Reserve Divisions

[EntropyAvatar]

Are there reserve divisions in HoI4? Back when the basic manpower and equipment systems were announced, it seemed like there was a great potential for an improved model of reserve divisions. At least, it seemed like there was the potential to pre-position equipment and perhaps pre-train reservists to a moderate standard. Such would be a huge improvement over HoI3, where there was an incentive to label a lot of divisions as reserve since you could reinforce the unit to full strength for a steep discount in production costs once everyone was mobilized.

I saw no sign of reserve units in the WWW videos. Are there any plans to include them in HoI4? Or will it be sort of a "poor man's reserve" of keeping a large stockpile of equipment and queuing up a pile of divisions once you have access to more manpower?

 

[afghanrabbit]

I do not think that there is. I know you can set your divisions with differing levels of priority for training, equipment, and reinforcement but I do not think there is a dedicated "reserve" status. I guess you could in theory train up divisions and keep them back from the fight on a low state or resupply and just disband them if you needed a quick jolt of men and equipment for your front line units. Everything has changed so much since the original DDs, and from the build they are using for WWW, that it is hard to know exactly how things will work.

 

[Sorime]

Isn't the queue exactly what a reserve, as you describe it, is?

 

[afghanrabbit]

Basically yes. They are just not deployed and therefore not able to reach their full "training potential" as I understand it. While we know that equipment goes back into a stockpile I cannot recall if manpower does when a unit is disbanded or production run is stopped.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

Isn't the queue exactly what a reserve, as you describe it, is?

As far as I know, there's no way to keep units in the queue from drawing their whole manpower allotment. So if I have a reserve division template, and put a bunch of them in the queue, then they suck up a lot of manpower that I might want to regular units.

I mean the idea of a reserve, as I understand it, is to have a bunch of mostly-equipped but partially-trained units in standby that only require a fraction of a regular unit's manpower until they are activated. I haven't seen anything that allows something like "only fill up to a portion of your manpower, and train on a part-time basis". It's really the manpower modelling that's key.

 

[TypicalRain]

As far as I know, there's no way to keep units in the queue from drawing their whole manpower allotment. So if I have a reserve division template, and put a bunch of them in the queue, then they suck up a lot of manpower that I might want to regular units.

I mean the idea of a reserve, as I understand it, is to have a bunch of mostly-equipped but partially-trained units in standby that only require a fraction of a regular unit's manpower until they are activated. I haven't seen anything that allows something like "only fill up to a portion of your manpower, and train on a part-time basis". It's really the manpower modelling that's key.

Your thinking too much of how HOI3 modelled it which is frankly wrong from how reserves work. This new way is much better and accurate.

In HOI3 you can make as many reserve divisions as you want as long as you have the small amount of manpower they require. But when you mobilise they fill up to full strength. However if you don’t have enough manpower in the manpower pool then they don’t go to full strength.

This is quite inaccurate. A reserve force already has all of its troops accounted for and assigned but they are not all on active duty at once, or even fully equipped. They are men with a rank that will be called upon when needed. Your not going to ‘Take’ men from the unit and distribute it to other divisions. (Unless worse case scenario the entire unit is dissolved. ) Instead it will be brought up to code, all the men will be put into active service and given their assignment. When they are relieved of there assignment and go back to reserve those men don’t go back to a giant manpower pool. They are given leave, but are still part of the unit.

HOI4 seems to model this much better.

You make a division and decided what it is made of. All the men get assigned to said division. Then you can set their status to reserve and they will be the last to receive equipment and reinforcement, and most likely you will not ‘waste’ supply training them until a few months before they are needed.

 

[jamesd]

Your thinking too much of how HOI3 modelled it which is frankly wrong from how reserves work. This new way is much better and accurate.

In HOI3 you can make as many reserve divisions as you want as long as you have the small amount of manpower they require. But when you mobilise they fill up to full strength. However if you don’t have enough manpower in the manpower pool then they don’t go to full strength.

