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Total control over where every truck is all the time is unrealistic, as trucking is ubiquitous and there needs to be a ebb and flow.
However it would be nice if the player could control the moving of trucks from one unit to a specific other unit.

Look at some of those Infantry Divisions in France and you will see some have over the required amount of vehicles. Which is very realistic, they have good scroungers in supply and they been living it up on garrison duty in France.

3rdSS use to steal artillery and vehicles from other German's supplies.

Another issue with trucks affecting the Axis player only is the massive buildup in damaged trucks vs ahistorical very low repair rate. You have units crying for trucks but 200k (or more) stuck as damaged.

I had noticed in an earlier game I wasn't going to be able to execute a planned counter attack because several panzer formations were desperately low on vehicles.
I had used them a good bit to that point, so this isn't a matter of questioning the fact the vehicle inventory of the divisions were spent, but it became impetus to learn more about the 'flow' of trucks, so I could get them where I needed them.

With the newfound importance of trucks/vehicles to the flow of supplies and reach of units, I'd like to see WitE2.0 consider a 'vehicle' page for the CR.

Now each turn I try to at least look at, if not track:

From the Production Screen:

Vehicle Repair Pool
Vehicles repaired this week
Vehicle replacement Pool
Vehicles Built

Vehicles in Units
Vehicles Units Need
Vehicles Need Difference (derived)
Vehicle unit need % (derived)

Vehicles in (Motor) Pool
Vehicles in Repair
vehicles in Depots
Vehicles in Depots Used

From the Event Log:
Trucks lost to unit movement
Total Trucks lost to unit movement
Trucks repaired to logistics pool

From the Freight Event Log
Truck pool
Trucks used
Trucks lost in Freight weekly (derived)
Trucks lost in Freight total

I would like to see on a CR type unit page the vehicle need and allotment. Some units may be so low on vehicles it makes sense to make them static, but I don't want to click, click, click through each unit to check that each turn. A sortable CR page on vehicle info would be great, especially when I'm trying to figure out which of my armored and mech units can be formed into the 'freshest' kampfgruppe to put out next fire and who needs to take some vacation.

I've seen that too with lots of trucks in the damage pool..after a while, I get more back from repair per turn then I get from new production.

If you have the EF box on you start with a repair pool of 182k trucks, and repair per turn starts at 20k a turn, which is 4-5x total weekly production (depending on factory damage).

Total control over where every truck is all the time is unrealistic, as trucking is ubiquitous and there needs to be a ebb and flow.

I don't want 'total control', but I am seeking to understand how the game intends (or actually) works in order to best replenish vehicles where I want them.
Basically looking for 'best practices'.

From another post:

******

The 9th SS is a fat and happy little unit that has been resting in Vienna and now Milan (both national supply sources) for a few weeks (moved only by rail in the last month).



Aside from a few items their TOE is blessed.



This is an EF box game, which should inflate the number of trucks you see in the depots, but I'm showing a motor pool of 30k trucks.



As the player, what can I do to draw down that truck motor pool and get 9th SS Panzers vehicle allotment at least at a point it isn't crippling their mobility?

I could spend AP on a non-motorized unit and draw trucks from the pool into that unit. Some kind of function like that might be needed for arm/mech/mot units. When you combine the truck loss from movement itself and then add in the losses from resupply (20.1.7.1. Emergency Use of Vehicles) I think the historical panzer pace would be hard to match without something like that.

"In July 1941, Balck became Spar-kommissar at the Office of the Director of Army Equipment in Berlin. His task was to make up for vehicle losses in Russia. Over a four-month period, he stripped 100,000 vehicles and their crews from uncommitted units and transferred them to the combat forces."

*****

Oddly enough, after making that post the 9th SS got a slew of trucks (going from 808 to 2890).



No new elements except trucks to the unit. Instead of Refit status it was on Reserve status. Maybe the motor pool assignment routine looks at refit as a 'non combat' status and doesn't assign trucks as readily? I'll try to tinker with this in different locations as well (this was a national supply source - I'm interested in seeing how it works if I sit on top of the Eastern depots which are overflowing with trucks). I have a few panzer corps in reserve during the April rains, so I'll see if I can experiment and crack the code on the logistics engine's priorities.

