Oil upkeep should be a thing!

[Deaston]

Does anyone else think that Hoi4 should simulate oil upkeep and reserves like HOI3? When you look at why Germany lost WW2 it was primarily down to the constant oil crisis they faced. Oil was the deciding factor in who would be the next superpowers, e.g. SU and USA, which both had huge oil outputs. In contrast, the UK did not produce much. Italian ships had to stay in harbour for extended periods of time. Motorised division production had to be reduced and existing divisions often had to stop and wait for supplies. Tanks ran out of oil constantly and had to be abandoned. Likewise, oil for planes was limited at best. Supplies and artillery were typically moved by horses and this had its own issues like the lack of horses available and constant need for food and rest.

So the axis only had a fraction of the oil they got in peacetime during the war and bear in mind this consumption grew dramtically after occupying most of Europe and with the war in the East. They probably got around 30% of the oil they actually needed. This of course would drop in the later stages of the war due to bombing of the Romanian oil fields and synthetic factories.

However, in HOI4 you really don't need to worry about oil in Germany. All you have to do is build a bunch of synthetic oil factories and you're set. Just rinse and repeat as your demand increases; there are no constraints other than building slots, which you have plently to work with. So there is no upper limit like Germany faced in real life. Coal was in short supply as well as oil. So perhaps HOI4 should add an upkeep system and actually allow the player and a.i. to have a reserve. An upper limit should probably be added to synthetic oil factories too based on coal, to actually reflect the actual situation in Germany. It may even be a good idea to add coal as a resource seeing as it did still play a pretty important role in the war. As I said, I honestly never feel like Germany has a shortage of oil, so it kinda just removes the sense of being on the clock in regards to when you should strike the SU. Do you wait and lose your oil reserves and with that your ability to effectively utilise your mobile armed forces? Or do you take a gamble and strike the SU to get the oil that you so desperately need to survive?

Your thoughts?

[RapteR]

It will be next update

[Deaston]

I hope so! No idea why Paradox decided to change the resource system used in HOI3. That was such a bad move...

[spike2071]

HOI3 was a terrible implementation, too. You just spent '36-'39 stockpiling oil/fuel to 99,999, then you didn't care about oil.

The idea in 4 is that you use oil to replace units in the field, thereby consuming oil. Since you can't stockpile, there is a constant need for oil. It's poorly implemented and just as bad as 3, though, and less realistic.

Oil consumption for units in the field is on the roadmap for Paradox, but I don't know when.

[Deaston]

Publicado originalmente por spike2071:

HOI3 was a terrible implementation, too. You just spent '36-'39 stockpiling oil/fuel to 99,999, then you didn't care about oil.

The idea in 4 is that you use oil to replace units in the field, thereby consuming oil. Since you can't stockpile, there is a constant need for oil. It's poorly implemented and just as bad as 3, though, and less realistic.

Oil consumption for units in the field is on the roadmap for Paradox, but I don't know when.

True. I admit I did just stockpile every resource to max. I think the big flaw here was that they didn't implement diplomacy too well. For instance, relations should have played a bigger impact in how much you could trade, the lower they go, the lower the cap. Least there were still situations where you did run out of a resource though. Even more so if you did the later starts! In hoi4 however, once the tank unit or motorised unit is made, it doesn't really matter about the oil situation. I'd personally say hoi3 had a better system, but you're right, it could be easily cheated.

[Belgian Problem]

Publicado originalmente por RapteR:

It will be next update

Source?

[zacharyb]

Publicado originalmente por Belgian Problem:

Publicado originalmente por RapteR:

It will be next update

Source?

He's wrong about it being in next expansion, it's not guaranteed.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-1-5-2-future-roadmap-and-ironclad.1088407/&utm_source=stcom-owned&utm_medium=social-owned&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=wtt_hoi_2018410_pla_dd

"Properly represent fuel in some way in the game"

[Deaston]

Well let's hope they do decide to implement some upkeep value. Least then you'll have to take into account how many tanks and other fuel dependent vehicles you are producing. Not just how much it takes to initially create them. Then you could deprive countries like the soviet union of oil by taking their oil producing regions. After their reserves deplete their tanks will be useless, unless they can find another source, e.g. the USA. That would certainly bring more strategic thinking to a "Grand strategy" game.

[emcdunna]

I think the cost in oil resource to BUILD a tank or plane is super high right now, same for rubber. It seriously limits your ability to actually build tanks/planes as certain nations.

Technically speaking, you don't build a tank and hand it every gallon of oil it'll ever need, but that's the way this game represents it.

