Why is my hub providing so much less supply than the UI says it can?

[kookypoopy]

Despite the UI telling me Varna receives 20 supply from the capital my units are only receiving about 5 total. Is there something I am missing here? I made sure there were no other troops in range of the supply hub.

Also earlier on when I had my troops spread out in the salient (no screenshot but you can see where it was on the others) they were only receiving about 1 supply total (across all units) from the supply hub. What actually determines how much supply they get from any given hub?

screenshots below

 

[kookypoopy]

I managed to replicate this in a few other places. Each time the hub was only providing about a quarter of the supply it needed to despite having more "capacity".

What is strange is that on the hub UI it says that the supply demanded is much lower than what the divisions actually need.

 

[Mister Analyst]

@kookypoopy

Welcome to the HOI4 forum.

You may want to have a look at the HOI4 wiki page regarding supply. It has a thorough explanation of how supply works. Hope that helps to answer your question.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Your basic issue is that supply is regulated by two different limits. There is a limit to the capacity of a hub which restricts how much supply can be delivered from it to units in the surrounding area - this is the limit you have been looking at - and there is a limit to how much supply can be delivered to a single province which will be what is causing your limited supply delivery. If you spread your divisions out then they will receive more supply. This is a common issue as in earlier versions of HOI4 there was no individual province limit so leaving large stacks of divisions all together wasn't an issue. Now you need to spread out to avoid supply issues.

 

[amalric de g.]

Your first screenshot shows that you have a rail bottleneck between Anzio and Naples, due to rail level 1. So build up your rail line, that should help with the supply.

What totally baffles me, is that in the first screenshot, the Divisions need 5.9 supply and in another screenshot 16.9.

 

[kookypoopy]

Your basic issue is that supply is regulated by two different limits. There is a limit to the capacity of a hub which restricts how much supply can be delivered from it to units in the surrounding area - this is the limit you have been looking at - and there is a limit to how much supply can be delivered to a single province which will be what is causing your limited supply delivery. If you spread your divisions out then they will receive more supply. This is a common issue as in earlier versions of HOI4 there was no individual province limit so leaving large stacks of divisions all together wasn't an issue. Now you need to spread out to avoid supply issues.

Thanks for the reply. The issue remained even with spread out units (sorry if the screenshot was misleading, I was basically messing about trying to figure out what was causing my division in the screenshot below to only receive 0.03 supplies). When I tried recreating the problem next to a random province in France the units took all the supplies they needed so now I am really confused.

My only guess is that because it is at the mouth of the salient all the supply going to the salient has to pass through it so it only receives a little due to the province limit. Still seems ridiculously low though.

 

[kookypoopy]

Your first screenshot shows that you have a rail bottleneck between Anzio and Naples, due to rail level 1. So build up your rail line, that should help with the supply.

What totally baffles me, is that in the first screenshot, the Divisions need 5.9 supply and in another screenshot 16.9.

from what kanitatlan said I am guessing it's because the province can only take 5.9 supply so hub is only demanding as much as it can give out

 

[Kanitatlan]

Thanks for the reply. The issue remained even with spread out units (sorry if the screenshot was misleading, I was basically messing about trying to figure out what was causing my division in the screenshot below to only receive 0.03 supplies). When I tried recreating the problem next to a random province in France the units took all the supplies they needed so now I am really confused.

My only guess is that because it is at the mouth of the salient all the supply going to the salient has to pass through it so it only receives a little due to the province limit. Still seems ridiculously low though.

I can't see why you are having the issues you are having based on the screenshots provided. I have to say that I have spent a lot of time browsing around my supply structure to get an understanding of all the nuances and why it does what it does. I have yet to see a situation in my games that couldn't be explained so I don't think there is a fault. If you upload a save game then we might be able to work it out. The main think is that the draw from the hub is below capacity so hub capability isn't the issue. If I was checking your game I would look for anything which is interfering with supplies getting to the hub and then check all the tooltips for the provinces.

Note that those friendly German divisions are out of supply because you are blocking supply from your hub.

 

[kookypoopy]

Looked around a bit and so far as I can tell there is nothing that would affect the supplies getting to the hub. What is weird however is if I hover over the provinces they usually have what should be enough supply remaining even though they are red on the map mode.

Attached the save file in case you are interested/don't mind (I was playing with expert AI which doesn't change anything to do with supply as far as I know)

 

[pro.gamer.69]

I have yet to see a situation in my games that couldn't be explained so I don't think there is a fault.

i've seen (in MP games, admittedly, I rarely play SP) supply hubs that produced 0 supply despite the rails to them and the hub having been captured months before and the hub's UI indicating it should be fully operational. there are definitely some glitches still

 

[Kanitatlan]

Having loaded the save, I would say that this is your main problem

Your supply route is as follows

• Rail - Rome - Anzio - Taranto
• Sea Taranto - Athens - being intercepted
• Rail - Athens - Thessaloniki
• Sea - Thessaloniki - black sea ports

Your convoys in the central Mediterranean are being intercepted. This will cause reduced delivery of supplies. Unfortunately there isn't a way of asking the game to run extra convoys to compensate for the ones that aren't getting through. Probably the only way to reliably fix your supply problems is to improve the rail infrastructure for a land route to Thessaloniki or Varna and block the Central Med (make it a no go sea zone). Currently your land based supply route would only generate 15 supply so if you block it straight off you may some reduced supply. However, looking at the level of forces deployed this might be a sensible step.

