Curtis Lemay
Posts: 12969
Joined: 9/17/2004
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: ColinWright
It's nice to see one's point so promptly illustrated. We can't make progress on the supply issue, because among other things, Curtis won't admit:
1. That supply for tanks, other vehicles, and artillery has a different dynamic than supply for infantry.
Quartermasters don't deliver a pound of bullets, a pound of gas, and a pound of shells. That would be idiotic. They schedule supply shipments according to demands. Most of the tonage will be shells, then fuel, then, finally, bullets - all in proportion to needs. There may be special cases where that's not the case, but they would be the exception. And adding facility to handle that exception to TOAW would be a waste.
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2. That supply for defensive purposes is a different matter than supply for offensive purposes.
What is your point here?
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3. That supply is volume-based. That is to say, the Germans could supply two divisions in North Africa well, or five badly. They couldn't supply five divisions as well as they could supply two.
That was never my position. But it involves nuance, so, no doubt, you missed it. What I said was, only a select few topics would warrant a system to handle this. Most topics don't need it. It was all about priority. And I was right.
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4. That in fact there is anything wrong with the current system at all.
If you're attributing that to me it's a bald-faced lie. I probably want more revisions to supply than anyone else around. I'm trying to wheedle Ralph into adding a supply enhancement to 3.5 now.
What I said in my post was exactly correct. It is going to take many many revisions to get all the supply changes we want. 3.4 has taken nearly three years to finish. A huge chunk of that was addressing supply issues. But there is still so far to go.
And there is a general misconception that the unit supply number equates to the size of the unit's supply stockpile on hand. It can't be. If it were, then the unit would retain full combat strength regardless of its unit supply level - until it reached the bottom - where it would then be reduced to zero combat strength. It doesn't. Combat strength drops as supply is consumed. That equates to less ammo being expended per round. This is a realistic feature. It's called "fire discipline". The higher the prof, the more the unit has of it.
And this produces realistic results. Real units don't blow off all their supply oblivious to how much they have left. Fire discipline allows them to retain significant combat strength as stocks run low. Furthermore, it also models Diminishing Returns. Initial large expenditures don't produce a linearly greater combat strength than later, more disciplined rates. Otherwise, we would have the situation where the Waffen SS fights for a single player turn - all the way to zero combat strength - and then are wiped out by grandmothers with brooms in the following enemy player turn. Real combat units are far more resilient than that.
The 1% unit supply level is not an "out of supply" condition. It is a condition where the unit is assumed to be expending supply at the same rate it is receiving it - if "supplied". It still has a significant buffer stockpile to address some variation in that.
Now, one issue is that there may be some cases where the hex supply level is so low that that assumption is not warranted (the "infinite supplyline issue). That's why I want a third supply state - one that would be inbetween "supplied" and "unsupplied". See item 5.9 in the Wishlist.
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