Matrix Games Forums

I hope this is correct because I'm starting to think that instead of truck stations I need to be building supply bases.

Like a rule of thumb is instead of truck stations every 8 or so hexes, build one truck station, one supply base, one truck station, one supply base, and so on. I feel like I have tons of LIS but it never gets to where it's supposed to be. I mean 0% of anything is 0.

I would say keep in mind that a Supply Base only adds some Action Points for your truck points to extend their range. You can see it clearly when inspecting the road network with the Traffic Signs tool: there's a separate count for the original 100 APs from the Station and the 50 APs a level 1 Supply Base provides.

You might send 1 000 trucks further down the road, but if you need to transport 2 000 truck's worth of cargo, you'll still have supply issues.

And if you upgrade dirt roads to sealed roads, you're basically doubling your range (since you're halving the AP cost for passing through a hex).

But this brings up one thing I'm wondering about : only the first Supply Base extends the range of the Truck Station upstream, I get this.
But if the situation is : Truck Station A <-> Supply Base <-> Truck Station B, does the AP bonus apply to both A and B's truck points? I'll have to pay attention to this in game.

During your turn show "current points;, find a small unit on the map and upgrade it. Check your current points again. Based on weighted LPs, you can see your current LPs reduced along the route from the origin (e.g. SHQ) to your unit.

I believe every delivery works sequentially like that procedure.

Too few available LP in any hex along the chain and the delivery is aborted. It's a graph transverse (pathing algorithm) where the cost is debited from each path node--if a valid path is found.

I was getting ready to buy the game until I read this post. What a mess. I am glad I read this first and saved my money.

It sure looks daunting like this but we're somewhat finessing here.
I can assure you jpwrunyan's diagrams have caused me greater headaches than the actual game.

Well, this game's logistics issues have caused me greater headaches than these posts. I *always* lose a game because of logistics failures. Troops starve, tanks run out of fuel, and then I lose my army to the AI. I can *not* win.

ORIGINAL: Jdane
I would say keep in mind that a Supply Base only adds some Action Points for your truck points to extend their range.
But this brings up one thing I'm wondering about : only the first Supply Base extends the range of the Truck Station upstream, I get this.
But if the situation is : Truck Station A <-> Supply Base <-> Truck Station B, does the AP bonus apply to both A and B's truck points? I'll have to pay attention to this in game.

Often extending the range is the only thing I need to get stuff from one zone to another. Building a truck station is overkill and costs twice the amount of fuel to maintain. Once I connect to another city with range, I can build a truck station in *that* city where it is much more defensible.

The question of what happens when a supply depot is shared between one or more stations, it should extend the range of both. The document implies it by stating that it's a depot for dropping off fuel and crew to take shifts. So yeah, if you need range and not LIS, Station/Supply change seems the way to go. If you radically need more LIS, a chain of stations is fine. But why chain stations instead of just upgrading them? Especially in the early game before I have paved roads and still rely on stockpiles of fuel.

Anyway, the advantage of paved roads is great, but it's impossible to optimize for it in your original logistics network.

Does this situation explain why I sometimes see two percentages in the bottleneck overlay -- one in parentheses, one not? What do the two numbers mean?

Hi WadeStar,
Your first assumption was correct with the points...
200, 200, 160, 120, 80, 60 (40 + 20), 40, 60, 80, 100, 100

LIS points are all that matters in the end - not percentages. Percentages just show the effect of the erosion of the action points on the LIS.

Supply stations only provide Extension Points (EP - a bit like action points) and only apply ONCE to each LIS initiation point that goes through it. While there are EP it doesn't use Action points. But if it goes through a second Supply Station you don't get any more EP.

You can also double your AP and EP (and so you double your supply range) by building sealed roads.

If you use the traffic sign tool along the road you can isolate every truck station and see exactly how many LIS points, AP and EP are being allocated at each hex.

When the turn starts these points are then used to ship stuff to and fro from hex to hex. If you use 100% of the LIS in one hex then that amount is the maximum amount sent to the next hex along. This is shown as black on the Bottleneck tool.

I had not thought of using the traffic tool to debug point distributions along a straight road. That is a clever (though time consuming) idea.