Vehicle/Need - Axis vs Soviets

[Wiedrock]

Looking into extreme discrepancies for German vs Soviet Vehicle/Needs. And the overall issue of Supply Priority 4 for all Units not being an issue, some observtions.
Note: This is mostly tested with NON-MOT, tested with "Supply Only (1)" TOEs. Most effects also apply to MOT formations, things like vehicle-modifiers may be different...or rather the same (actually Ger 1:1 Sov) as can be seen in the additional screen attached at the end!

This time I've tested in a StB Scenario Editor, so all hidden 1941 effects are off (I hope). As pointed out in this Thread, Soviets Need way less Ammo. So far so good.

As seen in this first Screen, both Divisions have exactly the same 100 Guns, MOR/EXP and both 100% AMMO and Vehicles.

Ammo is explained in the other Thread. The Vehicles show a huge difference, is it caused solely by more Ammo? NO!

vehicles1.png (523.81 KiB) Viewed 797 times

Here we can see that Germans have 50% more Support Need than Soviets.

“Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.”
As can be seen, Soviets need only 66% of Support.

Support Squads.png (421.9 KiB) Viewed 797 times

There are several things worth noting looking at these numbers

1. Ammo
   • Soviets Artillery required Ammo is German numbers x0.6x0.4 as mentioned
2. Supplies
   • Soviets require only ~70% of German Supplies
3. Vehicles
   • Soviets require their "freight tons" (in this case only Ammo) divided by 6 in vehicles
   • Germans require their "freight tons" (in this case only Ammo) divided by 3 in vehicles
4. Support/Need [Support Squads - partially assigned by HQs]
   • German Units need 50% more Support Squads than Soviet Units (or Soviets have only 66% of German Needs)

Questions:

1. No Question here - taking it as given and WAD. [Infantry is 1:1, Tanks x0.6, Artillery x0.6x0.4 (Assault fronts Status removes one of this Artillery modifiers)]
2. Why are Soviets eating 30% less than Germans do?
3. When Germans are already using more vehicles due to more Ammo AND more Supplies (for whatever reason), why are they additionally Needing double the amount of Trucks to transport those freight (NON-MOT only)?
4. Why are Soviets having only 66% of German Support Need (or Germans 50% more than Soviets)?

My weird thoughts on how it may have been sopposed to work:

1. see the other Thread for ideas.
2. Soviets = less vehicles needed due to (history?!) or way less Ammo freight, and possibly did more horse drawn Supplies?! -> therefore increased Supply (horse fodder), but this modifier was implemented in the wrong way, so reducing the Supply needs for Soviets by 30% instead of increasing it?!
3. Germans = more vehicles needed for Ammo -> reduce the vehicles needed by "/2" but instead dividing by 2 it was multiplied by x2?!
4. Soviets have less Support (intern and in HQs) due to historical TOEs -> therefore less well supplied [See the following Quote from the Manual what's affected], but due to them only needing 66% of German Support this gets somewhat canceled out?!

21.2.3. Impact of Support Squads on Unit Performance
The level of logistics support provided by Support Squads has an impact on the following:
•Impacts the formulas that determine the amount of supply a unit receives based on its supply trace;
•Attrition suffered by vehicles during freight operations;
•The amount of fatigue added or removed from a unit during a turn;
•The ability of leaders to conduct successful administrative checks; and,
•The amount of attrition a unit suffers due to movement.

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There are also other possible side effects worth mentioning, like:

• Less Trucks in Units -> more Trucks in Pool/Depost -> Less Trucks of Units used for freight -> More MP assigned
• Loss of trucks due to Movement/Interdiction may be percentage based(?)
• CV affected by vehicles/Need is percentage based, so 100% is always the same, be it 50/50 or 400/400 vehicles.
• Vehicle/Truck Repair Rates for Soviets (25%) and Germans (5%/10%).
• ....and I guess like 50more things which I can't make up now.

