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potski -> RE: Setting support to zero (7/25/2021 3:30:26 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: michael1771
Afternoon all,
I'm currently learning the game, and after watching both Dojo and XTRG youtube series, they set support to zero and run all units back to OKH after turn 1. I am curious as to the purpose of this. I've tried it, and then assigned units in turn 2, and at the end of the turn the support reverts back to OKH. Anyone have some insights for a rookie? I don't want to assign units for each Corps each turn....thanks in advance!
Further to what Loki says. I checked Strategy Gaming Dojo's stream from the last day or two, and froze it to check exactly what he does. I don't have the will to check XTRG's. Dojo does NOT set support to zero. Using zero (0) as the value would tell the AI to remove all support units from a Corps and move them up the chain. So yes, anything you assign manually to the Corps is likely to be removed by the AI the next turn if you are mistakenly setting the value to zero (0). They would go to the Army, not to OKH, then from the Army to Army Group...
Dojo sets the value to "Locked", which tells the AI not to touch the support units assigned to that HQ. There is a ++ and -- buttons on either side of the number that allows the number to be changed, add one or minus one. But if you click on the number itself you can choose Locked. Or he is using the Game Option to Lock HQ Support, which will apply Locked across all of your HQs. Once locked, the AI will neither add new ones nor remove any. In which case he then has to individually manage every single support unit in the entire game. I am not sure why he does this, the AI is perfectly capable of distributing them evenly between different commands as Loki describes. And you can give preference to say the Panzer Groups, stuffing the Motorized Corps with lots of support units ready for an assault. The support units don't count towards the command limits, so it is an efficient way to improve CVs.
When he came to the defensive when winter set in, he could simply reduce the Motorized Corps from 3 to 1, for example, allow the AI to take back some of the support units and then allow the AI to redistribute them automatically to some of the infantry corps. This value can be changed from the individual HQ counter on the map. But it can also be done from the Commanders Report, so that it can easily be done for several HQs all at the same time. Currently, I see Dojo manually adjusting all of the support units for every Corps ready for the spring offensive. Fortunately, he tends to do that sort of micro offline. I can't speak to what XTRG does, nothing can make me sit through the hours and hours of his streams. But if he does have the HQs set to zero (0) instead of locked and then is manually assigning SU's to them, then this is a complete waste of time. The next logistics phase they will be removed.
If in the initial game setup scenario files the support units are not already reasonably well distributed (assuming the files follow the historical situation, rather than what is most efficient for game play), the AI should do all of the re-organisation for you. It might take a couple of turns to make all of the adjustments, but it will save you alot of time. And throughout the game any new support units that arrive with OKH from reserve will automatically get sent out to the most needy HQs following the priority you have set.
Sending them manually to OKH rather than to another Corps or Army puts them all in a central location, but you cannot re-assign a support unit twice in a turn, so anything sent to OKH is locked there until the following turn, plus they suffer some penalties on the turn they are assigned. But its this sort of massive overhead in distributing support units manually across the entire German forces as preparation to get the first turn underway in my opinion which is just dreadful. None of the Corps or Armies would have any support units available to them on the first turn. But what is worse to me is just awful awful micro management. No game should take hours and hours of preparation just to take the first turn. I have seen people spend ten hours or more reorganizing things for WITP:AE. WITE2 shouldn't need that.
But if you really want to manage the support units in this type of detail, at least go into the Commanders Report, set all of the HQs except OKH to zero (0) and allow the AI to recover them all. Then next turn go into the Commanders Report and set the HQs all to Locked, before manually distributing the SU's. The AI cannot then over-ride what you have done. And generally you should only very rarely need to check and adjust what is assigned.
The details of this are set out in the Manual section 21.5.6, on page 245-246. There are separate rules governing the automatic assignment of engineer and construction support units explained there. These will be locked the same as the other SU's, but the numbers to be assigned to each HQ if you unlock and allow AI control cannot be controlled in the same way. So if you tell the AI to assign three of each type of SU to a Corps HQ, you will get three artillery (if available), but only two construction units. You can only ever have more than two construction units assigned to a Corps HQ if you have them locked. And this makes some sense as you don't need to give lots of construction units to Motorized Corps HQs when on an offensive. An Army Group using AI assignment will get up to 16 construction units and can share these with any combat units that need to fortify their position, as well as sharing them with cities/towns needing to repair railyards, ports etc. You really don't need to go to the bother of locking all of the Corps HQs for example just so that you can assign three construction units to each of them.
Lastly, with the combat support units, having more than a handful as a reserve at any of the higher HQs (Army and above) is pretty wasteful - they can only join in a battle if they are within five hexes of it, so generally it is only the ones currently assigned to a Corps HQ which are getting used.
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