ORIGINAL: Stamb
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And the problem is that having system like NSS 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 and 4 4 on the front is less effective than 0 0 1 1 4 3 3 4 4. As for unknown reasons, for me, stockpiling freight and then dropping priority of that depot is more effective then just having an incremental line of priories. I would expect that if there is enough trains and rails capacity to deliver freight to both frontline with #4 and #4 in the middle, then in case of leaving some depots in the back to #3 would make no difference as all of the freight that could get to a #4 will get there and rest will stay in #3.
But as i said, i do not understand that logic and i made some topic showing that, IMHO, super depots somehow can get a lot of freight, while without a super depot you will get MUCH less freight for now obvious reasons.
I did not try it, but i guess that even when setting all depots at 0, and only 1 depot on a front to #4 (simulating that all freight should go there) will produce worse result than a super depot.
Personally to me it looks like that without a super depot - rail transport is not working in full power. Unfortunately you can not afford such a luxury as keeping FBDs on top of a depot.
Since this has become a depot/freight thread, lets stress the basics. A Super-Depot does not pull more freight into the Soviet Union for the axis player, it distorts where a finite batch of freight goes.
The amount that can be sent in any turn is a capped number that may not be met.
The cap is fundamental, the freight is at the NSS, there are only a finite number of railyards of 2 or more in 30 hexes - that is a limit you can't break.
The amount that is actually sent out is likely to be less for a few reasons:
a) the malus on axis rail transport till April 42
b) You entrained reinforcements around Berlin in the turn - this have grabbed some of that finite rail capacity (lets call them trains)
c) Your rail net is congested, remember that congestion on dual track rails clears at volume/6 (if its 30k or less) and /4 for anything 30-50k. So crudely if you stress your system in one turn, it works less well for some time afterwards.
d) this matters as the 'trains' are represented as SMP, if there is no usage penalty, the freight can go up to 200 hexes, as soon as you generate usage penalties then it quickly becomes far more expensive for each unit to try and make that journey (in other words it calls on more trains to move 1 tonne so there are less trains left).
Why does that 'Minsk at 4' trick work?
Basically at some stage rail penalties have impacted so freight can't reach the front lines but can reach say Minsk. Since Minsk is a 4 it sticks there - very limited combat units are accessing it. When you release it, this batch of freight is not competing with the railyards in the Reich, it takes its 'trains' from the railyards around Minsk - and they have shorter journeys to the front so can overcome larger SMP penalties.
Why does this matter?
Well its all out of sight, but the more you know how to trigger the system to behave with very simple tools (on both the supply and demand side) the better your logistics will be.
And never forget, the system assumes SNAFU, so don't fuss at the occasional oddity. Your dispatcher got lost, couldn't read the writing, was having a bad day, got shot by the partisans ...