Hearts of Iron IV - 33rd Development Diary - Supply

[Denkt]

But then can't you stockpile equipment locally by having a dummy division that you disband when you need more equipment?

Well what I think is that the equipment will start at the province the division was disbanded in so if another division in the same province need equipment it will recive equipment that was used by the disbanded division. The rest of the equipment will slowly be transported back to the capital.

Yes, the only thing that is worrying are, imho, "panzer rushes". What if the enemy is not good at all stopping you? (you simply encircle enemy troops, fighting as few as possible). The germans spearheads during Barbarossa were always stopped due to lack of fuel. Winter came later (Guderian was stopped four days before the first snow came due to complete lack of fuel). What if the SU AI is bad enough so that it doesnt really scraps your panzer divisions much? In theory you could go all the way to Moscow non stop.

Equipment take attrition even if not fighting.

 

[mursolini]

Another interesting question is:
We know how much equipment were there for start of war and was produced. Wouldn`t the production figures look really, really different from real world ratios? Germany would have vastly higher number of "abstract tank+munition+oil boxes" that it had produced IRL, while let`s say USA may have much lower, as producing a single Sherman without fuel and ammo for a few years of fighting was much cheaper than if we measure it in "abstract tank+munition+oil boxes".

In the end, the feeling could be just as artificial as HOI3 abstract IC, albeit divided into 3 branches.

Equipment take attrition even if not fighting.

At what point of "equipment attrition" is your division supposed to fully stop? If you can take a 100% division and make a non-stop fight from Soviet border to Vladivostock, losing let`s say 90% of your equipment, technically it may look "realistic" from very high perspective. From tactical perspective it would be insane having armor being able to march huge, unrealistic distances without supply lines.

 

[Katarian]

I'm willing to wait and see how the no fuel in the game works out. HoI3 supply system and stockpiling sounded great before you started playing and was either irrelevant or a pain whilst playing the actual game.

It's nice to see one UK screenshot, but what is the "9 Divisions - Command group 2" written on the map on the border near the British motorised infantry?

 

[dizzle3]

Well what I think is that the equipment will start at the province the division was disbanded in so if another division in the same province need equipment it will recive equipment that was used by the disbanded division. The rest of the equipment will slowly be transported back to the capital.

So then there is a potential workaround for the whole supply system. You can just use divisions as equipment dumps and equipment carriers.

If you're having supply problems in an area, instead of using the supply system, send in a division which has the equipment that you need to that area and disband it.

 

[Vukodav]

Equipment take attrition even if not fighting.

And that is taken care of by attrition counter and reinforce option - not supply chain. Those are two vastly different things.

 

[tommylotto]

HOI4 have stockpiles in the form of equipment. Equipment themself represent both the thing on the picture as well as everything needed to support it.

I understand how it works and the abstractions used to rationalize the system. The problem is that it makes no effort to simulate the real situation and it is a poor abstraction of the situation too. Combining the manufacturing of equipment with the manufacturing of the supplies and fuel used to operate that piece of equipment throughout its entire lifespan is a poor decision, in my opinion.

 

[Heatth]

So then there is a potential workaround for the whole supply system. You can just use divisions as equipment dumps and equipment carriers.

If you're having supply problems in an area, instead of using the supply system, send in a division which has the equipment that you need to that area and disband it.

I don't think that is how it works, actually. From reading the DD, I don't get the impression that the equipment stockpile is actually anywhere in the map. Instead, the supply situation of the region is what determines how long it takes for the equipments to reach the division.

That is why your whole supply chain doesn't collapse when not connected to the capital. There is nothing actually stored there, unlike HOI3. Similarly, your own capital can be in a poor supply if it is cut off from everything else, as it will have to rely solely on the local supply.

 

[misterbean]

I understand how it works and the abstractions used to rationalize the system. The problem is that it makes no effort to simulate the real situation and it is a poor abstraction of the situation too. Combining the manufacturing of equipment with the manufacturing of the supplies and fuel used to operate that piece of equipment throughout its entire lifespan is a poor decision, in my opinion.