Worth including, two other armor/mech formations in the same hex, all attached to the same panzer HQ (and panzer army), and they're still in desperate need of trucks.

However it would be nice if the player could control the moving of trucks from one unit to a specific other unit.
Look at some of those Infantry Divisions in France and you will see some have over the required amount of vehicles.

You've given me an idea to test.

Yes I see this allot.

RR seems to bless units allot more then refit.

I am guessing this is a bug as there was on with WitE, I called it the RM bug.

This was fixed WitE but I guess it came back to life in WitW.

Old BUG new life

[:D]

Easy to test have fun [;)]

I don't want 'total control', but I am seeking to understand how the game intends (or actually) works in order to best replenish vehicles where I want them.
Basically looking for 'best practices'.

I didnt think so, as a collective I wanted the devs to know that we were not asking for that.


In game is Reserve status almost a type of Refit status if on Reserve between turns?


Has anyone noticed this happening?

I have experimented with this. After refitting at a depot all you can - except trucks-, move from the depot and the "Administrative Staff" may decide the unit needs more trucks to resupply itself.

ORIGINAL: Pelton
Yes I see this allot.
RR seems to bless units allot more then refit.
I am guessing this is a bug as there was on with WitE, I called it the RM bug.

Seeking to clarify, are you talking just about trucks, or elements in general appear to flow better in reserve than refit mode in your experience?

As noted this unit is basically stocked (even full on scout cars! Just no heavy mortars), it's the truck issue I'm struggling to understand.

I don't know that anything is bugged because I don't know how it's supposed to work.
I can understand if the reasoning is a unit on refit isn't fighting, so it doesn't need scarce vehicles, whereas a unit on reserve needs mobility. Would units on Ready status have an even higher claim on trucks?
Understanding this is important to the game, but I can't find it spelled out anywhere, so I'm asking in the hopes anyone who knows how it should work can chip in.
Once we know how it's supposed to be we can explore if it's WAD, but trying to guess on the design with so many variables in play isn't easy.

ORIGINAL: Pelton

ORIGINAL: Seminole
"The engine of the Panzer is a weapon just as the main-gun." - Guderian

With the restrictions that the truck TOE% puts on armored movement I care more about how many trucks are in my armored/mech units than I do how many AFVs they have...

As German player you need to set up depots LONG before the Allies invade so supplies are not an issue even
under 7-9 interdiction for months.

You know basicly the best landing spots in France so place depots so no units will be more then 3 hexes away and then 2nd and 3rd layers. You also position units 1 hex off the beaches and then in the best defensive spots and have panzer reserves close to beaches from Netherlands to Normandy.


Same goes for Italy. You be stopping them just south of Rome and the landing areas are Anzio to northern Italian zone.
You simply put depots along these areas so no division will be more then 3 hexes away, then a 2nd layer a few hexes up the boot.

All Armys and depots are at L-2 other then the panzer reserve Corps that are at L-4.

Once Allies hit the beaches you only have to move reserves up once and your done. No matter where they land you got depots alrdy full of ammo and supplies which generally last long enough until you get some bad weather and they quickly fill up if you turn all others to 1 and the front line ones to 4 same for units.

The Panzer ToE will be HUGE for mobile warfare on Eastern Front, its basicly what I have been doing for yrs with AGS.

It will be more of a risk with 2.0, but the possible pay off is huge. I have tested it out with allies and seems to work better then I expected.

The current engine makes defending very easy if you have the time to set things up and under stand how the logistics system works or how they think it should work.

Interesting thought about setting up depots well before hand and living within 3 hexes of them. Maybe we could refer to it as 'spamming depots'? [:D]

In RL, why didn't the Germans do this? IIRC supply in Normandy was more of an issue than your description produced by this tactic.

Of course, this raises the question as to whether interdiction is restrictive enough within the 3 hex radius of a depot. And also whether your supply being adequate is with no attacking, or full attacking...

