Vehicles and Trucks - The Motor Pool as Russia

[Chad Harrison]

Hey all

So, is Russia just doomed to always have a lacking motor pool?

I just finished my first GC against the German AI. At first, I didnt really pay attention to the motor pool. But as the game went on, I started to realize how important those generic 'vehicles' are. I mean, they are needed everwhere! And everyone needs a lot of them! Combat units, HQ's, support units, even airfield base forces! So those 30 empty baseforces I had not been using? Yeah, they were eating up 2000 vehicles just sitting back there!

So, is Russia just doomed to never have enough vehicles? Their production rate of vehicles is just about worthless - no wonder the Generals are always driving American Jeeps in pictures! [:D]

Any advice from the ever so wise testers on what to do to help with this lack?

I assume advancing your entire Russian front doesnt help with the motor pool [:D]

Or building 400 Independent Tank Battalions [;)]

Thanks in advance

Chad

[abulbulian]

In the beginning summer 41 Russian did lack trucks. Some people put back units into static mode, but other than that you might just have to wait a 6 months to a year for that to improve. As time goes on, the Soviets only gain more advantages if they survive intact before winter 41. Germans have their own issues with the motor pool. Not all roses for the axis.

At some point I believe the Sov start receiving lots of trucks through lend-lease, but not sure on the #'s or exactly when.

[bwheatley]

Well he said finished the GC. Crazy to be lacking trucks at the end game unless you went hog wild on unit builds.

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: bwheatley

Well he said finished the GC. Crazy to be lacking trucks at the end game unless you went hog wild on unit builds.

I dont know though - Russians aint building a whole lot of vehciles. My game ended January 1944 (auto victory against Germans - took Berlin in the fall of 1943, took until January to chase down the Germans in the Balkans), so I dont know if things change as the game goes on, but I had motor pool issues my entire game.

Heres some specifics:

1. Per the manual (21.1.6), you produce 10 vehciles for 1 Vehicle production point. So, after the inital rush by the Germans, I was left with 140 Vehicle production points. That means 1400 vehicles (ie. trucks) per turn, but its reduced to 55% for the Russians - so only 770 trucks per week were built. I opened the 44/45 scenario and its at 135 - so I assume this number doesnt magically go up later.
2. So how many is 770 trucks per turn? Nothing. On the last turn I played before the game ended, I lost 1271 trucks to 'unit movement', 4019 trucks to 'unit resupply', not to mention whatever I lost to combat that turn. So just to non-combat attrition, I lost around 5k trucks in one turn. Production made good about 1k of these losses and lend lease added 3k that turn. So even without combat, my net was minus 1k trucks - plus whatever I loose to combat. Which is going to be a couple of thousand. So I am looking at having a net loss of ~5 to 10k trucks per turn [X(]
3. Obviously the lend lease and initial mobilization will help with this, but you are talking about keeping the Red Army moving! We are going to need more than 700 trucks built in a week [:D] Is that really all they were building?
4. So when my game ended, I had 234k trucks in units, but needed 368k! It would take 174 turns to build that many trucks. And I dont feel like I went crazy building a bunch of excess units.
5. Also at game end, with my winter offensive in full swing, my motor pool had 142k trucks, but it needed 265k trucks! That means my troops were only getting 54% of their nominal supply levels.

So am I missing something? Did I just let my Red Army get too big? Is there a way to build more trucks? Does lend lease balloon later in the war (44, 45)? Its just feels funny to be building 310 T-34's a week, but only 700 trucks [;)]

Just curious what others are finding.

Thanks

Chad

[Chad Harrison]

So heres a pic of my production screen.

You can see both my vehicle (ie. truck) needs for units, and for the motor pool.

[Chad Harrison]

Here is my event log, again from my last turn in Jan 1944.

You can see my truck losses and my sad attempt at building more trucks! [:D]

Now let me be clear: This isnt complaining or saying the system is broke or demanding that something be changed. I am trying to understand if theres something that I am missing in maintaining a better vehicle balance in the game as the Russians.

With unlimited manpower, resources, fuel and tanks (later on) its very tempting to build a huge army! But, as far as I can tell the only thing holding you back if your vehicles. Seems like if I have the resources to assemble 7 divisions in one week from scratch, I might, maybe, possibly could churn out more than 700 vehicles in a week [:D]

Thanks in advance

Chad

[Klydon]

This is pretty much historical (Russian shortage of trucks). The Russians simply did not produce that many trucks in the war. They concentrated on tanks.

The Allies sent a lot of stuff and most of it was a drop in the bucket compared to Russian production. There are several exceptions. Trucks, telephone equipment, and rations were the big three that made a huge difference, especially later in the war.

There are reasons the Russians would launch an offensive, go for awhile and then stop and park for months and that was because they needed time to get the supplies moved up to the troops, etc. If the Russians have piles of trucks, then they don't have to wait that long, which is not what really happen.

[Chad Harrison]

The Ostfront is really a mystery to me. This game and some recently acquired books are going to help with that problem!

So did the Red Army have a lack of trucks in reality? If so, the game represents that well!

[vinnie71]

Yes, the lack of supplies stopped more Russian offensives than anything else. Look at the aftermath of Bagratin. They for all intents and purposes destroyed AGC and tore a huge hole in the German frontline. Although it was exploited, they still had a huge problem in actually completely destabilising the entire front and in the end their advance was broken up through lack of supplies, scorched earth tactics and fortresses in major cities. Aslo keep in mind that the Russian army needed insane amounts of ammunition not just general supplies, and ammo took a huge chunk of the transportation capabilities of its comissariat.

