Supply system fix (second pass)

[el cid again]

There is some good news:

1) Released from the strange hidden sources of supply of various kinds, the AI is not at all bad at running local and regional economies. It tends to stockpile about 10 times as much supply as a location needs - which is perfect (that is, this is normal practice in a real economy).

[FYI I have adopted the standard that, unless a location is a major depot of some sort, there is 10 days accumulation of resources produced there or appearing there. If there is heavy industry there, there is 5 days of requirements stored there at start, unless the 10 day rule above is bigger.
This represents, respectively, two 5 day workweeks of production of oil/resources, and one 5 day workweek of material needed by heavy industry. In both cases, these are civil norms. It gives the AI enough to play with so industry actually works from day one in every area. It is smart enough to move things between places - even if they must go by ship. In fact - it is too smart and too efficient - but that is a different subject.]

2) There is a way to make ANYTHING you want appear in ANY QUANTITY at ANY LOCATION - or in fact even on a mobile basis (witness my guerilla units - which are nominally static - but they move under pressure - and if they move - their ability to eat from the neighborhood supplies not in the regional system moves with them). Specifically, I can make resources appear WITHOUT supply points: the problem is I cannot do that in a way subject to destruction by bombers or ground fighting. So I prefer to use resource centers to make both resources and supplies - and then eat any excess supplies. But on the map edge - and in peculiar locations - it is possible to make resources - or supply points - independently.

[FYI I concieve of supply points, when produced at a resource center or by "magic", to mean: food, logs, gravel, handicrafted goods, cement, Asian style lumber (see note), and similar goods. When a location has, for example, a local fishing fleet that produces more than 360 tons per year, I give it a "free" supply point per day. Similarly, some places produce things like coconuts, rice, etc - and no industrial resources. I measure the EXCESS production - above local needs - and this becomes available for the military managed economy. If you ignore it - say an island making one supply point per day - it will just accumulate those points until the cutoff level is reached - different from most islands which have no supply. Bigger places - e.g. Guam - make a few resource points and rather more supply points every day - but not enough to support a major military unit - just enough to prevent a small one from totally starving. An island with just one supply point per day will not even permit a company of any type to be in good shape.]

3) The only problem area at all is the US West Coast. This seems to be addressable by simply having large enough stockpiles at the cities at start. It is not realistic to think there might be 60,000 tons of supplies at a small place - but it is realistic for the big ones - and it is our fault for adding small ones which were not in stock in the first place. Further - places like Aberdeen probably DO have 60,000 tons of logs and lumber! [Aberdeen is the best place to invade - it is not defended and has two nice ports - so I put it on the map - just SW of Tacoma - which is just South of Seattle. Tacoma is a big shipyard site and it is deep in Puget Sound - not easy to get at by enemy forces.] I also have Astoria - the location of Fort Stevens - and also of Tillimook - the Northernmost Blimp base. This is just below Aberdeen and blocks entry upriver into Portland (which represents Vancouver Washington - where 50 CVEs came from - it should be its own base but there are not enough slots).

The big problem is reduced to a few locations with major resources but no coast defenses or major HQ units. These can be assigned "civil defense" units - or we can ignore them - or we can produce some resources by "magic" - say half - and reduce the local glut of supplies. The other half is subect to destruction - but the "magic" part will always be undamaged - in that case. Still - the economy can work in the sense various places need to use resources and oil to make supplies - and other places need to import supplies.

The efficiency issue is that AI will move resources in huge quantities instantly over vast distances (by land). It is not clear if it cares about the route either - any sort of route seems to do - except overland. However, it may be poissible to break up the Continent into areas - and players can do that by cutting enemy lines of communications.


The amazing thing is that "little economies" - on Tasmania - New Zealand - the Dutch main island chain - the Philippines - Malaya - India - China - Russia - North America - Japan - ALL work separately - and link (withing the same side) to some degree by ship if AI is boss. Not bad at all. I am amazed this AI was never given the opportunity to function. I suspect there was just not enough time to tinker with it. It will take us a long time to get it close to perfect - endless debates about "should the tin at banka be more - or less?" - but the quick and dirty pass indicates it will work basically - and better than I had hoped. We have almost total control of what happens - so any issue you don't like can be addressed by mere data entry.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
1) Released from the strange hidden sources of supply of various kinds, the AI is not at all bad at running local and regional economies.

What do you mean by "strange hidden sources of supply of various kinds"?

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: el cid again
1) Released from the strange hidden sources of supply of various kinds, the AI is not at all bad at running local and regional economies.

