Railway Interdiction effects

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Wiedrock
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Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Wiedrock »

Trying to figure out how the Rail interdiction works I encountered several issues.
  1. Mission effect gets divided by 4 before it's shown in the Combat Window.
  2. Before being applied to the Hex it gets multiplied 2....or the base divided by 2
  3. Before the enemy Ground Phase it's further divided by 3.
  4. Due to all this it has mostly 0 effect on enemy SMPs for Units.
  5. Most likely it also has (close to) 0 effect for Freight.
  6. Losses to the transported Units only start to occur at ~32k+ numbers for the single-line orange, which is reached after passing over it several times. (so basically when the Line is more than 100% clogged up [and has Air Interdiction])
Railway attacks1.png
Railway attacks1.png (2.04 MiB) Viewed 800 times
Railway attacks2.png
Railway attacks2.png (671.6 KiB) Viewed 800 times
Dead Manual, p.263 wrote:During each logistics phase, accumulated friendly
rail line usage in each hex is reduced to the higher of

either current rail usage divided by six or the enemy air
interdiction value (the actual value of this is shown in a
hex pop-up) times 500, with the latter being maxed out at
45,000 tons of rail line usage.
In cases where there is no
enemy air interdiction, at the start of the movement phase
the max rail line usage will be 5,000 tons (for a dual track
line and 2,000 for a single track line).
This statement is weird or wrong or missleading in two different ways.
  1. In the example with 99 Interdiction the Rail usage should be 99x500=49500, which it isn't, it's 10833.
  2. What's the general relationship between the initial Mission with its "effect numbers", which results in a Hex Popup halve that size during my turn which is then resulting in a Hex pupup in enemy turn which is further divided by 3(single rail), I don't see where quote: "the enemy air interdiction value (the actual value of this is shown in a hex pop-up) times 500" is supposed to take it's part in the calculation?!

As an example:
If you'd start with 100SMP after entering the Train, you can go 100Hexes (unloading next turn).
If this example would include 3 Orange Hexes caused by Partisans/Air Interdiction it'd be 100-(3*2)=94 Hexes.
I don't want to think about the Sorties/freight needed to make 3 Hexes Orange tho.
Splitting this Sorties over 10 Hexes may cause the whole Mission to have 0.00effect.
Since losses to transported untis appear to only occur when it's 100%+ clogged it's also 99% useless in this regard, altough I feel like the Interdiction is easier done than using actual Interdiction missions.


Not sure where the issue is located. But I feel like there are possibly too many weird multipliers in the formulas, ending up at a point where this whole mission has close to no effect at all, I guess it'll be similar for effects caused by Partisans.
/4 for Combat Window why would one divide the effect by 4 before it's shown in the combat window? :roll:
/2 (or /4*2) for same turn enemy Hex Popup
/3 before enemy Ground Phase (single rail) this as per manual should be affected by the Air Interdiction (only)?! Which it doesn't seem to be, as pointed out in "B".
-> this last modifier may be even higher when it's about double-rail (as seen in the 57597 example).
Last edited by Wiedrock on Fri Apr 03, 2026 1:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Joel Billings
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Joel Billings »

Players are better off bombing enemy depots where they know they can destroy some freight and cause some losses because of it. I don't think Gary is going to revisit the can of worms you are opening up re rail interdiction.
All understanding comes after the fact.
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Beethoven1
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Beethoven1 »

Joel Billings wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2023 7:14 pm Players are better off bombing enemy depots where they know they can destroy some freight and cause some losses because of it. I don't think Gary is going to revisit the can of worms you are opening up re rail interdiction.
It is fair enough to not prioritize that IMO, but FYI bombing depots also does effectively nothing (even if it actually works, which I am not sure of) because there is (in general) no shortage of freight. So all it can do is really just decrease the size of the enemy freight surplus marginally, which has no real effect since they still have a surplus.
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Wiedrock
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Wiedrock »

At least Gary now has some worms for ice fishing this winter. :mrgreen:
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Joel Billings
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Joel Billings »

Beethoven1 wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2023 8:44 pm
Joel Billings wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2023 7:14 pm Players are better off bombing enemy depots where they know they can destroy some freight and cause some losses because of it. I don't think Gary is going to revisit the can of worms you are opening up re rail interdiction.
It is fair enough to not prioritize that IMO, but FYI bombing depots also does effectively nothing (even if it actually works, which I am not sure of) because there is (in general) no shortage of freight. So all it can do is really just decrease the size of the enemy freight surplus marginally, which has no real effect since they still have a surplus.

