Sovet Truck Park

[pat.casey]

In one of my most recent games I was doing pretty well as the soviets; I had plenty of APs and a non-trivial tank pool (at least 3k tanks in the park). So naturally I built a mess of tank corps that then proceeded to spend most of the game at about 20 movement points because I had a massive truck deficit ... something like 70k (216k) was pretty typical.

My question for the group is, does anyone have any advice at keeping the soviet truck park running at an appropriate size? I feel like if I expand the mechanized army to its natural limits in 1942/1943 I won't have the trucks to support it. I'm not sure if this is historical or not, but it does seem to be a game constraint.

Are there any suggestions to mitigate this? Things I can do to run more tanks with less trucks, keep my trucks alive, build a truck surplus, etc?

[Flaviusx]

Trucks will not keep up, alas. This is one of the reasons the Soviets are never going to make heavy use of HQ buildups. The Axis can contrive to produce a truck surplus for most of the game and can afford to burn these, which will never be the case for the USSR.

There does indeed come a point where you really no longer want to build more units for sheer logistical reasons. The gain in mass is offset by the loss in mobility.

I recently concluded a private playtest and by 1943 was barely able to manage 60% or so of my truck requirements. This was with a roughly historical size mobile force. (36-40 tank/mech corps is about the historical maximum, with a 2:1 ratio between tank and mech corps.)

The upshot of this is to make cavalry corps incredibly valuable due to their mobility; they pay lower terrain costs, are less fuel dependent, and generally stay far closer to their MP maximums than the mech units. They are not even very much weaker than the tank or mech corps, particularly with tank battalion attachments. The later TOE for them gives them a sizable organic AFV component on top of that, so it's quite possible to build up cavalry corps with 200+ AFVs.

I personally think the Soviet truck pool needs some looking into as they are permanently starved for these in the game.

[Klydon]

This is historical. The choke point for the Russian mobile forces is trucks, not tanks. A lot of what you do in 1941 has a huge effect the rest of the game.

If you look at most Russian AAR's, they stick their armor and especially motorized infantry units into checkerboards, etc. To me, some of it is necessary, but it is a mistake to do it on a wholesale level. The reason why? Because they have tons of trucks in those units. How many of those units the Russians lose (IE surrounded and surrendered) determines how many trucks are available later.

If given a choice (and no, I have not played a AAR yet as the Russians) you won't see motorized infantry around after the first couple of turns. I look to put them static someplace (raking in a lot of extra AP's along the way) and save the trucks (should be between 1500-1800 per division). After they switch to infantry divisions, I reactivate them for 3 AP's. The tank divisions, I have a tendency to make them the last line of defense and use them for digging.

In part of all this is why the Germans need to do the Lvov pocket on turn 1. They simply need to put all those trucks out of commission or pay for it later.

Now, as far as management of tank corps. First, the Russians had more tank corps than they could support with trucks (check the scenarios). If you want good truck support, your tank corp force is going to be smaller. The other thing you can do is build fewer tank corps and more tank battalions/regiments.

Readers digest version is what you do with your motorized/tank divisions in 1941 plays a huge role in your truck situation for the rest of the war.

[Flaviusx]

Klydon, the truck shortage ingame is far greater than the historical one, particularly in the late war.

[Klydon]

Saw that in your post. I should rephrase and say that it is historical for the Russians to be short trucks for the mech/tank force they fielded. That the game has them even shorter than historical makes it even tougher. 

[Arstavidios]

Also you have to be careful about your truck factories. You cannot afford to lose them.
Most of your trucks will come through lend lease eventually.
i agree that the Tank - motorized divisions in 1941 are a critical source for trucks and APs. For the germans they should be priority targets.
as for tanks the soviets are producing a large surplus. Actually it's somewhat frustrating to see thousands of tanks piling up in the pools while you're desperately short of trucks, knowing that you cannot shift production.

[pat.casey]

ORIGINAL: Arstavidios
<snip> Actually it's somewhat frustrating to see thousands of tanks piling up in the pools while you're desperately short of trucks, knowing that you cannot shift production.

This .

I'd dearly love to play a variant of this game that gave both players (axis and soviets) full control over the economy, something similar to the level of detail of Japan in WITP.

I realize it'd be wildly ahistorical.

It is, nonetheless, a game I'd love to play and happily play for.

[Mynok]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Klydon, the truck shortage ingame is far greater than the historical one, particularly in the late war.

What's the design decision on this? Balance? Curious....

[ComradeP]

I'm going to guess here, but I think it's unintended to a certain extent. There was no way to see what the Soviet motor pool would look like in a game between humans in 1945 with 1941 as a starting point without playing such a game pre-release with a recent version, which due to the time requirements for that and the rapid release of new versions was not possible.

