Matrix Games Forums

All was well, then suddenly most of my units on the map go "red" with food shortage. Even the unit in my capital. I have plenty of food and my supply lines are green or yellow. Can someone explain this?!

The way resources work is that first everything get's distributed away from your shq and then collected to the shq afterward. So what you see is your income without deductions. It may be that you consume 3k food and produce only 2k. If you want to know if you actually have enough you need to hover over the value and see how much got sent to units last turn. If the total amount sent is similar to your stockpile things are getting tight.

The same thing happened to me, I discovered that it was due to the massive consumption of ammunition, which is distributed first, and blocks logistics, leaving no room for food or fuel.

nadia911 wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 5:51 pm The same thing happened to me, I discovered that it was due to the massive consumption of ammunition, which is distributed first, and blocks logistics, leaving no room for food or fuel.

The very next turn showed a massive consumption of ammo (due to building up my replacement pool?). I guess I need to buy a massive amount of ammo any turn I "purchase" a lot of replacements.

Micromanaging logistics sours the enjoyment of this game. A real military logistics network would not function this way. Log officers would balance the shipments to ensure commands had a balance of everything needed. Does no good to have plenty of ammo and no food.

Okay. Now I am bleeding troops. Raised 6,000 recruits because it showed I was short about 28,000. Next turn the 6,000 I raised were distributed, but it still says I still need 28,000. Raised another 10,000. Next turn it now says I need 31,000 and the 10,000 have been used up. I'm not fighting anyone, my troops are now in supply, I ensured my troops aren't sitting in rad hexes. Yet I keep losing troops every turn faster than I raise them. At this point I gave up. This game is just too complex to be fun. Rummaging through spreadsheets and analyzing data, trying to determine the causes of problems is too much like work. Which is not why I play games.

You do not necessarily have enough of anything if you see the green arrow on the SHQ storage. This is the amount that has been delivered to SHQ the previous turn, this turn it will be distributed, and if more than 2k food is needed, it's still not enough.

Logistics is not a problem since SHQ unit failed to supply as well, SHQ supply screen gives you a proper hint: SHQ is missing enough items.

The way you build looks nice but unless you are using the new logistics system or placing traffic stops that is a lot of wasted log points.

You are barely making any food, I like keeping above 1k surplus especially if you have 43k recruits in supplies because they chew through food more than regular troops do.

For logistics I just make a few extra truck depots in a line or 2 near my SHQ/ capital(4 or more) and limit supplies going that way to 90%ish, train stations as well if I need them. If you are getting further away from a city a supply depot helps and near front lines supply + truck station/ railway station/ railstop. It's only difficult if you are min maxing, if you overbuild logistics, then logistics isn't an issue. It however is a waste of time checking traffic. Anyways logistics should be just run between towns without connections because connections cuts part of the overall supplies(weird logistics system where you lose points if runs over a truck station or has a road split).

I also keep/ store up IP and metal, why are all of your roads supreme quality? You have no spare resources, you can't build anything with so few resources. You don't need paved roads until you have +1500-2500+ spare ip a turn(we can't see what you are spending though so I imagine you aren't that limited but having so few nothing is being built in the next turns, or build it up slowly between cities). Most of my investment tends towards increasing IP and getting decent energy + food, water is easy, oil you don't really need to rush. As as metal has no limit, anything without a limit you should be building up even if it means rushing towards metal soil filtration. But you also basically have no mech parts so I don't believe you are even on heavy industry yet so there's no way in hell you should have any paved roads because you have no spare IP or metal at that point. You however have paved roads and railways going everywhere.

You can limit building production so something only builds at 25%-100%, useful if you are running low on resources. The previous time you showed you had no food it looked like a weird bug this one looks like your mistake. There's 20-30 units there that need about 60 food each so 1800 food(that is what we see on the screen, you unlikely have one frontline), your recruits probably require 500 or more + whatever your cities require. You think you have a food surplus but you don't, it just looks that way because you ran out and you likely continue to run out of food. Sucks that in the base game the only viable food resource take up so many pops unless you go for hydroponics. But once you get cross fertilization it gets better.

If you use the new beta logistics system then you can build the way you have no issue because it just sends log points to your units/ cities and the spare elsewhere.

Thanks for the responses, but I'm going to finally give up on this game. Any game this complex is not fun for me. I spend more time trying to resolve supply issues than actually playing the game. More like a job I hate than a game I'd play. Prefer games that automate this and only ask me to make decisions of where to focus resources, not micromanage them. Thanks again, but not my cup of tea. Too bad, because it had potential.

Yeah this is pretty clearly lack of food, not any logistical issue. Production happens after consumption so shortage scenarios like this can show food in stock even when you are short of demand.