Armaments and Manpower

[56ajax]

I have got too about T26 as the Reds, most of the reinforcements have now arrived and manpower and armaments are heading for zero.

I have turned down Max TOE on nearly every unit, severely on those with low morale and experience.

q1 ; How do i replenish manpower and armaments. Suggestions please.

q2; do the items in the pools include the manpower to use them?

q3; is there a thread or posting that lists the timelines for the amalgamation and creation of Soviet units?

Thanks in anticipation.

John T

[Stelteck]

q1 : You will soon have plenty of armaments points. There is a gap end 1941 with armaments points but it will be solved as soon as 1942 give you new factory production ratio. Your main issue is manpower, you will always lack manpower until the end of the war.
There is no clear solution for this problem. Use the refit mode to prioritize replacements to your most usefull units and let others sink.

Whatever, the lack of manpower, unless critical, create mostly a lack of support squads in your units. It will not have a big impact in the fighting part of your divisions.
Lack of support (which is men that carry ammunition, food and vodka box) will decrease a little logistic rolls and things like that, but will not prevent you for fighting.

q2 : Items in pools do not include the manpower. It is only the equipment.

q3 : yes
tm.asp?m=2882717

[Denniss]

Items in Transfer pool always include manpower (on the way back to pool), only active pool has them separated

[chaos45]

with the soviet army it depends on how you build your army. You can be short of both for a long time if you build armaments intensive units. As well manpower most likely wont get to surplus until 1943 as a best case.

As the soviet army is building alot of new units in 41/42 that come in with almost no men so your replacement pool is used to fill them.

[Stelteck]

ORIGINAL: chaos45
with the soviet army it depends on how you build your army. You can be short of both for a long time if you build armaments intensive units. As well manpower most likely wont get to surplus until 1943 as a best case.

As the soviet army is building alot of new units in 41/42 that come in with almost no men so your replacement pool is used to fill them.

What are you building if you want to dry spare armament points ? For example, chain building tons of 203mm howitzer support regiment will not kill your armaments points pool, because heavy guns and each types of equipment have a hardcoded limitation, and for example maybe you cannot built more than 5 units of 203mm guns each turn whatever the number of units that lack 203mm guns.
Limitation of artillery building is not the AA points now but mostly the hardcoded limitations.
Creating tons of 203mm regiment will only created tons of unready regiment with no guns and little production.

So i always have tons of spare AA points and no ideas how to use them.

What are armament intensive units ?

[chaos45]

152mm howitzer regiments seem to eat alot of armaments esp the one with 48 tubes....as well cavalry divisions eat alot of armaments and sappers.

[56ajax]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

q1 : You will soon have plenty of armaments points. There is a gap end 1941 with armaments points but it will be solved as soon as 1942 give you new factory production ratio. Your main issue is manpower, you will always lack manpower until the end of the war.
There is no clear solution for this problem. Use the refit mode to prioritize replacements to your most usefull units and let others sink.

Whatever, the lack of manpower, unless critical, create mostly a lack of support squads in your units. It will not have a big impact in the fighting part of your divisions.
Lack of support (which is men that carry ammunition, food and vodka box) will decrease a little logistic rolls and things like that, but will not prevent you for fighting.

q2 : Items in pools do not include the manpower. It is only the equipment.

q3 : yes
tm.asp?m=2882717

I use Max TOE to shrink unwanted units and use refit to raise morale to maximum asap.

How do you reduce support (bit worried about vodka supplies) and not the cv of the unit or are you talking about HQs and Airbases etc.

Thnks for the link.

[56ajax]

ORIGINAL: chaos45

152mm howitzer regiments seem to eat alot of armaments esp the one with 48 tubes....as well cavalry divisions eat alot of armaments and sappers.

And on about T12 Howitzer regiments have a TOE change down to 24 tubes which fills up the pool with this weapon. Once this happens I start building 41b Howitzer regiments to use up all the spare tubes. Hopefully this consumes minimal Armament points.

Note : whilst the number of tubes reduces by 50% the required support reduces by only 30%.

[56ajax]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

ORIGINAL: chaos45
with the soviet army it depends on how you build your army. You can be short of both for a long time if you build armaments intensive units. As well manpower most likely wont get to surplus until 1943 as a best case.

As the soviet army is building alot of new units in 41/42 that come in with almost no men so your replacement pool is used to fill them.

What are you building if you want to dry spare armament points ? For example, chain building tons of 203mm howitzer support regiment will not kill your armaments points pool, because heavy guns and each types of equipment have a hardcoded limitation, and for example maybe you cannot built more than 5 units of 203mm guns each turn whatever the number of units that lack 203mm guns.
Limitation of artillery building is not the AA points now but mostly the hardcoded limitations.
Creating tons of 203mm regiment will only created tons of unready regiment with no guns and little production.

So i always have tons of spare AA points and no ideas how to use them.

What are armament intensive units ?

I am sure someone has done a spreadsheet on this but

41 TD battery costs 2 armament points and a Separate Tank battalion costs 6 (but you dont have the tanks to fill it) whilst a 41 BM How. Regiment costs 4200.

When building divisions or brigades avoid building those who use Motorcycle or Cavalry squads as they are very expensive in comparison.

Then again, if there are large numbers in the pool, it costs zero.

[Stelteck]

On thing to consider when whishing to spend Armament point is the following :

While it is true that cavalry squads are very expensive, they have, like everything a hard cap limit to what can be produce each turn, even if you are swimming in armament points. For cavalry squads, i think it is 200.

So you will never produce more than 200 cavalry squads each turn.

