Supply

[Redge]

I am curious about supply

Is supply computed for a single province completely, then another province completely then another, or is it incremental?

If sequential, what determines the order that supply delivery is computed for a province?


I still don't know why a supply convoy route is not just considered by the algos a province with a throughput and supply load, it would make multiple ports or even port/land combos really easy. Wouldn't that work? Then if port is used change supply location in unit to port name, and show the throughput in cargo screen.

I have some spare time and like thinking about the algos.

 

[ApacheX]

I have a game as US and are invading africa. I did have marines in Malta that I did use to invade afrika. Then I did send rest from us via gibraltar as a midle station to africa. I have one lvl10 port and one lvl4 (or 5) but the AI sends almost nothing to africa from us. And my tech is good.

If this is am example you are looking for I can send a save game.

 

[jju_57]

I came back and have been playing 1.3 for a week now. I have not seen the original 1.1 or 1.2 supply problems as of yet. I have found a different type of supply issue. I was playing germany 1936 GC on hard mode. I took out Poland in 1936 and then did nothing till 1939. The fight against France was going very well and I was impressed with all the improvements done for 1.3. Then I noticed that after taking Paris the French kept forming up new defense lines faster then i could exploit them.

There was no Vichy event for over a month and I was fighting a WW 1 type of battle cause each breakthrough was met with many new french forces. trying to figure out what was up I saved the game and then went on as France. To my astonishment they had zero manpower, 20 (just 20) supplies, zero fuel, zero oil and 53% leaders.

Here is my issue, none of their troops were out of supply, or out of fuel and each battle was against almost fully manned divisions that were being brought back up to full strength. How is this happenning? They had zero manpower, low leaders and almost zero supplies yet was fightin as if nothing was wrong. I have a save game of this if you want it.

So while I have not seen the lack of supplies so far I have found that in a hard version of the game the enemy had no negative impact from their lack of supplies and resources.

Finally, their national unity was at 40% and they only have 14 VP's in mainland France plus whatever overseas VP's they begin with. Why was the Vichy event so long in comming?

 

[womble]

I have 2 savegames that might be useful. At the beginning of September 1942, I have 96k-odd supplies. At 19 September '42, I have 27k-odd. Now, I wasn't assigning any IC to supply production, because I wanted to run down the stocks, but even if my defecit was 1000 a day (it wasn't) that wouldn't drop me 70k supplies. Would that pair be any use, Johan?

I have to say, the supply model is total rubbish (by which I mean utterly divorced from any reality of logistics, to the point where it really hurts the game). My troops in Jo'burg (next to a port: Durban) are now out of supply because I linked up with the push down from the Congo, so now all the suupplies landed at Durban have to go most of the way to Tangiers and then back through Darkest Africa, a round trip of around 14000km as the airliner flies. My African supply dump used to be at Umm Qasr, which at least was convenient to both east and west, but now the dump is (as near as dammit is to swearing) as far away from my next target (the Arabian peninsula) as it is possible for it to be.

Sure, Italy "shouldn't" (whatever that word might mean in the context of HOI3...) really have conquered all of Africa, but it shouldn't be the fact that supply suddenly has to travel 14000km "because them's the rules" instead of 500km (which might seem just a littlesaner) that stopped them. That just makes for a crappity game experience.

Edit: Have found the missing supplies. Discovered that every single outgoing convoy to an African port had been cancelled. Which is fair enough, since Khemisset (the aforementioned supply base, far away from anywhere useful) has 61k-odd supplies to dish out to my troops in Africa. So that 61k wasn't being included in the total. :-/ Which seems a little odd. But: why did the system allow Khemisset to get so disproportionately huge? Africa has maybe a quarter of my troops (at the moment, this is a pretty recent development; it's managed with about 5% til I had to race Germany for S. Afrika). Is it because the Gib-Tanger convoy and all the Iberia-Morocco convoies are so short that they cycle very fast?

How can I recover those supplies? Do I have to conquer Turkey and/or Persia and open up the dreaded land route? At least I've finished Africa now, and the Arabian peninsula won't take a huge force to subdue.

Edit: I just thought: if I don't connect Africa to the rest of the supply net, can I have 99999 supplies in the Roma net, and 60-odd k in the Africa net? That might be handy, if they would ever get delivered to the right place.

 

[RisingSun]

Why cant we use the old supply tactics in HoI II, that way can pile up resources and supplies at a giving port or depots. I would say depend on port size and infracture.

The way things are going is not going to work, of course there will be spoilage involved.

Rising

 

[GuderianTA]

What we need is the ability to build supply depots if been advovating this since last year.

