You stare at the endless host of convoys and escort ships sailing into the horizon while loved ones say their goodbye from the pier. These are your tools of destruction reinforcements, bringing conflict directly in the enemys home. Having plotted your way through nations near and far, the price of victory is a strategic investment in time: a price that will hopefully pay off in the long run. Just imagine, how terrific it will feel to finally put your adversary off-balance. When they see your forces appear in faraway regions, the element of surprise will be complete and devastating. Welcome to the wonderful world of logistics, colleagues!

Regional Information

As you maneuver your way through geopolitical challenges in your terminal, you will find yourself weighing matters of logistics. Like any worthwhile Commander in Chief, moving Army Commands, Air units, and Fleets is no instantaneous feat, making deployment a hotspot for strategic issues and opportunities. To begin with, let's consider your options for a good logistical overview for A Steel Authority focus.
As you look to protect India from capitalist aggression, having access to possibly recruit the historical leader Nehru will be an excellent move, but it would be wise to gather some friendly military forces in the theater and worth investigating further... The universal tool for gathering information about any element in the terminal is Pressing and Holding for 2 seconds. Do so over any region and you will see information about its regional status. The shortest route for any glorious Soviet forces would, naturally, be through Afghanistan.
Hold your breath though, as despite being a good possible route for the USSR, you cannot deploy there yet, as the region is non-aligned and Soviet influence there is zero. Looking elsewhere in the theater, Western India is the second closest to the Soviet border and possesses a friendly presence.
This is our opportunity, and the tooltip tells us that we can both deploy and withdraw to or from there. A very good potential, should we somehow end up facing enemy unit of any kind.

Intelligence INFORMation gathering

The question is, how much longer of a route would this be for our Soviet units compared to Afghanistan? No worries! Being part of the KGB's day-to-day operation, the INFORM mission does not require any additional costs to help you estimate deployment costs. Select your Intelligence (marked KGB or CIA) service and push the INFORM button. Follow the on-screen instructions by selecting a region. Example: Select the Central Asian Zone, in the Eastern European Theater to gather information about the logistical situation as this region borders the South Asian Theater. The information will be granted in the message log (bottom row).
The route taken for deployment will go through your capital and through the Urals and can travel on land or at sea. Just as in real life, deployments take time, or in-game terms at least 1 turn. The farther you are from your capital (your logistical HQ) and the more complicated the route, the more turns required. The different levels of influence and their effects for a region are as follows:
(NOTE: If you are interested in knowing the exact decimal costs involved in every passage along the logistics path you can toggle that information in the Options menu.) So far so good...Now let's return to South Asia to explore on the other side of the theater border.

Western Indian Logistics

Switching back to South Asia and using the INFORM mission, we quickly gather information on Western India. Notice that deploying a Land or Air units in Western India would only cost 2 turns while the deployment of a Sea unit would cost 6 turns.
We know from before that there is a land route to Central Asia and we can assume that logistics can flow through all the way here to Western India. By selecting the minimap button in the top right, you access the world logistics overview.
Plotting logistics, you can see that deploying land/air units in Western India will be a much simpler affair than deploying any fleets and how precarious your position can be at sea in this theater. Strategically, it means you need to invest in increasing influence through non-military means, like False Flag operation or by making use of Leaders. Perhaps it would also be wise to quickly take control of strategic sea regions like Sri Lanka and thinking twice for the long run about protecting the logistics path from being cut off. The Middle East, in particular, will also now be important with straits like the Suez Canal in Egypt or the Turkish Straits, controlling access to and from the Black Sea.

Enemy Logistics

Much like plotting your logistic lines, by selecting a region with enemy influence using INFORM, your intelligence service will make a probable cost calculation for their logistics. This will allow you to identify possible chokepoints to exploit if you are on the offensive. Example: In Pakistan, that neighbors Western India, the US has a cheaper deployment cost for sea units but twice the cost for land and air units compared to Western India.
Of course, US control in China can lower their deployment costs and also noteworthy, the USA has a good step off position should they secure the strategic strait (Strait of Malacca). US Carrier Fleet, Fighter or possibly also Bomber Command deployments could open up new possibilities as deployment there is considerably cheaper for the enemy.
A Soviet focus on the Pacific theater, and on removing influence along enemy logistical paths in the Philippines, or perhaps even Indonesia, would be favorable for the USSR cause. There is a lot at play in logistics as the costs of going through a region changes dramatically depending on influence. Priorities can and will change but remember to stay one step ahead and you will be victorious. Mighty Cheers, Davide "DVD" Benedetti and Gellert "GFK" Keresztes ********************************************************* Upcoming Development I) NEW tutorials are in productions and the official MANUAL is in print! Expect the first rollout in the coming weeks! II) KIM IL-SUNG: A Communist Ideologue and Supreme Leader will rise to power like the living Sun to establish a People's Republic like never seen before and the first Communist dynasty. Or will his life be cut short and his reign curtailed by US regional power? The rise of North Korea is in BETA testing. III) RED SCARE: Joseph McCarthy starts his investigations. What will he find and how will that shape the future of the United States?

CHANGELOG

AI

• AI now makes even better and more realistic choices with an added a level of randomization for AI actions which it values to be equally impactful making it more unpredictable and a lot harder to game

GAME

• NEW Major update with the rollout of the LOGISTICS system
• NEW Updated ruleset for logistics, deployment and military withdrawal
• NEW Logistics cost now correctly considers landlocked capitals and sea units marker is no longer printed if the capital is landlocked as a consequence of logistics not having a cost
• NEW Added dashed lines instead of dotted lines for out-of-theater-connector of logistics
• NEW Pressing the BACK button when accessing the intelligence HQ folder should clear current inform region selection
• NEW Added Go To button for Logistics World Overview for quick navigation to the region in Theater Com
• Increased Ocean Regions logistics costs from 0.25 Turns to 0.45 Turns
• Fixed "last movement circle" not being cleaned up on games end.
• Fixed an issue where orders were shown in reverse order in the Message Log for Air units
• Updated setup of Region Notifications
• Updated the text for Ocean and Arctic regions
• Updated the text for Non-aligned regions
• Updated wording to match the new setup for Surface Fleet CONVOY ability
• Minor fix for command reserves when pressing theater button
• Fixed coloring issues for world overview text
• Updated and added world overview unit names
• Inform cost marker is no longer shown in the starting region (capital) if a non-capital region is selected
• Theater borders are correctly disabled in nuclear map mode
• Fixed an issue where region 54 was incorrectly sorted in Western Europe instead of Eastern Europe

DECISIONS

• Added Finance mismanagement decisions to Balance of Power SCN 10

LEADERS

• Leaders will now lose 2 power instead of 4 when contesting enemy units in the region they are recruited in
• Fixed an issue where Leaders would incorrectly contest Bomber Commands first instead of Army Commands

OTHER

• Precise deployment toggle in Options now affects intelligence Inform too
• Added new imagery for the design of the logistics system
• Theater Com off-map lines now centered on unit names in the world overview
• Fixed a compiler error
• Filtered remaining CHARAC sounds
• Fixed various typos