One feature a day serie: #9 Supply Lines

[Pocus]

The game portrays supply lines, which are used to transport food/water and ammo to your troops (2 supply types). This network benefits greatly from new depots built in strategic locations, but Supply Wagons will also be of great help to support your armies in hostile lands or if you want to stockpile for a major operation. As the North has a thriving economy it can produce great quantities of supplies. Use your riverine and rail pool to its best advantage by being near waterways or in a region with a railroad track. Beware though to protect your depots, as your enemy can take them and burn or capture the stockpile.

One of the coolest features of this system, is that supply transportation is automated thanks to a sophisticated algorithm, taking into account travel time, enemy presence and rail/river network. But if you are not totally satisfied by the supply stocks distribution, you still have the possibility of rearranging your supply wagons, which you manually control. We tried to provide you with the best of both worlds (a precise system, but without micro-management) and we hope this solution will please you.




interesting detail: the number of barrels and crates displayed on your wagons act as an indicator of the current stock they have.

Stay tuned for screenshots!

[Ayeshteni]

wow.

Thats very very good. Nice set of options, I like.

Aye.

[dave]

i must say that with each of these daily updates i am looking forward to the game more and more. Are we close to screenshots yet?

[Pocus]

start of december normally... all graphics are not there but they should give you a good feel of the game nonetheless.

[aryaman]

Would it be possible to cut off an enemy army from his supply line so that it is forced to retreat in order to resupply? Or will be like in BOA, where you can go anywhere in the map taking a city to get resupplied?

[Pocus]

You can definitively do that, and it is most advised for the CSA player to slow down any Union offensive

In fact the system is completely different from the BOA one, but it involves no more micro-managing on your side. All supply stocks are localized in each region, so if you have troops in the right place, you can prevent a part of the map from receiving supplies from the main stockpiles, thus unsupplying the enemy.

Each region produces supply locally, but this is tied to the loyalty level, so if you are in enemy territory don't count on that, and your options are:

a) to have supply wagons with you (they have an innate stock but it depletes!)
b) to take enemy depots from the enemy to resplenish
c) last option, living on the country (pillaging). Some leaders are better at that compared to others (guess who? ).

Overall, the supply system is a major overhaul compared to BOA. The transport of supply is automated, from stockpiles to stockpiles, but if you are not sastified with the distribution, you also have your supply wagons which can be used manually (send them to the rear, by rail if possible to be resplenished, then send them back to your army corps). With these 2 features, you should have enough possibilities.

[saintsup]

Overall, the supply system is a major overhaul compared to BOA.

Besides the improvement of the game engine there are real considerations making middle XVIII logistics very different from middle XIX. Some elements coming to mind:
- size and density of armies (before conscription)
- consumption of ammo
- ...

[aryaman]

[quote="Pocus"]
Each region produces supply locally, but this is tied to the loyalty level, so if you are in enemy territory don't count on that, and your options are:

a) to have supply wagons with you (they have an innate stock but it depletes!)
b) to take enemy depots from the enemy to resplenish
c) last option, living on the country (pillaging). Some leaders are better at that compared to others (guess who? ]
If I understand correctly, in order to cut off enemy supply lines you have to control the regions around which the enemy force is located, right? That is not exactly a supply line, but I understand that with a map divided into regions it is probably the best you can get. However what i don´t like is the supply wagons system, IMO they are out of scale, at least for food (ammo, especially artillery ammo, could be well represented by that system).Armies of the time travelled with rations for 5 to 7 days, because the cost of transporting rations for more days rapidly become antieconomical. If the one month/turn is kept, the wagons are transporting supply for large armies for a month or more, which is clearly non historical. IMO wagons could still be maintained for ammo, and to represent the baggage train, and here is my suggestion. Make mandatory for every unit to move to carry a baggage train, that has some kind of cost, with that you will achieve 2 things, slow down the advance of armies (at least in BOA playing as English in PBEM I always had my wagons left behind as a useless hinderance to fast movement) and more important the difference in cost of keeping a garrison or an army in the field. That is something I have never seen simulated in a game, and a very important factor in wars of the time, and one of the reasons of why so many garrisons were never mobilized in most wars to fight at the front, unlike in wargames.