Hearts of Iron IV - 33rd Development Diary - Supply

[Axe99]

The idea is to come up with an abstraction that comes to the same result over the course of some years -- not to precisely simulate Panther Ausf A #274's birth, life, and death.

It's not going to be perfect - but since we already gave up simulating oil and food levels from day to day, we need to come up with a mechanism for which the limit of all the oil usage over the course of the game is the same, integrated over time. I understand it has flaws. With apologies to Churchill, you might say that this is the worst possible supply system, except for all the rest that HoI has already tried and discarded.


Since you already assume that the factory needs and the oil needs would exist during the tank's lifetime.. what's the difference if the oil needs are subtracted at the beginning or over the course of the tank's life? Summing over all tanks/planes/ships and integrating over 39-45, the outcome is the same. One benefit is that there's much fewer calculations needed by the engine -- because the numerous day-to-day calculations weren't adding to playability.
Per day now, I'm only paying for new construction.. whereas before I was paying for the day-to-day use of tanks 1-10, planes 1-30, ships 1-40, and other units 1-50.. each of which modifies daily..

That's the thing though, this isn't an abstraction. An abstraction comes up with a mechanism that provides the same results (or close enough) at the macro level, but at the micro level leaves out the details. This system, mathematically, cannot do this. There have been numerous posts detailing this, and I'm a bit buggered post-Christmas to go into it all again. It's a reasonable gameplay decisions, but it is not an abstraction, and it will (has to, mathematically) encourage situations that could not and did not occur historically because the historical actors were faced with different pressures, even at the macro level, than

As for the Churchill quote, it's far from clear this is the case (for a start, there's a whole bunch of equipment needs the game will be calculating daily - so it's already calculating daily needs for a bunch of goods - it's unlikely that fuel is going to be a huge extra burden given there's a mechanism in place). Again, it's the team's call, and from a purely 'let's have fun, it's a game, we don't want people to have to worry too much about logistics' the decision is absolutely defendable, and I'm not saying HoI4 won't be a great game or won't be a lot of fun, but this particular decision will also mean it won't be as historically plausible.

 

[dav77-b]

1) In HoI4 oil will play a bigger role than In HoI3
2) The system is transparent and easy to understand.

--> HoI4 has in every aspect a better supply system than HoI3.

Iam happy that this new system will come. Ofc it could be better. But cyring about "what if" is stupid.

 

[Caesar15]

HoI4 has in every aspect a better supply system than HoI3.

Ships don't actively use oil but they do in hoi3. How can this be better?

 

[Joppos]

HoI4 has in every aspect a better supply system than HoI3.

The way armies and air forces are affected by a nationwide lack of oil is by reduced equipment reinforcement rates. How is this better?

 

[Denkt]

Becuase the supply system in previous HOI did not have much effects on the game. Generic supplies is a ridiculous concept.

All suggestions I have seen have been just to reduce the amount of possible strategies while adding absolute nothing of value.

 

[Joppos]

Becuase the supply system in previous HOI did not have much effects on the game. Generic supplies is a ridiculous concept.

All suggestions I have seen have been just to reduce the amount of possible strategies while adding absolute nothing of value.

Please do elaborate as to both how the current system adds possible strategies, as well as how generic supplies forcibly tied with equipment is somehow not at least as ridiculous as generic supplies by themselves.

The degree to which a country is affected by an oil shortage is now completely circumstantial. It might or might not matter for a nation with a fierce army airforce or navy if the enemy completely cuts off their oil access via embargo, blockade or land invasion and so on, since the vehicles and ships already got their fuel at construction. This army, airforce or navy can be superior enough that losses and attrition simply are minimal and acceptable, perhaps even fully replaceable even with limited construction efficiency. This unequivocally removes strategic possibilities. For example; Trying to starve japan as the UK via various diplomatic and military strategies, yet fighting a completely fueled and mobile navy regardless of what you've accomplished. Their oil scarcity only starts to matter if you manage to inflict large enough losses on them, something that is far from given.

