Civilian supply consumption simulation?

[Dili]

What is the best way to simulate the need to supply cities and island civilian needs even if there isn't a military unit there?

IRL big islands need several kind like fuel, supply and that can be a drain military transport.

Can a civilian device be build for the propose?

[Lokasenna]

IF you wanted to do such a thing (remember that supplies are not domestic supplies - they are meant to be military supplies), you could create static civilian devices and insert them into units. They would eat supplies.

[Dili]

Thanks.

Reason is sea transport.

I suppose the load weight would be most important factor for its supply consumption or am i wrong?

[el cid again]

This is a good idea. A Japanese occupation of Hawaii was impractical
unless the population was deported or allowed to die by starvation - there
was not enough shipping to feed the place. Other cases apply on a lesser
scale to both sides.

Local populations also are a problem in terms of conquest of large cities
and controlling them thereafter. This may make it impractical to attack
a major urban area at all.

I call this concept the "supply sink." Supply sinks are mainly non-productive
civilians in numbers. For this I created a device called "slum community".
It is paired with a support squad (to make it neutral in terms of support)
in a unit that is static. In Japan, Depot Divisions are an example. In an
Allied city, a CD unit is already static. A 'civilian' device needs to have
no combat attributes at all - it is only a logistical creature. But it WILL
increase the squad count for the unit (and location) and it will spread casualties
between 'military and civilian units' compared to a location only with military
units.

Such units are MORE effective than expected. It is not necessary to have gigantic
numbers of them. It also nice simulates problems such as the British had feeding
India. These units demand supplies ALL the time - and become a problem when the
source of supply is cut off. They STILL demand supplies - complicating the military
situation.

The biggest problem with the concept is they do not change sides well. Limit them
to places likely not to be conquered. Indeed, a location with them on any scale
isn't likely to be conquered. See Manila for an example of combat in a dense urban
area (even though only a few thousand hostiles were present - it became the most
damaged city in Asia - and one of the worst in WW2 anywhere - second only to Warsaw
probably). The decision to abandon Manila (by Mac) only "saved the city from destruction"
for a while - it ended up destroyed anyway. So be careful where you put a major supply
sink. Tokyo, Bombay, Chunking etc are good examples - none is likely to fall - all are
major places demanding non military supplies writ large.

The concept that "supplies are meant to be military" is IMHO a mistake. You cannot distinguish
between supplies for the military and civilians. Food is food. Gravel and timber are equally
useful for construction for both. You permit building of factories (for Japan anyway) and of
airfields, roads, railroads and ports - how can you say material useful for such isn't useful
for the civil economy? Instead of trying to separate them per se, create an economic model in
which you ASSUME that LI (and to some degree HI) generate supply for civilians. Make the resources
consumed to generate supplies be appropriate to support both; consider the (invisible) civilian
supply as a sort of "tax" on production. That way you only need to worry about civil consumption in
MAJOR cases - as in gigantic urban centers that indeed were a real wartime problem in terms of feeding
the population. An owning or occupying power cannot easily ignore these needs. When the British did,
in India, they lost legitimacy as rulers, and there was no longer any chance of retaining power. India
never forgave the strategic decision that there was not enough shipping to feed India. Afraid of
similar effects in Ceylon, the British decided to feed them better! These are grand strategic military
considerations - not merely political ones.

[Dili]

Thnaks Cid can you say how large are your supply sinks?

Btw the issue of changing sides might be "fixed" by having one for each side appear in that city. Or am i wrong?

[Yaab]

In RHS, those supply sinks are attached to static units (BFs or CDs) in big cities. A unit has a population device in its TOE, consisting of 1000 civilian squads. You would have to tailor the device size in your mod and monitor it via Tracker to see if their existence makes any dent in supply at hand.

[szmike]

I think it's completely outside the scope of the game, as in not counted on production side. So using those you'd need to add supply to production (for Japan at the least), so it evens overall. By the way, how much merchant shipping was taken over by military during war? All of it?

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Dili

Thanks.

Reason is sea transport.

I suppose the load weight would be most important factor for its supply consumption or am i wrong?

1 inactive device = 1 supply point required.

Load weight has no impact on supply consumption.

Alfred

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: szmike

I think it's completely outside the scope of the game, as in not counted on production side. So using those you'd need to add supply to production (for Japan at the least), so it evens overall. By the way, how much merchant shipping was taken over by military during war? All of it?

Correct.

Depending on how it is approached, it not only skewers supply consumption + the existing carefully calibrated supply production structure, it can also skewer combat.

Alfred

[Dili]

Thanks everyone including the detailed reference by Alfred about supply.

[Yaab]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Dili

Thanks.

Reason is sea transport.

I suppose the load weight would be most important factor for its supply consumption or am i wrong?

1 inactive device = 1 supply point required.

Load weight has no impact on supply consumption.

Alfred

1 inactive device = 0.5 supply point required.

1 active device = 1 supply point required.

Load weight has no impact on supply consumption.

[Alfred]

No.
 
1 inactive device = 1 supply point required
 
1 active device = variable supply points depending on how many shots the unit has fired
 
You are mistaking an inactive device with a disabled device.  They are not the same thing.  An inactive device is one just sitting there doing nothing, neither attacking nor defending, or in the case of an engineer device not building.  A disabled device is the one in (xx) which is unable to participate until it has recovered to "ready" status at which point it becomes an inactive device/active device depending on the situation.
 
Alfred

[Yaab]

Sorry, I meant

1 disabled device = 0.5 supply point required.

[Dili]

Thanks. A disable device when repaired spends more supply?

[Yaab]

If you go to the LCU screen and check supplies needed by an LCU unit and number of devices the LCU has, you will see that a unit with i.e 970 devices needs 950 supplies. If you count disabled devices in the unit you will arrive at 40 such devices. Thus one disabled device must consume 0.5 supply point even though in the game the smallest visible unit of supply is 1.

[Dili]

I got that, just going a bit further tying to know if there is a device repair penalty.

[el cid again]

There are only a few. Most are 1000 "slum communities" matched with 1000 support squads.
One is 500 and 500. These helped solve a peculiar problem in RHS in the context of AE
code which has supplies for a land body collect at the biggest base in that land body -
for a big area (India, China, Honshu) this made some points collect "too many" supplies -
and in the context of real problems feeding the local population - it was a logical solution.

ORIGINAL: Dili

Thnaks Cid can you say how large are your supply sinks?

Btw the issue of changing sides might be "fixed" by having one for each side appear in that city. Or am i wrong?