What do you mean by "strange hidden sources of supply of various kinds"?

from Wiki -
In Greek mythology, Amalthea raised Zeus on the milk of a goat. In return Zeus gave Amalthea the goat's horn. It had the power to give to the person in possession of it whatever he or she wished for. This gave rise to the legend of the cornucopia. The original depictions were of the goat's horn filled with fruits and flowers: deities, especially Fortuna, would be depicted with the horn of plenty.[;)]

[el cid again]

What do you mean by "strange hidden sources of supply of various kinds"?

There are four kinds of supply: supplies, fuel, oil and resources.

In theory, one would think that resources and supplies come from supply centers; fuel and supplies come from heavy industry, oil from oil centers. All of these are subject to bombardmend and damage in land fighting - and more or less are "fair game" in the game.

But all four kinds of supplies appear in all sorts of places - particularly in CHS. Some of these places are quite obscure towns in China, for example. They are not connected to victory conditions/points, nor real economics in any sense which is obvious to me. These hidden sources of supply are also often quite large, particularly if unit supply needs are on a /30 basis. Now some places - mainly on the map edge - are clearly dealing with things coming from places off the map - and here such supplies are reasonable: better than if we put things on the map that could be damaged - they are not going to be damaged.

Now there are good reasons to do this sort of thing on a minor scale. Supply points can represent food (etc) in a local place - a place that has no resource points of interest. However - note these hidden supply sources are subject to CAPTURE - and undamged capture at that. A Japanese player who takes an obscure hex in China may suddenly - and without every knowing it- benefit from the secret supply source put there to feed the ROC and sustain it! I want as much as possible supplies of all kinds to be known, subject to damage, and tied to victory points - so players strategies make some sense - and the fruits of their ops get reflected in victory points and so on. You will note that I have adopted this practice - strange hidden sources of supply - for one and two point (that is 360 and 720 tons per year) production of food, etc - supply that does not burden the computer with calculating production even (it is a pure add, not the multiple calculations and adds of HI or resource centers). I do not let this practice involve large numbers except for cause - and I am now working on getting rid of the exceptions altogether.

[el cid again]

Dear Treespider:

Salamat po!

If you don't do Tagalog try: Arigato!

If you don't do Japanese try: Danke schoen (they outlawed the umlaut and I am not sure how they spell it now?)

If you don't do German try: Mucho gracias senior!

If you don't do Espanol try: Shia shia!

If you don't do Mandarin try: Kop chai!

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Dear Treespider:

Salamat po!

If you don't do Tagalog try: Arigato!

If you don't do Japanese try: Danke schoen (they outlawed the umlaut and I am not sure how they spell it now?)

If you don't do German try: Mucho gracias senior!

If you don't do Espanol try: Shia shia!

If you don't do Mandarin try: Kop chai!

Ein bischen... Bitte schoen.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
But all four kinds of supplies appear in all sorts of places - particularly in CHS. Some of these places are quite obscure towns in China, for example. They are not connected to victory conditions/points, nor real economics in any sense which is obvious to me.

In India and China in CHS, supplies have been placed as follows:

- Oil in centres that actually produced oil.

- Resources are divided into two lots: One lot is placed at centres that produced strategically significant primary resources such as coal and iron. The other lot is distributed amongst bases, in proportion to the population of the area. This second lot represents all resource production not provided by the major mining centres.

- For the compoment of resource production at a base that corresponds to its population, resource production is then divided roughly in half. One half is provided by resource centres. These generate resource points and supply points. The other half is represented by daily resource points and daily supply points, in equal measure.

- There are a couple of effects from using daily resources and supply in this way: These points cannot be destroyed by strategic bombing, meaning that the local economy cannot be made to completely copllapse using this method. Secondly. the points disappear when the base is captured, meaning that the occupying power can only operate this part of the economy at a maximum of about 50% efficiency.

- The resourses placed at some bases to represent major mines are represented completely by resource centres, not daily resources, so they can be bombed, and if captured can be used up to 100% capacity by the enemy (except for facility damage, of course).

- Manpower at bases is also made proportional to population.

- HI is also added to bases proportional to population, with additional HI added to major industrial centres.

By the way, I considered also doing this to the Japanese economy, but I decided not to use daily resource and supply points in Japan, because the totals from these are NOT included in the production screen totals, which make them harder to track.

Andrew

[el cid again]

Secondly. the points disappear when the base is captured, meaning that the occupying power can only operate this part of the economy at a maximum of about 50% efficiency.

Are you sure about this? I hope you are right. But I assume when a location changes owner, any free "daily supply, daily oil, etc" goes to the new owner. I am running simultaneous multiple tests at this time.

[el cid again]

The resourses placed at some bases to represent major mines are represented completely by resource centres, not daily resources, so they can be bombed, and if captured can be used up to 100% capacity by the enemy (except for facility damage, of course).

And facility damage can take a very long time to fix. As you once pointed out. My peculiar supply sinks also happen to destroy the facilities in the hex if they die.