Simply having divisions, planes and ships require fuel continuously as a separate entity in some form, however abstracted, would allow the player to; target both the enemy's mobility and combat effectiveness in a direct manner for all theatres; make production strategies for future situations regardless of current oil supply; push oil supply via diplomacy or land invasion to be able to regain mobility and combat effectiveness for divisions, planes and ships without having to first spend months rebuilding them.

 

[Axe99]

Becuase the supply system in previous HOI did not have much effects on the game. Generic supplies is a ridiculous concept.

All suggestions I have seen have been just to reduce the amount of possible strategies while adding absolute nothing of value.

Normally you're quite fair in your comments, but this is a tad unfair, my understanding is that most armies standardise ration packs and ammunition, as well as a range of medical supplies, across units, so it's far from a ridiculous concept. There's also often quite a difference in the rate of use of 'generic' supplies vs the rate of attrition of equipment (most particularly when a unit is in a rested state - they keep eating food and using a little ammunition in training, but the rate of equipment attrition would be far less than in combat or even movement). Having supplies required for units in the game means there's an industrial cap on how many you can support. Only having attrition for movement and fighting means that, conceptually, countries could support infinitely large armies from an industrial point of view. Even EU, which has the most simplified model of warfare of any of the main PDS games, requires units consume something for maintenance. In other words, removing 'generic supply use' from HoI4 makes the model of army management in HoI4, on one (albeit small) level, worse than that in PDS' most simple model of army management to date.

 

[Wilbry]

It is just plain incorrect to say you can field an unlimited size army from an industrial standpoint.
You are assuming an unspecified number of factories over an unspecified amount of time - both parameters of which are practically limited in game.
A "OPM" like nation will not have more than 20 factories in its 1 state.
It will have limited manpower to fill the divisions.
And it will a maximum of 10 years to max out its army.
How many rifles, trucks, and artillery do you think this country can produce in that time?
And how many divisions can it fill with manpower before reaching its limit?

Johan's UK took 18 months of full production to refit 28 divisions with trucks.
How many states does the UK have?
Try building 28 full divisions from scratch as Bulgaria and then complain.

The point is, supply unit generation is moot, there are already (soft) force limits in place.
Better to focus on logistics through-put where decisions such as division frontage can mean something.

 

[Axe99]

It is just plain incorrect to say you can field an unlimited size army from an industrial standpoint.
You are assuming an unspecified number of factories over an unspecified amount of time - both parameters of which are practically limited in game.
A "OPM" like nation will not have more than 20 factories in its 1 state.
It will have limited manpower to fill the divisions.
And it will a maximum of 10 years to max out its army.
How many rifles, trucks, and artillery do you think this country can produce in that time?
And how many divisions can it fill with manpower before reaching its limit?

Johan's UK took 18 months of full production to refit 28 divisions with trucks.
How many states does the UK have?
Try building 28 full divisions from scratch as Bulgaria and then complain.

The point is, supply unit generation is moot, there are already (soft) force limits in place.
Better to focus on logistics through-put where decisions such as division frontage can mean something.

That's why I said 'conceptually'. If you mod HoI3 to have an endpoint in the 1960s, say, your supply cost will limit the size of your army. In HoI4, though, everyone's army will keep growing (at a slightly expanding rate, assuming some industry growth) in peacetime as long as the game continues. Conceptually, if the game went for an infinite period of time, even if the countries stayed at a finite size, they could have armies that were infinitely large. Of course, there are other mechanics in place, but those mechanics are not enough to change the way this mechanic operates over the course of the game. They're just enough to hopefully keep the distortion small enough so that most people won't notice.

It costs resources (and no small amount of them - defence budgets of nations just to maintain forces at current levels are amongst Government's largest expenditure items) to maintain a military force, even in peacetime. In HoI4, however, unless they're on exercise, they're free.

The design of this mechanic will mean that the rate of military prodction in HoI4 over time will be significantly different to that in HoI2 or 3 (and probably 1) because of it. In both, supplies were a larger and larger proportion of IC as your militaries got larger, so the rate of military growth relative to industrial base declined. The proportion of IC spent on supplies by my late game Germany that had conquered all of Europe and the UK wasn't small. In HoI4, there won't be any cost at all - I'll be able to spend all of my military factories building new gear, while my rather sizeable military live off the same fairy dust that the ships run on. In other words, gameplay and balance will be changed, in an historically implausible fashion.

