Support needed

Share your gameplay tips, secret tactics and fabulous strategies with fellow gamers here.

Moderators: Joel Billings, Sabre21

Post Reply
User avatar
morvael
Posts: 11763
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2006 9:19 am
Location: Poland

Support needed

Post by morvael »

While tinkering with the editor I have found out what previously eluded me: a unit almost always needs more support squads than it has in it's TOE. Previously I thought that it is similar to airbase units, where if it is below 100% of proscribed support squads it can't deal with the planes with 100% efficiency. Due to this I arrived at wrong conclusion that units with low number of support squads in it's TOE have advantage over those with less squads, because they use up less manpower to achieve the same. The part with manpower holds true, but now I also understand that such units create higher drain on Army/Corps HQ own support squads which are divided between units assigned to that HQ.

Therefore a 41 Mortar Bn with 36 120mm tubes and 7 support squads is smaller than a 42b Mortar Regiment with 36 120mm tubes and 32 support squads (356 men to 856 men), but it requires 35 support squads from HQ, whereas the regiment will need much less.

Now that I was enlightened - my question is - how it the support squad need calculated? For the 41 Mortar Bn it looks like the sum of elements, but for larger units this formula doesn't hold. I need this to evaluate how a given unit will cost me in term of excess support squads needed from the HQ before building it, rather than from just playing and observing.
Denniss
Posts: 8875
Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2002 10:00 am
Location: Germany, Hannover (region)

RE: Support needed

Post by Denniss »

Support need is a hardcoded value by equipment type, I can't comment on this specific TOE setup. We also have some unit types with too many support squads assigned by TOE (finnish german forts, finnish Inf Div/Bde and some others).

To find out specific unit support needs either look at an existing unit at 100% TOE or use the editor: build a unit of the TOE you want to look at, rebuild it to 100% strength, resupply it to 100% and you should see the actual support in-unit and support need.
WitE dev team - (aircraft data)
WitE 1.08+ dev team (data/scenario maintainer)
WitW dev team (aircraft data, partial data/scenario maintainer)
WitE2 dev team (aircraft data)
carlkay58
Posts: 8770
Joined: Sat Jul 24, 2010 10:30 pm

RE: Support needed

Post by carlkay58 »

I believe that the support needed is equal to all non-support elements in the unit. Larger units also require additional support for Support Units and airbases seem to require more also depending on the number and type of aircraft assigned to the base. I don't know what the calculations are for all of those, I just know that you can look at the unit detail and find what it needs. So just build a single unit of each type (and remember that SUs require support too) and check out the unit detail display. All units of the same type should require identical support needs.
User avatar
morvael
Posts: 11763
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2006 9:19 am
Location: Poland

RE: Support needed

Post by morvael »

ORIGINAL: Denniss
To find out specific unit support needs either look at an existing unit at 100% TOE or use the editor: build a unit of the TOE you want to look at, rebuild it to 100% strength, resupply it to 100% and you should see the actual support in-unit and support need.

That's how I actually found out about the issue, I wanted to see the maximum CV of a division and when I set it to 100% of everything it still showed support required at 24%.

So to find out the hardcoded values I'd have to make TOEs with single elements of given type and note down the needs. Seems like it would take a lot of time. I believe this information should better be visible to players, especially useful for Soviets as they actually have a choice what to field (and it happens I field a lot of support-sucking Mortar Battalions now :) ). The same applies to maximum theoretical CV value.
jaw
Posts: 1049
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2009 1:07 pm

RE: Support needed

Post by jaw »

Originally I had wanted the number of support squads a unit received to be based on the TOE of the other elements in the unit modified for nationality so that on a unit for unit basis a German unit would have somewhat more support than an equivalent Soviet unit. The development team decided however that they wanted the total manpower of a unit to approximate as closely as possible the historical authorized strength. To acheive this manpower total support squads were added to the TOE as needed without regard for the actual support requirements of combat elements. This procedure meant that the "organic" support of a unit could be either more or less than what the unit required depending on how much of the unit's manpower was not represented in the combat elements composing the unit. If the unit ended up being short of support, then it would make up the deficit by drawing support from its headquarters.
Denniss
Posts: 8875
Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2002 10:00 am
Location: Germany, Hannover (region)

RE: Support needed

Post by Denniss »

There's actually a bug in the edit, not always showing the correct support in-unit. Hitting resupply should update the support percentage and the support in-unit but this does not always work with correct values. If support in-unit is shown lower than ready support squads please re-enter the number of availabe support squads and the support in-unit will be updated.
WitE dev team - (aircraft data)
WitE 1.08+ dev team (data/scenario maintainer)
WitW dev team (aircraft data, partial data/scenario maintainer)
WitE2 dev team (aircraft data)
User avatar
morvael
Posts: 11763
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2006 9:19 am
Location: Poland

RE: Support needed

Post by morvael »

Thanks for great info.

About the bug - I have already experienced it and found that workaround. But one issue remains: I can't make the CV value refresh on the counter after I change unit's state and composition, other that saving scenario and restarting entire game.
Post Reply

Return to “The War Room”