Dubost's Ensign's Guide

[gwgardner]

nice work, Mike, on the Ensign's guide. I hope you have to revise it extensively with the upcoming patch.

[Mike Dubost]

Thanks. I hope so too.

I must admit that part of the drive to do it was that a project at work turned in an exercise in feline wrangling. I needed something that I could control and complete. [:)]

[gwgardner]

Anything you can add to the Ensign's guide with relation to STPs and supply?

I'm having difficulty in calculating needed STPs for maintaining a US force in France. The STPs available swing wildly from nothing to 90, for example. As the convoy reports are a week behind, it's hard to get a handle on planning for enough STPs.

Questions I have, for instance: do STPs used for transporting a unit one turn get taken out of the available pool only that turn, or also the next turn? How many STPs must be dedicated to a given unit on the ground in France? If a British convoy from Southhampton to Le Havre gets hit, and Le Havre only has say 23 PPs, why can't a US convoy to the same port take up the slack and bring the supply up to 30?

[Mike Dubost]

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

Anything you can add to the Ensign's guide with relation to STPs and supply?

I'm having difficulty in calculating needed STPs for maintaining a US force in France. The STPs available swing wildly from nothing to 90, for example. As the convoy reports are a week behind, it's hard to get a handle on planning for enough STPs.

Questions I have, for instance: do STPs used for transporting a unit one turn get taken out of the available pool only that turn, or also the next turn? How many STPs must be dedicated to a given unit on the ground in France? If a British convoy from Southhampton to Le Havre gets hit, and Le Havre only has say 23 PPs, why can't a US convoy to the same port take up the slack and bring the supply up to 30?

To be honest, I am not sure of the exact amounts of STPs needed for supply. I can probably figure it out with a bit of experimentation. Without doing the experiment, I can give you the qualitative answer that armor requires more than motorized, which requires more than infantry. Let me do some additional experimentation, and get back to you with numbers (it may not be today, but don't give up the ship [:)]).

The STPs used for transport are available again as soon as the unit debarks. They are not even gone for an entire turn. In theory, you could cycle all of your land units port to port in a single turn if you had them all lined up within less than one move of an embarkation port. If I recall the manual correctly, it implies that the STPs are taken out of the pool for the turn of transport, but experience shows the game does not operate that way.

The supply convoys are limited to your own units. Supply is currently judged at the start of each weekly turn, and all convoy movement and naval convoys are simultaneous, so this is somewhat contradictory, but I guess you can think of it as each nation having its own logistic system (e.g., the 12.6 (I think it is) inch guns on Italian capital ships). I agree that in the case of the Western Allies, the navies were sufficiently integrated that in the real war, they routinely shipped supplies to each other, and Italian ships sent supplies to the Afrika Korps. However, not all nations were so tightly integrated, so I guess the designers did not want to have one rule for some and a different one for others.

[gwgardner]

ORIGINAL: Mike Dubost



The supply convoys are limited to your own units. Supply is currently judged at the start of each weekly turn, and all convoy movement and naval convoys are simultaneous, so this is somewhat contradictory, but I guess you can think of it as each nation having its own logistic system (e.g., the 12.6 (I think it is) inch guns on Italian capital ships). I agree that in the case of the Western Allies, the navies were sufficiently integrated that in the real war, they routinely shipped supplies to each other, and Italian ships sent supplies to the Afrika Korps. However, not all nations were so tightly integrated, so I guess the designers did not want to have one rule for some and a different one for others.

This is one area of my doubts about the way the system works, because if I supply Le Havre by a british convoy, my US units use that same level of supply out of Le Havre. There's no separate US convoy run.

[doomtrader]

I found it today

Very well done.

[Mike Dubost]

ORIGINAL: doomtrader

I found it today

Very well done.

Thank you. That means a lot.

I am still working to improve it by getting input from the various threads in the discussion here.

[Mike Dubost]

ORIGINAL: Mike Dubost

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

Anything you can add to the Ensign's guide with relation to STPs and supply?

I'm having difficulty in calculating needed STPs for maintaining a US force in France. The STPs available swing wildly from nothing to 90, for example. As the convoy reports are a week behind, it's hard to get a handle on planning for enough STPs.

Questions I have, for instance: do STPs used for transporting a unit one turn get taken out of the available pool only that turn, or also the next turn? How many STPs must be dedicated to a given unit on the ground in France? If a British convoy from Southhampton to Le Havre gets hit, and Le Havre only has say 23 PPs, why can't a US convoy to the same port take up the slack and bring the supply up to 30?

To be honest, I am not sure of the exact amounts of STPs needed for supply. I can probably figure it out with a bit of experimentation. Without doing the experiment, I can give you the qualitative answer that armor requires more than motorized, which requires more than infantry. Let me do some additional experimentation, and get back to you with numbers (it may not be today, but don't give up the ship [:)]).

The STPs used for transport are available again as soon as the unit debarks. They are not even gone for an entire turn. In theory, you could cycle all of your land units port to port in a single turn if you had them all lined up within less than one move of an embarkation port. If I recall the manual correctly, it implies that the STPs are taken out of the pool for the turn of transport, but experience shows the game does not operate that way.

The supply convoys are limited to your own units. Supply is currently judged at the start of each weekly turn, and all convoy movement and naval convoys are simultaneous, so this is somewhat contradictory, but I guess you can think of it as each nation having its own logistic system (e.g., the 12.6 (I think it is) inch guns on Italian capital ships). I agree that in the case of the Western Allies, the navies were sufficiently integrated that in the real war, they routinely shipped supplies to each other, and Italian ships sent supplies to the Afrika Korps. However, not all nations were so tightly integrated, so I guess the designers did not want to have one rule for some and a different one for others.

A brief set of experiments reveals the following values, which I will incorporate in my upcomming revision:

Table 1: Points Required for Movement and Supply

Unit Type, STPs to embark,AIPs to embark,STPs to supply
Armored Corps, 50,4,6
Infantry Corps, 20,2,3
Motorized Corps, 35,4,5
Infantry Division, 10,1,1
Motorized Division, 20,3,2
Armored Division, 25,3,4
Airborne Division, 20,1,3
Air Division, N/A,N/A,3
Air Army, N/A,N/A,6

Air units travel overseas by rebasing, but they do require supplies at the destination.

I need to improve the formatting to make it an actual table, but hopefully the information is understandable.

[Mike Dubost]

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

ORIGINAL: Mike Dubost



The supply convoys are limited to your own units. Supply is currently judged at the start of each weekly turn, and all convoy movement and naval convoys are simultaneous, so this is somewhat contradictory, but I guess you can think of it as each nation having its own logistic system (e.g., the 12.6 (I think it is) inch guns on Italian capital ships). I agree that in the case of the Western Allies, the navies were sufficiently integrated that in the real war, they routinely shipped supplies to each other, and Italian ships sent supplies to the Afrika Korps. However, not all nations were so tightly integrated, so I guess the designers did not want to have one rule for some and a different one for others.

This is one area of my doubts about the way the system works, because if I supply Le Havre by a british convoy, my US units use that same level of supply out of Le Havre. There's no separate US convoy run.

That is very odd, since I confirmed last night that the Axis in North Africa needs separate supply runs. I sent a German motorized corps to land in captured Alexandria, and I found that the Italians did not use the extra 5 STPs for supply (they had 40 remaining after convoys) and the unit supply reflected the isolated city value (I think 13 supply), and only 4 action points. As soon as I got a German convoy running from Naples, the motorized unit went up to full supply (30 supply?) and had the full ration of 7 action points.

I will have to experiment with Allied units in France after D-Day.