 

[DigitalRommel]

You can abstract the supply system or you can make it more concrete, but trying to do just a little of both is causing users confusion and frustration. That's why folks aren't convinced that the supply system is working.

For instance, a unit suddenly runs out of supply. That is a play breaking event for the user. A check of the supply map indicates a hatched red line and low supply in the surrounding provinces. The user now knows there is a supply problem, but unfortunately that is about the most analysis of the problem the user can perform. More importantly, the user could nationally have 99,999 supplies on hand and not be able to influence or fix the problem (beyond manually flying a transport). We have a significant disconnect between abstraction and concrete and that causes user frustration.

Specific supply convoy details are located under the production screen using green and red colors for working and non-working convoys respectively. The user cannot choose any ports as convoy connection nodes -- let alone establish convoy routes via the map interface. The user can also not effect the number of transports assigned to the route to effect the quantity of supply being moved. If the user instead decides to look at the supply map, green and red colored convoys have a totally different meaning and are inconsistent with the green and red visual indicators in the production screen. They are incongruous. The user also gets no information from the supply map about the state (or condition) of the convoys. Is the convoy operational? Is demand on that route higher than supply? Again, the user cannot add more transports to the convoy to prioritize supply distribution if they did know supply was not meeting demand. The user may also want to analyze supply distribution in conjunction with infrastructure levels. The two are very closely related in the abstracted supply system, but disconnected in the user's map interface. (maybe think about overlays -- take that graphics engine out for a spin)

It's not readily apparent to the user, but supply distribution is not prioritized. It appears to use radial pathing based on demand (I'm really curious what factors you are using to generate influence maps for the pathfinding). This is another abstraction with a significant concrete impact on user interaction. For instance, consider that units have moved across a number of provinces during combat. Infrastructure is damaged and therefore supply throughput is diminished. If a user were to manually add a large quantity of supplies to a single province behind the front they could monitor the division of that stockpile to the surrounding provinces in a radial pattern. Supply distribution is not actually prioritized to supply the units at the front or locally stored in anticipation of opening up more throughput to the frontline units. I believe instead the demand of the surrounding provinces is high due to the damages done during combat. Supplies are being bled off to repair the provinces before they reach the combat units at the front -- and not just those damaged provinces that lead directly up to the frontline combat units.

Bottom line, you can abstract the supply system so that there is an effect on game play, but if you go so far as to make that impact significantly stop user (and AI) action, you need to provide the necessary tools to the user to visualize, analyze, and correct the problem. Otherwise, you create frustrated users who simply think the supply system is broken. Maybe the supply system is working as intended, but can a normal user really tell? If not, it might as well be broken.

 

[Atomcreator]

You can abstract the supply system or you can make it more concrete, but trying to do just a little of both is causing users confusion and frustration. That's why folks aren't convinced that the supply system is working.

For instance, a unit suddenly runs out of supply. That is a play breaking event for the user. A check of the supply map indicates a hatched red line and low supply in the surrounding provinces. The user now knows there is a supply problem, but unfortunately that is about the most analysis of the problem the user can perform. More importantly, the user could nationally have 99,999 supplies on hand and not be able to influence or fix the problem (beyond manually flying a transport). We have a significant disconnect between abstraction and concrete and that causes user frustration.

Specific supply convoy details are located under the production screen using green and red colors for working and non-working convoys respectively. The user cannot choose any ports as convoy connection nodes -- let alone establish convoy routes via the map interface. The user can also not effect the number of transports assigned to the route to effect the quantity of supply being moved. If the user instead decides to look at the supply map, green and red colored convoys have a totally different meaning and are inconsistent with the green and red visual indicators in the production screen. They are incongruous. The user also gets no information from the supply map about the state (or condition) of the convoys. Is the convoy operational? Is demand on that route higher than supply? Again, the user cannot add more transports to the convoy to prioritize supply distribution if they did know supply was not meeting demand. The user may also want to analyze supply distribution in conjunction with infrastructure levels. The two are very closely related in the abstracted supply system, but disconnected in the user's map interface.

It's not readily apparent to the user, but supply distribution is not prioritized. It appears to use radial pathing based on demand (I'm really curious what factors you are using to generate influence maps for the pathfinding). This is another abstraction with a significant concrete impact on user interaction. For instance, consider that units have moved across a number of provinces during combat. Infrastructure is damaged and therefore supply throughput is diminished. If a user were to manually add a large quantity of supplies to a single province behind the front they could monitor the division of that stockpile to the surrounding provinces in a radial pattern. Supply distribution is not actually prioritized to supply the units at the front or locally stored in anticipation of opening up more throughput to the frontline units. I believe instead the demand of the surrounding provinces is high due to the damages done during combat. Supplies are being bled off to repair the provinces before they reach the combat units at the front -- and not just those damaged provinces that lead directly up to the frontline combat units.

