Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

If there is a rationalization, it's a bad one.

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All ports/beaches have the same capacity to handle shipping or supply. I am sure the Western Allies wished that was the case on D-Day! If the game's model were accurate, they must have been confused about needing to take Cherbourg or Antwerp. How about weather, or damage from combat having an effect on any of these capacities? These real-world considerations were overlooked too.
Two words: Event Engine. There isn't one item on your list that couldn't be handled with a few events.

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Also, a more mysterious one , at least to me. In a rant against a review of TOAW 1, Norm (on his webpage) said the following:

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All ports/beaches have the same capacity to handle shipping or supply. I am sure the Western Allies wished that was the case on D-Day! If the game's model were accurate, they must have been confused about needing to take Cherbourg or Antwerp. How about weather, or damage from combat having an effect on any of these capacities? These real-world considerations were overlooked too.
Two words: Event Engine. There isn't one item on your list that couldn't be handled with a few events.

Now. How does one models varying supply capabilities of ports in the event engine? Or was this removed from TOAW 1?

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Guys,

I forgot the answer to this one. What is the rationale for allowing an out-of-supply isolated unit to keep moving forever and ever , even if it is a motorized / armoured / mechanized unit and is completely cut from it's own supply sources?

Thanks.

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Also, a more mysterious one , at least to me. In a rant against a review of TOAW 1, Norm (on his webpage) said the following:

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All ports/beaches have the same capacity to handle shipping or supply. I am sure the Western Allies wished that was the case on D-Day! If the game's model were accurate, they must have been confused about needing to take Cherbourg or Antwerp. How about weather, or damage from combat having an effect on any of these capacities? These real-world considerations were overlooked too.
Two words: Event Engine. There isn't one item on your list that couldn't be handled with a few events.

Now. How does one models varying supply capabilities of ports in the event engine? Or was this removed from TOAW 1?

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

See "France 1944". Allied supply levels are adjusted by event upon loss of the American Mulberry and capture of Cherbourg.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Fewer & fewer vehicles will be doing the moving. The loss of vehicles each turn (due to lack of a supply path) represents vehicles running out of fuel.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: jmlima

Also, a more mysterious one , at least to me. In a rant against a review of TOAW 1, Norm (on his webpage) said the following:

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All ports/beaches have the same capacity to handle shipping or supply. I am sure the Western Allies wished that was the case on D-Day! If the game's model were accurate, they must have been confused about needing to take Cherbourg or Antwerp. How about weather, or damage from combat having an effect on any of these capacities? These real-world considerations were overlooked too.
Two words: Event Engine. There isn't one item on your list that couldn't be handled with a few events.

Now. How does one models varying supply capabilities of ports in the event engine? Or was this removed from TOAW 1?

See "France 1944". Allied supply levels are adjusted by event upon loss of the American Mulberry and capture of Cherbourg.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

See "France 1944". Allied supply levels are adjusted by event upon loss of the American Mulberry and capture of Cherbourg.

This is fine in scenarios where no matter the situation, the player will be advancing from one single set of bases in one contiguous area.

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Now imagine you were designing a scenario which gave the Allied player a choice of landing spots. How do you model the comparative merits of the numerous ports from the Pyrenees to the Hook of Holland? There are some workarounds- but no easy solution.

Alternatively, take CFNA. As it stands, the British player can deploy one division or eight at Sirte- he'll get the same supply levels. In reality, he could deploy one division with decent supply, or eight and watch the men starve.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Fewer & fewer vehicles will be doing the moving. The loss of vehicles each turn (due to lack of a supply path) represents vehicles running out of fuel.

You're assuming the unit is cut off from supply.

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I recall you proposed some other change to the system which would treat these units as out of supply if they were two supply radii past the minimum supply level, but unless the unit has zero trucks, it's still going to keep going and probably at quite a fine old lick- whatever's being carried is being lost as well.

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Some sort of system which approximates quantified supply is probably the single most badly needed change- provided it can be done without too much cost to the development of the game. It will allow significant improvements in numerous existing scenarios, and open up countless possibilities which cannot currently be simulated at all.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I agree, except about the cost and the need. It will be very costly to code and use. And only a small subset of topics will be able to justify employing it.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

But that was not the question Norm was addressing.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I agree, except about the cost and the need. It will be very costly to code and use. And only a small subset of topics will be able to justify employing it.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

I've seriously developed or been involved in the development of five scenarios. In only one of these did TOAW's supply deficiencies not impose a serious burden and limitation.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

I would say;
a) it could potentially be very costly to code. I'd say what is needed is an effort by people like you and me to figure out a system that gives us most of what we want at a fraction of the effort. In fact I suggest we use this thread to discuss that.

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b) it could be used in countless situations. I'd estimate something like a quarter of existing scenarios would dramatically benefit. About the same number again of new scenarios would become possible.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

I've seriously developed or been involved in the development of five scenarios. In only one of these did TOAW's supply deficiencies not impose a serious burden and limitation.

