late war withdrawals - vehicles

[sjohnson]

It appears that when Axis units arrive, they mostly arrive without any vehicles (or much supply). This requires, especially for motorized units, that units come from the pools to outfit the unit. This is fine.

However, when the unit withdraws, it takes it vehicles with it. I noticed that late in the war (43-44 period) this can be critical to the Axis - eg like in Mar-Apr 44 9th & 10th SS Pz divisions arrive and then pull out 2 months later they take 4,000 vehicles with them.

This is problematic with all the pushing and pulling of armored units in and out of the eastern front in 44 which I believe reflects the German high command's struggle to find troops for the West and back and forth. My guess is that in late 44-early 45 it will be a big drain on the vehicle pool again as the 5th & 6th SS Pz Armies are sent West for the Ardennes offensive and returned to the East in early 45 for the Lake Balaton area attacks.

Is this working as designed? Seems more like a scenario data problem that units enter with no organic transport or supplies.

[Joel Billings]

Reinforcements come in with troops, guns, tanks and vehicles, at least the German ones do. Destroyed units being rebuilt must refill, but reinforcements are mostly full of vehicles. Soviet units are different as the mobilization in 41 is being treated differently.

[Denniss]

Hmmm, I can't remember arriving depleted units that withdraw later.

But it would indeed be better if withdrawing combat units would send all equipment in excess of 80% TOE back to pool, these units never took all their heavy guns/vehicles back home to germany but were usually refitted with factory-fresh stuff there.

[sjohnson]

Hi Joel & Helpless -

I will post screenshots to show the issue. It is clear that units (at least perhaps in late war scenarios) are arriving without supply, ammo, fuel, and vehicles.

Here is the first of several screenshots (this is 43 GC).

Note HG Pz Division on turn of arrival (it has had one logistics phase now). Note the very low supply, fuel, ammo percentages (as it was assigned to OKH and arrived on the map edge, it drew very little supply).

[sjohnson]

Here is the supply details screen - note the assignment of ~800 vehicles to the unit (the unit has precisely this many vehicles now).

[sjohnson]

And here is the division detail - note the vehicle numbers match; also note the supply received minus consumed minus what's left in the unit equal out to 0 (meaning it started with no supply). Same for ammo and fuel.

[sjohnson]

I also have all my vehicle pool, in unit, production, etc numbers for the game saved in excel. I can clearly see that the vehicle totals did not increase by the arrival of this or many other divisions in 1944; however, it did decline when various vehicle heavy units left.

[sjohnson]

And here is the shot from the editor; I have pulled up almost all of the units arriving as reinforcements in the 43 scenario and they all seem to be unsupplied, 'de-vehicled'.

[sjohnson]

And finally, I note that if I pull up the 41 GC scenario, the same units are all supplied; so this is just a scenario data problem (at least in 43) - the reinforcements were not set to resupply.

[Joel Billings]

Yes, that's 100% a scenario data issue. I think the 43 scenario was worked on after release, and it's possible that some of these units were not "built" correctly. Could also be that the 41 campaign was corrected at some point but the others weren't. I don't know how likely it will be that the scenarios will get some attention, but if they do, it would help to know which scenarios had these issues.

[sjohnson]

Hi Joel - Of the GCs it appears it is only the 43 scenario. All the others I spot checked seem to be OK (41, 42, 44)

[Denniss]

I really hope Trey will find some time to look at the campaigns. At least he should fix the local WW3 in the 1941 campaigns (Romanian High Command taken over by Hungarians, VI Corps by Germans).