Fully land based route is still not entirely land based

• Rail Rome - Latium
• Sea Latium - Genoa
• Rail Genoa - Klagenfurt
• River Klagenfurt - Nis
• Rail - onwards

Unfortunately lots of rails to improve to create a decent land based supply net.

Note that, immediately after loading the save the supply situation looks fairly OK because nothing really nasty is happening to your convoys - yet.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Having poked around a bit more I do have some other suggestion unrelated to your question. You've currently have 258K manpower on occupation duty and have taken 27K manpower losses (occupied territories display, garrison log button). This is something that is often forgotten about and will over time have a massive impact on your manpower. I would suggest a couple of things, firstly forbid your garrison division from using current model infantry equipment as they are equally effective with old equipment. Second is that you can supplement that garrison cavalry with scrap value light tanks - IW light tank, MG, 1 man turret, bogie suspension, 0 engine, 0 armour, gasoline engine - cost 2.4, switching to diesel would make it more reliable but why waste the army XP. You can go cheaper by going wheeled suspension but one of the advantages of adding these to your cavalry is the 80% hardness level which massively reduces the casualties you take (attacks on garrisons are all soft attack). One factory making these can build up numbers surprisingly quickly. If you don't do something about those garrisons the losses will drain your manpower completely.

Your current light tank stockpile is all perfectly valid as garrison fodder and not much use for anything else.

Currently resistance in Paris is 24% and rising and is going to end up over 60%. Resistance in Yugoslavia is still below its final stable level. Your garrison losses are going to rise substantially and this needs addressing as it will cripple your

A few other random comments

• Since you are likely to be short of oil I would recommend using Gasoline engine on your tanks as it will give reduced fuel consumption for the same speed
• If you build your AA tank much more expensive with the highest armour you can get for the speed this will make your armoured divisions have a better armour level (division armour is 30% x best plus 70% average)
• Modifying your AA and flame tanks will give you a model with the FIAT bonus
• It is worth improving the firepower on flame tanks as the penalties exactly match the reduced vehicle count in the company so an extra MG on a flame tank is cost effective as on any other tank
• Tank reliability is a lot less important than you think especially for any vehicle that appears in a division in very low numbers
• In SP an awful lot of players go for howitzer on tanks instead of cannon to up the SA, you can even build tanks with close support gun to save on resources.
• In one of the attacks you have in progress your armour is being penetrated because your divisions are under strength. This is something to be aware of, when your division loses tanks its armour level decreases so you need a bit of a margin on total armour level to maintain the armour effect
• I would definitely add support artillery to your armoured divisions and set them to elite status so they preferentially get reinforcements and the latest equipment. I, personally, would also add another motorised infantry battalion to increase hit points and reduce losses - I would add another one once you have Fiat 2800 (mechanised 1) as it doubles the motorised hardness and allows further mot infantry whilst keeping hardness over 50%.

 

[Andrew0Red]

I'll expand a little on parts of Kanitatlan's post.

Armour and piercing
In a typical 5+5 or 10+10 tank division, the best sub-unit (whether support or line) provides ca. 1/3rd of it's armour to the division, the rest of the tanks add 1/3rd of their average and the infantry add 1/3rd of their armour, if they have any. Piercing works roughly the same, except the best sub-unit matters a bit more. So if you include one super-armoured and/or super-piercing unit...

Reliability
Reliability affects losses to attrition and how much damaged material you get back after combat. For the purpose of attrition, any reliability including maintenance company beyond these values does nothing:

• Flame tanks: 33%
• Light tanks for armoured recon: 58%
• SP AA, single battalion: 72%
• Medium tanks/TDs, single battalion: 80%
• Medium tanks, 5 battalions: 96%
• Medium tanks, 10 battalions: 98%

Do note that reliability affects more than attrition, so don't dump it completely! (Maybe aim for at least 75%?)

Boosting flame-tanks and armoured recon
I'm personally not sold on the cost-efficiency of adding extra MGs or even turrets to tanks at all, so I wouldn't add them to flame-tanks or reconnoiseurs either. But I haven't crunched the numbers, so take my advice at your own risk.

Howitzers and close support guns
In SP, you will [virtually] never encounter hard divisions, only softs and mediums, so you only need soft attack and (average of soft and hard attack). This is what makes howitzers a good choice.
The close support gun, however, costs quite a bit but barely delivers more than the much cheaper automatic cannon. If you're massing tanks, you may have to mass support guns, but if you also have line artillery in your divisions, it's probably best to use automatics until you get the real howitzers.

Support artillery
If the division is expected to fight at all and you have the empty slots, add support artillery and support rocket artillery. Tank divisions may use so much other stuff that you have no room, depending on personal preferences, but if you have the empty slot, add it!