But after a fight, you will need equipment, which will take new fuel into account.

 

[fabius]

Mixed feelings on this

The positive:
Looks like land supply may play better. In a way we get the effects of low supply without having supply and fuel in the game.
After all this is what counts:

Being out of supply makes you lose organization, move slower, not fight as effectively and take a lot more attrition

Good highlights:
1. the easier to see and act supply overlay
2.

Research and attach Supply Companies to your division templates to help them manage.

3. Easier to see bottlenecks and take action compared to HoI3.

The disappointing
1. No supplies or fuel at all seems sub-optimal solution. Weird, and as others are pointing out not a good fit.
2. The land supply is old equipment stockpiled- weird, and over abstracting solution to the

hindsight problem

.
Maybe could have just limited stockpiles.
3. The system is so weirdly over abstracted that it seems that it does not fit air or navy.
So we will have a different system for land, air and sea. This is suboptimal, games aim for consistency in areas.

4. The game is said to have a greater focus on strategic choices of production. Where's the choice and demands to allocate industry to producing munitions and fuel during fighting that should be on top of replacing units.

Balance- will reserve judgement. I think the net effect will be better game play, but this system does not sound like the best that could have been.

 

[Kydax]

The "Tank" equipment as I said before also contains fuel, tanks need alot of oil to be produced so if you don't have access to oil you won't be producing many tanks which mean you will not have a replacement for the lost tank. The effect will be the same in the long term as if the game had fuel as a needed resource.

It sounds like caca

0/10

Mod edit

 

[Nicolas I]

Is there a way to prioritise certain units over other units, if there is shortage of equipment in the pool but I want units in certain area to get more than units in some other area (both with the same level of supply reaching them)? So I could strip two army groups of replacements, to have the main one remain strong (like Army Group Center in late 1941)?...

That's a big limitation of the new template system. Sadly, priority is set by templates, not by individual divisions.

So if I have 25 divisions under the same template, it will not be possible to prioritize 5 of them to keep them in better fighting condition, all 25 will suffer lack of supplies.

What will be possible as a workaround though is to make a new identical template (at no combat experience cost I think) with high priority and designate 5 divisions to operate under the new "supply priority" template. These 5 divisions will then have a higher priority. After the supply crisis is solved, you will have to designate these 5 divisions back to their old regular priority template.

I would have highly preferred to be able to set priority by division (corps armies) instead of by template to avoid all these contortions (create new templates, designate divisions to follow these templates) and workarounds...

 

[dizzle3]

I don't think that is how it works, actually. From reading the DD, I don't get the impression that the equipment stockpile is actually anywhere in the map. Instead, the supply situation of the region is what determines how long it takes for the equipments to reach the division.

That is why your whole supply chain doesn't collapse when not connected to the capital. There is nothing actually stored there, unlike HOI3. Similarly, your own capital can be in a poor supply if it is cut off from everything else, as it will have to rely solely on the local supply.

I'm talking about using dummy divisions as equipment stockpiles or to overcome bottlenecks to keep hard-to-supply areas supplied. Not about central stockpiles or capitals

 

[NeFuRii]

Fighting should make you lose fuel regardless of vehicle loses.
But vehicle loses during a fight shouldn't make you lose fuel.
If fuel is used for producing a unit and supplies it for its lifetime, it means that im losing a lifetime of fuel when a unit is destroyed.
Say, i've made a desperate attempt to move my panzer division on open ground in europe. It was a fresh division straight out of factory. But i had no air cover and it got decimated by enemy air attacks and finished of by enemy division. I just lost a ton of fuel there that went to produce them.
While in reality and in hoi 1-3, i would lose a ton of raw materials, but just a tiny bit of fuel used to move my unit during its short life span.

The nice thing about previous HOI installments was that fuel felt as a separate resource, it felt unique. I agree the stockpiling was not handled well and you had so much fuel you never really cared about it, but here it just becomes one more resource needed to build a unit. They could rename the resources from metal, fuel etc. into resource X, resource Y and nothing would change. Sure, maybe resource Y is harder to obtain than resource X, so it's still worth to get those middle east and Baku resource Y production plants, but, it's no longer fuel...

