Ammo and general supply

[DirkX]

Can it be that that issue (if it is one) never has been discussed ?

I simply truley believe that, especially, the CSA produces to easy too much ammo and general supply , compared to history.

You only need to industrialize one state (any cheap will do) to literally bath in ammo and supplies, while in history the greys didnt even have shoes sometimes and had a lack of ammo.

[lodilefty]

Can it be that that issue (if it is one) never has been discussed ?

I simply truley believe that, especially, the CSA produces to easy too much ammo and general supply , compared to history.

You only need to industrialize one state (any cheap will do) to literally bath in ammo and supplies, while in history the greys didnt even have shoes sometimes and had a lack of ammo.

I've read several in books that the south actually had pretty good general supply and ammo, but that there was no logistics system to get it to the troops. [Lee's Appomatix campaign was trying to get to the supplies that a rickety RR couldn't deliver].

Maybe the souther RR system is too good! The only thing in the game that models it is 'buying locomotves'...

I wonder if we can write events to randomly destroy southern railroads in various regions, to simulate the erosion of tracks and infrastructure?

...or how about increasing the frequency and severity of the 'train wreck causes loss of rail capacity' events.....

hmm, I'm off to the world of modding again.....

[kcole4001]

Having the supplies & ammo ready, and getting them where they need to be are two very different things.
I've frequently had troops unsupplied in bad weather one or two regions from a depot as the Union.
Tying up rail capacity shuttling troops is the main culprit, as far as I can determine, but distance & terrain also play a part I believe.

[richfed]

Can it be that that issue (if it is one) never has been discussed ?

I simply truley believe that, especially, the CSA produces to easy too much ammo and general supply , compared to history.

You only need to industrialize one state (any cheap will do) to literally bath in ammo and supplies, while in history the greys didnt even have shoes sometimes and had a lack of ammo.

There is much truth to this. Food & ammo have always seemed too easy to accumumulate.

It had always been a "problem trio" of war supplies/money/manpower. One of the 3 [at least as the CSA] is bound to suffer over the course of the game.

Utilizing the new historical attrition settings, it is now much more difficult to keep troop levels up. Either replacements or the ability to create reinforcements will severely dwindle, if not both.

Perhaps a historical attrition-type setting could be an option for these other necessary items, as well.

[LMUBill]

I've read several in books that the south actually had pretty good general supply and ammo, but that there was no logistics system to get it to the troops. [Lee's Appomatix campaign was trying to get to the supplies that a rickety RR couldn't deliver].

There is a wll-known anecdote about Union soldiers at Appamattox commenting on the ANV's lack of footwear when they surrendered. But when Union forces finally occupy Montgomery a week or two later they find warehouses full of new shoes that no one had a way to ship to Lee's forces.

Add to that certain governors (like North Carolina's) who deliberately withheld supplies to other state's troops so that their own state's soldiers got first crack at anything produced in/transported through their state and you get the idea.

The only CSA business/service that actually made money and thay was never disrupted was the Confederate Post Office.

[Le Ricain]

Due to logistics lack of manufacturing sites and the blockade there were many shortages for the CSA. One thing that was almost never in short supply was ammunition. The CSA Ordnance Dept was able to set up a number of powder mills to meet the need. The Richmond Arsenal alone supplied over 72 million rounds of small arms munition from Jan 1861 through Jan 1865.

[Clifford]

I've been rereading Shelby Foote's books and he writes alot about food and items being plentiful in one local and non-existent in others. If you read about Longstreet gathering supplies in NC to send to Lee when the Army of Northern Virginia barely had enough to eat. There is annother passage that describes when Grant captured Jackson during the Vicksburg campaign, of a factory filled to capacity with tent material stamped "CSA" and the workers still producing while the Federal officers were watching. Of course it was torched.... Remember Grant cut his own supply line during the campaign because of the abundance of foodstuffs available. And again Lee's troops were perpetually hungry and ragged.
So the comment above, regarding transportation rather then production seems much more accurate. To simulate that is a little more problematic. Do we raise the cost of CSA trains and riverboats? Do we reduce the amount of supply that can be pushed around on the system? Just some food for thought..... Also Union raids on Rails would be even more devastating. There should be a way to represent the loss of rolling stock that you read about when railines were damaged. The raillines were not just torn up, locomotives and rolling stock were destroyed at stations and sidings.

