Vehicles lost to attrition

[uther4117]

+1

As long as attrition is modeled properly and the owner of the battlefield is really important and mattered about who is going to salvage the warzone which is matter if not more, as much as attrition does. Attrition should be modeled as both "write-offs" and "can be repaired". But putting repair option brings tons of problems along as well. The easieast way they just disappear lets say you have 200 pz4s and as you marching the number drops to 180 some times but it comes back and you do not need to micro anything so this models the attrition and recovery. If we want to go more in-depth then broke down vehicles can go back to the pool after being repaired where they will go back where they reinforce as they needed or better is that whereever the vehicle brokes down they appear after being fixed in the capital of the "strategic region" where they broke down or closest region capital.

All in all this mechanic MUST be there IMHO since hoi4 aims somewhere high not decent. And devs will implement it better and better as/if they spent more time on it.

 

[safe-keeper]

Reading this thread, I find I'm actually partial to a "damaged" pool for vehicles. Whenever you lose a vehicle, there's a chance, determined by various factors, that instead of it being lost, it ends up in this pool, and then after a while is put "back into circulation".

Like the idea of recovery vehicle techs, maybe having engineers in a division could help reduce vehicle attrition, too?

 

[Mitsugi]

You do realize the reply was in regards to road marches right? So, are you suggesting that 5-10K road march is something that isn't done by rail? Even for WW2 standards, I don't see a complete road march done for 5000 to 10,000 mile stretches. Just isn't going to happen.

Dude, everyone but you is talking about the entire service life of the vehicle. Of course there are no ten thousand mile road marches. Nobody was suggesting that tanks were driven in one go from Cape Town to Moscow. Besides, how are you claiming simultaneously that 5,000-10,000 miles is unreasonably short life for a WW2 tank (more fit for a WW1 tank) and in the same breath say "well, of course there were no single 10,000 mile road marches"?

The final drive was designed for a vehicle much less in weight which is what that problem revolves around. If you pushed the speed of the Panther, for example like the Kummersdorf video or as they did in Kursk, on a constant basis you ARE going to break down a lot sooner than "100 miles" you aim to quote from. That figure was training the Panther drivers not to push the 50t tank to crack the final drive so they could get on average the figure you are quoting from. It's a little bit more involved than a technical estimation but rather training folks to go around a problem and have a solution to make the tank Operate better on the battlefield. IN other words, a "work around".

What the heck does this have to do with the price of tea in China? You were claiming that basically all WW2 tanks regularly lasted significantly longer than 10,000 miles. I gave you several examples of common medium tanks that could not hope to get a third of that without replacing basically everything that could possibly wear out from driving. The Panther's awful design was just an extreme example.

But it's not exactly a "new tank" because you are reusing a lot of metal work that does not have to be redone or can be patched up, like the "armor" in an armored vehicle like on a tank. I don't recall coming across Soviet sources, or at least those translated into English, that linked "capital rebuilding" to becoming "new tanks". The Soviets used Capital Rebuilding periodically to upgrade previous tanks to the latest standards but never came across where recovered tanks would mistakenly be mixed into actual tank production figures (which would factor into "new tanks"). Please show us the source.

Soviet tank gun production statistics from the government archives, June 41-Apr 45:
76mm F-34 mounted on T-34 and KV-1 = 34,355. T-34, 35,119. KV-1/1S, ~4,000 (actually ~4500, but one must subtract the very early models with L-11 and F-32 guns, plus the KV-8 flamethrower tanks).
85mm guns = 18,602. T-34-85 tanks, same period, 22,559. Plus 2050 SU-85 tank destroyers. And several hundred T-44s, KV-85s, and IS-85s.

There are three ways this is possible. One, thousands of Soviet AFVs went into battle unarmed. Two, the Soviet system was really spectacularly amazing at getting tank factories to lie about their production but inexplicably terrible at getting tank gun factories to do the same. Three, tank factories counted every finished tank leaving through the front gates as a produced tank. Which is what they did.

