American city resource shortages

[HansBolter]

Now that I have WITP Tracker running I get daily alerts warning me that both San Fran and LA are short of resources needed for HI/LI.

I was operating under the apparently mistaken impression that the AI was taking care of everything regarding US production. I can see now that either the AI is doing a poor job of resorurce distribution, or the game is modelinng a shortage of available resources as the US gears up to a wartime economy.

Either way, I started looking to see what could be done. There are no resources at all in the Eastern US (???) that could be shipped to the West coast. It didn't make sense to me to steal them from other west coast cities engaged in production, but I did discover a treasure trove of resources stockpiled at Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City has 50,000 resources stockpiled. Obviously, I can't send ships to Salt Lake City to transport those resources to LA and San Fran.

However, there IS a major railroad network connecting all three cities. Why aren't the resources needed in LA and San Fran being transported there by rail from inland stockpiles? Since players have no ability to call for additional resources to a base the way we can for supplies, and sufficient resources cannot be found in coastal cities we can ship from, how do we get sufficient resources to these cities? Will the game automatically ramp up the resources at these cities as the US war economy gears up? If so, why are the players left in the dark regarding this?

Shouldn't these nuances of US production be explained somewhere instead of creating the general impression that you only need to pay attention to production if you are playing Japanese? Please excuse the criticism if I have garnered that impression inaccurately.

[xj900uk]

I don't think the road & rail networks are properly shifting resources, oil and fuel between various joined same-continent city centres (supplies seem to work OK).  Wonder if this is a fault which will be corrected in the next patch?

[Smeulders]

Well, there are resource shortages for some cities and it is annoying that it keeps showing up in tracker, but that doesn't mean you should really pay attention to the production there. There will be always be more than enough supplies on the American continent, thanks to the huge production in the Eastern USA.

[Q-Ball]

Other than tracker messages, it doesn't matter. There is almost no conceivable way you could haul enough supplies out of San Fran and Los Angeles to actually have a shortage. Don't sweat it. The Allied player has no need whatsoever to ever think about Resources, Oil, or any other facet of production.

If you are Japan, on the other hand, you should sweat resource moves; it's important.

[Flying Tiger]

as an Allied player i'm not concerned about supply, but i would like to be reassured that my AC factories are performing at max output (yes, the Allied player does have a few AC factories!!), and without resources and oil i'm not sure those factories are functioning.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Flying Tiger

as an Allied player i'm not concerned about supply, but i would like to be reassured that my AC factories are performing at max output (yes, the Allied player does have a few AC factories!!), and without resources and oil i'm not sure those factories are functioning.

Exactly my concern. I have no worries about supply or fuel shortages. It's airplanes I have a decided shortage of in January '42. I would like to have a comfort level knowing my aircraft factories are functioning at peak level.

[wdolson]

Aircraft factories don't use supply, or fuel, they use HI points.  Allied Heavy Industry vastly over produces them, so it shouldn't be a problem.  Look on the Industry Management screen, most of the time the Allies have over 1 million HI points and only a need for a few thousand.

Bill

[HansBolter]

I'm not talking about fuel or supply, I'm talking about resources, which I AM getting constant messages that I have shortages of.

If you're telling me that the US has such a huge over capacity of HI/LI that the shortages of resources necessary to keep all of them running efficiently is NOT having a negative impact on aircraft and LCU device production, that is all well and good to know.

However, that does NOT excuse the fact that the rail network the players have no control over is not working properly on it's own to distribute the resources. Either the players should be given some measure of control over overland resource distribution similar to the way supply distribution is dealt with, OR the autonomous rail network should be made to work properly in autonomous mode.

[wdolson]

We found a bug in the resource movement code and it's been fixed.  North American factories should have enough resources now.

The fix just went in, so it will be in the final release, it isn't in the beta.

Bill

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

We found a bug in the resource movement code and it's been fixed.  North American factories should have enough resources now.

The fix just went in, so it will be in the final release, it isn't in the beta.

Bill

Great new!! Thanks for looking into it.

[wdolson]

To give credit where credit is due, BigJ62 made the actual changes on that one. 

Bill

[Califvol]

As an Allied player in 1942 I am routinely sucking all the supplies out of San Francisco. Run a few 200K+ Cargo TF's out of SF and even at max resuppluy selected for SF it runs out of supplies right quick.

[wdolson]

It's a good idea to put most of the bases in North America that are on the rail/road network on max supply draw (manually up the supply draw to max).  Especially do this in the bases in central California.  This will keep a large amount of supply close to San Francisco.  SF might have a temporary dip, but it will bounce back within a day when you suck a lot of supply out.

With all bases on max draw, every base in North America will be around 100 K or more of supply within a month or two. 

Bill

[Califvol]

Thanks for the tip!