You're missing a key element though. Damaged freight at a depot turns into damaged equipment and production resources.
All understanding comes after the fact.
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Beethoven1
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Beethoven1 »

Joel Billings wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2023 10:04 pm
Beethoven1 wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2023 8:44 pm
Joel Billings wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2023 7:14 pm Players are better off bombing enemy depots where they know they can destroy some freight and cause some losses because of it. I don't think Gary is going to revisit the can of worms you are opening up re rail interdiction.
It is fair enough to not prioritize that IMO, but FYI bombing depots also does effectively nothing (even if it actually works, which I am not sure of) because there is (in general) no shortage of freight. So all it can do is really just decrease the size of the enemy freight surplus marginally, which has no real effect since they still have a surplus.

You're missing a key element though. Damaged freight at a depot turns into damaged equipment and production resources.
I never heard of damaged freight, so I was interested enough to set up a quick test. TLDR it seems like it does not work as you describe.

Test setup:

Test is set up in modified VL scenario. Soviets bomb the Axis railyard in VL. There is only a single Axis unit at the start of the scenario, which is set at 0 TOE with 0 men etc. It is set on refit. The only depot for Axis is set to be empty, so it will get only new freight which presumably should be impacted by the bombing.

test scenario - https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... b_test.scn

Save from first axis turn after bombing - https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 942_Ax.sav

The 0 TOE unit gets freight for replacement, ALL of which comes from the VL depot which was bombed:

Image

The railyard has 59% damage from the bombing:

Image

The unit DOES get a lot of reinforcement elements. But every single one of the reinforcement elements is undamaged despite the bombing:

Image


So it seems this does not work and there is currently no reason to try to bomb depots/railyards (I assume by bombing depots you meant to bomb the railyards, since bombing "depot" is not an option for either ground attack or strategic bombing that I could see).
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Beethoven1
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Beethoven1 »

Also this is the freight at the depot. The depot started the turn with 0.

Image

8200 received

minus 7218 sent out

minus 22 lost

960 remaining

8200 - 7218 - 22 = 960

the numbers add up
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Joel Billings
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Joel Billings »

That's not the way it's supposed to work. It's not that units receive damaged goods, it's that goods are damaged or destroyed over time as freight is called for from the depot. That's the way it was described to me by Gary.
All understanding comes after the fact.
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Beethoven1
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Re: Railway Interdiction effects

Post by Beethoven1 »

Joel Billings wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2023 5:05 pm That's not the way it's supposed to work. It's not that units receive damaged goods, it's that goods are damaged or destroyed over time as freight is called for from the depot. That's the way it was described to me by Gary.
I don't understand what that is supposed to mean.

What, exactly, is it that is allegedly "damaged" and how can this alleged damage be measured/observed? Are the damaged "goods" freight, are they fuel, are they ground elements, are they supply, or are they ammo?

If it is just "freight" or something that is "damaged" before it is transformed into ground elements or supply/ammo, then that should make 0 difference to anything as long as you also have enough undamaged "freight" at the depots to be converted to the needed ground elements/ammo/supply/fuel. And that is generally the case since there is a surplus of freight for the most part apart from the special case of Axis in 1941.

The UI also does not appear to show "damaged" freight anywhere, unless it is included under the "lost" freight. But if it is included under the lost freight, there was only 22 lost freight at the depot (compared to thousands sent out), so even that would be infinitesimally small even if that were the case.

This is even all assuming that it isn't just outright bugged and not working. Which I suspect may be at least as likely.
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