 

[Wyrm]

They could have some sort of trickle-back mechanic for equipment the same way they had for manpower in HOI3 in order to simulate damaged vehicles being repaired and recovered.
This could be improved with tech and other factors, such as taking the battlefield giving higher trickleback chances than if you lose it as well as reliability and perhaps field repair techs or whatever

It could probably even be managed for each equipment type or even individual equipment depending on how much detail they use to handle equipment.

Thinking in code I suspect each individual piece of equipment will somehow be a game object if they intend for it to have different stats depending on what company made it or upgrade status, so just having a chance value to put it in an equipment trickle-back pool instead of removing it when destroyed would not take that much effort nor computer power (in theory)

 

[Poh]

Why is it an either or? After all, when you "write off" equipment, you are removing it from your Operational Order of Battle, not your strategic war weapons roster! At the end of the day, the equipment is still there just not capable of any further Operational Role without being rebuilt which is just something that is common with frequent use and breakdowns. HOI IV is all about the strategic interplay and I do hope, as my original response was meant for, that "attrition" doesn't equate to you just building more tanks to replace the war material that just breaks down and is "written off" Operationally. THAT would be silly!

How do you intend to simulate the rebuilding of tanks thats been written off? If you need to repair a tank in any way you will need to have spare parts. Since spare parts is not in the game as a produced good (atleast we have no indication that they are) you will need to simulate spare parts as % whole tanks. Hence if you have 100 tanks and you write off 20 as they break down and lose 5 in combat. You could translate that to 7 losses (5 from combat and 2 from having 20 tanks repaired for an average 10%) which would then need to be replaced which would also simulate the industrial strain of the production of spare parts.
the discussion about this has taken place before so im not going to go further into it.

i can however agree that it would be neat if a brigade doesnt fight with its full strenght as some of the tanks etc. would be written off before a battle as having broke down or otherwise unfit for battle.

 

[Jazumir]

[...] maybe having engineers in a division could help reduce vehicle attrition, too?

Just cherrypicking.

Of course vehicle attrition only makes sense, if there are significant differences to it, depending on various factors.

 

[Centurion1973]

Reading this thread, I find I'm actually partial to a "damaged" pool for vehicles. Whenever you lose a vehicle, there's a chance, determined by various factors, that instead of it being lost, it ends up in this pool, and then after a while is put "back into circulation".

Like the idea of recovery vehicle techs, maybe having engineers in a division could help reduce vehicle attrition, too?

I agree, that this would be ellegant solution, without micromanagement.

 

[Zwiback]

Too bad Paradox didn't implement a value for damaged (=not ready) equipment because I find reliablity and readyness for aircraft very important.

Without that stat I guess such a thing could be modeled by a higher org loss

 

[3ishop]

It would be interesting, the Soviets did lose a lot of their tanks in 1941 to breakdowns, T-35s pretty much all lost due to that before getting in to combat.

It'd also make buying tanks or capturing stockpiles/factories viable, else you will have to buy more tanks then you can issue to have replacements.

How it's represented though is troublesome, however it could be covered in the same way we don't build the supply trucks or trains for the soldiers and tanks, how did the casualty trickle back in HoI3 work? Could that work for this.

 

[Big Nev]

First, WWI tanks required overhaul more like every 100 miles, sometimes much less. Second, 5-10k miles is way, way more than pretty much any WW2 tank could do without replacing basically the whole drivetrain. The Soviets estimated the lifespan of their T-34s and M4A2s as 2000-2500km or 250-300 hours. Note in that post the quote from Guderian who is pleased that the Panther is up to 700-1000km between engine replacements by Feb 44. If you read Jentz' "Germany's Panther Tank", one Panther regiment is getting about 1500km on its engines by April. But they were also getting ~1500km for the gearbox and ~1500-1800km on the tracks. By that point, you'd probably need new drive sprockets and half the torsion bars would already have been replaced. All that was peanuts to the final drives, which averaged 150km. No, really, less than 100 miles between failures.

