Supply System

[basem2502]

You mentioned the game has a "detailed supply system." Can you elaborate a bit more. How does supply work? Effects of being out of supply, etc.

Thanks

[adherbal]

Land units capture hexes. The territory ownership is marked with coloured borderlines. In order for a land unit to operate at maximum efficiency there must be enough supply sources in the current territory to maintain the total amount of supply requirements of each unit in this territory.

In the screenshot below, the Supply display mode is turned on. In this mode, all units display their required supply cost instead of the strength number. The big 20 above the city on the right indicates this is a supply source which can support a total unit supply requirement of 20 in its territory. The player currently has no land based supply sources, but coastal ships can also provide supply. The ship with the big 20 is a Supply Ship, with the single purpose of supporting naval invasions. Warships only provide a low amount of supply.

The total amount of supply I get from my ships here is 20 + 4 + 4 = 28. The total unit requirement is 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2 = 15. So the remaining supply surplus in this territory is 28 - 15 = 13, hence the green +13 in the supply source markers. If the balance would be negative - meaning there are not enough supply sources to maintain all units - the combat and movement performance of units will drop.



The supply system means you need to plan naval invasions carefully, and you can only support a limitited amount of units until additional land based supply sources (ex: port cities) are captured. It also allows cutting of large groups of enemy units - which disencourages "camping" a big army around a single city - and requires players to balance their army core carefully between powerfull but expensive and cheap units. The latter are required to make sure you can always guard the whole length of your territory and slow down enemy penetrations aimed to cut your supply sources.

Strategic bombers can damage enemy supply sources, while engineers can blow up friendly supply sources (and bridges) - allowing for "scorched earth" retreat tactics.

[basem2502]

Looks great.....detailed yet very easy to understand.

[bobk]

Are the supply points on a given map cumulative, as in, as you capture enemy cities you get stronger, and they get weaker? Also, will you have enough core units to guard your supply lines? In Panzer Corps I was in favor of cheap, or even free militia type units that would appear next turn when you captured a city.

[adherbal]

Are the supply points on a given map cumulative, as in, as you capture enemy cities you get stronger, and they get weaker?

Your supply reserve will increase, but not necessarily the amount of forces you can deploy. This is limited by the amount of Command Points (CP) you have available in the scenario and this value only ever changes when certain events trigger (some player controlled, some based on the turn counter). So if you have reached the maximum amount of forces the CP limit allows, capturing extra supply sources will not make you stronger - but it may still make the enemy weaker of course.

The CP cost of unit types differs, so there are "cheap" types you can use specifically for defensive duties. For optimal use of your CP pool your forces must strike a balance between powerful, "high-tech" units and weaker "mainstream" units.

[bobk]

The first part of your answer makes perfect sense, and building up a versatile and powerful core force is of course necessary to advance in the war.
The second part is my issue. Who would want to load their core force with cheap, gaurd duty units? That was the free units I mentioned. They would appear in yours or opponents unoccupied cities automatically, and not count against your core force.
If I was to buy these guard units during a scenario, would I be able to unload them at the end, and recoup the funds I spent for them?
Thanks. Looking forward to playing this by the way!

[paxuni]

my concern is what if my supply ship get sunk ,i understand that all of my units get penalty move and fight ,but is it possible to decide witch units get the supply so i can decide to stop supply some units so get stronger penalty like arty or heavy armor for support only 1st line division with lighter penalty.

a basic switch on every unit to let us decide where supply goes when short about it

maybe to hard to implement at this stage but why not in future dlc

[bobk]

ad herbal, my apologies. I reread your original post very carefully, and believe I understand what your getting at. Games in this category usually don't have such elegant supply rules. Which leads me to some questions.
Since there are borderlines, let's say I drop paratroopers to a city inland, obviously behind enemy lines, and they captured the city. Would these units be in supply from that city, or would they have to link up with the front lines first?
Also, in your screen shot, you show a +15 supply in the enemy supply source marker, telling me that he has only +5 worth of units defending. Will that be shown in the game, even with fog of war?
Also to what paxuni says, reminds me of operational games like TOAW, where you would put some units in reserve to conserve supplies for units doing the fighting.
Anyway, very interesting to have these decisions in a turn based, tactical-ish scale game.

[Myrddraal]

Also, in your screen shot, you show a +15 supply in the enemy supply source marker, telling me that he has only +5 worth of units defending. Will that be shown in the game, even with fog of war?

Good point... We'll look in to masking that figure for enemy supply.

At the moment, supply is distributed evenly to all units within a region. It does sound interesting to be able to intentionally starve units of supply, but said that, in gameplay turns, being cut off from supply should be very bad for your units. The ability to micromanage supply allocation would give a get out clause. I can imagine situations where the player juggles their supply between units every turn, having full supply units carrying out attacks. It feels a bit like an exploit, and I'm not sure it would it be particularly realistic (supply chains weren't that flexible).

[paxuni]

understood but how hard it is to destroy a supply ship ? from previous picture let say supply boat with 20 supplies get sunk so all units worth 15 will only have 8 supplies left so they will fight with 50 % penalty ???
is it better in this case to continue attack or wait a couple of destroyer or disband arty and tanks to perform a good fighting for infantry?

[adherbal]

The supply loss effect isn't instant. It will gradually decrease unit efficiency. So if you can rectify the situation quickly the effects are fairly minimal.

[bobk]

From the screenshot, looks like the attackers can take that objective/supply source without much trouble.
The supply mechanics are a huge part of being successful in this game. I predict that this thread is going to get very busy as people catch on to this game

[danijocker90]

When you have played games like Commander saga you see that the charges you do with your units must been done carefully, avoiding if possible movements like that tank in the screenshot (leaving only 1 hex that connect with the supply lines). The next turn the enemy can move to that hex and leave that tank very weak.

Love this things

[bobk]

In Panzer Corps and PG there is not always time to capture all the cities on the map. Since these cities provide supplies now, will that extra time be provided in the scenarios?
Also, is there a land unit, like the supply ship, that provides supplies?