Yet another logistics tutorial (questions welcome!)

[finrodfelagund]

Interesting, but why far away logpts would affect SHQ output ? The SHQ itself does not seem to be pushing much logpts :/ Could have provided a savegame but can't post links because of 10 message limit...

[BlueTemplar]

Because (for a single path) it's the weakest link that matters.

[finrodfelagund]

There are no weak links. Every city is connected with rails but even though I have enough stockpile SHQ has problems with supplying my capital with resources. Savegame in link.

drive.google dot com/file/d/1DcrJos106yk58_We0ztYUqSF-3DtI09R/view

[BlueTemplar]

Ok, this is puzzling for me too, and when I thought that I had the logistic system figured out !

You have about 25k (Preview) pull points across your cities.
Yet, the SHQ location isn't getting any for some reason ?! (No wonder that the links to the selected hex next to it show as black in bottleneck view...)
Worse, even when I set up 30k pull points, like in this picture, the amounts don't change ??

(For some reason, looking at the crossroads, among the rail stations only a single one is sending its points to the capital ?? And it's not like they have excessive AP and/or branching issues...)

[finrodfelagund]

Hmmm, it got more interesting! Every new game is not only a new world but also mechanics work in a different way. Were you able to deliver reinforcements when you did your magic ?

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, looks like I have a related issue in my game... (description & pics later, I'm short on time)

The game just seems to assume that most of your logipoints are going to be emanating from the SHQ ?
This doesn't work so well in a complex grid of cities each with a rail station (noobtrap !)

So the workaround seems to be that you should *never* have a logipoint generator to branch out into another city(¤) before going through the SHQ ?
(Sorry if the guide had already pointed this out...)

(¤) City because rural assets and units are unlikely to pull as much logipoints.
Be careful when using artillery, flak, or aircraft with bombs I guess ?

[BlueTemplar]

Before :


(Ruby is a high speed rail station, the single one in my regime, aside from the 2nd one being built in the Eastern Viewpoint. Keats also has a mothballed regular rail station.)

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, much better :



In fact I'm going to cancel the HSRail station in Viewpoint East before it starts to get built, and put it in Landsberg instead.

This way I can also (kind of) follow the abovementioned rule for the truck stations for points on roads incoming to Keats from SE and NW, and also save 1 branching !

[BlueTemplar]

Like this :

Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with NE being oversupplied and SW being under-supplied... but at least every item was actually sent out, just some not sent back in...


(The roads NW will have to be non-optimal until the 2nd HSRail gets built and the points sent out, can't seem to do otherwise since the traffic sign settings are set per hex and not per hex edge...)

P.S.: I've also ran into another potential issue :
If I have an airdrop starting from a city in the SW, it doesn't have pull points added for it,
and it also doesn't seem to respect the SHQ Logistics limitations,
resulting in 100% airdrop being delivered, but everything else suffering because of it, including unit supply !

[finrodfelagund]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar

Yeah, looks like I have a related issue in my game... (description & pics later, I'm short on time)

The game just seems to assume that most of your logipoints are going to be emanating from the SHQ ?
This doesn't work so well in a complex grid of cities each with a rail station (noobtrap !)

So the workaround seems to be that you should *never* have a logipoint generator to branch out into another city(¤) before going through the SHQ ?
(Sorry if the guide had already pointed this out...)

(¤) City because rural assets and units are unlikely to pull as much logipoints.
Be careful when using artillery, flak, or aircraft with bombs I guess ?

I see. I usually create cities in a line to keep the logisctics simple as possible but annexing minors led to shenanigans like this one. I set up a few air bridges and a HS railstation similar to yours, cut the loop and finally I have supply to SHQ. Thanks!

[finrodfelagund]

hmm I think I broke it, again. moved shq to another city that has west-east outgoing rails, a hs statation that connects through the city but shq refuses to get stuff in... I think time to roll a new planet

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: finrodfelagund

hmm I think I broke it, again. moved shq to another city that has west-east outgoing rails, a hs statation that connects through the city but shq refuses to get stuff in... I think time to roll a new planet

Moving your SHQ is a extremely dangerous operation. If the new place is not up for the Logistics load, you will literally crash your economy.

I guess forming a new SHQ and slowly transfering resources and cities over to it is a safer approach.

[BlueTemplar]

I'd guess that very few people *actually* did this, you might have stumbled on a real bug ?

(Still, kind of hard to tell without screenshots and/or saves...)

[Reppu]

Like this :

Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with NE being oversupplied and SW being under-supplied... but at least every item was actually sent out, just some not sent back in...


(The roads NW will have to be non-optimal until the 2nd HSRail gets built and the points sent out, can't seem to do otherwise since the traffic sign settings are set per hex and not per hex edge...)

P.S.: I've also ran into another potential issue :
If I have an airdrop starting from a city in the SW, it doesn't have pull points added for it,
and it also doesn't seem to respect the SHQ Logistics limitations,
resulting in 100% airdrop being delivered, but everything else suffering because of it, including unit supply !