This is quite inaccurate. A reserve force already has all of its troops accounted for and assigned but they are not all on active duty at once, or even fully equipped. They are men with a rank that will be called upon when needed. Your not going to ‘Take’ men from the unit and distribute it to other divisions. (Unless worse case scenario the entire unit is dissolved. ) Instead it will be brought up to code, all the men will be put into active service and given their assignment. When they are relieved of there assignment and go back to reserve those men don’t go back to a giant manpower pool. They are given leave, but are still part of the unit.

HOI4 seems to model this much better.

You make a division and decided what it is made of. All the men get assigned to said division. Then you can set their status to reserve and they will be the last to receive equipment and reinforcement, and most likely you will not ‘waste’ supply training them until a few months before they are needed.

The main thing wrong with HOI3 and reserve units was switching to Specialist Training at the instant of mobilisation and quickly filling them up with superbly trained reservists who the nation has not spent any time or money training while at peace.

As long as HOI4 allows units to be partially manned and trained in peace time, it will model reserve units just fine. However if we have to manually click the do not reinforce button to stop some divisions from filling up to full strength and then manually unclick that button when going to war I would suggest that there should be a function to simplify the process. There should also be a benefit to the economy in having reserve rather than active divisions in peace time.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

This is quite inaccurate. A reserve force already has all of its troops accounted for and assigned but they are not all on active duty at once, or even fully equipped. They are men with a rank that will be called upon when needed. Your not going to ‘Take’ men from the unit and distribute it to other divisions. (Unless worse case scenario the entire unit is dissolved. ) Instead it will be brought up to code, all the men will be put into active service and given their assignment. When they are relieved of there assignment and go back to reserve those men don’t go back to a giant manpower pool. They are given leave, but are still part of the unit.

HOI4 seems to model this much better.

You make a division and decided what it is made of. All the men get assigned to said division. Then you can set their status to reserve and they will be the last to receive equipment and reinforcement, and most likely you will not ‘waste’ supply training them until a few months before they are needed.

Agreed that the HoI3 model was not great. I would like to specifically account for the full manpower of reserve division. At the same time, the men in a reserve division also had civilian jobs, so the impact on the civilian economy of having a reserve division is much less than the impact of having a regular division. HoI4 loses this distinction. A division on reserve status uses just as much manpower and just as much equipment as a regular division. As for not training them, it would frankly be a waste of resource not to fully train them. Yes, training consumes equipment, but you will only lose more equipment (and manpower) when a semi-trained division winds up in combat.

Ideally there would be some sort of manpower accounting that allowed you to create more reserve divisions in peacetime than your regular manpower would support. Sort of an over-draw on the manpower pool, but a limit on how trained those could be.

 

[TypicalRain]

Agreed that the HoI3 model was not great. I would like to specifically account for the full manpower of reserve division. At the same time, the men in a reserve division also had civilian jobs, so the impact on the civilian economy of having a reserve division is much less than the impact of having a regular division. HoI4 loses this distinction. A division on reserve status uses just as much manpower and just as much equipment as a regular division. As for not training them, it would frankly be a waste of resource not to fully train them. Yes, training consumes equipment, but you will only lose more equipment (and manpower) when a semi-trained division winds up in combat.

Ideally there would be some sort of manpower accounting that allowed you to create more reserve divisions in peacetime than your regular manpower would support. Sort of an over-draw on the manpower pool, but a limit on how trained those could be.

A competent General would never send troops into battle without training. You can choose to do so though. I’m not saying you shouldn’t train them just that you should only train the before they are to be used. If there is a situation in which you need to use untrained troops that is an error at the strategic level and overall poor planning.

There is a reason reserve divisions work the way I described irl. They way you describe the structure would work sure, except when you would need to actually man and deploy these divisions you would take MONTHS more of time to do so in such a system. The logistic peoples would have to go through see how many men they could actually get into the division, contact them all. Decided what division would be understrength and who should be dissolved to get everyone to full strength. Then recontact all the troops to give them there assignment. And finally once they are assembled you can begin getting them combat ready.

This is much more difficult then assigning your reserves to a division when they join and simply calling them to attention.

