ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
If we had Component Supply (Wishlist Item 5.14) that could be accounted for. So, supply could be broken down into fuel and ammo. Then moving would use only fuel and fighting would use only ammo. Then there could be justification for making the penalties for being 1% in either more stringent for the associated function. Of course, there could be more breakdown further, but I think those two would be enough for a while. The breakdown wouldn't need to take place until the supply got to the unit (for simplicity purposes).
The difficulty here is that units don't use fuel and ammo at the same rates.
Artillery that receives one tenth of its full supply of shells can do about a fifth of the damage it could otherwise; it can hold its fire until the target is really good, but at the end of the day, it needs
tons of ammo to be of much use. Worse, in a lot of armies, fuel will be needed to bring that ammo up.
Infantry, on the other hand, can remain at least defensively quite potent with a minimum of ammunition; the requirements are almost absurdly modest compared to that required by tanks and artillery to remain useful. One 105 mm round weighs around 40 pounds -- that's the equivalent of a thousand or so rifle-caliber bullets. Bring up a ton of ammunition to your artillery battalion and it'll burn through it in four salvos. Bring up a ton of rifle ammunition to your infantry battalion and you've got forty rounds per man -- quite enough to stave off anything but a determined attacker. It's twelve pieces that can fire four times each versus eight hundred pieces that can fire forty times each.
This helps to explain why the Stalingrad pocket could hold out for so long, among other things. The tanks and artillery quickly became capable of only the most limited resistance -- but the infantry could still fight.
Similarly with fuel, of course. Given a reasonably well-settled region, foot infantry and cavalry can keep moving almost indefinitely; they'll start to get a little frayed, but they can push on. Tanks and trucks, of course, simply stop. That is unless either (a) they can bring up fuel (and again, a lot of it) or (b) the enemy has been good enough to leave some behind.
This helps to explain why the Russians continued to field cavalry. It gave them continued offensive mobility even in the absence of supply.
The distinction between fuel and ammunition strikes me as largely flawed. First, forces that have enough ammunition generally have enough fuel, and vice-versa. Secondly, for a lot of forces, fuel is needed to
get the ammunition. Thirdly, those forces that need large physical quantities of ammunition to fight often need large quantities of fuel to fight as well, while conversely, those forces with modest ammunition requirements often have no fuel requirements at all.
Finally, of course, there are those forces (hores-drawn artillery) that need lots of ammunition to fight, but have no fuel requirements whatsoever -- either for fighting or for moving. They do need fodder -- but that may or may not be obtainable locally, depending on the circumstances. Also, a horse keeps running for a while without 'fuel.' Not so a truck.
So while in an ideal world distinguishing between all types of supply would be good, this strikes me as something that would definitely complicate the game but whose benefits would be questionable. In the end, we are managing as a one-man team in our spare time what is normally the sole occupation of thousands of trained personnel -- who often muff the job at that. We don't
want a perfectly detailed simulation. What we want is one where the generalizations reflect what generally happens. Breaking down supply -- and breaking it down in a way that doesn't seem to me to reflect the operative factors particularly well in the first place -- is not the way to go.