As I've said, I have no issue with the devs going "it's good enough, most people won't notice", and it's a reasonable enough game design decision to make (it's a game, and not everyone goes for historical plausibilty). However, it's also reasonable (particularly in a dev diary discussing the issue) to mention the distortions such a system will introduce).

 

[Wilbry]

How do you get around the manpower cap for your unlimited divisons?

 

[Joppos]

How do you get around the manpower cap for your unlimited divisons?

Going towards infinity is a thought exercise to see what happens when scaling a system upwards, not literally ever having unlimited divisions. In this case i recon one of the points is that for example manpower is a very arbitrary and nonsensical value to limit supply capacity by. In the long run a nation with low industry and high manpower will have the same supply limit as a nation with high industry and high manpower. It's a discrepancy that does not sit well.

 

[dav77-b]

The way armies and air forces are affected by a nationwide lack of oil is by reduced equipment reinforcement rates. How is this better?

Better than in HoI3 where fuel did not matter at all.

 

[Joppos]

Better than in HoI3 where fuel did not matter at all.

"Better than hoi3" is not a good argument for anything. We're not opinion wise choosing between what hoi4 already got and what hoi3 had, we're talking about what concepts hoi4 could or should have on their own merits. A big flaw in hoi3 was the distribution system and the stockpile. The stockpile was way too large and the distribution system was always redundant, irrational, redundant and troublesome. Very, very few people want that system back and it's simply not near the focus of discussion.

But fuel mattered. (The quite humorous fact that hoi3's troublesome distribution system led to fuel shortages that made no sense is beside the point, as no one here is talking about reintroducing hoi3's system. But fuel absolutely mattered)

If you ran out of fuel it affected your units in a very short time because they needed fuel input to be combat effective. This makes a whole lot of sense and is kind of essential to a ww2 type game. Not in any way because "hoi3 had it", but because it was a main concern and a very real dynamic in the war.

You want to be able to embargo a nation to diminish their ability to wage war in the short term. You want to be able to lack oil without losing all your equipment. You want to be able to gain access to oil and get combat effective without having to rebuild all your equipment and planes.

 

[Wilbry]

Going towards infinity is a thought exercise to see what happens when scaling a system upwards, not literally ever having unlimited divisions.

You are taking a piece of a system out of context and then complaining it doesnt make sense. You are not scaling the system as a whole because the system includes other game concepts such as manpower, attrition, and game play focus (meaningful decisions).

In this case i recon one of the points is that for example manpower is a very arbitrary and nonsensical value to limit supply capacity by. In the long run a nation with low industry and high manpower will have the same supply limit as a nation with high industry and high manpower. It's a discrepancy that does not sit well.

Manpower doesnt limit supply. It limits force pool. In your example both nations have the same number of max forces but the nation with high industry can cap-out faster. What is wrong with that? The high industry nation can field more mechanisation and better recover losses. But they both still can only field as many divisions as they have manpower. There is no problem there. How does putting supply production into that mix change any of those outcomes?

The entire point of the new supply system is that supply production doesnt do anything. What is important is how you handle getting supply to the troops, not what percentage of your industry is paying for it - which as they have said, was never a meaningfull decision, you always made sure you had enough supply generated so what is the point in giving you a decision to NOT make enough supplies?

What people seem to be craving is the option to over produce themselves into supply debt, by having more divisions than they can feed and then imploding into a death spiral of full strength divisions at zero org....how is that fun, or even something that ever happened in game or out?

 

[dav77-b]

"Better than hoi3" is not a good argument for anything. We're not opinion wise choosing between what hoi4 already got and what hoi3 had, we're talking about what concepts hoi4 could or should have on their own merits. A big flaw in hoi3 was the distribution system and the stockpile. The stockpile was way too large and the distribution system was always redundant, irrational, redundant and troublesome. Very, very few people want that system back and it's simply not near the focus of discussion.