Sure, all this could be repaired if you kept the battlefield and you had the equipment, but once you've dropped in a new engine, gearbox, transmission, suspension, and tracks, you're sort of teetering on the brink of "new tank". Which is how the Soviets recorded it. See, for the Germans, a tank that could theoretically be repaired and re-enter service wasn't lost. For the Soviets (and more or less for the other Allies), anything that (even temporarily) couldn't engage in operations was "lost" and likewise any tank that came out of a factory was "built" whether it had gone in as steel plate or as a wrecked tank. This is one reason why the statistics show low German losses and high Soviet/US losses, they had a dramatically tighter definition of "lost" than their opponents.

Yes. Trigger's broom.

I'm in complete agreement with this. It's not actually important, in game terms, whether you can recover & repair ten tanks, canibalise three to make one work or build one new tank with a certain amount of resources & worker's time. It's all about how much of your industrial capacity is "used up" to off-set this attrition & operational loss.

If a particular model you're using is really good in combat but has crap reliability, you will need to "spend" more "IC" to keep them in the feild but you may also want to considder that a not-so-good tank would actually serve you better if you didn't need to spend as much of your resources just to keep your formations up to strength.

I hope this is what we will see and I hope that the maintenance requirement for AFVs & tanks in particular is quite high. If this is represented as high supply usage, OK. If it's represented as x tanks "lost" per week then that, IMHO, would be even better.

Better still would be tanks being "lost" when out of supply.

 

[Beagá]

Why do you guys waste so much time creating so complex systems that will never be put to work?

Just make attrition work on the equipment pool and Reliability stat affect attrition rate. Done. Forget fancy stuff like vehicle recovery. This isn´t na operational level game. The more numbers you put the more chance for bugs there are, too.

 

[1alexey]

Soviet tank gun production statistics from the government archives, June 41-Apr 45:
76mm F-34 mounted on T-34 and KV-1 = 34,355. T-34, 35,119. KV-1/1S, ~4,000 (actually ~4500, but one must subtract the very early models with L-11 and F-32 guns, plus the KV-8 flamethrower tanks).
85mm guns = 18,602. T-34-85 tanks, same period, 22,559. Plus 2050 SU-85 tank destroyers. And several hundred T-44s, KV-85s, and IS-85s.

There are three ways this is possible. One, thousands of Soviet AFVs went into battle unarmed. Two, the Soviet system was really spectacularly amazing at getting tank factories to lie about their production but inexplicably terrible at getting tank gun factories to do the same. Three, tank factories counted every finished tank leaving through the front gates as a produced tank. Which is what they did.

Your source just conveniently ignores that Zis-5 gun was also installed in T-34s and KVs. So, overall counting L-11, F-34 and Zis-5 we arrive to 39k tank guns, matching the amount of tanks.
For 85mm, same story. 85mm D-5 and 85mm S-53 were both used for soviet armor.
According to Soviet sources, there were 2 modifications of S-53 gun produced in 1944-1945, S-53 with 11518 and Zis-S-53 with 14265 produced.

Oh, the mystery of Soviet accounting :rofl:

 

[Cpack]

Why do you guys waste so much time creating so complex systems that will never be put to work?

Just make attrition work on the equipment pool and Reliability stat affect attrition rate. Done. Forget fancy stuff like vehicle recovery. This isn´t na operational level game. The more numbers you put the more chance for bugs there are, too.

Sure, but this is what makes HOI-series so unique. You can have a lot of complexity in a grand strategy game.
If I want it easy, I play risk or world in flames....

