Soviet resupply badly failed - trying to work out what happened

[leegle]

Hi there

I'm playing as Soviets. On turn 54. Each turn I put anyone I want to refit back to Stavka as their HHQ (so armies aren't taken up with non-fighting units until they refit), put them on refit mode, then put them on depots with army HQs on them. Usually this works really well and by the next turn they're back to almost full TOE. This last turn something's gone wrong and most refit units haven't increased their TOE, across the whole map.

I can't see anything obviously wrong e.g. I've confirmed that supply priority from Stavka down is OK and hasn't somehow reverted to 0 (I've seen this happen on some armies before which is a bit of a concern), and that supply lines are OK.

I don't understand the deep game mechanics and probably barking up the wrong tree, but the only thing I can think of is that this turn there has been a terrible dice roll for Stavka which has filtered down to all units under it. Also I can see that most affected units seem to have a max TOE around 50. Not sure what they were before but I feel they must have been higher.

I'm not sure where I can look to work out what's gone wrong and stop it from happening in future?

Thanks

Lee

[DrHiramTemple]

I don't think the game should be changing your TOE% automatically. I leave the vast majority of mine at 100%, and have never noticed a change I didn't do myself, so if that is in fact happening it's probably a bug. 50% is the minimum for most troops-- is it possible that you accidentally batch set a a bunch of them in the commander's report? (the prompt defaults to zero if you don't enter a value, which i think it then bumps up to the minimum of 50. Certainly done similar to this myself before.)

And If I understand the leadership system correctly, rolls work from the unit up, so i don't think any given roll would have such a sweeping effect.

My main suspicion is that you may be scraping the barrel on manpower? If your manpower reserve graph has been holding steady around 200-250k, that's probably the culprit. there's a quirk in the graph data that manpower and the like is recorded before it gets spent for the turn, so it looks like you still have a decent reserve when you're actually coming up short. for more sleuthing, check the units -> supply sub-tab of the commander's report. There's a column there for men received, so you can easily see which formations actually got troops that turn.

[leegle]

Thanks for the reply mate.

I didn't even realise there was manpower reserve graph! I don't pay enough attention to some of these details. It's been holding steady around just over 200K (you mentioned holding steady is a sign of trouble - should it be going up?) and doesn't seem to have dipped this turn, but as you say maybe it has dipped but not seeing it.

However I do notice that in production under Manpower Cities / Towns it's only 2,545. This seems low! Not sure which of those is more important for refit - manpower reserve or in towns / cities.

Also now that I look under Supply Details or the Unit > Supply tab from commander's report (thanks for pointing that out!) for units which failed to refit the replacements number is negative. This also seems very bad!

The ToeM is set to 100 for almost every single unit from the commander's report and I can see that in unit details, so I've realised that it's not that the max TOE is too low for these, but rather the current TOE figure is like 37/45, so presumably that 45 is something other than the max TOE.

So I think from all this my current best guess is that I've run out of men in reserve, and perhaps have too many units on refit / too high priority and it's moving people from other units to fund that.

[loki100]

few bits,

the manpower reserve are those not yet allocated to 'elements' (ie the building blocks to your units). Basically an infantry style element will use up 10 men (all varies), and a set of typical infantry squad weapons. Once formed it goes into the 'transfer' pool and then later into the 'active' pool, at that stage it is called into combat units that are being formed up or reinforced.

The 2,545 is how many manpower 'factories' you have, the rate these produce manpower is set by the table in 28.3 (note Soviet manpower production really stalls from 1943). As the Soviets you also get a number of scripted allocations (see the table in 40.12).

the negative simply means that lost manpower>received manpower. Soviet formations in contact are vulnerable to fairly high attrition till late war and your typical unit experience reaches the 60s (so this can happen even if out of combat). You can see this in the loss table if you select the filter for Soviet Logistics Phase, depending this will be running in the 20-25k range.

Now onto the judgement stuff.

Till 1943 Soviet units under 60% TOE are very vulnerable to a retreat becoming a rout (the routine keys off TOE and Experience), so anything under 50 really shouldn't be in the front lines. The routs are bad as it escalates your losses of both men and guns (and you have an artillery shortage as you reconfigure the Red Army from late 42.

Solutions?

Refit mode, not in contact is essential. Best is refit mode and directly stacked on a depot with a decent amount of freight. If the unit is about 45 or less TOE I personally would send it to the national reserve. In that units that are set to refit have first priority for replacements so it should fill out in a turn or so.

Have a look at the production chart, again use the filters, and see how many active infantry squads you have. I'd normally say the Soviets can be refitting 20 or so infantry divisions a turn.

The manpower pool will try to flatline around 100k, it needs that sort of reserve and the actual men are churning from freshly raised (or return after wounds) to allocation to combat elements

edit - final bit, leadership rolls play a large part in the logistics system, the key variable is admin score and the Soviets have a lot of poor commanders here. In other words, units will often not take on the supply/reinforcements they need even if its notionally available.

[leegle]

Awesome, thanks for the tips, especially hadn't realised about the low max TOE consideration.

Looking a bit deeper I think I can see what's happened - I'd constructed a bunch of units last turn or a few turns ago. I must have put them all on refit. From what I can see manpower has been stripped out of most of my existing units and sent to them! Or at least all my fighting units have negative manpower flow and all those refit units have positive so I guess that's what's happened.

I had always thought manpower for new units would come from the pool and just fill up as available, hadn't realised they'd be stripped from existing units. I must read that manual in more detail one of these days...

[loki100]

its not being stripped out of the existing units but its more this is the sequence:

a) take attrition losses (and these can be substantial, esp if the unit is low morale or in poor supply)
b) manpower goes into elements (transit pool)
c) elements move transit-active pool
d) active pool tries to go to units that need new elements

Now here:

1) refit and in reserve = priority and almost always will happen (newly raised units meet this criteria unless you manually intervene)
2) refit and on depot = quite likely to pick up replacements but may not (leadership rolls or local shortages)
3) pretty much everything else but limited due to supply and leadership issues

To add to this

a) damaged elements are set to recover, become disabled or die
b) disabled go into disabled pool
c) every turn some die, some return to the transit pool

So there are a lot of manpower flows going on

[Iam5not8]

When looking at the available elements and stuff in the Production Screen, be sure to swith the filter to "Active", so you get a good idea of what is really available to refit / build units