BTW Lend lease also provided thousands, possibly millions of pairs of boots as well. So basically Russian mobility depended to an extent on its western allies.

[Grotius]

Hmm, I've had a surplus of trucks playing as the Sovs through December 1941. What am I doing right, lol? I have hardly glanced at Production.

Maybe it's because I rail a lot? But I still drive my HQs and airfields around. Maybe it's because I'm obsessive about keeping HQs near their subordinate combat units?

[karonagames]

Managing logistics is a major part of the game, and I spent a lot of time in testing looking at this aspect.

The bottom line is that the SU should not be able to support late-war offensive operations along the entire front at 100% supply capacity. In testing it was found that by shutting down about 1/3 of the front line (static mode) the SU could run Offensive operations at 80%+ supply on the other 2/3rds - more experienced testers were getting closer to 100%.

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison
The Ostfront is really a mystery to me. This game and some recently acquired books are going to help with that problem!
So did the Red Army have a lack of trucks in reality? If so, the game represents that well!

The Russians may have had an inadequate production of trucks, as they concentrated on other fighting equipment, but they did receive 500,000 trucks and jeeps through lend-lease. Their own tank designs were superior to allied models, so it's no surprise they built their own AFVs, conversely, US trucks were superior to models that the Soviets could produce, so they relied a lot on lend-lease transport. Home production would therefore be comparatively lower than it might have been.

A quick look at the screen shot seems to show that truck returns from repair and lend-lease arrivals are more than compensating for your losses. [:)]

[raizer]

is there a column for all the spam that was convoyed in to Murmansk? [:'(] 

[Q-Ball]

2 out of 3 trucks in the Red Army in 1945 were made in the USA. Even still, they had a shortage.

As someone else pointed out. Lend Lease was really less about battle equipment (because the stuff we sent them, frankly, was 2nd tier leftovers and not very good), and more about logistics. Radios and Trucks especially, but also boots, optical equipment, tires, etc. I don't want to necessarily open a "Russia could have won WWII by itself" "No, it couldn't" thread, but that logistical support was critical.

[paullus99]

If you look at the phased offensives of the Red Army, they never launched a "Front-wide" attack across the entire line. They built up individual areas & launched focused attacked - and still played out their logistics pretty rapidly. Seems the game really reflects this, with the need to concentrate your forces & other assets, as opposed to just running wily-nily up and down the line for an entire season of campaigning.

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: paullus99

If you look at the phased offensives of the Red Army, they never launched a "Front-wide" attack across the entire line. They built up individual areas & launched focused attacked - and still played out their logistics pretty rapidly. Seems the game really reflects this, with the need to concentrate your forces & other assets, as opposed to just running wily-nily up and down the line for an entire season of campaigning.

I just purchased "When Titans Clash" per your all recommendations. While flipping through the maps that show the operations of the war, I noticed exactly what you have pointed out: that the Red Army was never pushing along the entire front. They would attack in one sector while the others were dormat.

So in simple terms, why cant you do this in WitE?

As far as I can tell, its simply limited by your motor pool. You have plenty of men, supplies and fuel to do it, you just cant get the later two forward to your troops.

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison
As far as I can tell, its simply limited by your motor pool. You have plenty of men, supplies and fuel to do it, you just cant get the later two forward to your troops.

Which is what happened to the Allies in France 1944, and in the desert campaign. It is a natural feature of WW2 large scale operations, you can only press the offensive so far. [:)]

[usecase]

Hah. I feel your pain. I think it has to do with this [from the manual]:

"This vehicle requirement for the supply system is based on supply and
fuel usage, distance from the rail heads and the current number of organic vehicles in combat
units, which increases the required number of vehicles in the motor pool by one for every two
vehicles in a unit." - Note that last clause.

As I'm too lazy to go and look at the old saves from my completed GCs, here's a quick snapshot of the organic vehicles in a Soviet corps, circa Autumn '42.

Guards Tank Corps: 1377 (My corps have all manner of directly attached units, your mileage may vary)
Guards Rifle Corps: 139
Guards Cavalry Corps: 76
Mechanized Corps: 2376(!)

Plain-Jane Soviet rifle division: 37

I've learnt my lesson - I don't over-mechanize.

[Chad Harrison]

Yeah, thats what gets you. I mean you can build as many as you want, and you have all the tanks you need, so your like 'why not build an army of all Mech Corps?' So, that Mech Corps of say 7 Mech corps would need:

16,632 Organic vehciles (ie. trucks)
83616 Vehciles in the motor pool

So you could have about 120! Guards Rifle Corps for the same requirement of vehicles!! [X(]

So its not that you cant use them, its just that you need to be very careful and aware that everything you build or use, or even dont use (empty airfield base forces are sitting on hundreds of trucks per base!) has an affect on your motor pool.

But from what I can tell, the Germans dont really have an issue with the motor pool.

Chad

[karonagames]

But from what I can tell, the Germans dont really have an issue with the motor pool.

They lose a lot of vehicles during the Blizzard, and come Summer 1942, they need to shut down an Army group so that the other 2 can support offensive operations. Once they are on the defensive there are less problems.