Usage of air transports in supplying the front

[unmerged(160940)]

Hi,

I was playing a multiplayer game as USSR and I noticed something unusual:

The guy playing Germany was using transport planes to drop supplies in provinces along the front as he advanced eastwards...

My guess is that he was trying to get a higher percentage of ESE for his frontline troops by creating small stockpiles of supplies very close or in the same province of the divisions that were engaged in battle...

Is this possible or did he do this for flavor?

 

[mcganyol]

afaik it doesnt work that way, ese wont change from stockpiles nearby.
it is only useful for your encircled troops or supply your paratroopers behind enemy lines.
i think its wad, as air transportation of supplies was highly inefficent and wasteful in ww2 and was never used on grand scale for conventional armies. indeed they were mostly used to supply partisans. (first attempt for a grand scale use was in operation market garden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Market_Garden))

So in game terms, he didnt gain anything by dropping supplies to his provinces which are land connected to Berlin.

 

[unmerged(140582)]

Air supply on a large scale was tried before Market Garden, for example for the 6th Army in Stalingrad. Though you are correct that all attemps more or less ended in failure.
I'm pretty sure that the ESE value in AoD is calculated without taking temporary supply dumps into account. So air supply to provinces which are land- connected to the capital should be pure waste.

 

[unmerged(160940)]

I see...but units that are in a province not land-connected to the capital drain supplies from the stockpile that the convoys bring in a certain province so the ESE is calculated from that stockpile...
The real question is do the units use the capital stockpile or the closest one even if land-connected?
If that is the case then the average ESE is calculated from the distance of the nearest stockpile which led me to believe that this guy was not crazy as I thought he was...

 

[mcganyol]

No, as we already told, game mechanics neglect those stockpiles. (try it out for yourself if u don't belive us)
Supply dropped to a province land connected to the capital is carried back each day at 0:00.
If you check your troops "supplied from" parameter it always remains the capital, no matter if there is a stockpile or not.

Be cautious though if he has air transports, it's likely he has paratroopers too. I'm pretty sure you don't have air superiority so he can paradrop behind your frontline, cutting off your retreat possibilities temporarily, which can be a very nasty suprise, combined with massive frontal assault and armored attacks on the flank.
To defend against being pocketed or overrun by armors _always_ secure your way of retreat behind the front!

In my recent su-ger i made the mistake of leaving Moscow undefended as i managed to stop the Wehrmacht at Smolensk. They paradropped from Mogilev to Moscow, which caused me great problems. With that single move, they get a decent ammount of my rares to fuel their industry, lowered my ic considerably and lowered my troops overall ese as Moscow infra was in ruins for months after the recapture.
So leave an infantry division (or at least a militia) in key provinces!