BICE mod new player question: what is Heavy Transport Truck?

[Ryan]

New player here playing as Japan. It's 1937, and I have a deficit of 1,400 Heavy Trucks. I have no supply for my Manchuria troops for the border skirmishes. How did this happen? What is the difference between heavy trucks and the regular transport trucks? In the base game you only need a few military factories on trucks. I have more than 10 factories on the heavy trucks, and the game says it will take years to meet the demand. There is clearly some game mechanic I don't understand. I haven't even trained new divisions because I lack the equipment to do so.

Any help is much appreciated! I'm trying to like this mod. So far the envelope or briefcase unit icons are a huge turnoff. The new economy system is very cool though.

[Primigenia]

I haven't played bice in a while but I'm guessing that heavy trucks are used to carry artillery or heavy artillery while normal trucks for troops and supplies if enabled, but you can see it in the unit info, it tells you in the template what kind of trucks it needs

[Lepenski Vir]

Yep, Towing the big boy artillery

[Smog]

The answers are wrong. Im currently figuring out BICE myself and you must have motorized your army's supply. Heavy Artillery needs these Artillery Prime Movers.

Heres a lil guide:

Light vehicles --> for the car versions of support companies (Field hospitals, logistics companies, anti-air and Headquarter detachments) aswell as military police and light artillery stuff

Transport Trucks --> for everything motorized (support companies and all motorized batallions)

Heavy Transport trucks --> used for Army supply (when you motorize an army) and motorized artillery (Normal and medium for some reason)

Artillery Prime Movers / Tracktors --> Only used for heavy Artillery and heavy AA

Im probably missing some but im also new to the mod. Hope this helps :D

[mk11]

The main issue is you use them on supply hubs.

Pay attention to reliability in BICE. Attrition and combat attrition can be brutal. Heavy artillery has reliability like 30% but infantry equipment 80%. Heavy trucks are something like 50%.

One addition to Smog: you only need artillery prime movers if you have motorised heavy AA or heavy ART supports. You can always use the cav version in infantry divisions and just use horse and cart.

[Ryan]

Thanks for all the replies. I set all my divisions back to be supplied with horses, and the heavy trucks went back to a small surplus. Apparently, in the WW2 industrial age, we are meant to supply our armies with horse and buggy. Go figure.

Also, railroads are now ridiculously expensive. I learned this the hard way by trying to upgrade a small route which normally would have taken a couple weeks. I checked back a month later and saw it would take 6 months to complete! It would seem this mod wants you to make due with the default railroads. They are too expensive to upgrade.

[mk11]

Only the USA and UK routinely used motorised supply everyone else used horses/mules/porters for most of their supply. USSR partially motorised using trucks sent from the USA.

Big issue with building railways is that the default is not to work on segments in parallel. You can do better by ordering construction of part from each end. However, basically yes building railways is limited. Look at the difficulties Japan had building the Burmese railway