Why are some tank designs so useless?

[TheMeInTeam]

The 60% hardness on those tanks is because you have 8 tanks and only 5 motorized. A division that's 50% motorized and 50% tanks will have less hardness. I don't know what the doctrine is on those tanks, but the org and hp of a tank division will be really low if you have too many tanks in it, and Hp is the most important stat as far as reducing your equipment losses. You don't want your tanks to be so tank-heavy because that means you take way more IC worth of losses per battle. The difference between motorized and mechanized is much more important when the infantry component of your tank divisions makes up a larger percentage of the division.

It's more relevant for multiplayer, but generally in a mp game mech 1 gets finished in 1937 due to tech rushing/sharing and there are plenty of them ready for war on all sides. In single player I usually use motorized in the beginning but switch to mech as soon as I can get it into production. Mech is so much better than trucks that you're hurting yourself by not using it, unless your entire strategy is to speed blitz with 12kph tanks or something.

As for me, I prefer 8kph tanks that take way fewer losses breaking through enemy lines and have the stats to defend themselves when making encirclements over 12kph tanks with much lower combat stats.

5 mot is probably fine in sp. with mw you'd have reasonable org and great breakthrough with that setup, and between still-decent hardness + good damage output (tank dense = lots of damage if they're designed well) + maybe even armor bonus, you're not going to take much damage when most enemy damage is soft. can easily shred the enemy with damage that way too, so marginal increase in losses/equipment losses probably won't show much in sp.

despite all that, it's probably still better overall to use mech since it's not that hard to get it going in sp. unless you aren't a nation that starts with a lot of infantry, then maybe you just scale into air power + nukes and run paras.

modern armor + mech 3 is fun though, assuming you can fuel it. when cost is no object you can of course just throw fuel drums on all the tanks

 

[Cavalry]

blitz can get higher probability than breakthrough since you go from weight of 4 to 8 if you have panzer leader or combined arms expert, which breakthrough doesn't get.

breakthrough is the better tactic on average, though neither will be countered that frequently (not many players will pick elastic defense as preferred either).

Elastic defense is one of the best selectable and early defense tactics for infantry generals. The best is Tactical Withdrawal/Guerilla but it is very late and not available for many.

 

[jaredstanko]

1938 to 1940 medium is the biggest increase in stats for just about any tank tech increase. You get speed, armor, and a massive reliability upgrade. You can spit out a crazy amount of cheap 1940 mediums with just the improved medium cannon and riveted armor, and maybe easy maintenance and some speed clicks if you want

Yeah, it's probably not worth selling the farm to get 1940 mediums really early, but you should definitely consider getting the tech and swapping your lines once you can. It's one of the better tank techs, probably the 2nd most important behind 1938 mediums.

 

[Cavalry]

One point I discover now the medium cannon I have +4 breakthrough compare to howitzer I, and much cheaper and more piercing. Combide with +4 tick on armor, it is + 8 breakthrough (equal +20% more breakthrough, +10% IC cost) . Paradox made sure to seperate tank gun vs SPA gun. Reliability is also a much more serious problem now for tank with howitzer guns. The more armor tick the more the difference. This also encourage the use of SPA, free firepower is always good, you can have more tank divisions to attack elsewhere.

With the reduced province width in AAT, multiple attacks in coordination are much more important than before. Consider attack on two province wide.

 

[General Tao]

Tanks above 8km is good for bad supply areas. you can bring them to back lines to "recharge", and quickly re-atack before get out of fuel(is lack fuel that drop tank speed to 1km, not lack of supplies).

Just want to throw my opinion in and say that since the introduction of fuel for divisions this gameplay mechanic of having to dance tanks back and forth with strategic redeploy is the single most annoying thing for me in all of HOI and completely ruined my enjoyment of maneuver warfare in the game.

It's unnecessarily micro intensive, you have to do it for each division every 1-2 provinces, divisions run out of fuel in a couple of days (even with recon/flame tanks built entirely out additional fuel tanks) and divisions use fuel when just sat in the reinforcement queue to a battle not actually fighting, so when they reinforce they are already out of fuel!

