SUPPLY & FATIGUE

Fatigue

Fatigue represents a general temporary loss of effectiveness for a division. On the tabletop, fatigued brigades begin a battle with 1D3 hits on them. In the Campaign, fatigued units cannot force march and if arriving as reinforcements can only arrive in reinforcement phase two. In auto-battles, fatigued units fight at 80% effectiveness,

Fatigue can be gained (it is never automatic) by a unit forced marching, performing piquet duty with cavalry, fighting a battle, or retreating.

The chance to become fatigued is based on the quality of the division.

Mud and other bad weather is coming. Besides limiting maximum movement that can be done each day, bad weather will increase the chance of gaining fatigue when undertaking any activity that would give a fatigue check.

Exhaustion

I am looking to add exhaustion as a further level of fatigue. Fatigued units that would normally gain more fatigue would instead become exhausted. Exhausted troops that even just move would have a small chance of losing troops. Units could not become exhausted by simply performing piquet duty. This isn't implemented yet. I will wait to see how the supply trains fit into the game.

Removing Fatigue

There are two ways to remove fatigue and both involve the unit not moving.

A> If a unit does not move and is not molested by combat, it has a good chance each day of losing its fatigued status. The chance of losing fatigue is based on the quality of troops.

B> If a division's Corps HQ has a supply train, is within one day's march of the division, and the division does not move then fatigue is automatically removed. This test is done after the test to see if they recover fatigue normally so they won't always use supply trains if they don't need to.

Supply Trains

Corps and Wing HQs can carry supply trains along with them. While they have a supply train they can only move at speed 1 though they can force march. Supply trains are destroyed if the HQ is required to retreat from combat.

If an HQ has a supply train, all of its divisions that are within one road leg of the HQ will recover fatigue automatically, if they did not move. This occurs after movement. If a supply train is used on a given day, there is a 33% chance that it will be depleted and removed.

A HQ can only have one supply train at a time and each supply train in your wing costs 2 points. Points are refunded as supply trains are destroyed.

There are two ways for a HQ to get a supply train: depot or forage

Depot Supply

Supply trains may be purchased at the depot, like replacements and they will march toward that depot's muster point. Each supply train so raised costs 2 points. This means that if you intend to send out wagons every couple of days and you are  some 10 days into enemy territory, you'll need to plan to budget 10 points at all time to maintain this level of support. Once the supply trains are transferred to a HQ, the points are not immediately refunded.

Be careful, when any HQ shares a location with any train, including a supply train, it might pick up that train. You cannot specify which command will pick up trains so keep your HQs away from them unless you want the trains attached.

A HQ does not need to be halted to collect a supply train. It might be argued that this is unrealistic but we don't wish to cripple advances.

Forage Supply

A Corps can be authorized to requisition supplies from local populace. If they are so authorized/ordered, they will always seek to build a supply train if they are stopped and don't already have a supply train. They will spend 2 points to do so so if you expect your Corps to requisition stores, keep a pool of spare points.

You can toggle the Cops HQ to requisition or not on the Corps Logistics page.

There is a limited amount of forage available and gathering the necessary stores for a supply train is not always possible. It requires forage.

Forage

Every town, city and fortress may or may not have sufficient resources available to allow the building of a supply train. If there is enough forage, it is temporarily exhausted with the creation of one supply train. The local populace will naturally work though to replace the lost goods and, over time, more forage will be available in a depleted location.

Every day there is a chance that towns without forage will spawn another pile of food. The chance to do so is based on a number of factors.

Each nation has a general rate of forage production. Some very fertile states will replenish at a rate of 1 in 3. The very worst landscapes might be as bad as 1 in 10.  If the location is a city or fortress, then it goes up to 2 chances (2 in 3 or 2 in 10)

Forage is also affected by the season: In winter it is a fifth the chance of restocking. Spring is quite a bit better, Summer even better, and autumn is the base value.

Note that there is no way for a player to know if a town currently has a forage pile.

Some Number Crunching

Suppose you had a small Cavalry Corps in the Austrian countryside (forage value 5) that was sending out piquets every day in two different directions from their divisions. Assume that the Corps HQ is set to requisition and in a town. 

The odds are that every day, at least one of those two cavalry divisions will become fatigued but at least half the time it will recover the fatigue on the same day that it loses it. Still, let us say that every second day, some element of the Corps needs to look to its supply train for forage for the horses.

With a 33% chance of a supply train being destroyed each time it is used, that means that you'd expect to burn through a supply train once each week.

In Autumn, there is a 1 in 5 chance that the town will restore its forage and in summer, it is 1 in 7 so, generally, each week the town would allow the cavalry corps to restock its supply train.

In those circumstances, barring wretched luck, you could sustain the Corps indefinitely through the campaign season. You'd run into trouble if you tried to have more than one Corps using the same point for its forage or you tried this in the winter.

Destroying Supply Trains

On the Corps Logistics page, you have the option for a HQ to dump all of its associated trains, including supply trains, when it might wish to regain movement speed 3. Points would, of course, be refunded immediately from such a dump.