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Final words:
How I'd imagine things should be...
1. Ammo note: Infantry is 1:1, Tanks x0.6, Artillery x0.6x0.4 (Assault fronts Status removes one of this Artillery modifiers)
2. If you need less vehicles, you'll need more horses, so you'll need more (not less) Supplies.
3. If you have a Truck that Truck moves freight of a certain amount.
4. Soviets have a higher Combat to Support Squad ratio in their Divisions. Cancelling this effect by reducing their Needs while maintaining the "more" in combat elements is questionable.

I think there was put lot's of effort in all those modifiers, but somehow there was a point reached were they canceled each other out or may in combination reversed the intended effects eventually.
Additionally due to the multiplicative nature of things, such "small" modifiers (if the reader of this is someone who sees a 33%, 66%, 100% or a 50% modifier as small) end up in big numbers, combined with the impact of each of those in several other calculations in the game this has a (not fully) exponential effect on balance and some of the modifiers (from my interpratation) may actually have been implemented in the wrong way (as in my thoughs section before mentioned).

I am eager to hear other peoples take on this and/or what other way of possible interpretations for those modifiers are reasonable. As initially said, it's my try to figure out why Supply Priority 4 (for all HQs) is a thing and this time I looked at Vehicles (and Supply/Support Squads), as I did take a look at Ammo in the other post.

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Attached as mentioned the MOT MECH (3[ALL]) Motorized Unit. The Vehicle modifier gets removed as it seems, the rest seems to be the same (Supplies differences may be varying ~68-85% due to small-number-rounding...or there is another modifier going on, ....that's why I mostly used NON-MOT for now).

[Joel Billings]

I'm pretty sure this is all WAD. I don't remember all the reasons why Gary did these things, but I'm pretty sure on supply the assumption was the Soviets were living off the land more than the Germans.

[gingerbread]

"Assault fronts Status removes one of this Artillery modifiers"

Does the other modifier disappear when the Soviet ammo rule expires? I think the date is 1/1/1944.

If so, the Soviets could be paying by having less ammo to fire. This might be implemented in a binary way, that is a highter probability to not fire at all, but full effect if the roll(s) are made.

[Wiedrock]

"Assault fronts Status removes one of this Artillery modifiers"

Does the other modifier disappear when the Soviet ammo rule expires? I think the date is 1/1/1944.

We tested this in Doscord a while ago and 1 turn after assigning an Artilelry SU to a Assualt front it's Ammo needs changed. That's how we encountered this. Altough not every "Gun" seems to be considered "Artillery" in this context.

Did a quick repeat of my tests with a "rolled" StB to 1945.
Germans stayed all the same (note that a little Test in Vistula to Berlin Scenario somehow increased most numbers for Germans by +12% [not sure why/how]).
- Soviet Supply needs are equal now?!
- The Soviet Ammo modifiers compared to Germans changed from x0.6x0.4 to a x0.8 as it seems?!
- Soviets seem to still only need half of German Trucks.
- Soviet Support needs are still ~66% of German numbers.

StB - 1942 vs 1945 comparison.png (996.21 KiB) Viewed 704 times

If so, the Soviets could be paying by having less ammo to fire. This might be implemented in a binary way, that is a highter probability to not fire at all, but full effect if the roll(s) are made.

As far as I have understood it it is someow like this. Reduced ammo decreases chance to fire for Elements, so less FPE per Element, but allt hat happens inside the black box.

I'm pretty sure this is all WAD. I don't remember all the reasons why Gary did these things, but I'm pretty sure on supply the assumption was the Soviets were living off the land more than the Germans.

Thanks. I am not saying any of these modifiers is weird/wrong or so, when looked at it in a vacuum. Just looking at the numbers created by this many modifiers are irritating (for me) in the ways described initally. And their magnitudes may be too large.

There are other things rarely being used in TOEs, Like the other Motorization types
0 = "none"
2 = "all non-Infantry"
Those are the ones hinting me for the difference between less Trucks = more Supply (Horse fodder). See this example.

Motr-types.png (333.36 KiB) Viewed 704 times

At least that's how I interpreted/immersed those numbers. I am aware that it's difficult to reproduce the numbers/TOEs with this three types and can understand that mostly "1" is being used as a middle ground but with the additional Soviet modifiers (1942: vehicle 50% and Supplies 70%) I struggle with putting those things together.

