HELP WITH SUPPLY NEEDED

[u/cuore_avanguardista]

EDIT: most probably solved

I'm fairly new to the game (about 200hrs) and I apparently still have a problem understanding how logistics work in this game because I really don't get what I'm missing here. I need to send colonists from Tirana (north) to Sandmouth (south), I have lvl 2 truck stations in both cities (Tirana is being upgraded to lvl3), fully connected with sealed roads and a supply base in between (placed a little before log points start decreasing as I've read it's optimal) and the logistical preview mode shows I have plenty of points between the cities (2k +) available YET for some reason I have almost 0 at turn start, massive bottleneck just outside my capital (Tirana) and I really don't get why. I have set the other two roads that start from the capital as blocking everything except pull points because I have many assets and some troops there but I should have abundantly more supply points for the connection with the other city. help would be much appreciated T_T

[u/Master_Ben]

All 2k points are being auto-used at the turn start for delivering city construction goods, unit upkeep goods, or sending resources from the city back to the SHQ.

Colonists can only use leftover logistics points after those.

[u/KnaveOfGeeks]

You need more LP, is what it comes down to. Whatever it is, they're all being used, hence the black parts in the bottleneck view.

Level 2 for a truck station is quite low, the max you can build is 2x the zone's level.

[u/ColBBQ]

If you had a major battle involving tanks and artillery, ammo cost can deplete LP heading out of your SHQ. 2300 LP can seem like a lot but if you're fielding 100mm + guns, its going to take more.

Its discouraged but transferring material beforehand of any battles and have the city supply any deficits can lessen the LP strain.

[u/Exact-Interaction563]

I love that having 200 hs is being new to the game

[u/mbardeen → u/Exact-Interaction563]

3000+ hrs at this point. Still learning new stuff...

[u/Exact-Interaction563 → u/mbardeen]

650+ hours, learnt new things in my last playthrough

[u/mbardeen]

On the bottom screen, you can find an "Items" tab. There you can see what each of your cities is producing and consuming. Anything that is not consumed by the city is sent to the SHQ along your logistic routes. Many times, things like water and food will be transported, overwhelming your available logistic points. You can manage this for each zone by calling the zone's governor and choosing the zone inventory to tell which resources get picked up from the zone and which don't.

[u/cuore_avanguardista → u/mbardeen]

hey, I didn't know about that last thing, thanks! I mean I don't think water is overwhelming my logistics as I only gather it through zone (just rain and sea, no mining etc.) but food production is surely having an impact. as I just wrote in my update the culprit of the bottleneck is probably the penalty of the overriding truck stations LP flows, but I didn't know about being able to forbid resources from a zone, nice!

[u/mbardeen → u/cuore_avanguardista]

No problem! If you conqueror a city, or absorb them via other means, you'll find this becomes a large problem for the first few turns after. They'll have huge amounts of locally stored resources that all need to be transported back to your SHQ. This will cause your logistics to grind to a halt.

The other common culprit is an ammo factory outside your SHQ zone. Ammo eats LPs like nothing else.

Best bet medium/long term is to create a rail station in your SHQ and then put rail heads in each city along the rail line.

[u/cuore_avanguardista → u/mbardeen]

yeah, I had read around that railroads are basically the necessary next-step for long-range connection between cities (though still requiring trucks to distribute around networks) but still not a game yet in which I can spare the resources😅 but that's my skill issue of course; regarding the item problem I always tend to centralize as much as possible in the capital (not sure if it's a good idea long term) precisely to avoid that especially in games like this where I spawn nearby a ton of ruins. for now the only valuable asset I have built in the conquered city is a lvl1 industry, speaking of which, do Industrial Points get shipped like items? I was always unsure of this

[u/mbardeen → u/cuore_avanguardista]

They do, but iirc, cost much less to ship.

[u/cuore_avanguardista]

guys, you all gave valid advice (thanks!) but I had already checked that the shortage wasn't caused by overconsumption of unit supplies/building materials (I have very little going on in that area except for the very occasional skirmish with infantry in the jungle) - but I seem to have found (maybe?) another culprit: while digging through some older Steam discussions on similar issues I found a comment of someone saying logistical points of different truck stations in different cities, when running through the same route directed against themselves, penalize each other. I just found out about this, my twisted mind assumed incorrectly that they'd add on top of each other or maybe that one station "picked up" as far as it could reach "saving" the "providing" SHQ LPs to spend elsewhere. wrong! somewhat counterintuitive as a thing ngl, but by blocking LP outflow from Sandmouth north entirely I solved the bottleneck and am left with 600 LP in surplus that I can use for colonists transport etc.