So in effect, getting oil fields is extremely important for germany, however it doesn't have exactly the realistic effect of tanks being abandoned or useless without it.

I think the easiest thing to do would be to implement a variable "attrition"/reliability effect of having low oil on tanks and planes.

The best representation would be that you actually paid oil to be able to move/attack with planes or tanks in fractional amounts, and mobility would go to zero for during oil shortages.

The biggest downside I see to any system more complicated than the one we have is that the ai can't handle situations like this and German ai would just have fuel-less tanks and grounded planes sitting there. I'd prefer it to be slightly gamey but not entirely broken like how it is now

For example there's a mod which implements "ammo" as a piece of equipment with high attrition. You have to keep building bullets and bombs to replace them in the field. It's handled horribly by the ai which runs out super fast and has inefficient divisions because of this

[spike2071]

Publicado originalmente por emcdunna:

Technically speaking, you don't build a tank and hand it every gallon of oil it'll ever need, but that's the way this game represents it.

I think that's kind of the point if the game design doesn't use fuel in field. :P

Out of supply tanks/mot/mech do drop to 1kph. That's magical supply and has nothing to do with actual oil/fuel, but there is an impact to being out of supply.

I like the fact they tried to do away with the 99,999 stockpiles, but the result is underwhelming. I agree with you that moving units need to consume resources and/or factories (food, generic supplies, whatever).

[Px]

Publicado originalmente por Deaston:

Does anyone else think that Hoi4 should simulate oil upkeep and reserves like HOI3? When you look at why Germany lost WW2 it was primarily down to the constant oil crisis they faced. Oil was the deciding factor in who would be the next superpowers, e.g. SU and USA, which both had huge oil outputs. In contrast, the UK did not produce much. Italian ships had to stay in harbour for extended periods of time. Motorised division production had to be reduced and existing divisions often had to stop and wait for supplies. Tanks ran out of oil constantly and had to be abandoned. Likewise, oil for planes was limited at best. Supplies and artillery were typically moved by horses and this had its own issues like the lack of horses available and constant need for food and rest.

So the axis only had a fraction of the oil they got in peacetime during the war and bear in mind this consumption grew dramtically after occupying most of Europe and with the war in the East. They probably got around 30% of the oil they actually needed. This of course would drop in the later stages of the war due to bombing of the Romanian oil fields and synthetic factories.

However, in HOI4 you really don't need to worry about oil in Germany. All you have to do is build a bunch of synthetic oil factories and you're set. Just rinse and repeat as your demand increases; there are no constraints other than building slots, which you have plently to work with. So there is no upper limit like Germany faced in real life. Coal was in short supply as well as oil. So perhaps HOI4 should add an upkeep system and actually allow the player and a.i. to have a reserve. An upper limit should probably be added to synthetic oil factories too based on coal, to actually reflect the actual situation in Germany. It may even be a good idea to add coal as a resource seeing as it did still play a pretty important role in the war. As I said, I honestly never feel like Germany has a shortage of oil, so it kinda just removes the sense of being on the clock in regards to when you should strike the SU. Do you wait and lose your oil reserves and with that your ability to effectively utilise your mobile armed forces? Or do you take a gamble and strike the SU to get the oil that you so desperately need to survive?

Your thoughts?

If they rebalance then yeah sure, tanks would need a buff and especially light tanks.
If its too historical and realistic then the game would just play out the same as real life and thats not the point,

[Deaston]

Well they could have reserves, all they have to do is just limit the amount you can stockpile to say... 5000 or something. Give the player a year tops of potential reserves, maybe even less depending on the rate of consumption. That'll get rid of the player abusing the reserve system pre-war. At the same time, you'll be on the clock to find new resources before you war machine runs out.

[emcdunna]

You'd have to actually build fuel tanks somewhere to be able to stockpile it. I think the cap could be tied to infrastructure

And you'd also need, hypothetically, to stockpile food and other such resources.

But I still think the ai can't handle this kind of balancing.

[GoldenTalon]

They should fix the AI first. Giving the AI yet one more mechanic to manage is not a good idea at this point. Resource management in prior Hoi titles was not that great. As @spike said you generally just stockpiled oil, metals, etc. until the war started and then ignored them. Even playing as Japan in DH, oil was never an issue even though that's was a main reason for their DOW against the US.

[↯Zindy⛦]

i wish there was a way to stockpile resources in general

[emcdunna]

I do worry about oil as germany, of course I just build 20 synthetic refineries. That's moreso what I see as broken.

But as germany, like wow you need resources and you can't trade for most of the world's oil or rubber once you go to war with the UK