 

[D3m0]

But after a fight, you will need equipment, which will take new fuel into account.

And how much new equipment and thereby oil you use up in the process is more determined by how hard the fight was rather than how much distance your units traversed, which could led to wonky situations of steamrolling weak armies and moving huge distances contrasted by fighting a slugfest with a lot of material loss in which your units barely do strategic road movement and the later making you more reliant on oil than the former. I don't believe in attrition making up for it unless they purposely model attrition rates ahistorical, which would be more band-aiding for something that could have been more correctly modelled with fuel production.

 

[telesien]

Granted I haven't seen how it will behave in the game, but I do have a prediction.

Demand for fuel will be part of the first DLC tied patch.

I can't imagine this working well...

 

[Denkt]

Atleast you should give the new system a chance, it is much more important that the system work and is interesting something which was not the case with previous HOI. The developers have made a system they think is good for the game.

So, what is supply exactly?
In HOI3 supplies was something you produced and stockpiled, then fed into a flow network towards units. In HOI4 the only thing you can stockpile is equipment so this is what you do. Moving, training, fighting, being in bad weather or in particular in bad supply means equipment breaks down and this equipment needs to be shipped. The worse a supply situation is the longer it will take to send equipment and the more attrition you will take. So instead of a flow network we have a system being limited by bottlenecks.

So this means that the abstract "supply" of HOI3 is now instead requests for specific equipment instead which fits a lot better in with HOI4's equipment and production focus. This also means that there is no separate fuel need as such in the game, this instead is included in production of replacement equipment which need Oil (all tanks, trucks etc). Before everyone chokes on their friday beer give this some thought. Being able to stockpile fuel generally leads to the same problems as all other kinds of stockpiling when it comes to hindsight, so by wrapping it into the actual production of equipment requests to units (also nobody would request a tank without diesel to run it, and if they did it wouldn't really be usable as a tank) everything clicks into place and player doesn't have to micro manage all movement, airplane rebasing etc to try to avoid fuel waste and focus on making sure they have access to a strategic Oil resource and replacement equipment and a clear path for units to be supplied.

 

[Heatth]

I'm talking about using dummy divisions as equipment stockpiles or to overcome bottlenecks to keep hard-to-supply areas supplied. Not about central stockpiles or capitals

I know. But what I am saying is that, as soon as you disband your "dummy divisions", the equipment goes to the stockpile, which is located nowhere, meaning it won't reach the front lines any faster. The equipment don't actually travel through the map, like supply does in HOI3. If the region your divisions are have enough supply capacity to support them, then the equipment will reach in the regular speed, regardless of anything. If they are not, then the equipment will arrive slower (in addition to your division have penalties to organization attrition and etc).

 

[dizzle3]

I know. But what I am saying is that, as soon as you disband your "dummy divisions", the equipment goes to the stockpile, which is located nowhere, meaning it won't reach the front lines any faster. The equipment don't actually travel through the map, like supply does in HOI3. If the region your divisions are have enough supply capacity to support them, then the equipment will reach in the regular speed, regardless of anything. If they are not, then the equipment will arrive slower (in addition to your division have penalties to organization attrition and etc).

But then I can just disband encircled divisions?

 

[smurphy99999999]

I asked in another thread if AFVs or planes could be cannibalized. I am not sure if they can, but that should be a good addition to "fix" that problem. A country that hlods "the field" after a battle should be able to repair some equipment damaged, using "cannibalism" if needed.

They don't have explicit cannibalization but that is part of the attrition rate.

 

[RogalDorn]

Finally! This is 100% better than HOI3's super gamey and easy to exploit system. Very elegant actually, the worse you supply the worse the attrition, the worse the attrition the more replacement equipment is needed...which requires fuel and metal and all kinds of stuff. So essentially you can totally remove the need for fuel and ammo by making equipment attrition more realistic. As for the people who just want to drive tanks around in circles in friendly territory for years so they can feel like they are getting one over on the supply system I only have one question...why would that be fun?