[Wiedrock]

I did some reading and the modifiers (Vehicle/Supply[freight]) ...seems to become historical Thread now.
They seem to be derived from Soviet TOEs (having less vehicles) and the daylie consumption/need numbers for Soviet Rifle Divisions (which were little smaller than for the Germans). So from that everything seems alright, altough not sure if the game is doubling this effects by the additional Ammo modifier and the fuel difference (since those are already included in the historical daylie usage differences comparisons afaik).

[Denniss]

I'm pretty sure this is all WAD. I don't remember all the reasons why Gary did these things, but I'm pretty sure on supply the assumption was the Soviets were living off the land more than the Germans.

This is a bit questionable in my opinion. You live off the land to get supplies like food/water that your traditional supply chain does not provide fast enough. That does not change the amount a unit actually needs.
If you look at latewar saves a Rifle Corps of ~30k men needs about the same amount of vehicles as a german Infantry Division of ~16k. That is with the germans defending their homeland but they don't get this "live off the land" bonus.
Soviets don't have much of a problem problems supplying their units deep in Axis territory. They need more strain on their logistical chain and that could be done by requiring more supplies thus more vehicles and fuel for their non-motorized units

[Wiedrock]

Lord13 just recently did a GC41 AI vs AI and Soviets were early in every aspect, there were 2x VP towns not getting +6VP Bonus. D-Town fell 2 Months earlier and Berlin fell in February '45. KIA Axis: 4.2million Soviet: 5.8million (shouldn't Soviets be more at 10million KIA?...I know there are huge debates about numbers).
Similar outcomes can be observed in many StB PvP Scenarios which are unedited (so no Morale adjustments) where Germans are looking like it'd be 1945 in '43 already and there's barely a thought possible about Zitadelle (yes, it depends on the players).

So we already have:

• less Vehicle numbers are historical
• less Supply Need is historical
• less Ammo Need is historical

...there we have the "Support Need" left. Which is modified by x0.66 for all Soviet formations (afaik, tell me if that's wrong). This one I can not fully understand, since everything else has already been lowered. Having less Trucks means you gotta do more stuff the manual way, in return you are more fatigued. Fatigue is impacted by Support Need numbers. Therefore this could be perfectly reproduced by removing the x0.66. Similar to other effects, so Soviets would/should end up with:

• little more Fatigue
• little less MP
• little less Supplies
• ...and what the Manual states

21.2.3. Impact of Support Squads on Unit Performance
The level of logistics support provided by Support Squads has an impact on the following:
•Impacts the formulas that determine the amount of supply a unit receives based on its supply trace;
•Attrition suffered by vehicles during freight operations;
•The amount of fatigue added or removed from a unit during a turn;
•The ability of leaders to conduct successful administrative checks; and,
•The amount of attrition a unit suffers due to movement.

Soviet Divisions have less internal Support Elements, also the HQs usually have less Support they can assign to Divisions. This gets largely countered by this hidden Modifier. On top of all that this reduction indicates (how I interpret it) that they were 33% more efficient with all of their Logisitcs/Support, which I am not sure since from what I know this "better" was a result of having infinite Fuel and Trucks (Lend Lease) and fighting a beaten enemy facing a two front war.
As an example, depending on TOE Germans have [42 13th/14th Wave Infantry Division] ~65% Support Squad Manpower and Soviets ~41% [42b Rifle Division]. So in return Soviets have more men with guns and those are also only needing 66% of German Support.

If possible, an option to enable/disable it (at least for Modding a Scenario) or to edit the modifier would be neat. After all the Red Army usually runs with Supply Priority 4 and 100%'ish fullfilled needs most of the time (Germans are not that much different but thats the Supply system which is another topic). Removing this modifier may rebalance some of this and delay Soviet offensive capabilities a little bit, altough not sure whether it's effect would actually be recognizable at all if removed, since it's many small points adding together which is hard to grasp. But if each Division would lose 2% CV and 1MP every 3 turns due to this it may be worth considering it for balancing (and from my limited PoV, realism) purpose.