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Hearts of Iron IV - 33rd Development Diary - Supply

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Thank you very much for the DD. I really appreciate.
Just one question in my mind:

Any big cities/victory points will increase it. So holding out in these is possible.
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Does that mean that number of Victory Point determines if it is a big city or not?
What about strategically important places with less population like Suez, Gibraltar, Iwo Jima, etc.. ? Either they don't get any Victory Points and so done give supply increase or they do get VPs and magically improve supply increase without having acutally high population values...

As far as I remember you mentioned in prevois DDs that you already have "population values on state level", haven't you? Wouldn't it be more useful to determine the size of cities by the pop. level and linking this one to supply increase instead of VPs which I recall more of a strategic value instead of an indicator of population?
 
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A strong point of the system is that not only is it far superior strategically, it is also less micro intensive. Pretty much a perfect solution which will both help gameplay as well as realism:)
 
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mursolini said:
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.


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.
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If you lose 90% of your equipment and aren't replacing it then you are going to take out of supply penalties as stated in the DD. Those would include org penalties, movement speed penalties, and probably attack/defense penalties too.
 
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dendro said:
Thank you very much for the DD. I really appreciate.
Just one question in my mind:



Does that mean that number of Victory Point determines if it is a big city or not?
What about strategically important places with less population like Suez, Gibraltar, Iwo Jima, etc.. ? Either they don't get any Victory Points and so done give supply increase or they do get VPs and magically improve supply increase without having acutally high population values...

As far as I remember you mentioned in prevois DDs that you already have "population values on state level", haven't you? Wouldn't it be more useful to determine the size of cities by the pop. level and linking this one to supply increase instead of VPs which I recall more of a strategic value instead of an indicator of population?
Click to expand...
What about supply in China?
 
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dendro said:
Does that mean that number of Victory Point determines if it is a big city or not?
What about strategically important places with less population like Suez, Gibraltar, Iwo Jima, etc.. ? Either they don't get any Victory Points and so done give supply increase or they do get VPs and magically improve supply increase without having acutally high population values...?
Click to expand...

Well, victory points are not the only thing that determines base supply. If you look the screenshots, you will notice the VP supply are actually very small in comparison. So, for example, Suez will have 1 supply since it is a VP, maybe representing the British stockpiling there since it is an important location, but the region will still have low base supply, meaning you will need supply routes anyway.

Alternatively, VP have been reworked to represent only population centers. So strategically important locations will be important solely for the strategic value, but conquering them won't actually make the enemy to surrender faster.
 
[QUOTE="podcat, post: 20211677, member: 80904"Units need more when fighting for example.[/QUOTE]

Ok, that is really good to hear.
But how much will divisions stockpile locally? Will I be able to halt an offensive due to supply issues, build up a stockpile now that the non-fighting units have a lower draw, and resume the offensive when stockpiles are filled?
 
Denkt said:
Podcat explains well why the new supply system is better then the old one...
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I don't want a system deemed "better" only because the previous was worse. It was not difficult to make something better, and it seems really better in many ways. What I want is a good system.

The lack of supplies and fuel (abstracted inside equipments) is in my eyes a major weakness of this new supply system.

I really don't understand that given the importance attached to equipment in HOI4 as major feature of the game they overlooked the supplies and fuel needed by all these equipments ?

Why don't make supplies and fuel as "equipments" and distribute them with the new supply system ? They can even have added a critical choice for players when there are bottlenecks, prioritize fuel, supplies or equipment replacements ?
 
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Strange have to think about this, I understand why air supply is still WIP though as you tend not to see anyone flying in tanks to resupply an encircled PZ Division.:)
 
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As long as the oil costs are balanced this should work well in most situations. But because its basically trying to average fuel/ammo usage and roll it into the costs there will be extreme situations where this does not model things well. So far it seems their tendency for HOI4 has been to mostly focus on the normal situations and slightly abnormal and chalk the extreme situations as rare events that don't need to be fully modeled. Might work well gameplay wise might not. Guess we'll see.
 
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Dammit Paradox.
Instead of Hearts of Iron IV, we seem to be getting EU4,5- The World War Two Multiplayer simulator.

The complex supply networks of HOI3 were one of the best aspects of that game. Yes, it could have been handled better but the system now taking place seems just so out of place in the HoI series.

As someone said, the predictions are out; they will eventually release some expansion that brings back the fuel and supply flows with some actual "Fuel DLC".
 
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podcat said:
  • Incoming supplies from neighbor area. We trace back to capital, or if capital is cut off the next best area. The supply you get is limited by the lowest infrastructure on your route (also possibly sabotaged by resistance), including your own infrastructure level. So for a player what you need to care about is what the bottleneck is, because that is what is going to affect how troops on the front fare. There is also some guaranteed spillover from neighbors to soften the transitions between bad and good areas (simulating that even if decent railway lines stop at a point it's feasible to transport some distance with trucks or horses etc).
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I'm not clear whether this means that you use throughput like in HoI3. I.e. whether the amount supplies that can be delivered to an area is limited by the how much is siphoned off on the way by units in supply areas further upstream.
E.g. units near Stalingrad wont get any supplies, because units in the Ukraine and Poland are eating all the supplies being sent East from Berlin.
 
Shiftey said:
Most of the changes are awesome and appreciated, but I can't get over the lack of fuel and ammo? in supply lines. It makes no sense and even will cause problems especially in the Pacific, where historically cutting off Japan's oil supply lines and starving its navy was the major factor in US victory. Fuel (and ammo?) missing from supply really defeats the purpose of having any sypply system at all.
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If I can choose between a simple, working abstracted system and a broken, complex opaque system I know which I will choose.
 
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There is a lot to be said in favor of the new design, but I do think it falls down as a good WWII simulation as it impacts fuel.

Aside from the naval concerns (which are significant I feel), think about tanks. Lack of fuel means they cannot run. Being idle does not, in and of itself, damage a tank. A Panzer division with 120 tanks and out of fuel that later gets fuel would still have 120 tanks that would now be operational. The new system says that I need new (lifetime fueled??) tanks (fusion power perhaps, Shipstones?, not sure) whenever I have too little supply (fuel). This does not make sense. The idea that if I had fuel, but somehow had no other supplies, like spare parts, lubricants, etc., that my tanks would actually break down is reasonable, but this method is too abstract.

Many of the features of HOI4 seem so advanced, immersive, innovative, and fun. Then along comes a supply diary and it gets seriously degraded.

Why not have a Supply system and a Fuel system? Both working the same way, but independent of each other. Fuel was at least as large a concern to all the armies as other supplies, but not the same. Patton ran his tanks until they ran out of fuel, not until they ran out of Spam.
 
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My biggest disappointment is the lack of fuel in stockpiling. :( Germany was stockpiling it before the war, in one documentary ('The Prize' on oil in the 20th century) Germany captured a year of they oil/fuel needs from France.

Also stockpiles of ammo & food for military needs seem to be more than just replacement of lost/damaged equipment.

From a modding point of view I checked & used supply as a cost to simulate production of something added by an event. I will need to find another way to do it.
 
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