I know how bad it was before with the whole 1-truck to Moscow thing. I get that armoured pushes lost momentum after a while, but the distances tanks can travel now on their own supply seem ludicrously short. 1-2 provinces most of the time, sometimes not even that if there's an obstacle! I think (correct me if I'm wrong) German panzer divisions managed to get further under their own steam in Russia in the first couple months of Operation Typhoon that what can be managed in game now.

Even if it was realistic sending tanks back and forth (magically requiring no fuel with strategic redeploy in the middle of nowhere with no rail or rivers) it's so unpleasant to play like that I've just regressed back to space marine 4km/h infantry and late game unstoppable air power because the plane designer ruined air balance with the AI.

Fuel sucks. At least let air supply drop fuel for tanks.

/rantover.

 

[Gort11]

Fuel sucks.

I have a lot of problems with the supply system in general.

Supply hubs are probably the worst part - they're just trying to represent too much. There's no difference in effectiveness or building cost between the supply hub that represents the centre of London or one you built at the top of the Alps. Perhaps they need levels like the other buildings have - supply dumps were being constantly thrown up and torn down in WW2. Maybe the devs don't want to represent that kind of granularity, but there needs to be something.

Railways should grant some level of supply without any extra buildings required. Advancing up a top-level railway and being completely out of supply unless you spend six months building King's Cross Station at the top of it is nonsense.

A lot of real-world supply buildings are missing. If you look at the campaign in North Africa, a lot of the battles were over ports, but if you look at that part of the map ingame there's nothing between Alexandria and Tobruk. Level 1 ports are easy enough for a human player to build, but there doesn't appear to be any logic for the AI to make them, so that part of the map often becomes an equipment graveyard for the AI as attrition wrecks everything and nobody can advance. It's weird - I see the AI upgrading ports to supply their navy all the time, but there doesn't seem to be a trigger for "my coastal army is out of supply, maybe I'll build a port there".

The battlefront and general AI doesn't account for supply hubs. They don't prioritise them when attacking, they'll happily sit in one space for years unable to advance without building one.

There are weird arbitrary-feeling rules for the base level of supply. Like units can be in full supply, then they cross over an arbitrary line into a new province and because only a little bit of that province is under their control their supply drops to zero.

There's also the weirdness where trucks involved with supply use no fuel, so it's trivial for even quite resource and production-starved countries to motorise their entire supply network.

 

[bigredsnake]

This also encourage the use of SPA, free firepower is always good, you can have more tank divisions to attack elsewhere.

Towed arty works over building another line, cheap easy soft attack and no real loss of speed. I wish it was easier to build variations: TDs/SPGs like the actual war.

German panzer divisions managed to get further under their own steam in Russia in the first couple months of Operation Typhoon that what can be managed in game now.

Yeah but they are letting you have the use of Soviet railway the germans didn't have (or at least initially). Seems like they got 200 miles (~322 km) in one week and were mostly petered out by December with what I can tell seems about 600 miles (965km) or so in give or take depending what part of the line you're talking about.

I guess that's the issue with trying to determine fuel usage is even knowing the operational range of a Panzer IV or whatever clearly they're maneuvering around and fighting during that week.

Even if it was realistic sending tanks back and forth (magically requiring no fuel with strategic redeploy in the middle of nowhere with no rail or rivers) it's so unpleasant to play like that I've just regressed back to space marine 4km/h infantry and late game unstoppable air power because the plane designer ruined air balance with the AI.

I generally tend to find the war in China, Russia, Canada, and sub Saharan Africa to be boring because like you said it bogs down so much (although if that's from scorched earth tactics, the weather, mountains/rivers, or mud/snow then I don't mind).

Supply hubs are probably the worst part - they're just trying to represent too much. There's no difference in effectiveness or building cost between the supply hub that represents the centre of London or one you built at the top of the Alps.

So true, that's up there with my 1 battalion of paratroopers taking a shack in the middle of nowhere fine, but London/Berlin, how? It's like a major city other than the art on the map isn't a major city be it for invasion, supply, resistance, etc.

Of course I guess when I think back to it, that was what they wanted us to deal with when they pushed NSB: bogging down and the ability to go scorched earth. Which again that's fine and dandy but there was work arounds for that time.

