot, the units on that landmass can remain in supply. Whether they get ENOUGH supply from that depot depends on techs and the infrastructure between them and that depot, as well as the amount of supply in the depot at the time it's cut off. Unfortunately, the local manufacturers do not add their supply and fuel outputs to the local depot, but magically teleport them to the capital, from whence they may be shipped all the way back to the depot in or near the city where they were produced. Any supplies or fuel injected into that landmass via transport planes, convoys, or other means will either be used by units in the province where it arrives, or else will travel overland all the way to the regional depot, to be distributed.

If you tag-switch to the UK, you can check any unit in India to see where it's drawing supplies from. There's the depot. Take that, or cut off access to it, and the troops will be down to whatever's already in the transport chain, plus their 15 day local supply.

Playing Japan, your supply depot is likely to be in Northern China, which makes operations all the way in India extremely difficult unless you go way out of your way to avoid (or lose) any land connection between that Chinese theater and your operations in India. All of that supply has to go overland through China, through the jungles and mountains of SE Asia, and eventually all the way to India. Good luck getting more than token amounts of food and ammo at the end of all that. Once the connection is broken, it will create a separate supply depot for the isolated area, but re-connecting the regions will merge the depots again, and it's unclear as to how it chooses which one to delete and which to keep.

Supply in HOI3 isn't totally broken, but it's got more than its fair share of quirks and limitations.

 

[midget_roxx]

Thanks for the response. Using the Japan example, would it be better to not have a direct land route to India, but instead capture ports around Burma forcing the game to deliver supplies via convoy for a higher throughput?

I tagged switched to UK and noticed they were getting supplied from Kathmandu.

 

[themousemaster]

As Japan, going for the port-route is probably best.

If you are playing as an aggressive China, it might be a different answer.

 

[Kovax]

There are times when you need to go out of your way NOT to provide a direct land connection, and supply the invasion by way of convoys to ports in that independent theater of operations. Japan venturing in India is the textbook example of that situation at its worst, and illustrates why not to connect it with the supply lines in China. Invading the US, and having separate zones in the north and south until you've basically eliminated serious resistance, is another case where it can help alleviate supply issues. If you were to launch a separate German invasion of Manchuria along with Barbarossa, that would be another catastrophic link-up that would effectively all but shut down supply to the far eastern regions.

Historically, you would WANT to link your beachheads, but in HOI3, that's usually counter-productive if you do it between large areas. In a real-life situation, you could supplement your land deliveries with convoys, and have the supplies distributed from the ports, but in HOI3, any excess supplies not used by the units in the port itself, or with the port directly in their line of supply, would be routed all the way back to your capital before being sent back out overland.

That said, you CAN supplement the supplies going to units at a distance ***IF*** the port is directly on the supply route. Check the supply overlay, and see where the supply lines run. If it goes through a port, you can probably improve the supply situation with convoys, bypassing all of the infrastructure between that port and your depot.