Early Mech rush feasible?

This strategy got quite a bit more potent in 3.06. I'd say to the level of being no brainer for GER due to certain changes PI made to game systems.

1) The elephant in the room - 33% IC price increase for ARM and HARM.
2) Like if 33% price increase was not enough, PI is penalizing reserves training - in 3.05 if you trained 3y draft unit on specialist level - you'd get 25% exp unit @ 3/4th of strength, now you get 18.75% exp ( it is speculation if it is intentional or simply yet another limitation in production code ).
3) Armor now has massive penalties in defense on Urban, Woods, Forests, Mountains, Hills ( Alex don't nitpick, I know MEC has penalties in some of these terrains in 3.06 ). This creates a situation, where forum darling division of 2xARM + 2SPA has combined 50% penalty to defense in Urban province or 27.5% one in Forests. MEC has no or much smaller defense penalties on these terrains.
4) Direct upgrade route from INF->MEC. Minor, but gives a lot of flexibility of upgrading enough MEC when time is right.
5) GER has quality feedstock of INF - 45% EXP units will keep exp when upgraded and will have at least 10% extra advantage due to nerfs in (2).
6) While the reduction of ARM units across board gives less targets for TD component to shoot at, it means that relative advantage of having a lot of "hard" units rises as well.

What do you think guys?

P.S. There is also a factor of research expenditures, ARM research costs a lot now ( 3 LARM, 5 ARM difficulty ).

Sorry for digging
But it seems not all factors are considered in this thread

I've found that Arm+SPArt have a decent advantage compared to Mec+TD.
This advantage is terrain modifier

Almost always Arrm+SPArt have better (or not worse) attack modifier than Mec+TD:

Wood -15% vs -22,5% (+7,5%!)
Forest -45 vs -45
Jungle -60 vs 70 (+10%!)
Hills -25 vs -25
Mnt -55 vs -57,5 (+2,5%)
Marsh -50 vs -80 (+30%!!!!!!!!!) because TD is absolutely not for attacking in marshes
River -60 vs -75 (+15%!!)
Amphib -120 vs -115, anyway they both will not be used
Urban -70 vs -75 (+5%!)
Fort +5 vs -5 (+10%!)

So, if you plan to attack a lot of marshes, rivers, woods, urbans and forts, you should think about Arm+SPArt, not Mec+TD
In some of extreme but real variants, attacking via river a wood fort Arm+Spart will get 0.4*0.85*1.05=0.357 modifier, while Mec+TD will get 0.25*0.775*0.95=0.184.


UPD:
Ups!
It seems the information I used is correct only for Vanilla or SF. (I used wiki: http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Terrain)
but if you have FtM 3.05 and look units files, than modifiers will be different
Thus, in FTM 3.05 Arm+SPArt have only a little advantage in river crossing(2.5%), plains offence(5%), urban offence(5%) and fort offence(10%), while in other terrains Mec+TD is better by 2,5%-10%.

So, Blue Emu made a right choice.
But anyway, in all similar analysis terrain modifiers should be considered, because their influence could be significant.

I think singling out the terrain modifiers as the only basis for Mech+TD combo isn't recognizing the broader issues behind the idea:
1) from a research perspective, you can eliminate significant portions of the armor tree and focus instead on other areas that can benefit the overall German war effort (take your pick..i'd go air or Navy)
2) The reduction in supply consumption of Mech vs Armor is significant...arguably allowing you to create more mobile divisions which results in a significant strategic advantage.

I'm not sure blue-emu intended to imply that Mech is necessarily better over all, but more a question of whether it be achieved since the Mech Inf tech is generally perceived to be out of reach for a pre-war German build-up. But naturally, he can speak for himself better than I ever could. Having tried it myself, I have to say there are some big advantages...although it's not like I'll never build another armored unit ever again.

robw963 said:

I think singling out the terrain modifiers as the only basis for Mech+TD combo isn't recognizing the broader issues behind the idea:
1) from a research perspective, you can eliminate significant portions of the armor tree and focus instead on other areas that can benefit the overall German war effort (take your pick..i'd go air or Navy)
2) The reduction in supply consumption of Mech vs Armor is significant...arguably allowing you to create more mobile divisions which results in a significant strategic advantage.

I'm not sure blue-emu intended to imply that Mech is necessarily better over all, but more a question of whether it be achieved since the Mech Inf tech is generally perceived to be out of reach for a pre-war German build-up. But naturally, he can speak for himself better than I ever could. Having tried it myself, I have to say there are some big advantages...although it's not like I'll never build another armored unit ever again.

Click to expand...

The thing I like most about the mech rush is getting all that power PLUS a speed of 9KPH! The speed of these units makes them very powerful. Their high toughness also makes it possible to send them against targets that will really hurt armor. I can set a mech/td division against a well defended city and they can attack for weeks with poor odds. This ability to pin enemy units w/o harming mine is a good plus.

Sure, robw963

tech cost and supply consumption is important (and oil consumption even is more important)
but tech for Mech comes quite late in the game. so Mech+TD good decision for '44 games
for '36 games you need to develop armours if you want to fight early.
in this case, when '40s will come, you could have a lot of armour techs, so developing Mech could cost you more leadership, than keeping Armour doctrine

also Armour techs give access to infantry tanks(HArm), which could strongly enforce you infantry divisions.

Iwo Jima said:

Sure, robw963

tech cost and supply consumption is important (and oil consumption even is more important)
but tech for Mech comes quite late in the game. so Mech+TD good decision for '44 games
for '36 games you need to develop armours if you want to fight early.
in this case, when '40s will come, you could have a lot of armour techs, so developing Mech could cost you more leadership, than keeping Armour doctrine

also Armour techs give access to infantry tanks(HArm), which could strongly enforce you infantry divisions.

Click to expand...

Because Armor became more expensive in both IC and leadership the Mech rush is more feasable. You can have a mechanized core of no less than 30-mech by March, 1939. You'll be catching up in a number of areas, especially land doctrines, but because these are easier and cheaper to research when you finally go to war against Poland, you will easily get good doctrines by the time you go after France in 1940. Good mech divisions render armor almost useless, and by the time you face heavy armor you can have AT techs high enough to break even these.

Secret Master said:

And all of this is about to go out the window when TFH comes out anyway. The new armor/penetration mechanic and new CA mechanic means that MECH/TD may no longer be as uber as it was before. We already know it will have inferior CA bonus to MECH/ARM/whatever.

Click to expand...

Agreed, but the speed aspect of these units cannot be discounted. If I attach Mech to Lt Arm I get a unit running at 11-kph. As a bonus in combat, speed kills. We'll have to wait until next week to start exploiting the new toys we are getting!