Land Forces sheet - Ammo and Fuel Capacity Calculation Issue

[tim]

In light of the discussion about supply capacity, and a dummy play through I'm doing, I am seeing issues with the ammo capacity of many Axis units.  A quick glance is showing similar issues on the CW Land Forces sheet. 

One issue is that HQ units with no inherent capabilities are assigned ammo values.  For example, the Italian HQ class unit "a" has no Barrage, anti-armor, AA or Close Assault ratings.  Yet it is assigned an ammo value of 1.  A related one is that gun units, AR, AT, AA units have ammo ratings, when those things should come from the assigned TOEs not the unit cadre itself which has no capabilities.

But a more important issue is that the ammo capacity for units with inherent capabilities should be based on the capability that allows the unit to expend the most ammo, to "fire once" as the rules put it.  That would be: Barrage = 4; Anti-Armor = 3; Close Assault or Anti-Air = 2.  Even units with parenthesized values could use that capability, so they should be able to hold that much ammo.

Ammo capacity comes from one of two places. Either the unit has inherent values, for example in Infantry, HW and some HQ units. Or those values should come from the TOE points assigned to the units. Attached is a list of what I think those ammo capacities should be for Italian units when units drive the capabilities rather than TOEs. 

Note:  I also looked at inherent fuel ratings and don't see any issues in the Italian forces. 

[edits] Changed Title
Adding further details on bugs in the Land Forces sheets

Attachments:

Italian unit ammo capacities.xlsx (16.23 KB)

[Michael Miller]

Interesting find, Tim. Certainly if a unit's ammo capacity is insufficient to permit it to fire in an otherwise permissible manner, then something is wrong. I'll look into this as well.

[Deleted]

As these appear to be issues with the spreadsheets, I'll let you folks sort them out. I haven't started to deal with those yet and haven't determined yet to what extent or in what manner I'll be using them. Even so, I'd be glad to help diagnose or straighten any problems if their internals were visible but, alas, they're not.

[tim]

Bob - this is the spreadsheet forum, so yes that's what we're talking about. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with them, if only because we need to see some of that data as we work with the Air or Front Line commands.

One of my challenges is that my summary and admin sheets were relying on some of the figures summarized on each Land Forces sheet. And as I start double-checking them I am finding errors.

Looks like I need to have the sheets unlocked to dig into the calculations.

[tim]

Second issue found:

Fuel Capacity column (column 23) is incorrectly totalled when there is more than one TOE in the row. The Fuel Rate column seems to be the TOE type's fuel rate TIMES the number of TOEs. Then that value seems to be multiplied by the CPA/5 and then again by the number of TOEs again to get the Capacity.

The good news is that the Fuel rate usage summary in column 16/row 10 is correct.  And the Ammo use in column 14/row 9 just reflects the incorrect summary of the ammo capacity column discussed in the first post.

[Deleted]

Let me rephrase: As these appear to be implementation problems with tools that I may or may not use, I'll leave you to sort them out. The spreadsheets might be the finest hammers ever made but hammers aren't always the best tools for the job. I promised Tony that I would give the spreadsheets all possible consideration and I will. In the meantime, snide comments or not, I don't have a dog in this fight. I only commented here because it has become apparent that my non-response to a thread may be interpreted as not my having read it. It's not constructive for people to think, as we ramp up, that they might "never" hear my position on a topic, tangential or not.

[tim]

Fair enough - and I missed this until now as I was focused on the logistics side more than the spending side of the supply chain. But now that I'm doing a rough run-through these items are coming to light.

[ATD]

Oct 12, 2014 22:32:28 GMT tim said:

But a more important issue is that the ammo capacity for units with inherent capabilities should be based on the capability that allows the unit to expend the most ammo, to "fire once" as the rules put it.  That would be: Barrage = 4; Anti-Armor = 3; Close Assault or Anti-Air = 2.  Even units with parenthesized values could use that capability, so they should be able to hold that much ammo.

I believe I commented on the rationale for this in the accompanying documentation.

The fuel capacities are of course clearly too high however. I'm surprised that no-one (including me) spotted that previously.

HQs caused all sorts of problems in development; in fact the rules in general did not lend themselves easily to computer implementation.

[Michael Miller]

I should have been more diligent in vetting this myself, but other issues kept getting in the way. Now anticipating doing so, and will post results and observations.