[lodilefty]

I've been rereading Shelby Foote's books and he writes alot about food and items being plentiful in one local and non-existent in others. If you read about Longstreet gathering supplies in NC to send to Lee when the Army of Northern Virginia barely had enough to eat. There is annother passage that describes when Grant captured Jackson during the Vicksburg campaign, of a factory filled to capacity with tent material stamped "CSA" and the workers still producing while the Federal officers were watching. Of course it was torched.... Remember Grant cut his own supply line during the campaign because of the abundance of foodstuffs available. And again Lee's troops were perpetually hungry and ragged.
So the comment above, regarding transportation rather then production seems much more accurate. To simulate that is a little more problematic. Do we raise the cost of CSA trains and riverboats? Do we reduce the amount of supply that can be pushed around on the system? Just some food for thought..... Also Union raids on Rails would be even more devastating. There should be a way to represent the loss of rolling stock that you read about when railines were damaged. The raillines were not just torn up, locomotives and rolling stock were destroyed at stations and sidings.

I'm getting close to a 'beta mod' that will:

1. Randomly reduce the RR capacity (similar to the winter train wreck events) on an increasing probability and severity each year.
2. Randomly select a CSA owned region and break (destroy) the RR same as if a raider had done a 'destroy railroad' . Again on increasing probability by year.

I won't be able to exhaustively test this due to my BoA2 beta commitment, but will post it as soon as it 'functions'....

[soloswolf]

What are those two possibilities supposed to reflect?

[gbs]

Ammo was no problem for the South. In fact the powder works at Augusta, Georgia was at the time, the largest such facility on the world I believe. I live in Augusta and it is still there.

[Spruce]

It's my feeling that for the South it's too easy to economically survive in the long run. In not one of my games the South got stressed - even more - in some of my Confederate games its seems I'm outproducing the Union on ironclads.

I think the one thing missing is the fact that the southern economy was very inflexible.

As soon as blockades were becoming more effective - one could notice that the stocks of cotton were growing in the Southern ports - and prices did rise even further. For each bale of cotton rotting in port - no goods were "traded" back into the CSA.

I don't think that plantation owners switched to agricultural goods like crops, weat and potatoes to feed the CSA armies. In fact with rising prices - would you jeopardise your business and turn it all upside down to start making goods like potatoes that probably would not never make nice profits. And accepting your plantations to switch over would both be sign of Southern defeat and be in total contradiction with one of the reasons the war was started - the difference in economical background between North and South. I think for each plantation switching over to food production the turmoil and unrest would rise.

Also I believe that Southern railroad connections were not dimensioned at hosting large scaled transfers of any kind of goods to the front states. By this I mean either food supplies, or any kind of supplies. Again the "switch" from a trading nation to a blockaded nation is quite a strain on even the local economies. The whole supply chain is dismantled and becomes overloaded with each port being added to the list of effectively blockaded ports. I think priorities in the goods needed made it pretty hard to have a sound logistical system.

Another remark is about the war supply production upgrades. If you are lucky you can get a whole series of war supply upgrades without investing extra money in the industry. I mean - I recall games where I had about 4 successfull war supply upgrades in 6 months time. This is huge compared to the fact that the upgrades will pay back rather quickly ... and during the first war year you can spare such investments as the battles are still limited and the AI can be kept at bay pretty easy by your CSA.

So summarised =

1. For each upgrade on general supply production, a NM point should be deducted. See my motivation above.

2. Blockading should also reduce Southern transportation capacity - and Southern supply effectiveness- as more and more goods are needed to be stuffed in the already overloaded Having many engines is just nice - but if you lack the rail capacity - or the system gets overloaded - it won't be possible to manage all things.

3. Succesfull upgrades on war supplies should deduct a figure of war supplies from your war supplies pool. This is to reflect that upgrades on war supplies are costing many many investments of other "heavy goods". Please notice that the cost for industrialisation is payed nevertheless - in disregard with the fact wether or not you upgrade was succesfull. If you have a succesfull upgrade, you will lose some war supplies extra. This is too prevent "hoarding" on war supplies if you are lucky during your first months of the game.

I believe these things will improve the game further and are not that difficulty to implement. But my general impression is that industrialisation for the South is too easy.