I'll copy and paste my post from the tester forum on cavalry corps, it doesn't include any confidential information:

OK, some additional thoughts:

A (Guards) Tank corps with a morale higher than 56 but lower than 71 can move a distance of 12 enemy clear hexes with 50 MP's. 4(1 for clear hex, 3 for moving into an enemy hex)x12=48. It's a rarity that mobile units will have 50 MP's. Let's say the Tank corps has 30 MP's, which is still higher than average when you've been attacking for multiple turns. It can move 7 hexes into enemy held clear terrain.

A (Guards) Cavalry corps with a morale higher than 56 but lower than 71 can move a distance of 7 enemy clear hexes with 22 MP's. 3(1 for clear hex, 3 for moving into an enemy hex-1 for being a cavalry unit)x7=21. It's not too difficult for cavalry units to get full MP's when they have a good leader, but let's say the unit has 18 MP's on average which allows it to move a distance of 6 clear hexes.

If the terrain includes any non-clear hexes, the advantage quickly swings to the cavalry corps. The cavalry corps can also in many cases make two or even three deliberate attacks during its turn, the Tank corps can at best make one.

Cavalry corps do require a lot more support squads (555) than Tank corps, but that's mostly because Tank corps have a poor supply situation. With two Tank battalions/regiments, a cavalry corps has ~100 tanks in 1942, which is acceptable. Of course, Tank Corps switch to a maximum of 162 at their first upgrade, so around 240 with two Tank battalions/regiments, but they're still seriously lacking staying power in terms of squad strength, something cavalry corps have plenty of generally. In February 1943, cavalry corps switch to a maximum of 135 tanks, which puts them at 213 tanks with 2 Tank regiments or 177 if you give them two Heavy Tank regiments.

Why is that relevant? Because cavalry formations require less trucks, so checking what you can do with them is worth it. Even with attachments, a fuel strength cavalry corps uses around 300-400 trucks I believe. Compare that to a mechanized corps which fairly easily requires 10 times as many trucks.

Also note that there's no limit to the amount of cavalry formations that can become Guards, so on average their morale will be higher than 56 whilst the average Tank corps will still be struggling to get there for a while.

I'm currently playing a vs. AI game where I won't build any Tank or mechanized corps, just cavalry corps, primarily to see what that does for my motor pool.

[Flaviusx]

Soviet truck pools have been all over the place. In the past, we were perhaps overly generous with them and had to cut back. Now I tend to think it's gone a bit too far in the other direction. Not easy to find the sweet spot here.

[Ketza]

If the Soviet makes it a point early to make armor/mech divisions static you can come up with a ton of trucks. In my latest game as Soviets I have almost 270k saved up by turn 12.

Is that more then usual and working as intended?

[Klydon]

One of the reasons that is such an impressive number is you don't have a lot of formations using trucks. (99k worth). I am sure that number will come down during mud, etc. The other thing is those tank units will turn to brigades at some point and they will be very expensive to reactivate (or at least they were for me in past games). You can't just disband them while they are static either unfortunately.&nbsp;

[Ketza]

ORIGINAL: Klydon

One of the reasons that is such an impressive number is you don't have a lot of formations using trucks. (99k worth). I am sure that number will come down during mud, etc. The other thing is those tank units will turn to brigades at some point and they will be very expensive to reactivate (or at least they were for me in past games). You can't just disband them while they are static either unfortunately. 

Most of the 1 and 2 CV tank/mech divisions that had the trucks were garrisons for places like Odessa and Kiev. They also make great MP sponges for checkerboards. Most of them wind up destroyed when I play but you are correct in the fact spending 11 aps to activate a tank brigade is a bit much.

[Jim D Burns]

The Soviet truck shortages are historical, Russia didn’t have the capacity to turn their army into a mechanized force that could compare to anything the Germans had, even after the tide had turned. I for one think things should remain as they are now.

According to WWII a Statistical Survey, in section 7 chart 91 the USSR built a total of 197,100 military trucks and Lorries during the war. Comparatively the Germans built 345,914. Factor in the small production numbers of the various axis minors and you probably have the axis building close to twice the numbers of new trucks that the Soviets managed to produce.

Severe rubber shortages in Russia (they had no rubber industry of their own) were probably the biggest culprit to such low production numbers of wheeled vehicles, and that choke point could only be overcome if the allied navies could ship either rubber stock or finished goods into Russia via lend lease.