But fuel mattered. (The quite humorous fact that hoi3's troublesome distribution system led to fuel shortages that made no sense is beside the point, as no one here is talking about reintroducing hoi3's system. But fuel absolutely mattered)

If you ran out of fuel it affected your units in a very short time because they needed fuel input to be combat effective. This makes a whole lot of sense and is kind of essential to a ww2 type game. Not in any way because "hoi3 had it", but because it was a main concern and a very real dynamic in the war.

You want to be able to embargo a nation to diminish their ability to wage war in the short term. You want to be able to lack oil without losing all your equipment. You want to be able to gain access to oil and get combat effective without having to rebuild all your equipment and planes.

To quote you: "A big flaw in hoi3 (...) was (...) that (....) fuel mattered (...) not"

As you see, I adaped your style of reading, quoting and argueing.

 

[Axe99]

Manpower doesnt limit supply. It limits force pool. In your example both nations have the same number of max forces but the nation with high industry can cap-out faster. What is wrong with that? The high industry nation can field more mechanisation and better recover losses. But they both still can only field as many divisions as they have manpower. There is no problem there. How does putting supply production into that mix change any of those outcomes?

Exactly - given enough years to max out, both a high industry and low industry nation would be able to field the same size of force with the same force composition. This example should be enough to highlight the flaw in the system. Take a faction in China that has the population of Belgium in a historically plausible situation. There's no way known they would be able to raise and maintain a force as well equipped as the belgian one, regardless of time, as they would max out far lower because they wouldn't be able to maintain the upkeep requirements of the Belgian force. Not so in HoI4, where given time the faction in China can build up just as much, because manpower is the only hard cap.

The entire point of the new supply system is that supply production doesnt do anything. What is important is how you handle getting supply to the troops, not what percentage of your industry is paying for it - which as they have said, was never a meaningfull decision, you always made sure you had enough supply generated so what is the point in giving you a decision to NOT make enough supplies?

Actually, deciding on how to manage your available industry and manpower at the strategic level is a huge decision. Do I go with a supply-heavy, low manpower army, or do I go with a low-supply, high manpower composition? In HoI4, there is no supply, so one element from that choice has been removed, simplifying the strategic game. Now, I have no issue with people wanting this, or the designers designing it, but not recognising that this is a reduction in strategic depth I think is missing something.

What people seem to be craving is the option to over produce themselves into supply debt, by having more divisions than they can feed and then imploding into a death spiral of full strength divisions at zero org....how is that fun, or even something that ever happened in game or out?

I can't speak for others, but I want to have a historically plausible military management system in a game that is about warfare at a strategic level. Not having upkeep for those units, in some form (if we don't like producing supplies, maybe increase attrition by the ratio of the size of the army to the industrial base, to stimulate supply needs that way?) is as historically plausible as flying battleships (it's just a bit more subtle). Again, it's a game, and some of the more subtle strategic issues will be things players that are more interested in bashing through Europe with armoured divisions won't care for, and that's fine. However, it's also reasonable that those of us looking for a more strategic WW2 game want more strategic elements in it.

Edit: Sorry if I sound short, still recovering from Christmas, and brain's a bit knackered. I guess the point I'm making is that I have no issue with HoI4 taking the path it has - it's PDS' game and they should make the game they want - but it frustrates me a bit to see people say that the choice they've made has no strategic impact, when it does. It is a choice between depth and accessibility, and it's not a bad thing to choose accessibility, but recognising this will help with the discussion (for example, then we can think about how to add the depth back in, in a way that's accessible enough for the broader HoI playing community to enjoy ).

 

[Wilbry]

Actually, deciding on how to manage your available industry and manpower at the strategic level is a huge decision. Do I go with a supply-heavy, low manpower army, or do I go with a low-supply, high manpower composition? In HoI4, there is no supply, so one element from that choice has been removed, simplifying the strategic game. Now, I have no issue with people wanting this, or the designers designing it, but not recognising that this is a reduction in strategic depth I think is missing something.

There is supply. The choice to go with a supply heavy, low manpower army or the opposite, is still a choice. Heavy supply units will clog up the supply system just as you want them too. The choice isnt removed.
Allocating more supply "tax" has been tansformed into units requiring more actual upkeep in terms of materiel (trucks, tanks, etc).
If you want to build an OOB which requires a lot of factories just to maintain, you can.

