This is why my divisions will be short of squads in 10 turns even if I have sufficient manpower.
After running one turn of production the German produces (among other things) 16 105 mm Howizter, 12 Cavalry Squads, 367 Pioneer Squads, 12 150mm Infantry guns, 1150 Labor Squads and only 10 Rifle Squads.
The arms points are being diverted to everything else except infantry squads.
Is that working as designed or am I missing something?
Well if I understand this correctly, and there is a LOT a don't understand, the Germans will manufacture what is needed to the limit of their manufacturing/manpower capability. And if those limits are passed, priority seems to be given to "big ticket" items such as artillery, and more "desirable" ground units such as sappers and cavalry. Then if all the armaments points are exhaused but there is still manpower left, then lots of labor and support troops can be added.
So as near as I can tell, it is working as designed.
Now you have a great deal of control in this process because you can set priorities at a high level. No, you can say build rifles but you can say give priority to the 999th infantry division and let everybody else complain: just set maxTOE to 50% globally and then go to the 999th infantry division, set maxTOE back to 100%, put them on refit and park them on an active rail line. In at most two turns you will have a nicely maxed out 999th infantry division and (probably) a lot of armament and manpower points in the pools since no one else got anything.
In other words, it pretty much worked like the real world since the Germans didn't even have the Heer up to 100% at kickoff and it never got any better. Just decide who gets the goodies with the maxTOE control and work it out as well as you can.
EDIT: Well, there is an exception to that control. Just as you have built up your pools in order to keep a continious flow of replacements to your favorite units along comes a reinforcement unit like a LW field division that will suck goodies out of your pools; keep a close eye on the reinforcement track and switch newcomers to 50% maxTOE immediately. Once one of those LW units soaks up your infantry and artillery there is no way to get it back short of disbanding the unit.
After several plays of the 43GC against the AI, I can tell you adjusting the TOE does not quite work. The units with high TOE fill up with everything except infantry squads, and those with a low TOE are short of everything.
If I understand the system correctly setting the TOE ranges will not change the production, just what is used. Moreover the infantry divisions that require a few cavalry squads and hundreds of infantry squads cannot fill properly if the system builds more of the rarely needed cavalry squads and few of the universally needed infantry squads.
Having the basic building block of all units (infantry squad) given the lowest priority is simply wrong.
The game is producing Labor to Infantry 115:1, Pioneer to infantry at 37:1 and Cavalry to infantry at 1:1 and it uses these things in the opposite proportions. Did any military in history ever produce more specialty squads than basic infantry? At these ratios?
After several plays of the 43GC against the AI, I can tell you adjusting the TOE does not quite work. The units with high TOE fill up with everything except infantry squads, and those with a low TOE are short of everything.
If I understand the system correctly setting the TOE ranges will not change the production, just what is used. Moreover the infantry divisions that require a few cavalry squads and hundreds of infantry squads cannot fill properly if the system builds more of the rarely needed cavalry squads and few of the universally needed infantry squads.
Having the basic building block of all units (infantry squad) given the lowest priority is simply wrong.
The game is producing Labor to Infantry 115:1, Pioneer to infantry at 37:1 and Cavalry to infantry at 1:1 and it uses these things in the opposite proportions. Did any military in history ever produce more specialty squads than basic infantry? At these ratios?
Well, as I implied above, I don't see that. If I am not trying to fill up the entire Heer at once, I maintain both manpower and armament pools. If I open up the TOE on a unit that has lots of infantry and nothing else I would see what you see, but what I get is production in proportion to the needs of the units I am feeding replacements to and that is usually infantry heavy. However, that doesn't happen until you get everyone to 50% since that is the minimum you can set the TOE.
If I were to lobby for a change here, I would like to be able to set maxTOE to 0% so I could pull burned out units back to the homeland and leave them there, out of the way, until I had the replacements to fill them out. Right now the only way to do that is to disband them which is both permanent and takes APs.
EDIT Sorry, I am being narrow-minded here. I have NOT played 43GC seriously as yet, so it may be necessary to disband some units as well as set everyone to 50% before you can build a pool. See my call for a change above.
I do not know if the production system is making poor decisions in '42, which I have not played; it seems to me it is doing a good job in the '43 GC. I went in and had a very close look at my production (Turn 8 -> 9). The only issue I have (besides the fact that most of my factories seem to be producing at a not particularly large percentage of their nominal capacity, much smaller than the % to east front times % factories not getting supplies would suggest. For example, capacity for 16 Tigers per turn; actual production 58 Tigers in 8 production turns); getting back to the start of the sentence, I am making a fair number of Motorized Rifle squads, not surprising given that my Pz Corps are taking the brunt of the SU offensive. What is surprising is that the vast majority of my production is of the two obsolete types and maybe 15% is of the 'correct' '43 TOE squads. Wouldn't mind an explanation for that seeming anomaly (the type of squads being massively produced even have the # designation showing that the AI knows they are obsolete). Anyway, the production system is making lots of rifle squads, pioneer squads. PG squads, etc.
In '43, the issue is not the production choices but the fact that, as the Axis, I am just going to run out of men and armaments and will then get bled white by the SU horde. I am doing better than historically, still holding Kharkov at the end of August and leaving Orel and Belgorad 2-3 weeks later than historical. But the SU is up 1.4 million men and I am down 150,000 despite the SU taking 400,000 more casualties to date. My armaments pool is down 30% and my manpower pool down 50%, although the latter seems to have stabilized. Strangely, I do seem to be winning the airwar. The SU is down almost 3000 planes and I am up 1200. I can explain my numbers but I know the SU can build almost 1000 planes a week and the math just doesn't work: 12,000 + 8 * 900 (say) - 6000 = 9200? For me, 2200 + 8 * 275 - 1000 = 3400. Yup. And my highest losses are Ju87D's, which is great. In 5 months of playing this game, I have never had a Ju87B or D actually destroy a soviet tank so the SU is just wasting ammo shooting at them. Mind you, by patch 47.07, I expect that will be changed and the huge flaws in the airwar portion of the game may get a spot of attention. Followed almost immediately by a manual for the editor.
Sorry, got off track there; but I am not seeing this issue. I still have all my TOEs at 100% (and have modded all the TOEs so that they have a lot more organic support (StuG, PJ and Pz IIIn companies in every division - since the AI never uses the non-organic ones in combat)). I also turned off the 'auto-lose option' of keeping the Axis '44 and '45 TOEs. Pretty sure I won't have many full strength units by '44 but at least the degree of patheticness will be my choice, not involuntary. I also won't have the problem of great bunches of AFVs in the pool while full TOE Pz divs have single figure CVs. This portion of the war, for the Axis, will be about managing manpower and possibly armament/AFV shortages. But to date, the game seems to have modeled this well and is doing an excellent job of carrying out the 'A' production.