Just imagine if the logistical system would 'send' the 'needed' logistic shortest possible route at the building and units that 'reguested' them.
No need any of those road signs. No need to worry wasted logistical capacity going the 'wrong way'. Logistics would go where is it needed.

[BlueTemplar]

That's already what they do.

Except, because what you need for the items to flow is logipoints on every intermediate hex, there are many reasons for the system to fail to work perfectly (most noticeable when your logisystem is already under strain) :
- logipoint generators outside of your SHQ hex(es) might fail to send enough logipoints towards it, notably because :
- some things require logipoints, but don't consume them (assets, free items)
- the system might also have trouble with complex networks that have various logipoint generators (mixed trucks and rails, rails without railheads...)
- each logitendril kind of works separately, which might prevent sending large units even though it *seems* that there are enough points
- logitendrils are prevented from looping on themselves by using a "snake" rule
- the estimates that the logisystem does are probably wrong because it likely uses the Management => Asset => Preview to figure out the city pull points, which has errors (for instance it seems to assume that Unincorporated zones are Regular, and so private assets produce state items).
- finally, other player actions (and events ?) might throw those plans into disarray (most obviously, if a road get blocked by rebels, but it can be more subtle if troops get killed and don't need to be resupplied ?)

Last but not least, all or some of the above might be obsolete since v1.12c :

Changelist for v1.12c
[...]
-Logistical System Pull Point algorithm has been revised to better function when there are less Logistical Points available than that are needed by Cities,Assets,Units. (it might also have become a tad slower- lets keep an eye on this and any other possible complications!) It would be nice if anybody could try a new game with special attention to if the pull points of the logistics system are working well *

(Revised how ?)

Shadow Empire (core) changelist for v1.12n:
-Slight nudge to Logistical Pull System in some odd cases where traffic signs were wrongly preventing Pull Points being placed for Units (Battlemode Ben)
[...]

[BlueTemplar]

ORIGINAL: Soar_Slitherine

ORIGINAL: DTurtle
Looking at the SHQ shows you what the points were used for. You CAN change the maximum allowed for each type. You probably shouldn't. Not fulfilling all requested items is usually caused by lacking the resources requested. Missing replacements are usually caused by militia. If you consistently use more than the max allowed, you should probably upgrade your production of logistical points (aka upgrade truck/train stations)

I had to spend some time figuring this out to get the logistics system to cooperate a while back, and the order indicated here isn't correct.

What the game actually does is it adds the unused portion of each category's maximum LP allocation to the maximum for subsequent categories. Making use of leftover LP from the previous categories is the only reason why usage sometimes exceed the set maximums. Unused LP that makes it to the end of REPLACEMENT does not get spent, it's saved for manual strategic movement and such.

If that was the case, SHQ > Zone should never be able to exceed it's limit. After all, there is nothing to give it excess points above it.
But I am 90% sure I saw SHQ > Zone exceed the limits.

I am almost totally certain that when I was experimenting with this, LP left over after REPLACEMENT did not go back to into ZONE > SHQ, despite that category not having enough LP allocated to transfer all the resources. I am 100% certain about the general mechanic of unused LP max getting transferred into the next category - this is why REPLACEMENT never gets any LP on the default settings if there's a bottleneck at ZONE > SHQ (the max settings for ZONE > SHQ and the previous categories add up to 100%, so ZONE > SHQ is permitted to consume up to 100% of available LP).

After being stumped for a while on a logistics issue, I finally got an eureka moment remembering this discussion, and I can second Soar_Slitherine here (not to say that what zgrssd says did *not* happen, but an example would be nice) :

ShadowEmpire_xdnZmoGFtX.png (191.48 KiB) Viewed 1381 times

ShadowEmpire_3pZe8Q9g2o.jpg (792.19 KiB) Viewed 1381 times

but :

ShadowEmpire_s64ZGBZj0Y.png (190.23 KiB) Viewed 1381 times

ShadowEmpire_7IPgInd5vj.jpg (789.49 KiB) Viewed 1381 times

[BlueTemplar]

Save :

[glawen]

Just wanted to say thanks for the guide, which I find to be the best about logistics in this game (this one combined with rompafrolic's steam one made me finally understand it - or at least most of it )

Wanted also to add a little something I haven't seen anywhere else : logistics producers like truck stations, also need logistic points to work (as most other assets do). They're mostly self-sufficient in that regard except when they start
I noticed that when, having build, as DTurtle suggested, a truck station one hex outside a city, with a traffic sign stopping all incoming logistic points to that hex, to limit refocusing, my truck station was not producing any logi point (it couldn't, because it had no access to logi points to kick start it ). I just had to remove the traffic sign for one turn, my truck station started producing logi points, and so became self-sufficient, and I was then able to replace the traffic sign the next turn and completely suppress refocusing.