The whole concept of trying the break the game by running an argument involving unlimited time and unlimited peace is pointless if you want a wargame spanning 10 years, mostly at war. You are arguing that if the game wasnt about world war two but was a multi-generational geo-political sim, it would suck. Well, it also sucks as a game of Risk (tm).

You keep missing the point. Supply tax did not add anything to the game in terms of choice. If you wanted a supply heavy army it didnt really impact on your army production because by the time you had enough army to cause a large supply tax, you were low on manpower so you were not producing as much army anymore - so the choice between more supplies or more units was an illusion.

In HOI IV if you have a large army it requires a larger portion of factory output just to move it around. This is essentially the same as costing supplies and you still have to worry about being in supply.

The problem is entirely hypothetical and that means it isnt a problem at all, because it doesnt exist in the game. There will be no point in the game where you can have unlimited time to build an army that stands around doing nothing for eternity. So its pointless to model a system that can represent that.

I can't speak for others, but I want to have a historically plausible military management system in a game that is about warfare at a strategic level. Not having upkeep for those units, in some form (if we don't like producing supplies, maybe increase attrition by the ratio of the size of the army to the industrial base, to stimulate supply needs that way?) is as historically plausible as flying battleships (it's just a bit more subtle).

Do you know if there is attrition for units who are on the map who are not doing anything? There may be a minimum attrition level in place. I dont think they have said anything either way on this, and certainly, there is time before it is released to address it if they havent already.

 

[Joppos]

To quote you: "A big flaw in hoi3 (...) was (...) that (....) fuel mattered (...) not"

As you see, I adaped your style of reading, quoting and argueing.

I'm confused as to what you're trying to say here. Are you implying that i somehow quoted "Better than in HoI3 where fuel did not matter at all." out of context or didn't address what was quoted? It surely can't be because i missed to type out "in" in the sentence just beneath the actual quote which i included, as the reply is very much still in regards to your direct quote.

I replied to your comment stating that; 1) Something being better than in hoi3 can still be bad. Arguing for or against a system should be done on its own merits, 2) I myself did not like the hoi3 system, 3) Fuel input did matter for units, not least due to troublesome distribution system, 4) There are several examples of where this issue would matter for strategic gameplay in hoi4.

 

[inteljoe]

There is a main point we are all missing to hit here.

The HoI series is a game, it's intended to be entertaining. The FACT that HoI is in it's 4th iteration (many more if you count expansion packs and such). I found that HoI has in times before focused on becoming a "realistic" or at least offering a level of immersion that felt as if you [the player] to feel as if the leader of countries could change the course of history. But there are some aspects of creating a game that are intended to be fun or add immersion that through time complicate things or create instability through one avenue or another whether it be intentional or unintentional.

The supplies simulation was intended to bring a level of immersion but "I feel" all it did was over complicate things. Making the player responsible, in part, for making sure individual units and armies were supplied just added mayhem to all the other things that need to be done. Again, "I feel" that the developers decided to take a higher road to the way supplies work this way around. Basically the assumption is that if a unit needs to be supplied, it is. This makes sense to me, I mean when it comes down to it if you are worried about supplies something has gone wrong.

But the developers haven't removed it entirely. Instead they refocused the need each unit needs in order to be produced. Instead of IC we have factories. Instead of having the need to obtain raw materials in order to convert into resources (fuel for example) and supplies that is taken into producing the equipment. Instead having the necessary equipment is now more or less your supply need. From the WWW's and Dev Blog's it has become obvious that in order to build a fighting army you will need to focus on research, construction and experience in order to out pace your opponent.

Additionally I would imagine that by not allowing "supply" as it were in previous HoI games it allows for less computational time of the game engine, meaning that the game becomes more efficient or that they can add additional features due to more processing or memory power being available.

My 2 cents.

 

[Joppos]

@Wilbry,

I was merely trying to answer your question by interpreting the other poster's thought exercise. Apart from the glaring shortcomings of not properly representing fuel, i have no real issue with my current understanding of the supply system. I'd personally want the vehicles to be as much only vehicles as possible not least to get representative production numbers and attrition rates, but incorporating ammo and general supplies into combat equipment seems fine.