In game it would be very messy if you had a reserve division only full of 3.000 men who you trained to basic. But when you mobilised you get 7.000 green troops added. So then you would have a division training that would have to be averaged in game to be only 30% trained. But what then if they go through some training and become 50% and you demobilise. What happens to the troops and who gets sent back with what training. Do we really want memory taken up by the training level of every single manpowers training level? And Since then those same troops could be assigned to different divisions who each have there own training. @_@ It is much to complicated and nonsensical to have the same reserve system in HOI4.

As for the economics in game the conscription laws are what effect efficiency. I haven’t seen anything to show that using more manpower from the available pool results in less industrial efficiency. Looks like anyone in the pool doesn’t work . If I’m wrong post a picture or someone else chime in.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

A competent General would never send troops into battle without training. You can choose to do so though. I’m not saying you shouldn’t train them just that you should only train the before they are to be used. If there is a situation in which you need to use untrained troops that is an error at the strategic level and overall poor planning.

My point is that in real life, there was a logical reason why you wouldn't train reserve divisions to the level of regular divisions (they had day jobs). HoI4 doesn't model that, so the main reason why reserve divisions have less training goes out the window and you might as well train everyone or you are just wasting manpower and equipment in the long run.

There is a reason reserve divisions work the way I described irl. They way you describe the structure would work sure, except when you would need to actually man and deploy these divisions you would take MONTHS more of time to do so in such a system. The logistic peoples would have to go through see how many men they could actually get into the division, contact them all. Decided what division would be understrength and who should be dissolved to get everyone to full strength. Then recontact all the troops to give them there assignment. And finally once they are assembled you can begin getting them combat ready.

I totally agree that this is how it works in real life. It would be nice to have the reserve divisions with their manpower already assigned, though in some sort of reduced readiness to reflect that the men need to gather.

In game it would be very messy if you had a reserve division only full of 3.000 men who you trained to basic. But when you mobilised you get 7.000 green troops added. So then you would have a division training that would have to be averaged in game to be only 30% trained.

Yeah, if the manpower is already assigned to the division, you can better model their training (just have a lower training cap for reserve units).

But what then if they go through some training and become 50% and you demobilise. What happens to the troops and who gets sent back with what training. Do we really want memory taken up by the training level of every single manpowers training level? And Since then those same troops could be assigned to different divisions who each have there own training. @_@

In my opinion, this is an important question whether or not you have a reserve system. If you disband a unit with a lot of experienced men, where do they go? If they go back into the manpower pool, do they lose their experience. As an aside, if they wished to model experience in the manpower pool, it wouldn't require much memory. You simply keep a list of how many green men are in the pool, how many trained, regular, veterans, etc. It would basically just be a few numbers. Possibly a few dozen if you wanted to track different types of experience. The challenge would be how you convey this information in a nice way to the user.

As for the economics in game the conscription laws are what effect efficiency. I haven’t seen anything to show that using more manpower from the available pool results in less industrial efficiency. Looks like anyone in the pool doesn’t work . If I’m wrong post a picture or someone else chime in.

As you say, once the men are in the manpower pool, they don't seem to be doing anything for the economy. But reservists ARE doing something for the economy, so drawing from the regular manpower pool probably isn't the best model. It would be better to say that reserve divisions "borrow" 80% of their manpower from the section of the population that hasn't been drafted into the pool yet, but in order to activate them, you need enough manpower in the pool to pay back the 80% 'loan'. So in peacetime you can set up a lot of reserve divisions (assuming you have the weapons) and train them (but more slowly and to a lower cap). Once war is close enough to allow you to bump the recruitment laws, you get access to the manpower and can mobilize the reserves (either one at a time or by hitting a button).

 

[jamesd]

My point is that in real life, there was a logical reason why you wouldn't train reserve divisions to the level of regular divisions (they had day jobs). HoI4 doesn't model that, so the main reason why reserve divisions have less training goes out the window and you might as well train everyone or you are just wasting manpower and equipment in the long run.

I totally agree that this is how it works in real life. It would be nice to have the reserve divisions with their manpower already assigned, though in some sort of reduced readiness to reflect that the men need to gather.

Yeah, if the manpower is already assigned to the division, you can better model their training (just have a lower training cap for reserve units).

