While I've got your attention, how easy/hard is managing supply? (both land and sea, fuel transportation etc.) Is it automated? or do you have to manualy set routes and ships and stuff? Or both? That's another thing that kind of threatens me about this game.
Supply is semi-abstracted. Supply points(or "tons") are generated by industry, both heavy and light. Ground units use supply - if they dont have supply available to maintain squads and devices, they will become damaged and eventually destroyed. Also fixing disabled squads/devices burns supply, as does combat and movement, depending on the squads and devices in the unit. Supply is also burned when ground unit takes replacements, at a big enough base preferably with a HQ in range and lots, lots of supply available.
Air units use supply depending on the type of plane, sortie and ordnance(torpedoes, drop tanks, or normal load). Maintaining and fixing planes also burns supplies as does taking replacements(like with ground units, base has to be big enough, with HQ nearby and enough supply points).
Supply can be moved aboard ships but it also moves cross-country(slow, depends on distance and terrain type), via roads(dirt and paved), railroads(1-rail, multirail, heavily railed). Units and bases will automatically pull the supply where its needed, with a small delay, but cross-country or too long road connections will result in slow movement and some of the supply being wasted on the route, simulating the supply needs of the transferring by foot or on trucks.
Supply is also used to repair and rearm ships.
Ships on the other hand burn fuel, which comes from refineries. Fuel can be moved with tankers or regular transports, but as fuel will be in barrels the cargo space is not used as efficiently. As with supply, load and unload rates depend on both the ship and port size and available "naval support" squads as well as dedicated port load/unload labor squads. Tankers move a lot of fuel and oil but unloading them at some atoll will take forever...
Logistics is easier for the Allies as they are practically swimming in supply and fuel compared to the Japanese. Japan needs to set up a system where convoys pick up fuel, oil and resources from China, Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin, Burma and East Indies and transfer them from Honshu's industry, while surplus fuel is transferred where ever it is needed or stockpiled. Those resources, oil and fuel can also be moved closer via roads or rail to minimize the need of risky naval traffic, but there will be some wastage on the journey and for the massive amounts of stuff required only some of the, say, Burma's oil and resources can first be moved to Thailand, Malaya or Indochina, so clear shipping lanes are vital to Japan and submarines a real threat.
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Topic: War in the Pacific PBEM AAR - sign up for Bay 12 fighter squad on page 31+! (Read 50634 times)