Trucks brigade

[Commander666]

IMO AoD has done an excellent job over Doomsday as regards supply and the finer points of infra and ESE. I especially like the supply and oil bars put on every unit. It gives the player new concerns that need to be addressed:
- Some units refuse to take on supplies fully even though ample supplies are being convoyed to a distant shore where those units sit.
- Transports especially need to be carefully managed to insure they fully replenish before attempting the return trip from a long sea transport mission.
- Decreasing supply can be a considerable modifier to any battle result.
- IF surrounded, you are not immediately out of supply.
- And tanks just simply can not keep going forever. In fact, if using mobile units in larger jungle provinces the difficulty to just reach the next province before running out of oil now reveals the mistake of using those units in a jungle in the first place.

Low infra combined with inhospitable terrain and extended ESE should present serious problems for mobile units. In fact, I wonder if AoD has made it difficult enough. For instance, without referring to any combat modifiers, I don't think it is very good that most armor units still reach the next mountain province before mountaineers do. And just how do those tanks ever push thru the jungle without first constructing a road? The answer is probably that there always is some road in a province as big as the game uses that the mobile units can avail to transit that province. But I wonder if it would not be a better game if many more provinces simply had "no entry border" specific to only mobile units?

As regards the trucks brigade there is one advantage. Just like in real life when the troops get out a walk, you can always detach the brigade and return your INF to normal INF. This might work very well by putting the truck brigades so collected in the deployment pool on other INF, and the first set of INF now able to take on better brigades that were put up into the Deployment Pool ahead of time.

Finally I'd like to comment on "This effect (destroyed infra) is based on and triggerd by the province changing hands". Very true for as you intend that to mean. But fortunately not applicable in most cases of liberating countries. While it does not seem to apply to every liberated country (India is an exception playing 1.05) most countries I liberated kept the infra I had repaired and that included the Naval and Airport size too. It makes sense that a friendly change of hands should not result in any destruction, and I don't know why creating India had a problem.

EDIT: Encountered this playing 1.05

 

[unmerged(236565)]

Interesting - I have never liberated India in 1.05 - I will check if this is still the case in 1.07 when I get around to playing it next time.
I agree with you that tanks and MECH should be totally useless in jungle or mountains. I mean they already take severe penalties when in a fight there so that is ok, but when there is no resistance they can relatively quickly take over huge strips of land - even in china or south east asia. Maybe increase the penalty for moving around in such inhospitable terrain. But I would not know how. I'd have to look first. I would not go so far to close certain terrain for them completely. Besides I dont think that is even possible - either a province has a border you can cross or it does not. Cant close it just for certain units IMHO. They should be allowed to move there but should loose lots of org and supplies in the process.

 

[Gazer75]

Can change speed by going in to ...\db\units and edit the modifiers.csv

MOT MEC ARM already have -70% speed in Jungle though. And attack and defense penalties are also pretty severe.

If you want to stop them from going in to jungle then just set MOV_JUNGLE to -100 and they will be unable to move there afaik.

 

[alufdufe]

I have at least 2 problems with the facts that infrastructure and ESE don't affect speed. It means logistical bombing a province will not slow a unit down and offensive supply does not speed a unit up.

 

[unmerged(291207)]

I think Infrastructure vanishing after taking a province could be taken as a proxy of something else: you must move forward and organize your supply lines. It takes time and means of transport to "rebuild" infrastructure, that means for me - to make it usable. Even if roads and bridges are untouched, you need also trucks, trains, and stations for unloading and repairing all of your means of transport. For Germany in Barbarossa it was the main problem.

I don't know, if that was an idea of this feature, but I understand it like that.

 

[Gazer75]

That's what we have the supply for. ESE for a province will rise slowly depending on infra, tech, distance and partisan activity between capital, supply depot and/or harbor. With a province taken with no battle the INFRA is not damaged and the supply trucks can move faster.
Supply lines will still get stretched thin as they cant keep up and your army will run out of supply. It will just make the initial breakthroughs more devastating.

An army at 15% ESE is not much of a fighting force, and if its forced to fight its supply stock will empty fast.

I guess the problem is that the AI might not be able to deal with it. Its already pretty easy to flank the AI and encircle its divisions. But for PvP battles it would be interesting IMO.

 

[Commander666]

With a province taken with no battle the INFRA is not damaged.

Is this really correct?

My Soviet forces just para dropped into Cuzco, Peru which was undefended. I can only check what the situation was before and 2 weeks later. Infra in Cuzco starts at 60%. Two weeks after para drop it is at 45.7%. I was repairing provinces at 100%. It does seem like a rather quick repair so maybe infra did not go to zero when I took the province?

 

[Gazer75]

No, its what I am proposing as a change

 

[Commander666]

I have at least 2 problems with the facts that infrastructure and ESE don't affect speed.

But infrastructure does affect speed, which is logical. So I don't see a problem. Can anyone confirm that infra affects speed, or am I wrong?

I have noticed that logistical bombing does NOT seem to slow the enemy like I would like, but passed it off as I was just bombing too late, or his mobile units just still had enough remaining speed to transit in the time elapsed, or maybe cause I did not keep that target at zero infra. I agree that bombing infra in 1.05 does no longer seem to get the slow down I remember from Doomsday but have no accurrate examples for comparison.

 

[Count of Reval]

But infrastructure does affect speed, which is logical. So I don't see a problem. Can anyone confirm that infra affects speed, or am I wrong?

I think I remember (what would be a certainty coefficient of the claim like this?) that retreating your units with Scorched Earth mode switched on - and destroying infra to 10% or so - ensured that even your infantry units weren't caught up by the enemy panzers that chased you.