Due to all limitation like those, i find it difficult to consume so much armament points and i'am usually swimming in armament points starting from 1942.

[chaos45]

there is no reason to give HQs much over 90% ToE as you only take a roll penalty if you fall below 90%.

Usually one of the first things I do in the game is just drop all Airbase and HQ units to 92 or 95% I usually do 95% just in case they take losses as even at 95% they seem to hover around 92-93% most of the time esp if you are still moving them around due to attrition losses from movement until the lines stablize.

[morvael]

The chance to get admin bonus from HQ is equal to "number of ready support squads in the HQ"/1000, so every single support squad actually counts.

[Nix77]

ORIGINAL: morvael

The chance to get admin bonus from HQ is equal to "number of ready support squads in the HQ"/1000, so every single support squad actually counts.

Digging an old topic with somehow matching headline...

Question about the admin bonus: corps seem to have 250, armies 500 and fronts 1000 support. Does this mean lower level HQs have less of a chance to give the bonus? I'm guessing it's a one time bonus, so if the first level succeeds in the check, no other checks are made?

Then about support squads in units and HQs: I made a support squad test by clearing a front of any armies other than one, with 500K men in the manpower pool. The support level in the units stayed at around 50-70% (364/538, see picture). On tank brigades it was even lower. Airbases seemed to have their support satisfied with a fixed level of 245-250 support on all bases.

The first number is supposed to contain the support offered by the HQs, which should be maxed out in my test scenario. Does this mean that in most Soviet units, the support need is so high that they never manage to fulfill it to 100%, even in optimal conditions? Or is this just intentional to make the Soviet units behave different?

Looking at numbers, the rifle corps for example seem like a horribly inefficient unit with having only 600 support squad and requiring 1741. An army might contain 3 corps, how can it support them with 500 support available, and 1000 at front level?


EDIT: Checked through unit ToE excels, seems like units really do have innate support deficit, ranging from as low as 10% up to 100%, with some units even having excess support by default.

EDIT2: Ok the headline didn't match the questions at all...

[morvael]

ORIGINAL: Nix77
Question about the admin bonus: corps seem to have 250, armies 500 and fronts 1000 support. Does this mean lower level HQs have less of a chance to give the bonus? I'm guessing it's a one time bonus, so if the first level succeeds in the check, no other checks are made?

Every HQ can give bonus to the admin skill of the leader it has attached.
Lower level HQs with less than 1000 support squads have lower chance to give this bonus, while at the highest level it has almost 100% chance to be added.
If the lowest level leader passes a test, higher level leaders will not be asked to make a test. On the other hand you can't always count on that, so leaders on all levels, as well as number of support squads and location of the HQ unit are important, because they will increase the chance for given unit to pass a test.

ORIGINAL: Nix77
The first number is supposed to contain the support offered by the HQs, which should be maxed out in my test scenario. Does this mean that in most Soviet units, the support need is so high that they never manage to fulfill it to 100%, even in optimal conditions? Or is this just intentional to make the Soviet units behave different?

Looking at numbers, the rifle corps for example seem like a horribly inefficient unit with having only 600 support squad and requiring 1741. An army might contain 3 corps, how can it support them with 500 support available, and 1000 at front level?

Yes, some units have surplus by default (surplus will have no effect on other units), some are extremely short on support squads, this means higher losses and lower morale, unless HQs can help them. HQs help support units and combat units attached directly to them, I think you have used up all the support squads in your 2nd Shock Army, they were divided amongst the units. I don't remember if there are limits per unit, but I can check this.

[Nix77]

ORIGINAL: morvael
Yes, some units have surplus by default (surplus will have no effect on other units), some are extremely short on support squads, this means higher losses and lower morale, unless HQs can help them. HQs help support units and combat units attached directly to them, I think you have used up all the support squads in your 2nd Shock Army, they were divided amongst the units. I don't remember if there are limits per unit, but I can check this.

42a Rifle Division has 302 support squads, and a need of 500+ support. So basically the army support is drained completely by only 3 divisions. Front HQ will spread it's 1000 support among the armies, that's eaten by one division per army.

Standard front setup would probably be something like 7x4 rifle divisions (28*200 support squad shortage by itself only) plus tank brigades and support units, that'd be way over 5000 extra support squad need on front level. I guess it's really intended that the Red Army operates at support squad deficit all the time? I can't see any other way: armies with 4 divisions and a few support regiments just don't work

[morvael]

Yes, and that drives their losses up and morale down.

[Stelteck]

As support squads are the first thing scrapped in case of manpower shortage, it is also very common to have low support squad TOE.

[morvael]

Support squads have lower replacement priority, in order to conserve manpower for fighting elements (introduced not that long ago). They can be also converted into rifle squads, if units have very low number of rifle squads.
So in case of manpower shortages there will likely be bigger shortage of support squads than other elements.
If there will be too many unwanted support squads in the pool, some may indeed get scrapped (remember in the pools elements represent equipment only, not men and equipment as in units).

[Nix77]

There was absolutely no manpower or any kind of shortage in my test setup, I disbanded couple of fronts worth of infantry so I had like 500000 manpower surplus, and ran the game for several turns after that.

It's just a fact that a Soviet army's support squad capacity is designed for 4 rifle divisions, you can test it out yourself

Certain support units have 100% or even more support squads of their need in the ToE, so they don't actually require help from HQ.

[Nix77]

ORIGINAL: Stelteck

As support squads are the first thing scrapped in case of manpower shortage, it is also very common to have low support squad TOE.

Low ToE% isn't the problem, with 100% ToE a rifle division still needs over 200 support squads from the HQ