But then again, maybe the issue is just the use of the correct counter - recon the locations of the depots, and bomb the Railyards back to the stone age (assuming appropriate in game effects of course)

I'm still not entirely content with depots on two key fronts.

- They are too truck flexible - you can get more trucks in a depot than were committed to the Red Ball Express
- I think you should be able to see and bomb them to destroy freight but having exhausted my brownie points I'm having to save up to suggest big change like this - unless Pavel's feeling generous this Christmas as adding depots as an air target would be some work.

In RL, why didn't the Germans do this? IIRC supply in Normandy was more of an issue than your description produced by this tactic

I've never seen production of supplies as an issue (in the '43 campaign game), it's always questions of distribution.

Could the Germans have historically 'spammed' Italy and France with depots and stockpiled more supplies than the Allies?

In my EF box I from the outset created extra depots to try and alleviate demand on the truck fleet. The result of which is I have more supplies stockpiled than the Allies at this point.



If I understand a side effect of this is that supply costs of distribution are doubled, but even that doesn't seem to slow down the accumulation of supplies so long as there are depots to fill.

I have engaged in a truck killing campaign as the allies. I set up early interdiction (July '43) missions for the allied airforce over some area of France and keep bombing turn after turn (until bad weather), combined with bombing the vehicle factories in Germany.

It's my way of using strat bombers to 'interdict' German movement for the invasion.

In the one game I tried it, I had destroyed 233,000 trucks by Oct. 1944.
In comparison, as the germans in another game, where my opponent wasn't trying to kill my trucks, I had lost 54,000 trucks by mid Aug. 1944.

I am not sure how many vehicles my axis opponent built in the game where I was bombing those vehicle factories, but in my axis game I had built 108,000 trucks by Aug. 1944.

That would imply I gained 50k trucks in one game where the German vehicles are left alone, and my opponent lost 100k where I actively was trying to destroy them.

This brings us to an interesting point. To what extent were German shortages true shortages and to what extent were they issues of distribution? I read a good article last might that suggested that there was a fundamental imbalance of German military 'production' throughout the first 4-5 years of the war that was only beginning to be rectified in 1944 when the whole system started to collapse. basically, Germany spent more on increasing the size of the army at the expense of munitions for it to use, based on a desire to have big headline forces not a balance capabilty. The article (https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ ... tprint.pdf) attempts to normalise US, UK, USSR and German production, and compare ratios (correcting for wages and industrial capability). Up until 1943, Germany spent as much on military pay (proxy for size of military) as it did on munitions. US spent 3-4 times (falling away at the end), UK spent twice and USSR spent 3 times. The conclusion is US overdid it early war (or lend lease distorts it), and 'developed' economies needed to spend twice as much on munitions as the army/navy itself. USSR needed more for the same amount of munitions because they had a low wage army and a low productivity (= expensive) industry, and Ge has a benefit from a small navy/no merchant marine, but not enough to explain this.

The munitions issue probably doesn't impact until Barbarossa, but Germany has 2 years of all out war with only 50% of the munitions per man relative to everyone else. Thus I have a question... does Germany (in RL) have enough surplus to build up a 'depots in depth' defence? In game they certainly do. I wonder if the German system should be limited in supplies production, but (initially) more capable of moving it around (for little net change in supplies at the front in 1943. This would limit build up potential, and make Allied rail yard/RR attacks more important.

1943 production: (All types of war production, US $ (1944 prices))
Germany 13.5
USA 38
UK/Canada 12.5
USSR 14
Now, difficult to separate supply from aircraft, tanks etc, nor Eastern front vs ETO/MTO vs PTO, but more supplies stockpiled than WA seems... worth investigating.

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

I'm still not entirely content with depots on two key fronts.

- They are too truck flexible - you can get more trucks in a depot than were committed to the Red Ball Express
- I think you should be able to see and bomb them to destroy freight but having exhausted my brownie points I'm having to save up to suggest big change like this - unless Pavel's feeling generous this Christmas as adding depots as an air target would be some work.

Depots would make nice targets for partisan attacks in both west and east.

I think the supply movements from them rather than the depots themselves, but same difference - some supply loss with trucks to go with it...