From the manual:
The effective supply efficiency (ESE) is therefore the base supply efficiency modified by the amount of infrastructure in the province. This can be further reduced if an enemy bomber force is conducting certain types of bombing campaigns against the province (these missions are detailed in the Air Combat section). Because of its wide-ranging effects, it would be hard to overemphasize the importance of the effective supply efficiency value. A division that is located in a province with low ESE will suffer increased attrition rates, reduced movement speeds, and will take much longer to upgrade or to regain its strength and organization.

So infrastructure does affect speed (at least through ESE).

 

[Gazer75]

Interesting...
Wonder if the Infrastructure not affecting speed is a bug.

 

[alufdufe]

It's not just infrastructure, but ESE and offensive supply too. I went through several save games and pulled the numbers. I have a table, if I can figure out how to post it. I used metapad and the spacing gets lost when I paste.

Here it is without the spacing.


INF4 w/sparty 2

it goes province terrain infrastructure ESE speed

Norfolk,, plains,, 80,, 111.81,, 4.0
Norfolk,, plains,, 80,, 106.73,, 4.0
Zaqazig,, plains,, 27.7,, 41.03,, 4.0
Fayum,, plains,, 21.4 ,, 40.88,, 4.0
Gaza ,, plains,, 50.7 ,, 48.25,, 4.0

Los Angeles,, hills,, 80,, 73.71,, 2.8
Beirut,, hills,, 45.8 ,, 68.87,, 2.8
Tunis ,, hills ,, 51.3,, 71.24,, 2.8
Oran ,, hills ,, 56.5 ,, 71.43,, 2.8

el-arish,, desert,, 22.9 ,, 48.25,, 2.4
El Alamein,, desert,, 41.5 ,, 47.23,, 2.4
Rabia,, desert,, 28.2,, 45.64,, 2.4
Tobruk,, desert,, 47.6 ,, 70.89,, 2.4

********************************************************************************************

Mech1 w/sparty2

Norfolk,, plains,, 80,, 106.73,, 12.0,,
Jaipur,, plains,, 36.9,, 70.67,, 12.0,,

**************************************************************************************************

MOT2 w/sparty2

Norfolk,, plains,, 80,, 106.73,, 13
Tripoli,, plains,, 51.8,, 70.99,, 13

Aswan,, desert,, 37.8,, 29.84,, 7.9
Qusayr,, desert,, 9.6,, 28.41,, 7.9
Rabia,, desert,, 28.2 ,, 68.47,, 7.9
Ghat,, desert,, 0.0,, 10.00,, 7.9

Jeruselem,, hills,, 26.5 ,, 38.76,, 9.2
Haifa ,, hills,, 34.0 ,, 34.0,, 9.2
Barca,, hills,, 45.4 ,, 79.54,, 9.2,, off supp
Msus,, hills,, 15.1 ,, 55.69,, 9.2,, off supp

*******************************************************************************************************

armor3 w/sparty2

Fayum,, plains,, 21.4 ,, 61.31,, 10
Amman,, plains,, 24.8 ,, 34.04,, 10
Alexandria,, plains,, 43.1 ,, 106.42,, 9,, rain
Tel Aviv,, plains,, 36.7,, 69.88,, 9,, rain & off supp

Idfu,, desert,, 29.1 ,, 29.07,, 6.1
Aswan,, desert,, 37.8,, 29.84,, 6.1
Qusayr,, desert,, 9.6,, 28.41,, 6.1
Suwayz,, desert,, 15.4,, 34.52,, 6.1
Mersa Matruh,, desert,, 35.2,, 42.58,, 6.1
Nibeiwa,, desert,, 18.1,, 33.62,, 6.1
Gerawla,, desert,, 31.4,, 43.48,, 6.1
Aujila,, desert,, 15.0 ,, 46.45,, 6.1,, off supp
Gabes,, desert,, 30.8 ,, 39.89,, 6.1

Jeruselem,, hills,, 26.5 ,, 38.76,, 7.1
Msus ,, hills,, 15.1,, 106.6,, 7.1 off supp
Satapura Mtns,, hills ,, 89,, 77.94,, 7.1

I'm using AOD 1.07 with SMEP. The last number in each line is the speed and it's the same for each terrain type regardless of ESE and Infrastructure.

 

[Count of Reval]

To find out my version of truth about whether infrastructure and ESE influence a speed, I conducted the most simple test I could think of. Opened a random save game, moved a random infantry unit from one province to neighbor province (seeing first that both provinces had infrastructure 100%) and took a note about the arrival time. Exited the game. Then changed in the save game file the infrastructure value to 0% for both provinces involved (just in case). Re-loaded the modded file, moved the same infantry unit from the same province to the same neighbor province and took another note about the new arrival time. The difference between two arrivals was exactly 24 hours.

Then I changed the save game file once again: restored infrastructure in both provinces to 100%, but decreased infra in capital to 0%. As a result, all the land units across the country took a significant ESE hit (from the value of 115 to 15 or similar in magnitude). Re-loaded and ordered the same infantry unit in third time to the already familiar path. The arrival time was the same with the first case. No change.

Finally, switched an Offensive mode on and checked whether it changed the arrival time. It didn't.

So the conclusions for the AoD version 1.07 appears to be that: 1) infrastructure does affect the speed *, 2) ESE doesn't affect the speed, 3) Offensive mode doesn't affect the speed.

* It sure does affect the arrival moment. Whether it affects a speed as a parameter in some other calculations, I don't know.

 

[alufdufe]

Sorry for posting incorrect information. I tried an experiment similar to Count of Reval and got the same results. You can't trust the speed display.

 

[Commander666]

Count of Reval's experiment fits my experiences. Infra matters, ESE doesn't for any transit time. Back in Doomsday offensive suppply really did speed movement (even if no combat). It definitely does not anymore in 1.05.