lancer
Posts: 2963
Joined: 10/18/2005
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Detailed Explanation of how it all works
Welcome to the land of Hope and Glory. You’re in charge. Congratulations. What happened to the last General, you ask? Hopeless. Had to put him down.
Down south is the fair, sunny Homeland (Nordic gods, all of us) and our fine Capital. Directly to the west is Near Island with its single oil well. Nobody likes living there. It stinks.
Up north is The Peninsular (they’re all inbred) and Far Away Island (don’t talk about them, we don’t). Internal rail lines are shown.
Nobody likes foreigners. Not around here. Best not to deal with them. We’d like you to focus on getting all the oil and raw from the Homeland to our capital. How many trains do we need?
Each resource site is at level 1 which gives it an output of 20 t (or the Oil equivalent in bbls).
Both the Oil wells to the north east are 4 hexes away. That’s a distance of 40 Nm as each hex is assumed to be 10 Nautical Miles wide (it’s an international measurement used by the whole world unlike miles and kilometres). So the capacity required for each well is 40 Nm x 20 t = 800 t-Nm (tonnes per nautical mile).
A train has a capacity of 2000 t-Nm (this scales upwards with map size, it’s a very small map) so we are looking at a couple of trains to handle the Homeland transport requirements (eg. 800 + 800 + 2400 = 3600 t-Nm, which is easily carried by two trains with a combined 4000 t-Nm capacity).
Hold on, it’s not that straightforward. Our transport priority is ‘Balanced’ which means a 50/50 split between Oil and Raw. Trains that carry Raw aren’t capable of carrying Oil at the same time. So one for Oil and the other for Raw. Will that work? Raw has a requirement for 1600 t-Nm. No problems but Oil needs 2400 t-Nm. You’ll actually need two trains to handle the Oil.
So three trains will do the job. Good oh. We happen to have some spare engines and enough rolling stock lying around to take care of it. We’ll assign them to the transport pool immediately.
But there is a lot of industry here in the Capital. We’d like to optimise our factory production lines. Near Island have offered to sell us their Oil.
Excellent but will our three trains be enough? That gives us a total capacity of 6000 t-Nm which, because of our Balanced priority, is split down the middle with 3000 t-Nm available for Raw and the same for Oil.
Well the Raw is easy as there is only 1600 t-Nm situated on Homeland soil. Homeland Oil needs 2400 t-Nm and foreign Oil (anything that isn’t on the same land mass as your capital) requires 600 t-Nm. Looks like our 3000 t-Nm capacity can handle it, just.
Then, of course, we’ll need a ship. As a standard cargo ship, on this map size, can tackle anything up to 4000 t-Nm it looks like we are all sorted.
One important thing to note is that Homeland resources always have priority over Foreign ones. Your available rail capacity is allocated firstly to your Homeland needs and anything left over is directed to your foreign requirements.
O.K. Everything going according to plan except for the Treadworth Steelworks in the Capital. Desperately short of Raw feedstock. Can’t make tanks without more Raw. Our only option is to suppress our xenophobic tendencies and import it from The Peninsular and the Far Away Island.
Trouble is we can only, despite our best efforts, muster eight trains and a couple of rusty cargo ships. We Vikings are doing it tough.
With eight trains we’d have 8000 t-Nm capacity available for both Raw and Oil, more than enough to cover all contingencies. But two cargo ships only provide 4000 t-Nm for each. Not an issue with the Oil we are shipping in from Near Island but we’ve got a major problem with the Raw from Far Away Island.
We’ve got only half of the 8,000 t-Nm capacity required (which is calculated by the distance, 20 hexes = 200 Nm multiplied by the tonnage from the two level 1 raw mines, = 200 x 40 = 8000 t-Nm).
Drum roll dramatic music because we have a BOTTLENECK! On Far Away Island the trains are happily shunting all the Raw from the mines to Far City but half of it is going to sit on the docks because of the lack of shipping.
The amount of Raw which we’ll be able to import from Far Away Island is therefore only 50% of the total. Instead of our 40 t of much needed Raw we’ll only import 20 t. This is despite the fact that we have enough rail capacity to move the full amount.
A bottleneck can’t happen on your Homeland because it is solely rail transport. But it can happen with foreign (non-homeland) resources whenever you have a mismatch of foreign rail (which moves the resource from mine to the nearest foreign port) and shipping capacity.
In the case of a mismatch (in the above instance our foreign rail was running at 100% capacity but our shipping capacity was down to 50%), the lower capacity applies (hence we only received half of our Raw).
There are two ways to get around a bottleneck. Either build more of the required trains and ships (your staff will let you know how many) or change your transport priority.
