Beethoven1
Posts: 754
Joined: 3/25/2021 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Stamb Why having only front depots at 4 and other at 3 is a bad practice? Those at 3 should be able to catch freight that is out of SMP to reach 4. The reason why it is a bad practice (or a bad practice at least to some degree) is that how much freight depots receive is not only based on how much capacity there is to send freight (how much supply), but also is partly based on how much demand for freight there is. If you don't have enough demand, then it won't necessarily always send as much freight as it could send. And if you have a depot on priority 4, that signals to the system that you have a larger demand, so it sends more overall freight than if you The key thing that is confusing here, which I think is a large part of what is misleading so many people, is the word "priority." The game talks about "supply priority" and "depot priority." The use of the word "priority" makes it sound like you are prioritizing the allocation of a GIVEN quantity of supply between different competing entities which are demanding freight. But that is not what the logistics system does (although it does do that, that is not the only thing it does). In addition to determining the allocation of freight between various things which are exerting demand for freight, the logistics system also determines the total quantity of freight that will be sent out in the first place. In other words, "priority" does not simply mean "allocation" of a given set of resources. This is especially clear in the case of Soviet supply. For Soviets, you simply set your entire army to supply priority 4, and you can pretty much set all your depots to level 4. Why? Because supply priority does not mean prioritizing who gets supply out of a given amount of supply, it is instead asking "how much supply do you want?" If you want more supply, set a bigger supply priority. If you want less supply, set a lower supply priority. It is similar with depot priorities. If you want more supply (freight) going to a depot, set a higher depot priority. If you want less supply (freight) going to a depot, then set a lower priority. I suspect it may be harder for Axis players to intuitively understand because they don't normally see that, due to the need for Axis to set somewhat lower priorities some of the time for at least some units and some depots (to avoid excessive loss of trucks in the case of unit supply priorities, and because freight is more likely to be bottlenecked for the Axis until the Soviets advance far from their NSS in 1944/45, and insofar as you are actually bottlenecked then you do need to prioritize somewhat, and you have to set different priority levels to tell the system how you want the freight to be prioritized). quote:
And in should work even better, as front line depots at 4 will be able to draw freight from that 3, 3 from 2, 2 from 1, and 1 from NSS. Thus reducing cost for freight movement. You would be correct here if the logistics system ALWAYS sent out the maximium amount of freight that it is physically possible for it to send out. But it doesn't do that. Instead, if you don't demand enough freight by setting your depot priorities and supply priorities at too low of a level, the logistics system will say to itself, "hmmm, I guess you don't want that much freight. So I won't send out very much freight to you." So you get less supply overall than if you were to set higher priorities.
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