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

How do you intend to simulate the rebuilding of tanks thats been written off? If you need to repair a tank in any way you will need to have spare parts. Since spare parts is not in the game as a produced good (atleast we have no indication that they are) you will need to simulate spare parts as % whole tanks. Hence if you have 100 tanks and you write off 20 as they break down and lose 5 in combat. You could translate that to 7 losses (5 from combat and 2 from having 20 tanks repaired for an average 10%) which would then need to be replaced which would also simulate the industrial strain of the production of spare parts.
the discussion about this has taken place before so im not going to go further into it.

i can however agree that it would be neat if a brigade doesnt fight with its full strenght as some of the tanks etc. would be written off before a battle as having broke down or otherwise unfit for battle.

That's a great question ... for the devs on how they would make "attrition" for things like tanks work for HOI IV.

All I'm saying is that, if attrition is included in HOI IV, that it would not make sense if during non-combat operations when a tank gets written off from attrition that you 100% lose the vehicle and have to build a new one to replace it. That seems a bit wasteful for all the resources you did strategically to queue up making the original unit in the first place. There should be somewhere in between like a maintenance & recovery queue for the model that would simulate several things together to limit the amount of playerbased micromanagement.
1) Write-offs and recoverable tanks - Whether combat attrition or outside combat, basic tank recovered from the field and sent to the factory for an overhaul whatever circumstance hits the vehicle
2) Upgrade (like Soviet Capital Rebuilding) - So that older models are recycled back to the factory and up-spec to the latest version or a version of your choosing as SUPCOM
3) Destroyed tanks - a % chance based on the vehicles Design where if its destroyed in combat that it can be recovered by luck. Kind of like a Saving Throw from 40K where better designs have better chance of surviving

These three would be combined into a uniformed "Maintenance & Recovery Queue" that would over the long term save you resources in material than building a fresh new tank right out of the gate. Something like that would be sufficient without over loading the player to every extreme case of a vehicle that farts it's tracks.

Of course, those that do not require to be sent back to the factory should be factored into the Divisional Supply Requirements. So, the tactical and Operational means to recover tanks on the field should obviously be done based on how much supply that Divisional Unit is getting. That remains to be explained as it is entirely dependent on the Logistics DD everybody has been asking for. So, I took the liberty to actually only discuss things being sent back to the factory and not things that can be field recovered without much ado.

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

Dude, everyone but you is talking about the entire service life of the vehicle. Of course there are no ten thousand mile road marches. Nobody was suggesting that tanks were driven in one go from Cape Town to Moscow. Besides, how are you claiming simultaneously that 5,000-10,000 miles is unreasonably short life for a WW2 tank (more fit for a WW1 tank) and in the same breath say "well, of course there were no single 10,000 mile road marches"?

I think you have mistaken identity here. You should ask someone else that brought up the figure, not I. I'm more focused on non-combat attrition and hoping you don't 100% lose the vehicle from non-combat things like road marching outside of combat after all ... .

What the heck does this have to do with the price of tea in China? You were claiming that basically all WW2 tanks regularly lasted significantly longer than 10,000 miles. I gave you several examples of common medium tanks that could not hope to get a third of that without replacing basically everything that could possibly wear out from driving. The Panther's awful design was just an extreme example.

I don't know, you wanted to quote how long things last on the Panther and cherry picked the final drive as if this would help your argument (whatever that argument was in terms of the OP [original post]). I figured you would agree but want to discuss something else as I guess it is not your cup of "tea". Overall, obviously field repairs will largely have to do with logistics and the forthcoming DD around that which would adequately answer your minutiae from the Panther numbers.

BTW, the overall intent and design of the Panther I wouldn't say was an extreme example of "awful". There are worse designed tanks and the Panther was rushed rather than being completely awful idea from the get-go.

Soviet tank gun production statistics from the government archives, June 41-Apr 45:
76mm F-34 mounted on T-34 and KV-1 = 34,355. T-34, 35,119. KV-1/1S, ~4,000 (actually ~4500, but one must subtract the very early models with L-11 and F-32 guns, plus the KV-8 flamethrower tanks).
85mm guns = 18,602. T-34-85 tanks, same period, 22,559. Plus 2050 SU-85 tank destroyers. And several hundred T-44s, KV-85s, and IS-85s.