If you then figure in all the captured trucks Germany confiscated from its western conquests, I’d say Germany’s motor pool was probably close to three times as large as Russia’s. So no matter how well the war was going, Russia was never going to achieve mechanization to the same degree that the German’s enjoyed early in the war. I think the game comes close to getting things right the way it is modeled now.

Jim

[pat.casey]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

The Soviet truck shortages are historical, Russia didn’t have the capacity to turn their army into a mechanized force that could compare to anything the Germans had, even after the tide had turned. I for one think things should remain as they are now.

According to WWII a Statistical Survey, in section 7 chart 91 the USSR built a total of 197,100 military trucks and Lorries during the war. Comparatively the Germans built 345,914. Factor in the small production numbers of the various axis minors and you probably have the axis building close to twice the numbers of new trucks that the Soviets managed to produce.

Severe rubber shortages in Russia (they had no rubber industry of their own) were probably the biggest culprit to such low production numbers of wheeled vehicles, and that choke point could only be overcome if the allied navies could ship either rubber stock or finished goods into Russia via lend lease.

If you then figure in all the captured trucks Germany confiscated from its western conquests, I’d say Germany’s motor pool was probably close to three times as large as Russia’s. So no matter how well the war was going, Russia was never going to achieve mechanization to the same degree that the German’s enjoyed early in the war. I think the game comes close to getting things right the way it is modeled now.

Jim

I think you're forgetting lend lease.

The soviets got a total of about 350k trucks (150k 1.5 ton and 200k 2.5 ton) through lend lease.

If I remember correctly by 1945 over half of the soviet motor pool was lend lease trucks of one sort of another.

The massive influx of trucks from lend lease let the soviets concentrate their auto industry almost exclusively on tanks, which is one of the ways they got such impressive tank production numbers from their industrial base.

So if you add lend lease to the domestic production you quoted above, we get:

Historical soviets: 200k domestic, 350k lend lease -> 550k trucks (ball park)
Historical axis: 350k domestic -> 350k trucks (ball park)

Based on that I'd naively expect the soviet truck park to outnumber the axis truck park, although they also had a much larger army so its entirely possible that their *relatively* truck shortage was greater. Its also possible that something unique about the soviet army caused them to burn trucks faster than the axis, to the point that even given 60% more trucks entering the system their peak truck park never caught up; I don't have the data on that one way or another.

[Michael T]

How many trucks came via lend lease in comparison to all the trucks the Russians built themselves?

Thanks, you answered my Q before I even asked

[Zebedee]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
According to WWII a Statistical Survey, in section 7 chart 91 the USSR built a total of 197,100 military trucks and Lorries during the war. Comparatively the Germans built 345,914. Factor in the small production numbers of the various axis minors and you probably have the axis building close to twice the numbers of new trucks that the Soviets managed to produce.

I have the following for production of trucks and buses in the SU.

1940 - 139879
1941 - 118704
1942 - 32409
1943 - 46720
1944 - 55167
1945 - 69662

Table C.1., Accounting for War, Mark Harrison. Sourced from the Soviet figures.

I guess the definition of 'military trucks and lorries' is going to explain the difference in numbers (as opposed to the Soviets building a lot of buses ) though the Soviet figures are closer as a definition match to the USSBS figures for Grossreich German truck production of 409458 from January 1940 through end of February 1945. (I can't get the figure of 345914 to work for the USSBS' figures - it seems to be c.30k too high even when assuming 'military trucks' means trucks allocated to military over civilian uses).

[Klydon]

Another issue is the Axis trucks compared poorly with their allied (especially US) counter parts. The Opal Blitz was a single axle, rear wheel drive vehicle.&nbsp;While this is great on paved roads in good weather, in Russia, not so much. The US trucks featured double axles in the back and 10 wheel drive.

The other thing was the Russians also got a lot of half track vehicles as well I believe, and those were certainly very useful in Russia.

[Flaviusx]

I'm seeing Soviet truck pools of far less than 200k (closer to 150k) by 1943, and that's versus the AI with comparatively minor losses. I think this is rather low.

You can temporarily inflate the figure in 1941 by static games, but this doesn't persist and attrition eats away at it.

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I'm seeing Soviet truck pools of far less than 200k (closer to 150k) by 1943, and that's versus the AI with comparatively minor losses. I think this is rather low.

You can temporarily inflate the figure in 1941 by static games, but this doesn't persist and attrition eats away at it.

And the "static games" really don't effect the total number of trucks by about 1jan42 because the the trucks you get by grounding mech, mot, and arm units you get anyway when the tank divisions change to tank brigades and the mot/mech units change to infantry. By grounding them you just get the trucks a little sooner.