All good, and you're quite right - sorry, I wasn't trying to suggest fleets wouldn't have range or could go anywhere with impunity. The Home Fleet would, presumably, be able to bounce from Scapa Flow to Hong Kong (taking however long it would take to sail there) and be operational at its max range there the next day, as long as it was in supply though (presuming Hong Kong is suitably built up in HoI4 - substitute for Singapore or Alexandria if there's any doubt). My main concern, though, is that it's free to operate once built - which effectively means the majority of the UK, US, Japanese and Italian BBs are basically 'free' all game - there's no cost for having or running them. This just feels off, and given the low manpower requirements of naval units, would allow for extreme fleets to be produced (as you only need the oil once, and there's no way they can require a realistic amount of oil to be included in the base cost of the unit, or the cost in oil will provoke outrage).
For example, under the proposed system, if the UK decides to have its entire navy on the sea at all times, there's no impact, at all, on the amount of oil available for the use of their air force or armoured and motorised forces. While there was far too much oil available in HoI3, when I was playing them and went to a war footing, I noticed the impact it had on my stocks and very much the impact it had on my use. If there hadn't been crazy-easy conversion, I would have actually had to manage it, and in a number of mods you do have to manage it. In HoI4, it's not even there, so there's no management required at all, which means no cost of use (there's limits to use, as you describe, but no cost per se), which means there's no choice - of course you use them. Therefore, we have less player choice, therefore we have less strategic depth. It's a valid game design position to take, mind, and not inherently 'wrong', but it is less deep.
It's not rocket science, and there are a number of ways to skin the cat. The way I'm planning to try modding it based on what we know, and prior to any discussion with others (I presume a few of us will bang our heads together and try and do one or two fuel mods well, rather than ten mods that aren't as well tested or refined, no pun intended) is to remove oil from the cost of ships (and other units), then add in a fuel cost for ships moving (if possible - fingers crossed it is).
Fuel is produced (by military or civilian factories, or automatically converted from 'spare' oil in your flow - whichever makes sense), and there is either a very limited stockpile (I'd think 2 months max) or the units work with fuel the same way they work with being out of supply in other ways - ie, they have their 30 days, then they're in trouble. If nations don't have oil, there'd be some kind of back-up system, but with no coal I'd need to think more on how this'll work. It could be a set rate based on total military and civilian factories, for example, that was plenty low, but enough to do some emergency stuff (keep in mind that nations can build their own synthetic refineries, so someone running out completely probably has themselves to blame, and should be punished for it in-game terms appropriately).
The trickiest thing isn't the system to do it - there are a number of possible, plausible alternatives that would add strategic depth to the game that look to be able to mod without too much trouble (ie, a bit of work, but no need for dark magic) into the game. The tricky thing is finding a method that the AI can use without falling in a hole, and we won't know how that'll work until we get our hands on the game, so no point getting ideas too fixed until that point.
This way there's a cost for using your navy, so instead of a free lunch it's a strategic decision (strategic resource allocation is a key component of strategy games, after all). You still have the excellent system for determining how much can be supported where, but you don't have 'free use forever' ships, so you have more strategic depth to boot. And it'll be a mod, so only those of us who want to use it will, and those who don't like the challenge of managing fuel consumption can play the base game and have a great time as well, everyone wins
Good luck with the new design ideas on fuel usage, I wonder what happens given this scenario: You have enough fuel to sortie your fleet to invade country B so you do,..... then country A surprise attacks your armoured army, they count as moving so incur fuel usage, say you now don't have enough fuel resource? .... Does your fleet now stop in the middle of the ocean not being able to move? Oh that wouldn't be realistic! so they can operate until there fuel tanks run dry, (hope you have included fuel tank capacity in your model) and they return to port? Immediately? Can they still carry on with the invasion mission if there is a fuel shortage?
I expect what you will find is that players not being able move things when they want will - make them question and argue with holes in the "Fuel model", then you will resort to stock piles to mitigate the players from running out of fuel. If a player runs out of fuel to do stuff, you can bet that they will blame the fuel model rather than their game play.... then you will be back to Hoi 3 .... where fuel usage is in the game but with so little influence on the game so that it isn't really noticed.
Many problems like this will make a fuel usage model a bridge too far I think.
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