I've developed ten different topics and I'm working on an eleventh. Only one (CFNA) would benefit sufficiently to justify the cost (to Matrix, myself, and players) of discrete supply handling. And CFNA's problem really hinges on the current infinite supply line thing. We may be able to fix that within the current abstract system - negating even CFNA's need.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I can't get around the need to physically push supplies around the map. That comes with a lot of overhead.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I think most of those topics you're thinking of would require full scale naval warfare modeling - like WitP. It's more than just port capacities.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

I would say;
a) it could potentially be very costly to code. I'd say what is needed is an effort by people like you and me to figure out a system that gives us most of what we want at a fraction of the effort. In fact I suggest we use this thread to discuss that.

I can't get around the need to physically push supplies around the map. That comes with a lot of overhead.

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b) it could be used in countless situations. I'd estimate something like a quarter of existing scenarios would dramatically benefit. About the same number again of new scenarios would become possible.

I think most of those topics you're thinking of would require full scale naval warfare modeling - like WitP. It's more than just port capacities.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

I've seriously developed or been involved in the development of five scenarios. In only one of these did TOAW's supply deficiencies not impose a serious burden and limitation.

I've developed ten different topics and I'm working on an eleventh. Only one (CFNA) would benefit sufficiently to justify the cost (to Matrix, myself, and players) of discrete supply handling. And CFNA's problem really hinges on the current infinite supply line thing. We may be able to fix that within the current abstract system - negating even CFNA's need.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright
The thing is, the current system rests on an essentially false paradigm: that supply capacity is the ability of the system to supply a portion of each unit's needs without reference to how many units there are.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious
I'm imagining a two part solution that doesn't require this.

First stage is to enable the game to tot up the amount of equipment in each force and use that as a divider for the supply level generated by supply points in that zone. You could either use the existing weight characteristic, or some sort of calculation based on equipment stats. For example AP strength + AT strength + AA strength + weight = supply requirement.

This shouldn't be too tough. All you need is that formula and a switch which allows you to change force supply from a blanket "25" to some huge number which then gets divided by the supply requirement of the equipment on the map.

The second stage is to allow the designer to define zones of the map. Each hex would just have an additional small integer attribute which would define which zone the hex was in. By default all would be in a single zone.

A number of variables would then be set by zone instead of force;
Base supply of supply points in the zone
Supply radius
Shock and Air Shock
Pestilence
Rail Repair
Rail/Air/Sea transport
Theatre Recon
Nuclear/Chemical Release

This is a bigger leap- but allows all sorts of neat things besides improving the supply model. Some of the above may require significant coding efforts, but they can be judged on their own merits.

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ORIGINAL: jmlima
I think your reasoning, specialy the bit about benefit/cost to Matrix falls apart when even people like Jamiam recognized that the system would benefit from a new supply system, and indeed that would be the case in TOAW 4.

You may like , or you may not like it, but the fact remains, all scenarios would benefit, to a lesser or bigger extent from a revamped supply system. When you say that only CFNA would benefit, then allow me to add another one. I made an Indochina scenario. Without discrete supply, it plays like a beer and pretzels game. In fact, all scenarios in TOAW play more or less like that. Have you eve played OCS? If yes, you know what I'm, talking about. I've never, ever, in TOAW refrained from sending units wherever I wanted. In OCS, quite simply not possible, since minor things , like lack of fuel, or of ammo get in the way. OCS is far from perfect, but it's an excellent example when it concerns supply handling.

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ORIGINAL: rhinobones
While on the subject, would also like to open two other supply proposals to discussion.

1)      The ability to move supply by rail should have an impact that diminishes the total amount of RR capacity available to move troops.  Maybe events could be devised that gives the player the option to give transport priority to either troops or supply.

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2)      If it is possible to give individual supply points values, then it should also be possible to both destroy (strategic bombing?) and build supply capacity (via Engineers or events). 

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I think most of those topics you're thinking of would require full scale naval warfare modeling - like WitP. It's more than just port capacities.

In most situations, one side or the other has overwhelming naval superiority. So this isn't necessary.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

1. I can imagine it being very difficult to implement, when you consider just how flexible TOAW is. Areas would have to be dynamic, as fronts shift and split them off from one another.

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2. It wouldn't even solve the problem you've stated. You could still supply an infinite number of units out of any supply point. The supply level by itself doesn't impact whether a unit is unsupplied or not. That's based upon communication path only.

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3. It doesn't abandon the abstraction we have now. It just adds another massive layer of abstraction on top of it. That means it can only solve that one single matter of port capacity.

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4. The port capacity issue is more complicated than you seem to realize. First, ports aren't just receiving supplies. They have to handle reinforcements, replacements, and even base naval vessels as well - that costs capacity.

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Second, there's cargo vs. amphibious transport. Only the cargo version is limited by port capacity. An LTV can just unload on to any beach.