Supply consumption - heavy flak unit

[vaned74]

Ok, scenario testing sandbox in the tech support thread as well as save game 91 which can be used to simply load head to head and see what happens if anyone is interested.

Conditions that I thought I needed to control and or test for:

1. Supply sources - no unit being tested has any supply source other than the supplies they have on hand. They are placed on islands with no bases.

2. Units do not share supplies, so no additional supply is provided to the units.

3. Unit supplies do not suffer from spoilage - and running 30-40 turns of no activity shows this to be the case.

4. Unit posture - was not tested, all cases were run in "Combat" mode.

5. The only unit that had engineers in it was the "I like to dig brigade" - so no other unit could consume supplies for building field fortifications, etc.

6. The only activity that would change the supply consumption was the activity tested - eg being bombed, digging, taking replacement, repairing.

7. Fatigue / Disruption - I ran some tests on this too, not posted the results. But, recovery of fatigue does not seem to require supplies. I thought it might be a function of the units being bombed being fatigued/disrupted and then recovery taking supplies and this not being seen as you cannot stop the turn processing / but, is not the case.

8. Experience/preparation gain - does not take supplies.

9. Upgrading - all units set to no upgrade / no replacements (unless testing taking on replacements was indeed the test).

10. No other units on the map to cause any sort of interaction - eg recon flights, etc.

11. Damage from bombing - I set the bombs to be able to do no damage / but, this is in anyway irrelevant. If the bombs did do damage to the unit the repairs do not cost supplies anyway. The only thing that would change is the base supply consumption.

12. Device types - irrelevant. Supply consumption is one point per device in the unit for every 30 days. It is dead nuts on the button.

So, as far as I can tell, the only influencing action on the consumption of supplies by the targeted unit is that which was tested - eg did it dig, did it take replacements, did it repair squads, did it bombard, was it bombarded, was it ground attacked by air and did it shoot back, was it ground attacked by air and did it not shoot back.

If I am missing something, please advise. If it is simply not possible to test something, that is OK too. These were more to get a sense and feel of what is being consumed.

And, really the only test that concerns me is the one where the unit with 800 devices, 10 of which are AA MGs, gets it supply chewed up pretty quickly by non-damaging air raids. 800 devices is a pretty typical reinforced brigade / small division size for Japan. 2,000 supplies or 2.5 months on hand is a slight excess of supply but would be pretty typical if the unit was amphibiously landed and did not immediately capture the base. Around 900 sorties within flak range will take all the supply from the unit - by mid-late war Allied standards, not a lot - 70-80 sorties a day for 10-15 days. Eg - its the big units with very small organic AA contingents that seem to cause the cases I see could be a problem. They can be easily drained if they are isolated and then you can bomb at whatever altitude you want with no fear of AA damage.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: vaned74

And, really the only test that concerns me is the one where the unit with 800 devices, 10 of which are AA MGs, gets it supply chewed up pretty quickly by non-damaging air raids. 800 devices is a pretty typical reinforced brigade / small division size for Japan. 2,000 supplies or 2.5 months on hand is a slight excess of supply but would be pretty typical if the unit was amphibiously landed and did not immediately capture the base. Around 900 sorties within flak range will take all the supply from the unit - by mid-late war Allied standards, not a lot - 70-80 sorties a day for 10-15 days. Eg - its the big units with very small organic AA contingents that seem to cause the cases I see could be a problem. They can be easily drained if they are isolated and then you can bomb at whatever altitude you want with no fear of AA damage.

This has been my experience also. In a frontline setting you can have the AA machine-guns of a division-sized formation end up leaving the rifle squads without enough supply to shoot at the enemy troops on the ground.

[tiemanjw]

ORIGINAL: vaned74

Actually, not entirely true. I monkeyed around with a similar test of the unit with just the 10 MGs, 800 devices total and 2,000 start supplies. Started bombing runs at 3,000 feet with just about 70 a/c average per turn. In 13 days, the unit went straight to 0 supplies...

but he is not getting resupplied (at least according to your initial description) between turns. So that means it took 70*13=910 sorties to drain him. If you can get 910 sorties over a unit in a day, than I'm ok with it being out of supply (read as unable to effectively resist) a ground attack later in the day.

[rustysi]

Just two more things here.

One, I would not consider 40mm a heavy flak unit. Its light like in your previous test. Heavy flak would be more like 75mm and above. Just sayin'.

As pointed out, some things here might be used to run units out of supply and there would be no way to combat that

Anyone ever hear of fighter support?[X(][:D]

[Yaab]

Basically, 40mm AA guns and 13.2mm AAMGs should be in the same Auto-Weap category - flak guns fed by clips with high rate of fire (120-140 rounds per minute). The test should be redone with single-loaded 75-120mm guns, shooting 15 rounds per minute.

BTW, 100 x 40mm AA guns in a single one unit should see lots of used suppply for sure.