Bottom line, you can abstract the supply system so that there is an effect on game play, but if you go so far as to make that impact significantly stop user (and AI) action, you need to provide the necessary tools to the user to visualize, analyze, and correct the problem. Otherwise, you create frustrated users who simply think the supply system is broken. Maybe the supply system is working as intended, but can a normal user really tell? If not, it might as well be broken.

Superb answer. In short, make it simple for the joe with average intelligence to work out whats going on.
I fear however, that putting things into laymans terms is a bridge too far for this game.

 

[unmerged(179641)]

I quickly got into the habit when playing as a major to routinely pause the game and increase Inf on all recently acquired provinces to lvl 10, and place lvl 10 ports in every 2nd - 3rd province when campaigning in a separate continent, as trying to play without doing so was just impossible (whether WAD or not

 

[jju_57]

After some more checking I found out that the AI was not cheating. It seems that you don't need fuel to move from one friendly territory to another and you can attack with no supplies as long as it is part of your territory that you are trying to recapture. I still think that if you have zero supplies you should be prevented from doing these moves and attacks but at least it's not an AI cheat.

 

[unmerged(28220)]

The simple problem with the supply system is that it is wildly unrealistic with the way it works... In a war it should be a good thing to link up fronts and troops but in this game it is something to be avoided because if as Italy you are invading Africa alll your supplies suddenly go from the nice near port provinces to the middle of the Rub al Khali... Same thing with Japan where if you aren't careful your supply minister decides suddenly that Beijing and Nanjing aren't good places to store supplies for frontline troops NO! we have to build a huge pile in the middle of the Gobi Desert or on top of Mt. Everest...

We get that supply is an important part of the game and we get that it should be a juggling act where if you load up too many troops you run into a supply crunch but its frustrating and infuriating to have your entire formerly well supplied offensive stop dead 1 province out of a lvl 10 port because you linked Rome up with Africa and instead of Suez your supplies are coming through a washed out mountain pass in Turkey or the Himalayas or the Gobi Desert or over Victoria Falls... and it's equally as frustrating that the only answer to this is to then build 10k provinces worth of lvl 10 infrastructure to counter the effects of this... The answer shouldn't be "Well then just build a 20 lane highway + subway system and international airport into the middle of the Gobi to get to your mountain of supply"

I know this is WAD but this design is broken...

 

[AlanC9]

For instance, a unit suddenly runs out of supply. That is a play breaking event for the user.

Huh? ITRW units would often run out of supplies. The play breaking thing is the inability to understand the situation, right?

Supplies are being bled off to repair the provinces before they reach the combat units at the front

Supplies are used for repair? You sure?

Edit: just nitpicking.

 

[unmerged(55246)]

The user may also want to analyze supply distribution in conjunction with infrastructure levels. The two are very closely related in the abstracted supply system, but disconnected in the user's map interface. (maybe think about overlays -- take that graphics engine out for a spin)

It's not readily apparent to the user, but supply distribution is not prioritized.

Fully agree , great observation . This one is really frustrating .
In other games I always invested a large measure of time and sophistication in supply management because it is indeed the supply which makes the armies advance .
In RL the German had special units in Russia advancing at the pace of the armies and repairing/converting the RR tracks . The Blitzkrieg depended on well managed supply .
So in HoI3 I pay attention to infrastructure , ports and convoys .
I avoid attacking in the midle of nowhere , leave mountains and jungles alone .

I would PAY to be able to see on the same display both infrastructure and supply status .
I would PAY to see on the supply map in flashing red regions where draw vastly exceeds throughput and in flashing green where throughput matches draw
I would PAY to be able to weight regions on the supply map in order to fix priorities for the supply flow and to be able to move the primary supply dump to the region of my choice .

But wait ! I have already paid ...

 

[Modestus]

Well I am afraid I don't understand how supply works but if its WAD it does not work.

German units in Alexandria should not be out of supply even if I have a choke point in Northern Iraq, its a port for God sake.

I see forward units moving into enemy provinces always in full supply with the follow up units then running out, if I keep on the move it appears that I keep grabbing enemy supplies? The forward units remain in supply and those behind run out?

How can I have a full supply of fuel and no other supplies where's the fuel coming from?