[tim]

Oct 13, 2014 9:20:05 GMT ATD said:

Oct 12, 2014 22:32:28 GMT tim said:

But a more important issue is that the ammo capacity for units with inherent capabilities should be based on the capability that allows the unit to expend the most ammo, to "fire once" as the rules put it.  That would be: Barrage = 4; Anti-Armor = 3; Close Assault or Anti-Air = 2.  Even units with parenthesized values could use that capability, so they should be able to hold that much ammo.

I believe I commented on the rationale for this in the accompanying documentation.

The fuel capacities are of course clearly too high however. I'm surprised that no-one (including me) spotted that previously.

HQs caused all sorts of problems in development; in fact the rules in general did not lend themselves easily to computer implementation.

I'm not finding that, I looked at the "Player Introduction" and "Using the Spreadsheets" is there are no references to ammo or fuel capacity calcs. Clearly that went into the development work, but that wasn't discussed.

Just to be clear, in my mind both are in error, not just fuel.  This came to light by playing through an Ops Stage to get a feel for supply use and the re-supply process.  Better to find these kinds of simple bugs now than when we're trying to play for real. 

As for HQs with no capabilities, I agree - hence the question marks on that attached list.  I would lean towards them having a fuel rating and capacity but no ammo capacity. Their attached TOEs, if any, would be treated like any TOEs in other units, retaining their ammo/fuel ratings.

[ATD]

There's a note on the ID sheet, indicating the rationale for the ammo requirements. The "normal use" of the unit type won over "maximum use" as the supply requirement indications are obviously just a guide, being heavily dependent as they are on the actual activity of the unit. It could even be questioned whether it was worth including these things but on balance I thought some idea might be better than nothing.

So, one is in error, the other is by design.

The HQs need to work properly (absolutely correctly) and I will have a look at it. My least favourite bit of the system.

[tim]

Oct 13, 2014 18:07:18 GMT ATD said:

There's a note on the ID sheet, indicating the rationale for the ammo requirements. The "normal use" of the unit type won over "maximum use" as the supply requirement indications are obviously just a guide, being heavily dependent as they are on the actual activity of the unit. It could even be questioned whether it was worth including these things but on balance I thought some idea might be better than nothing.

So, one is in error, the other is by design.

The HQs need to work properly (absolutely correctly) and I will have a look at it. My least favourite bit of the system.

You mean the note labeled "ammo expenditures"?  Sorry, I'd copy it here for reference, but that too is protected.  The label isn't great since we're talking about capacity rather than expenditure.  But that's a minor concern. 

A real concern, as described in the attachment is that the numbers hard-coded into the system fail to meet that standard.  Infantry units do not close assault for 1 ammo point, yet a number of Italian units have that capacity rating.  So there you would at least agree is a bug, right? Now that you explain the rule of thumb you are using I still clearly disagree with the logic, and the consensus so far does also. 

Sure, the capacity figure is a guideline.  But you take that number and repeat it in the summaries at the top of the unit screen.  Given that the consensus seems to be to use that maximum capability as the key instead of an arbitrary number based on unit type, correcting/updating those values would make sense. This seems to be a one-shot fix to the ID table and the rest will flow forward into the units. 

The problem with dismissing something as a guideline is that you are encouraging us to not use the tools provided.  As noted above, a mistake/design intent like this bleeds into other areas, even to the separate supply summaries that I developed. 

Now I am okay with pointing at a specific thing like the ammo capacity value you've entered and ignoring it until we address it in a future update.  Known bugs can be managed.  But once they build up beyond a given point we will have to address them (this comes from my background in software change management).  If you wish to defer this for now, I understand.  If you'd like help that offer stands.

[ATD]

Capacity IS expenditure in this context.

"...So there you would at least agree is a bug, right?" Er, no Tim. To begin with, ammo is by TOE, not unit and where did you get the idea that 1 ammo point is wrong for some Italian units?

It's not arbitrary, quite the contrary. It's based on the main combat activity for that unit type - eg. barrage for artillery.

I didn't dismiss it. I said it is a guide, which it is. It's also ALL that it can be because, as I alluded, actually expenditure depends on what the unit is up to. Actually expenditure in an Op/S could be anything from zero to x, where x is any very large number.

[Deleted]

I, for one, would immediately understand that 1 is an erroneous ammo capacity for just about any non-airplane combat unit, including even the Italians, because their absolute minimum ammo expenditure per TOE is at least 2. See [50.2], [4.46b] (for Italians), and [50.0]. But perhaps that's just me.

[Michael Miller]

The Ammo Consumption chart [50.2] shows the poor bloody Infantry with a consumption rate "1". Am I misunderstanding something?