Matrix Games Forums

Just want to clarify, to make sure I'm understanding this correctly:

Oil Use: How much oil a unit uses to move and attack. An oil dependent unit uses oil only once for movement no matter how many times it stops to attack. Land and air units use oil each time they attack. Naval units use oil each turn if they are away from a port, no matter their action.

Question 1: So the German armor unit depicted below, oil use is 2 so it could use a max 18 oil points in movement and attack in a single turn.
Armor
movement: 2 oil used/cost
attack: 2 oil used/cost
defend: 0 oil used/cost

For example, Option 1(max): 9 attacks no movement - 2 x 9 = 18 oil used/cost
Option 2(min): no movement, no attack 0 oil used/cost.
Option 3: movement and attack so somewhere in between

Upkeep: After each turn, this displays how much production and manpower was used to reinforce and upgrade units and maintain them with oil
Question 2: What's it's upkeep cost(assuming unit is fully upgraded)?
no movement or attack: 2 oil and 0 production, 0 manpower
movement and attack: 2 oil and ? production, ? manpower depending on the attack results
movement and no attack 2 oil and 0 production, 0 manpower

Question 3: In a single turn this unit can use/cost a max of 18 oil and a min of 2 oil(upkeep cost). Is this correct?

A units oil upkeep is 10% of it's oil use per turn.
Naval units in port is 1/10th an oil
Naval units at sea 10% of their oil use.

Upgrades have no impact on upkeep.

PP upkeep is just repairs.

So if you have a fully loaded armored corps on the map it uses 10% of it's oil use... that's it regardless of it's tech.

Take that same armored corps and attack 9x with it. That uses 18 oil + .2 for upkeep (2 oil use * 10%).

Attacking is INCREDIBLY expensive. Ships moving at battle speed uses an INCREDIBLE amount of fuel. I was floored when I read how much more. BBs are particularly notorious for burning through fuel at an astronomical rate when in combat.

Thank you. max: 18.2 and min: 0.2 oil. Got it. I'm assuming air units upkeep is also 10% of it's oil use per turn?
Attempting to build a spreadsheet

Yes. Dont build a spread sheet. The oil upkeep tells you how much units use as part of the 10%.

You will also pretty much never be attacking with all operation points for an armored unit in a turn. Usually 2-3 times.

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Yes. Dont build a spread sheet. The oil upkeep tells you how much units use as part of the 10%.

You will also pretty much never be attacking with all operation points for an armored unit in a turn. Usually 2-3 times.

Frankly, yes build a spreadsheet …. There isn't any current prediction as to upkeep/upgrade costs which hampers the ability to plan upcoming new builds …..

How would the planning figure out oil?

Nope: I thought I got it but I do not. My understanding is that Armor, mech, air units and naval units use oil. I'm wondering if I have missed other units that use oil. For example, do escorts, air transports, transports, trucks use oil? Searching through the manual, I can't find anywhere where it says if they do. The pic below attempts to calculate the upkeep cost for the units in play in the 1939 Scenario at start.(Germany) When I went into the editor and removed all the above units, I still had 8 upkeep of oil. That is I removed all the German ships, air units and armor at the beginning of the scenario. 14-8 = 6 oil, my calc didn't come close to that when the ships were in port. However, when I assumed they were at sea (even though they were in port) and used the 10% calculation I did get my six upkeep oil. I'm pretty sure the value on the screen is rounded too.

Question1: Are there other units that use oil? If so, what % do they use for upkeep, movement, attack? Thanks in advance for this help.[:)]


Question2: (Manual) Oil Maintenance. All units require oil to keep them in. Does that include infantry units and headquarters? If it does, then Germany would have 38 or 39 infantry units (Headquarters and INF) remaining on the board which would account for 4 more oil (10:1 unit:oil ratio) being used for upkeep of the 8 I can't account for.

Append to above: I was just reading over the manual corrections. Is the new Tactical Air Group oil use 2 now (1.00.05)? Just wondering because I would have to adjust my calculations a bit.

Question: Does the upkeep number shown in the production screen round up or down? That is 13.8 rounds to 14 or does it round to 13?

ORIGINAL: ago1000

Question1: Are there other units that use oil? If so, what % do they use for upkeep, movement, attack? Thanks in advance for this help.[:)]


Question2: (Manual) Oil Maintenance. All units require oil to keep them in. Does that include infantry units and headquarters? If it does, then Germany would have 38 or 39 infantry units (Headquarters and INF) remaining on the board which would account for 4 more oil (10:1 unit:oil ratio) being used for upkeep of the 8 I can't account for.

Q1: Support pool units do not use oil. As a historical note naval shipping is literally the most effective way to ship things overseas by a far margin. Trucks are the worst. Trains in between.

