Supply line length modeling

[jjdenver]

Hi,

First let me give a disclaimer - I might be missing something here and I'm asking this question based on past versions of SC that I've played, not having played enough of AOC yet to know if these problems are addressed.

Anyway I have concerns about how the game models supply. I think it misses two very important factors when modeling supply on the east front.

First, and most importantly the length of the supply line that Germany had to maintain across SU was a very important consideration. I could go back to various books that I've read about the war in the east for quotes but I'm a bit too lazy for that. Instead I'll summarize what I've read by saying that as the Germans marched deeper into Russia they had a very difficult time pushing supply across such a vast territory and such great distances. They faced rail conversion problems, rolling stock problems, and organizational problems, and to push a ton of supply across the distance from Berlin to Minsk (700 miles) is a very different animal than pushing that same ton of supply from Berlin to Stalingrad (1600 miles).

However in the game, once the Germans take a city and it has a few turns to build up to its max value there is no factoring in of the actual length of the supply line back to Germany, is there? Instead, a city east of Stalingrad is just as good for supply as a city on the Polish border. So shouldn't there be some factoring of the actual length of supply back to the home country - Berlin for example - when determining how useful a city would be for supply. Could the Germans really push supply to the Urals as easily as they could push supply to Minsk? I think no.

Second, I am not sure that the game models partisan effects very well in the east. I remember reading various books like "the black march" and "the forgotten soldier" (I hope that I remember those titles correctly) and the Germans despite committing lots of troops to security duties were never able to avoid supply disruptions by partisans in such a vast country as the SU. Since the game doesn't really model manpower directly, it seems that the partisan effects might be less than they should be. Is this something that should be improved?

Anyway, I'm hopeful that these factors can be modeled more accurately in this or a future version of SC because I really enjoy the game.

Thanks

[Big Al]

You are correct in your statement about the supply. When designing a wargame you have to abstract many details of a campaign. If you didn't it would make the game overcomplicated and impossible to balance.

I remember a game called North African Campaign (could be wrong on the name) and it had some very severe supply rules. The Italians had to calculate how much water they needed to make pasta in the desert. When you moved tanks you had to roll dice to see how many tanks broke down moving in the desert, each time they moved! It was a board game.

It is very hard to model supply in games especially when certain regions are different than others in many factors. In Western Europe there should never be a supply problem. There are so many rails going everywhere that it is very difficult to bomb a nation's supply line.

In Italy the Germans were in short supply? Why? It was close to their country? Perhaps they choose where supply went. Do you introduce that also? Will it skew the game?

Hubert is always looking into make the system better. Since I played this from SC1 I have seen vast improvements in the system and I contributed to a few of those.

But the comment is well taken and I'm sure Hubert will read this post.

[jjdenver]

Thanks for the response Big Al. The reason that I brought it up now is that I've noticed it before but was reminded by another recent post by steel32 here http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=110124

In this link he talks about pushing to Stalingrad then pushing behind Moscow to Yaroslavl before finally attacking Moscow from behind. Something like this would be a supply nightmare for Germany and I can hardly imagine that it should be allowed as an effective strategy in the game.....so really this problem does lead to some really silly operations in the game.

[jjdenver]

Btw, I'm sure that designers can come up with better ideas than this but a couple of ways to handle it would be the following (for these do not count any hexes over water, only land hexes traced count)

1) by city: If a city is not a home country city then city max level (instead of always 10 or 5) is 10 - distance from capital / 10. So a city 60 hexes from Berlin would be max 4.

OR

2) by unit: If a unit is not in home country then unit max organization = 100 - (distance from capital - 25). So a unit 50 hexes from capital would be max organization of 75.

I'm sure there are better ideas out there than this.