I only seem to run into problems after the first fall of the USSR so supply is not an issue for that campaign it is only the second attack from the USSR when I supposedly own half the country that I have supply problems?

 

[bluepoo]

I am not interested in reports from people who do not understand how the logistics works, as that would just waste my and your time.

Yes units will be out of supply when some are not. Please don't report such issues if there are actual chokepoints that is blocking distribution of supplies.

lol. the devs are going to figure out soon enough how most people just dont understand 'how the logistics works'. i just took over nat. and communist china (smaller warlords) with japan and i'm now at war with the soviets without having more than 5 alerts of units not recieving supplies. how? by using the supply screen and moving into the provinces with the supplies and basing my attacks from those provinces. it worked for me during the entire chinese campaign.

 

[unmerged(183189)]

My capital city has a through put of 700, and a demand of 1400. It's infrastructure is fully upgraded and undamaged, and the same is true of all the provinces around it. (its got 100k supplies in the capital) Fuel however seems to be fine at 670/670

I don't know if you call this an "actual network failure" or not. It does seem to be a failure of the supply model being used.

Not sure if this "network failure" has already been addressed, but considering the frequency with which the issue is raised I can only hope it's been fixed.. but ports. E.g. -> lvl 5 port province in finland (Turku) is having supply issues ( 0 local supply, 0 throughput, 5.62 demand ) when a single naval square away the island of Mariehamn is fine with a local supply of 71 and 390 local fuel, with just a single infantry division stationed there. It's not even possible to force a supply convoy to go there.

Once again, I don't know if these are the bugs you're looking for, but they are problems, that NEED to be fixed. If in order to do so a complete reworking of the supply system is needed, then I struggle to understand the efforts put in to fix unusual, hard to replicate bugs in what seems to be a flawed system.

If there's anything I can do to help rectify these problems, don't hesitate to ask.

 

[Tunceben]

I think the major problem in supply system -apart from some units starving next to supply depots- is how the supply system handles ports. I have an example of this which can explain what I mean (sorry no savegames though). I was planning an invasion of Canada so I send a preparation force of 2 full corps to the Britihsh Island (large one) on the north east coast of Canada. I upgraded the existing port (the one on the southeastern province to level 10. And the 2 corps were getting supplied well. The I decided when my main force arrives a single port would not be sufficient and began building a new one just to the west of the existing port. Meanwhile a full corps was guarding the land bridge on the nortwestern province against a Canadian counter attack which they eventually tried with 10 divs. Anyhow as soon as my new port reached to lvl 1 all the troops west of that port promptly started drawing supplies from it and left the thousands of units of supplies and fuel waiting in the first port to rust. I could not resolve the issue until the port became big enough to support the defenders on the west side and my invasion had to wait about a year.

This is a very good example how the supply system is wasting resources and miscalculating routes. Now this may not be a 'bug' and probably the system is working as it should but then it only shows that the existing mechanics is not efficient.

To continue the example after I finally launched my invasion. The two ports had accumulated about 30k worth of supplies and fuel each. When I landed on the main continent and captured a few ports they started drawing supplies from my own capital and putting a huge stress on the supply routes to build up on stocks. While instead they should be utilising the 30k stockpile just a hundred miles off of the coast. I tried a manual convoy to use them but there was no option to start a convoy from those ports. From what I gather only ports with direct land route to capital are allowed for originating supply convoys.

So what I suggest is a more relaxed policy on user made convoys. This should supplement the supply AI and help ease any problems. In short you should let supply convoys to be created between each and every port so we can sort it out ourselves.

 

[womble]

Every time I try and look deeper into the Supply System, I find further SNAFUs that make no damn sense. How much fuel was produced on the mediterranean islands during WW2? I don't recall them being a significant source in history, yet every convoy coming out of the med is bringing fuel (fuel, not energy) to Rome. Are we burning grappa to drive our tanks?!

The single biggest improvement would be to allow the player to move the supply source within its bounds. This would need to be supported by an acknowledgement that, in the 30s and 40s, freight moves by sea as well as rail, and actually very little moves by roads. The only motorways are in Germany and Italy, and trucks don't ship anything like the tonnage per axle that we manage now.

 

[Myndpyre]

Im sure that Johan is getting more and more frustrated as he asked for saved game files so he can fix it, only gets post after post of how it doesn't work, and very few game files.

Show him, don't tell him.

 

[FenrisLokison]

Im sure that Johan is getting more and more frustrated as he asked for saved game files so he can fix it, only gets post after post of how it doesn't work, and very few game files.

Show him, don't tell him.

save games are provided in the bug report forum