Q2: Yes when they are not on a map supply level 9. This represents trucks being send off rail to the front lines to deliver supply.

I looked at the code again just to be sure I said what I said correctly. So many rules I can't remember them all.

##UPKEEP
All land/air units
On map supply level 9 = 0 oil
On map supply level 1-8 = 1/10th oil per unit
On map supply level 0 = none but they start taking bad effects when unit supplies run out
All naval units
In port = 1/10th oil per unit
At sea = their oil use value. So if you have 3 BGs out at sea that is 3 x 4 oil use = 12.

The upkeep rounds down. That .9 oil is assumed that the counter has some small oil resources available. For example there was a recent discussion on that Hungry and Italy should have oil that was produced on the map. Someone calculated the amounts at most added up to 1. So this rounding down represents that number. So even small countries with no oil can have units on the map without penalty. Well it is supposed to work that way.

@ago1000: if you finish that spreadsheet, please share!

Thank you very much Alvaro for taking the time to answering my questions. The spreadsheet I'm building is an attempt to understand the rules and game mechanics so I don't have to go back and forth to the manual. Understanding oil and supply is huge in this game especially for the Axis. If I may make a suggestion, in the unit details information dialog it might be useful for some to display the upkeep oil usage for that particular unit (Air/Land/Naval) based on it's location at the time. For example, it's very helpful seeing the stored oil go down 2 oil every time the Armor unit attacks or 1 oil when it moves. It allows a player to plan ahead an offensive. As I mentioned before, easy to play but difficult to master. Thank you again.

@PanzerMike: Will do.

Most important thing to realize is to build for what you want to do and realize some about expectations. The Allies really don't have to worry about oil. The closer the Axis keep to historical forces the better they do. Knowing when to stop and offensive and recover is the big key and the Axis can recover oil rather rapidly. For every action there is a reaction. You slow down attacks with armor and air? You build oil reserves and effectiveness recovery.

As a general rule trying to keep your units above 65% effectiveness should be doing alright with oil reserves which means not 100% non-stop attacking and taking a break from time to time. This reflects part of the deeper strategy to the game. So many players are used to just attacking non-stop until units are low on strength. Even I am guilty of that when playing games.

It's funny that you say that because when playing Starcraft, HvH, a sustained attack is crucial. It keeps your opponent on the defensive and prevents him/her from capturing resources. Add to this, in an evenly matched game, knowing the short cut keys, to build units faster and upgrade faster, could be the difference to winning. This is a totally different game. You can take your time to plan an offensive and try different strategies. At the moment I prefer playing the Axis against a difficult AI. I'm slowly increasing the difficulty level each time I play. Thanks again.

When you can't let something go. There was 8 upkeep for INF units that I can't explain so I ran more tests with upkeep. Took the 1939 Scenario, removed all Naval, Air, Armor and kept all the inf units. Removed the Polish units and and most of the French units so they wouldn't attack me and effect my results. I moved units on and off rail these are the following upkeep values I obtained. In the 1939 Scenario, there are 26 INF units off rail, so 8 upkeep. I obtained the same results when I did the same thing with 11 armor units. I can calculate these results by dividing (the number of units - not on rail but in supply) by 3 and truncated the decimal value. However, for the life of me I cannot get the 10:1 (unit:oil) ratio.
(set repair/upgrade off)

So far my spreadsheet results. Not sure why but for the at start 1939 Scenario it seems to work but needs tweeking. Going to test it next on the game I'm playing now. (FYI: in the table with my calculations the title should be INF & HQ & AIR & ARMOR, those were all the unit types I counted that were not on rail but in supply) Note: I still believe this table requires tweeking and is not perfectly correct. In an early post the armor unit above had a max of 18.2 and min of .2. I've learned if the armor unit is on rail it doesn't have an upkeep, so the max is 18 with min of 0. (Note: The 18 is taken out of storage - so for upkeep alone its really max 0.2 (off rail and in supply) or 0 (on 9 supply source, rail) I haven't taken that into consideration yet in the table below. Ran out of time last night and had to sleep. lol. Trying to find an easy rule of thumb for calculating upkeep with units off rail and in supply. Should be count units divide by 10 but my results don't match the production screen.

You are going to kill me. Apparently I changed the value to 3 units per oil.

It is a variable you can change in the editor.

Campaign Data -> 2nd column -> 7th item.

And now I remember doing it. 10% was too low and made oil easy. 33% was much better.

Thanks Alvaro for taking the time. I know you must be very busy perfecting an already fantastic game. Tweaking is a difficult and time consuming process. I'm not sure when the change was made but I just recently noticed it and hence the questions. I have developed a general formula that seems to works: It's the sum of all air, land units off rail and in supply and all naval units in port. That sum is then divided by 3 and the value you see on the screen is truncated.
Thanks again.