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el cid again -> RE: AVGAS (6/16/2011 5:59:23 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Nikademus
Supply usage in the game has always been too small. This was true all the way back to UV. I think this is due to the game's origins from PacWar days in part, where jungle warfare was stressed and units could last a long time even in out of supply situations, leading to the Island hopping strategy.
Another reason is because, as mentioned, the model is an abstraction. While mathematically speaking the calculations are true in representing a "ton" of supply via the supply point, there is a loss in translation effect due to the simple fact that a supply point can be anything and everything at the same time. A can of beans, an ammo clip, an arty shell, or a gallon of AVGAS.
This is why players have always been able to do so much more, especially with air transport in Grigsby based games. (And why i eliminated transport planes from Scenario 4 despite their historical presence)
Future wargames can take two courses of action. They can either delve even deeper into details, representing all sorts of different supplies which IMO based on my experiences as a dev for this game, impractical for a game of this scale, or one can attempt to improve the abstraction by compensating for it when calculating what a supply point does for certain functions.
AE improved things alot supply wise, but ultimately it had to use the same code so there's only so much change that could be done...and yes, Terminus is right, there will be no major code changes along the lines of trying to introduce new concepts like specific AVGAS. Maybe in the next game. Be careful what you wish for. This game already could be considered too much management for players to complete in one lifetime.
Everything is relative. People who are unwilling to manage great detail won't attempt a game of this detail. People who are interested in modeling the kinds of decisions that made sense historically will accept the "dirt" of logistics. Yes - it must be simple. No - it does not have to be that "supply" = everything you might need. I recommend only three kinds of supplies: Fuel ( POL formally ), Ammo (all forms of munitions), and General (everything else). In terms of weight, Ammo is the vast majority in combat. Fuel matters more to things like ships and air units and motorized units - static and walking units don't need it at all (or not much). General matters mainly because things need to be maintained - or fixed. Resources are more difficult to simpify to such a point, but one attempt was made: JF Dunnigan had oil ( familiar to us ) and Northern Resource Points ( coal and iron ore ) and Southern Rersource points ( other minerals ) in the original, mechanical WITP. Crude, to be sure, but better than universal resource points by far. Holding Manchuria and Korea does not get you tin, gold, etc from the South. I prefer coal separately (2/3 of all resources by weight to Japan are coal alone), iron ore and copper (representing all other minerals needed in significant weight amounts - you might call it minerals). Oil - like everyone else = crude oil. And rubber (all trace materials represented here). Such games involved decisions that consider what is where resource wise far better than abstracting it all out. One cannot appreciate strategic locations like the tin islands, for example.
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