How to improve frontline supply status?

[steven512]

Hi bros:
It's soviet(player) vs axis(AI,morale 110),1941 GC no early end.The time is Sep 1943, and the frontline is around Oder -Wartheland - Upper Silesia - Central Hungary, AI has been crushed, and I'm playing slowly try to understand more of the game.
There are 6M men on the front, and every turn around 1/6 units are in low supply(<75%), especially units in Hungary. I can receive 34k supply one turn(which is nearly euqal to the amount I need), while 8k supply is lost on the way! I checked the supply route and hence units cannot get enough from near depot, they traced many hexes away to receive supply from other depots! That is to say, I can send merely enough supply to frontline depots, but units get a large part from distance depots, which causes so much waste on the way! And if they just get supply from near depot, they should have been all fed.(There are always enough trucks)

1. Send 1m troops to reserve and disband 1m more. Should I further decrease the number?or disband more units in other TB?
2. Send most Air Force to reserve
3.Try to produce more supply. I produce 3800k resource and HI need 3900k, but can only use 3300k one turn.Tbilisi and Grozny are always in need of resource why?
4. Manage depots both manually and by AI, not much difference.Depots never reached its railyard capacity
5. Set a few units to refit.I tried to set none to refit but not much difference
6.So many cargo ships in Ladoga, can I send them elsewhere?
7.Could units supply priority mean something? I didn’t manage it well( but at least all above 0)
8. Rail units are always working hard to reach as far as possible. But front rail lines usage are far from capacity

[malyhin1517]

My most important advice, put all forward depots on level 4, put the rest on level 1-3, then you will receive the maximum amount of cargo at the forward depots. And check the color. It should be yellow at the start of the turn. If it is green, but you are not getting enough cargo to the forward depots, then check if all railway stations of level 2 and above are connected to the railway. Without them, your railway will not work at full capacity. Also, check if all your Tier 2 train stations are repaired and if necessary, manually attach a construction battalion to them to speed up their repair.

[DarkHorse2]

I will try to offer some suggestions, but mostly from German perspective. Even then, it should still apply.

1. Send 1m troops to reserve and disband 1m more. Should I further decrease the number?or disband more units in other TB?

I would be very careful about going crazy about disbanding units.

But some units do consume a lot of supplies. For the Germans, construction engineers consume a lot and are not necessarily needed at the corps HQ. Also, machine-gun battalions consume more than their fair share.

For that reason, when supplies get tight, I transfer them back to OKH. You may find something similar with Soviet units.

2. Send most Air Force to reserve

The multi-engine AC can consume a lot of supplies. During the bad weather turns as Germans, no reason to have those AC sitting at a front-line AB, eating supplies that could be going to front-line units.

The single engine AC (fighters, dive bombers) are probably not the issue for you.

3.Try to produce more supply. I produce 3800k resource and HI need 3900k, but can only use 3300k one turn.Tbilisi and Grozny are always in need of resource why?

Do you have any real control over how many supplies you produce? Would be nice, but do not think WiTE2 affords players much control over this.

If you check your NSS(s) on the map and see you have stockpiles of 2.5 million, problem is not with production, but in transportation.

4. Manage depots both manually and by AI, not much difference.Depots never reached its railyard capacity

I would not do both manual and AI managed depots. I tried that once and the AI disbanded a bunch of my depots I had manually created.

If you feel comfortable managing the AI priorities yourself, then I would suggest manual.

5. Set a few units to refit.I tried to set none to refit but not much difference

This really depends more on where the refit units are located. Units close to a NSS probably will not impact front-line supplies at all. Issue is setting a bunch of front-line units to refit.

6.So many cargo ships in Ladoga, can I send them elsewhere?

No over-land redeployment of cargo ships, I am afraid.

7.Could units supply priority mean something? I didn’t manage it well( but at least all above 0)

Yes, it can impact supply delivery, especially in regards to vehicle usage. Over time, over-prioritizing unit supply taxes your vehicle pool and causes a greater attrition rate of vehicles. This will hurt you later.

You can visually check your vehicle usage by entering logistics mode and pressing the '8' key. If you see a lot of long red-lines, this is not good. This eats up your vehicles pretty quick.

8. Rail units are always working hard to reach as far as possible. But front rail lines usage are far from capacity

I do not believe the game fully shows the current rail capacity used beyond the previous turn. As a result, rail capacity shown on the map may be greater than what it really is.

This always confused me as well as I could not understand why freight was not being delivered when, according to the map, there was unused capacity available.

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Really wish there was another map overlay that accurately depicts rail capacity left after freight delivery.

[loki100]

...
There are 6M men on the front, and every turn around 1/6 units are in low supply(<75%), especially units in Hungary. I can receive 34k supply one turn(which is nearly euqal to the amount I need), while 8k supply is lost on the way! I checked the supply route and hence units cannot get enough from near depot, they traced many hexes away to receive supply from other depots! ...

1. Send 1m troops to reserve and disband 1m more. Should I further decrease the number?or disband more units in other TB?
2. Send most Air Force to reserve
3.Try to produce more supply. I produce 3800k resource and HI need 3900k, but can only use 3300k one turn.Tbilisi and Grozny are always in need of resource why?
4. Manage depots both manually and by AI, not much difference.Depots never reached its railyard capacity
5. Set a few units to refit.I tried to set none to refit but not much difference
6.So many cargo ships in Ladoga, can I send them elsewhere?
7.Could units supply priority mean something? I didn’t manage it well( but at least all above 0)
8. Rail units are always working hard to reach as far as possible. But front rail lines usage are far from capacity

Specific to the Soviets in Hungary, yes its hard to solve. You are basically reliant on the single track rails over the mountains and there are few decent railyards to help intermediate depot-depot moves. Also the supply line via W Rumania is not much better.

So (a) its about pauses; (b) here you really do need to make full use of the super depot rules (there are some large depots in E Hungary that can be used to good effect; and, (c) set up an air supply mission, base it near Bucherest, keep Bucherest at pri 4 and you can bring in quite a lot with a sustained effort.

In the end, in the late game the Danube becomes a tussle between 2 under-supplied armies.

1) I reckon you can push 6.5m/7m into the Reich so plan around that. Have a look at the pre-release Soviet AAR, that goes to March 45 and has a discussion about late war Soviet logistics. Beyond, that, yeah scrap, normally its an idea to overstock the theatres (for the VP) but you've won so no need to keep them mobilised

2) the constraint on the VVS is the lack of airbases, you still need a decent reserve to cope with combat losses so keep the longer range bombers and fighters, just make sure they are not competing with the front line formations for freight

3) its all about delivery, create depots between Moscow and the front at pri 4, let these fill up and then drop them to #1, that will push additional freight forward, use super-depots to direct the freight etc

4) go manual, late war Soviet logistics are subtle

5) if a formation is really chewed up, send to the national reserve to refit and replace with a fresh one, you should be able to do this from now on. Don't try to refit in place. If a Rifle Corps is very short on men, merge in a fresh division etc

6) No

7) unit supply priority tells it what % of notional need it seeks to acquire. So in Hungary I'd have this around 1 or 2 for most formations. The reason is if its not available nearby they go on long traces to get it, the trucks lost in this trace can leave you weaker than any missing supply.

8) reflects that you simply can't bring up all you need. Rail usage in this respect reflects capacity of front line depots to process (should be ok), track capacity (should be ok) and capacity of the railyards where the freight starts (under pressure) - there is a discussion in the player's notes in the manual about how all this intersects. Your tools are the intermediate depots (see above) and super depots.

@Hanny, late war Soviet logistics are very different to solving the 1941 problems for the axis