No Supplies Carried by Rail

[potski]

Reporting here rather than in modding forum, as this seems to be a general problem, not just affecting the modded scenario I produced, which brings Finland on to the map so the Continuation War is playable. But I had real problems with getting supplies to units in Finland, and they would report as in isolated hexes, so were easily defeated by Soviets. Downloaded and installed latest beta patches, as there were reports of unusual isolation on islands etc. The isolation has stopped but supply system still fails. See attached screenshot, which is at the start of Axis turn, showing all of the rail as amber "damaged". But in scenario editor and then also in an event to be absolutely sure, I set the rail to be repaired. Because of this state of the rail, no supply gets passed from the NSS in Finland, nor anything arriving by ship when I had the NSS's enabled in East Prussia. The only way to get supplies to the front is to pre-stack the forward depots with plenty of supplies at the start, so that trucks carry it to the units. And you can see from the logistics reports that this is the only movement of supplies, so virtually nothing goes from the NSS.

However, as soon as you carry out the air phase then the railways show as green, and a railroad repair unit I moved to Finland can't repair them. Selecting rail movement does allow units to be transported by rail. So in that phase it appears that all is well. But when you end the turn and move through the Soviet turn and back to Axis logistics, the same happens.

I might have done something wrong with the modding, but I can't spot it, and suspect the issue is that the logistics AI can't cope with rail that is physically separate from the rest of the rail network. Though I took Prussia and the NSS's there out of the RTL scenario deliberately to test whether it would work if the only rail in the game is in Finland, it doesn't matter.

Of course, this might be WAD, and there is no intention that players should be able to play as Finland with no link to mainland Germany, though I doubt this if we can play as Rumania etc. But my concern then is whether the rail system shuts down if at any time you are cut-off from Germany? Obviously, with a smaller pocket around a port this might not be obvious where trucks are getting supplies from a depot at the port directly and don't need it to be moved first by rail to a closer depot. I haven't tested that.

PS. I will email screenshot and save file, as I'm not yet allowed to attach anything.

[loki100]

moved to modding forum, problem not reported in the context of the vanilla game.

one suggestion is the modder doesn't have enough railyards of 2 or larger in Finland to generate rail movement capacity

[potski]

The restriction on uploading pics seems to have passed now, and I amended my first post to include screenshot.

Helsinki is railyard 4 (which I think is the default in the RTL scenario which I modded). When I was having difficulty with that I moved the NSS to Lahti and I had made it railyard 9. I have now also added some other railyard 2 to some of the other towns on the rail network in Finland.

Attached now is a new screenshot, again showing the rail as needing repair after the logistics phase despite adding in more rail capacity, and with the pop-up on Lahti that there is plenty of capacity, but no freight is being forwarded anywhere. The only sent freight is to a nearby airbase using trucks. This is visible on the map as a red line connecting Lahti to the base, and there are other red lines connecting depots which have been loaded with freight to units or airbases, but no white lines connecting the NSS to any of the forward deports. The section in the manual on railyards suggests only that the amount that would be sent would be capped at the maximum level of the overall capacity of the network, not that there has to be any minimum capacity below which nothing is sent. And in my view the rail capacity at Lahti alone is probably more than enough for the relatively small number of Finnish units and short distance from the NSS to the border/front. But if that is not the case I appreciate your advice.

The indication that this might be a bug rather than insufficient rail capacity is that there is enough rail capacity in the system in the ground movement phase to move divisions by rail, and in that phase the rails all display as green (no repair needed) not amber. The manual indicates that these work together - if there is insufficient capacity to move all the freight, then there won't be any capacity left to move divisions.

[potski]

And further screenshot showing the situation in the ground movement phase, with the railways coloured green. Savonlinna is only a level 1 railyard, but it is priority 4 depot, appears to be connected by rail to the NSS at Lahti, yet received zero percent of the freight it requested.

[potski]

And here is a save game file from Axis turn 3. Let it run over through Axis logistics phase into air phase and you see the problem.