Let’s say you decide to focus solely on Raw and change your transport priority accordingly. Now your eight trains are overkill for your rail requirements but the two available cargo ships have just enough capacity to cover your convoy route from Far Away Island (the route from Near Island isn’t used because there is no Raw there, only Oil).
So, happily for all the oompha loompah’s at Treadworth Steelworks they will receive their full quota of Raw. However if The Peninsular’s Raw mine was added in there would be another bottleneck due to the lack of shipping capacity.
Got all that? Stand in line for a medal, you’ve done well.
Reserves
There is no longer the option to specify a Reserve Priority. Now, whatever spare capacity is left over from either Raw or Oil will be used to move reserves, but only of the appropriate type. If you have specified a main priority, other than BALANCED, eg. OIL, then you’ll only have spare Oil capacity left over anyway so in effect an OIL priority will give you the same effect on the reserves.
Note that only spare capacity is used (which is what is left over when you have excess for what is required for each of the three ‘legs’, eg. Homeland, Sea and Foreign). Capacity unused due to bottlenecks (Foreign/Sea imbalances) is lost (‘wasted’ is probably a more accurate term as you don’t physically lose any trains or ships but they sit idle, unable to contribute for this turn).
An approximation is used to move reserves. It is assumed that your reserves are gradually making their way through your transport network, over time, from their resource sites, back to the capital, whenever there is a bit of spare capacity available. As there is a large measure of inefficiency involved (nothing is coordinated, whatever is on hand is utilised) your reserves will move at a slower rate than normal resources through your network.
Throw enough excess capacity at them, though, and you’ll eventually have them in your capital but nowhere near as fast as the previous incarnation of the mod.
It’s also quite conceivable that, on the same turn, you are adding to your reserve stockpile due to a lack of transport, or a bottleneck, but simultaneously moving some of that same stockpile back to your capital. This happens because you have surplus transport capacity in some part of your network (either the sea leg or the foreign land) that isn’t needed and instead can be utilised to move some of your stockpile.
Excess shipping capacity will shift foreign stockpiled reserves as well as homeland reserves. In the case of homeland reserves it is assumed that coastal shipping services are transporting reserves where-ever possible. However if there are no foreign reserves to move, eg. perhaps it is an all-land map, any excess shipping capacity will be lost.
All of this is handled automatically by the mod and there are reports to indicate what is happening. The explanation is more complicated than the doing.
Random Events
Your transport pool will be affected by enemy action but only, in it’s current – temporary – incarnation, by random, probability, based occurrences.
Once the next mod module is in place the enemy action will be a lot more detailed, dynamic, intelligently directed and you’ll have means at your disposal to counter it.
Random events are only tested for after the first ten turns have passed.
Base chance of an event is 5% ( 1 in 20 ) with an additional +1% for every 50 turns that have elapsed.
If an event occurs then it is a random roll to determine whether it s a land or sea event. The odds of these are directly proportional to the amount of land and sea on the map. Eg. if the map consists of 90% land then the chances are only 10% that it will be a sea event.
Next, the severity of the event is ascertained. There is a 10% chance of a severe event, 30% chance of a moderate event and 60% chance of a low level event. Depending on the type of event, land or sea, this translates to a loss of trains or ships from the transport pool due to partisans or enemy submarines.
You can expect that you will suffer a steady, low level attrition of your transport assets due to enemy action with the occasional spike. As the game progresses the frequency of random events will slowly ramp up, eg. by turn 250 the chances of a random event will be 1 in 10.
Summary
• Oil and Raw are treated separately for Transport calculations
• Land and Sea components are treated separately
• Land is broken down to Homeland (same land mass as your capital) and Foreign (everything else)
• When allocating rail capacity Homeland has priority
• Bottlenecks are caused when there is an imbalance between Foreign rail and Sea capacity.
• In the case of a bottleneck the lowest value transport capacity is used for both.
• On-map transport assets (trains and cargoships) contribute only 10% of their carrying capacity, those in the transport Pool 100%
• Move units into the pool via the POOL unit
• You can create your own POOL units, simply name them as such.
Note
The recommendations regarding the number of trains and cargo ships you need contained within the 'Staff Officers Report - Transport', that pops up every turn, are based on your current transport priority setting (eg. BALANCED) and refer to your transport Pool.
If you're used to playing with the previous resource mod then it's easy to build a bunch of trains and ships and forget to transfer them into your pool. If you leave them on the map they'll only be 10% as effective as if they are in your pool.
Cheers,
Lancer
< Message edited by lancer -- 1/14/2013 11:36:27 PM >
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Printable Version
The Enhanced Mod Suite - 
. I´ll be testing and playing your mod. Of course I´ll give you some feedback. It´s like a dream to play ATG with your mod, the hardcore production, the new officers and NATO symbols 
. 
I suppose it must be a really hard work. 
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