GAME MANUAL - Steam

HEARTS OF IRON DARKEST HOURfewer vessels and is somewhatless susceptible toenemy anti-convoy activitiesthan creating a large numberof long-distance direct routes.After you have created theconvoy route, you may needto use the Convoy Detailsinterface to make adjustmentsto the default goods beingtransported and to allocateconvoys and escorts to protectthem before it will becomeactive. You won’t need to dothis if you have a sufficientnumber of unassigned vesselsand have enabled the “automaintainconvoy” option, butyou might want to adjust itspriority. Once created, it willusually require a few days ofgame time before you begin tosee much activity along a newroute since the flow ofmaterials will take some timeto be established. You shouldalso check the routeperiodically if you aremaintaining it manually toensure that it is still active. Itmight cease to be functional ifthere are no materialsavailable for it to carry, or ifenemy anti-convoy activitiesare intercepting anddestroying the majority of thevessels.The most common error thatnew players make whenmanually establishingconvoys is to forget that oilis both a resource and asupply. If you set up a defaultsupply convoy to a depot anda default resource convoy topick up from that depot andtransport raw materialselsewhere, the oil that youintend to place in that depot asfuel for your troops will becarried away by your secondconvoy since it’s a resource.After you’ve done this acouple times and suffered thedevastating battle consequencesof being out of fuel,you’ll probably begin toremember to set the materialtransport limitations.When you are at war, youshould also be sure to checkthe status of your convoys ona regular basis. Enemyvessels and aircraft can beordered to engage in convoydisruption activities that willattempt to locate and sink aportion of your merchantmarine (enemy vessels will dothat automatically when atwar). While escorts will helpmitigate this to a degree andconvoys will adjust their routesto minimise losses, it is stillprobable that you will losesome percentage of yourshipments and that some ofyour transports and escortswill be sunk. You should makeprovisions to build new convoyvessels periodically to replacethese inevitable losses.Automating ConvoyManagementIf all of this sounds just a littlebit too complex and overwhelming,you’ll be very happyto know that you can delegatealmost all aspects of convoymanagement using the threebuttons that appear at thebottom of both the ConvoyManagement and ConvoyDetails interfaces. You mayelect to have the AI establishand remove resource convoysautomatically for you asrequired. You may also havethem do the same for yoursupply convoys, and you mayask them to maintain theroutes by assigning newtransports and escorts as theybecome available. If youautomate convoy managementyou will still beresponsible for ensuring thatthere are a sufficient numberof convoy and escort vesselsfor the AI to work with, and forassigning priorities to each ofthe routes.Resource DepotsThe lower right portion of theProduction Folder is ascrollable listing of all theresource depots that youcurrently have throughout theworld. Depots will exist for oneof three reasons: either it isyour nation’s capital; you havenatural resources beingextracted from provinces inthat region but there is nodirect land link to your capital,so they are being stockpiledlocally to await convoytransport to your capital; or adepot has been established toact as a supply dump of oiland supplies for your troops inthat region. I mentioned abovethat you can use air transportsto supply your armed forces,although this is very costly andinefficient so it should only bedone in case of emergency.This is an air mission(described in detail in the AirCombat section) and does notappear in the convoy listing,but the depot of supplies andoil that you establish by doingthis will appear in the depotlisting.The first depot in the list willalways be your national capitaland will reflect the sameresource stockpiles that arereported in the Top Bar andNational Resources summary.All natural resources listed asbeing located at one of yourother depots are not includedin the National and Top Barvalues and will not beavailable to your factories foruse until they are shipped viaconvoy to your capital.Generally, you will wish tomove all natural resourcesfrom your depots to yourcapital as soon as possible toavoid risking their capture andto make them available toindustry or international trade.In the case of a depot that isalso supplying your armedforces, you will probably wantto leave some oil behind andship some supplies to it.64