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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series >> The War Room >> Trucks

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Trucks - 9/9/2014 12:17:41 AM

hfarrish

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Does anyone have insight into how the truck levels for the Soviets actually work? I am currently in Feb '43 and even though my "Trucks Returned From Repair + New Trucks + Lend Lease" easily exceed Trucks damaged/lost by 4-6k per turn, my overall truck numbers stay stagnant at 91-95k. Is there some other phase where additional losses could be taking place?

I have to say the overall trucks issue is kind of a mystery to me...in my last game I had a major positive balance in most turns in 44 and 45 but never came anywhere close to cutting the gap.

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 3:23:56 AM

morvael

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Do you look at unit truck usage? Building new units and refitting exhausted units cause truck usage to go up. That's why at some stage Soviets can't build anymore units.

Edit: there is also no tracking info about trucks damaged from unit movement, they just go to the repair pool, so you may be missing this number from your calculations.

< Message edited by morvael -- 9/9/2014 4:25:25 AM >

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 5:27:58 PM

hfarrish

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The latter part is helpful. Could keeping the army on refit be contributing to this even if most of the units are at full strength? I tend to just be lazy and over time most of the military ends up in this status. Could that be causing extra drain I don't see?

I am at the point of creating lots of infantry corps but not building too much new other than scattered artillery divisions and the support units for the infantry corps.

Guess I'm just hoping that there is a solution because otherwise it just seems impossible to get trucks to anywhere like they need to be for a truly mobile offensive.

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 6:19:36 PM

morvael

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Yes, full strength units fully supplied will require a lot of truck to carry fuel and tow guns and transport men. Blizzard is worst time of year for trucks (x4 use), then mud (x3), then snow (x2).

There is a time for Soviet player when he has to slow down with building new units, from mid-42 to mid-43.

Consolidating units (rifle divs into corps) actually helps, the less units the less truck requirements.

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 6:23:19 PM

morvael

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Here you can see the period of worst truck problems I had in my game (though there were bugs with support units attached to my mobile units which costed me a lot of trucks). I stopped building anything in late August.

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 6:25:44 PM

morvael

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The airforce expansion in Dec'42 that hit together with the blizzard was the worst moment. I ended up sending back 1/3 of my airforce to reserve and removing all IL-4 supplying partisans and all transport planes from active duty. Only when the '43 Lend-Lease started, the tide has turned, but I didn't return over 100% until early '44. Without enough trucks you lose MP, and without MP you are not dangerous to the Axis.

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 6:45:27 PM

hfarrish

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quote:

ORIGINAL: morvael

The airforce expansion in Dec'42 that hit together with the blizzard was the worst moment. I ended up sending back 1/3 of my airforce to reserve and removing all IL-4 supplying partisans and all transport planes from active duty. Only when the '43 Lend-Lease started, the tide has turned, but I didn't return over 100% until early '44. Without enough trucks you lose MP, and without MP you are not dangerous to the Axis.

That's interesting - not too far off my experience (we are in 2/43). I do probably need to look at my air force management, I think my overloaded airbases (which I always say I will deal with and forget) might have something to do with it. I'll feel better once things start to rebound.

Where can you see the "In Units / Need" data? What is commonly shown is always the pool, correct?

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 7:05:13 PM

morvael

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With overloaded airbases you kill many pilots and lose many aircraft. See how much my op losses jumped with the change. Later with careful management I reduced my op losses to ~30 planes per turn (with airforce not active aside from ground support), which was even better score than Axis, since he had 10x less aircraft and half of my losses. I found that the only possible composition was Ftr+FB+TacB (IL-2 only)+LvlB(Pe-2 only) per airbase (or 2xFB instead of Ftr+FB, but they have to be those lighly armed with low load), so it doesn't exceed ~220 support need. I farmed to about 100 airbases before the jump from 20 to 40/32 planes per airgroup. This gave me about 6-7 bases per front, with 1-2 VVS. 1 VVS was dedicated to 1xIL-4,1xTransport,1xRecon,1xFtr/FB with night fly, but such base required about 2000 trucks, so I removed the IL-4 and transports. I also had a training center set up with Moscow Air HQ, which was used to rotate all air group with morale <50 and later <60 (damaged from front to NR, from NR to training base, from training base to NR and then back to the line).

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 7:15:02 PM

hfarrish

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Thanks - this is all very helpful. As usual, my lack of attention to detail and aversion to clicking has some consequences. Will work on my airfleets immediately!

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RE: Trucks - 9/9/2014 8:10:29 PM

morvael

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Yeah, air warfare and support units require a great deal of micromanagement, thousands of clicks and wrist pain. But for me the end result brings joy.

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RE: Trucks - 9/10/2014 2:09:18 AM

jwolf

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Morvael, looking at your tables of data I see you weren't joking when you described your AAR as the war diary of an accountant.

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RE: Trucks - 9/10/2014 6:06:07 AM

morvael

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Oh, yes, that's what war is about, right? Not some acts of bravery with guns and grenades on the frontline, these don't matter in the greater scope.

At first I needed this data copied from the screen for the AAR that I write for my friends in Polish. Later I realized I can make some charts to understand trends. And when you know the trend you can predict and react faster.

quote:

Where can you see the "In Units / Need" data?

hfarrish - you can see this data on the production screen - there you have numbers for vehicles: in unit (unit need), pool (supply need), in repair. Those are the numbers I copy to the spreadsheet every turn. Also, 1.08 comes with expanded truck tracking information :)

< Message edited by morvael -- 9/10/2014 7:06:33 AM >

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RE: Trucks - 9/10/2014 2:59:36 PM

hfarrish

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Speaking of 1.08, how does timing look? I know you get this all the time, but I have a game/opponent locked and loaded and will wait for release if we are talking a matter of days...

Thanks for everything you are doing for the game. So much better than it was 3 years ago.

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RE: Trucks - 9/10/2014 3:13:49 PM

morvael

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Doing German translation, profiling for speed while waiting for some HvH tests to happen. Small tweaks to formulas, no new features. Can't say when this will end. Could be soon or not so soon. Depends on activity of others mostly now.

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