There are three ways this is possible. One, thousands of Soviet AFVs went into battle unarmed. Two, the Soviet system was really spectacularly amazing at getting tank factories to lie about their production but inexplicably terrible at getting tank gun factories to do the same. Three, tank factories counted every finished tank leaving through the front gates as a produced tank. Which is what they did.

So how many T-34s were not truly "new tanks" based on your numbers? I figured you would have the answered instead of asking me 3 possible scenarios without substantiating the false numbers in factory reports. We have a choice of "thousands", a complete "lie" in the numbers (like they didn't exist), or a "calculation mismanagement" done by historians over several decades of WW2 research as I doubt the majority of folks here speak Russian or have the actual 1st hand reports on hand.

It is why I was asking you!

 

[Kovax]

Between Panther final drives and T-34 transmissions (both notoriously short-lived), as well as comparable weaknesses of many other tanks and pieces of equipment, there's a huge disparity between the number of pieces of equipment which belong to a division and the number which are available for combat at any given time. Reliability is a major concern in reality, and it would be great if the game could reflect that in ways better than the incidence of "critical hits" in combat.

I've heard one "statistic" cited that considerably more T-34s were knocked out of action by driving accidents and breakdowns than were caused by German gunfire. I think it's pretty clear that the Panther falls into that same category, mainly due to breakdowns, while the Tiger isn't much better.

Come to think of it, unit experience/training should also play a small part in the rate of breakdowns, as greener units will tend to misuse equipment, service it improperly, and be less able to repair it when things do go wrong.

 

[3ishop]

Just reading over some of the DDs and we do still get a trickle of combat xp even when at peace, this could be part of it as lose of equipment and reliability problems help develop new tricks and improvements. You also have to keep training up which would cost some equipment which could be classed as the recovered tanks.

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

Come to think of it, unit experience/training should also play a small part in the rate of breakdowns, as greener units will tend to misuse equipment, service it improperly, and be less able to repair it when things do go wrong.

I'm curious how that will factor into supplying the Division in the field as well. If less reliable tanks are fielded, will there be a MUCH larger logistical burden to maintain and operate those breakdown prone tanks?

Generally, I think there should be some effect, field logistics being the prime candidate, but there should be some sort of tradeoff to the player that might want to prioritize other things on the tank where having less reliability isn't too much of a handicap. So, say they have logistical wizards in the army and have very good supply, then potentially they can minimize and reduce the amount of handicaps less reliable tanks have if it means they can field more numerous and powerful tanks as an example. I don't believe it will translate as easy as that as we're talking about HOI here. It's not quite clear how much balance there is as the player an option to field less reliable tanks for some reason as we generally don't have a real solid idea how everything is going to fall into place and work either from a strategic standpoint from the factories or from a Operational standpoint on the field of battle.

 

[TheCrimsonMajor]

I like this idea, especially if the modifier for vehicles lost is adjusted upward for rough terrain (mountains, jungles, swamps) and weather (mud comes to mind). Also, I think such an effect should be amplified when retreating under such conditions. Many vehicles were lost on the Eastern Front when Germany was on the retreat, for example. Such an effect would simulate vehicles suffering a breakdown or getting stuck and having to be abandoned by their crew (and possibly scuttled to avoid them falling into enemy hands).

 

[Centurion1973]

Why do you guys waste so much time creating so complex systems that will never be put to work?

Just make attrition work on the equipment pool and Reliability stat affect attrition rate. Done. Forget fancy stuff like vehicle recovery. This isn´t na operational level game. The more numbers you put the more chance for bugs there are, too.

After battle vehicle recovery wasnt some minor thing - its effect was very significant on all battlefields.

Vehicle recovery should determine, how many lost tanks, artilery etc. each side gets when battle ends.