Some suggestions on the supply system

[Aryaman]

I would like the supply system be harsher. There are 2 problems I see with the system.

1) It doesn´t take fully account of the importance of supply lines. An example. In a PBEM game I am advancing a german army, some corps with a HQ, towards St Petersbourg. I have taken already the town of Luga, and from there I can supply all the units with my HQ, and it makes little difference if I have a supply line of continuous friendly tiles back to Berlin or not. Even if cut off Luga will get to supply 3 and the HQ to supply 8. In fact I could keep supplied the entire German army from Luga as long as I have a HQ there, and the same can be said from any Oasis in the desert.

My proposal is not to allow cut off cities to recover to level 3, only to level 1, so that it can barely supply a unit, and if you get a HQ still you can´t move it from the city to kept your adjacent units supplied. That way supply lines would become really important as they were historically.

2) Units wandering the desert at 0 supply. And I dont mean Arab partizans, but the British detachment in Basra, even if cut off the detachment wanders the desert until fdinding a suitable Oasis to get resupplied.

My suggestion is that at 0 supply units should get 1 strength point loss every turn they don´t get supply.

[Hubert Cater]

Hi Aryaman,

Thanks for the feedback and I can just add that the supply system is always being adjusted to better suit in game needs as well as player concerns. If you search through the thread history regarding supply you'll get the idea

However, that being said both #1 and #2 have been debated in the past and there are pros and cons to any further changes. While you've outlined some of the pros, the cons are that in many circumstances a unit or resource that is considered cutoff in one circumstance is possibly just outrunning its supply in another circumstance.

Additionally HQ supply giving value is now also tied into the HQ strength so if you or your opponent can weaken the HQ and/or the cutoff resource eventually the entire pocket will collapse.

Either way this is not to say that there is still not room for improvement, it is just that we have to consider the cons of any further changes as the supply situation you've described might be representative of something completely different on the game map, i.e. a unit on a resource on an island or in an area of the map that is not connected to a capital, and so any change to the supply system has to consider those types of situations as well.

Hubert

[Aryaman]

Thanks for your answer. In fact I think all the problems are related to the supply represented as a level instead of a given quantity. I imagine a change in that direction is out of the question, but I think it is worth cponsidering in any future wargame project.