In my opinion, this is an important question whether or not you have a reserve system. If you disband a unit with a lot of experienced men, where do they go? If they go back into the manpower pool, do they lose their experience. As an aside, if they wished to model experience in the manpower pool, it wouldn't require much memory. You simply keep a list of how many green men are in the pool, how many trained, regular, veterans, etc. It would basically just be a few numbers. Possibly a few dozen if you wanted to track different types of experience. The challenge would be how you convey this information in a nice way to the user.

As you say, once the men are in the manpower pool, they don't seem to be doing anything for the economy. But reservists ARE doing something for the economy, so drawing from the regular manpower pool probably isn't the best model. It would be better to say that reserve divisions "borrow" 80% of their manpower from the section of the population that hasn't been drafted into the pool yet, but in order to activate them, you need enough manpower in the pool to pay back the 80% 'loan'. So in peacetime you can set up a lot of reserve divisions (assuming you have the weapons) and train them (but more slowly and to a lower cap). Once war is close enough to allow you to bump the recruitment laws, you get access to the manpower and can mobilize the reserves (either one at a time or by hitting a button).

How does this sound:
Countries can raise reserve divisions while at conscription levels short of scraping the barrel. They may only be deployed in home territory and can't move. Such divisions require no manpower, but must still have at least the minimum number of weapons assigned in order to train. Their maximum level of training is capped at trained (ie off map training only). Training speed is reduced, and tied to conscription laws with training time for countries with maximum peace time conscription at say half normal speed, while training for reserve divisions of nations with volunteer armies would be extremely slow (reflecting limited amounts of training on nights and weekends). Upon mobilisation, those divisions fill up with troops within a week at the most - or maybe instantly for ease of gameplay.

If thrown straight into combat they would be a good step down from full time units, but still reasonably effective and if given a few months they could get themselves up to full speed. Even Germany, with a 2 year draft pre war had its reserve divisions do a fair amount of training over the 39/40 winter.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

That sounds pretty good. I guess if we haven't seen them yet, there's little chance there will be this sort of thing in the initial release, but hope springs eternal!

 

[Denkt]

HOI4 only have regular divisions and I think it is a good idea to keep it that way. You could keep division undeployed but I don't know if that have any advantages other then maybe avoid equipment attrition and maybe not take up any supplies but you can not do field exercises with undeployed divisions and experience is extremely important.

I think you should train as many divisions you can while at peace (be careful with manpower laws that reduce production) so you have many well trained divisions then the war starts. You may have to value having more divisions that are well trained vs more pre war production (by switching over to a harsher manpower law).

 

[EntropyAvatar]

HOI4 only have regular divisions and I think it is a good idea to keep it that way.

Why though? You say that the game shouldn't have reserve divisions and the rest of your post seems to be about good strategies in a game without reserve divisions.

I think reserve divisions were an important factor historically, so in my mind, there needs to be an important gameplay to rule them out permanently (I could see them see them ruled out temporarily just because of development costs).

 

[CrasherZZ]

Havivg reserve units would make Mobilization a more meaningful event. Don't know if HOI4 has that though.

 

[jamesd]

HOI4 only have regular divisions and I think it is a good idea to keep it that way. You could keep division undeployed but I don't know if that have any advantages other then maybe avoid equipment attrition and maybe not take up any supplies but you can not do field exercises with undeployed divisions and experience is extremely important.

I think you should train as many divisions you can while at peace (be careful with manpower laws that reduce production) so you have many well trained divisions then the war starts. You may have to value having more divisions that are well trained vs more pre war production (by switching over to a harsher manpower law).

But the thing is countries didn't have many fully trained divisions at the moment they went to war. British regular divisions in Britain drew about half their manpower from reservists. France's active divisions were usually no more than about 65% strength and even Germany's first wave infantry divisions didn't have more than 80% of their troops on active service prior to mobilisation. Full time soldiers undergo continuous training to keep their skills current, and once they've been discharged into civilian life, those skills start to deteriorate. Allowing Britain to deploy 22 full strength, fully trained and equipped motorised divisions to France before war even starts is just wrong historically, just as Germany having 100+ fully trained infantry divisions at war start is also wrong. Having all regular and no reserve divisions gives nations a capability they did not have when war broke out.