I'd kinda like to see more IR concepts about engineers come in: if you have engineers you can build in enemy territory and if not you can't (excluding liberating allies and reclaiming your own land). Maybe having engineers cuts down on supply hub construction? If they're helping me move faster across a river because they're laying down a temporary bridge fine but presumably they can help build a supply hub faster as well. Maybe even have the speed of construction correlate directly back to the entrenchment of the units, kinda like the planning works, let the bar fill = faster construction because the engineers are free to go build crap since they're not digging trenches or laying bridges down?

 

[Lamartine]

If you look at the campaign in North Africa, a lot of the battles were over ports, but if you look at that part of the map ingame there's nothing between Alexandria and Tobruk. Level 1 ports are easy enough for a human player to build, but there doesn't appear to be any logic for the AI to make them, so that part of the map often becomes an equipment graveyard for the AI as attrition wrecks everything and nobody can advance. It's weird - I see the AI upgrading ports to supply their navy all the time, but there doesn't seem to be a trigger for "my coastal army is out of supply, maybe I'll build a port there".

I think this would be much easier for the AI to implement, and more interesting for the player, if different provinces had different levels of maximum port infrastructure. Not everywhere can be the Themes estuary. Ports often need natural harbours, and the game should model that. Once you give the AI more structure about where to build, it is possible for it to do a better job.

 

[bigredsnake]

Ports often need natural harbours, and the game should model that. Once you give the AI more structure about where to build, it is possible for it to do a better job.

True or make floating harbors last closer to what they actually did. I'm reading here the Mulberry harbor used at Gold Beach basically lasted from D-Day to V-E day.

Mulberry harbour - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[marcelo r. r.]

Just want to throw my opinion in and say that since the introduction of fuel for divisions this gameplay mechanic of having to dance tanks back and forth with strategic redeploy is the single most annoying thing for me in all of HOI and completely ruined my enjoyment of maneuver warfare in the game.

i find it needed only in china btw. but i use only 20w templates.
even in africa tanks are fine.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

you can design tanks that have more fuel, and that + speed lets them reach deeper supply hubs. however, you can also pick up invader or commando and stack that 240h supply grace on top of base supply grace, such that infantry + pin micro can go impressive distances in sp before supply starts to hurt them. even when you can't paradrop, paras can therefore make deep runs as ground troops. supply grace can be further extended if you go mass assault, but base + 10 days worth of supply extra is already pretty good. for both tanks and infantry, supply drains faster in combat, so you don't get the full grace time in practice. even so, if you pin line and walk 4 km/h guys through with adjacent provinces pinned, it's hard for ai to run them down w/o strat redeploy and they can make it surprisingly far.

fuel drum tanks can often hit 5-6 provinces if you're moving at a good clip. avoiding terrain that slows you down is pretty important to that attempt, even if it sometimes means building new railroads.

 

[justtxyank]

The issue with this stuff, like most stuff in a game like this, are as follows:

1) You're playing a game on a grand strategic level. Therefore, most nuanced uses of vehicles, equipment, etc. are easily lost. You operate on a mass production scale so it's hard to replicate the idea that it might be useful to build a few dozen flail tanks to help clear beaches. So some of the modules that in there are just not good for grand strategy game, but, they do provide people role play opportunities if they want it.

2) You have so much visibility into stats that you can make easy decisions. When the Soviets built the T34 they couldn't look at a sheet and say "if we add this it will give us 30 soft attack and only lower our reliability to 80. As long as it's above 75 we're good! Oh and we know the enemy will have 75 armor so we don't need to go above 80 on piercing." You're able to look at modules and designs and call them useless because they don't maximize stats, but they did not have that type of visibility. Lots of trial and error in tank design, lots of "oh my enemy did this, let's do this" and lots of "oh crap, we thought this would work but not reports from the frontline that it's breaking down."

 

[Ringwraith_JP]

The issue with this stuff, like most stuff in a game like this, are as follows:

1) You're playing a game on a grand strategic level. Therefore, most nuanced uses of vehicles, equipment, etc. are easily lost. You operate on a mass production scale so it's hard to replicate the idea that it might be useful to build a few dozen flail tanks to help clear beaches. So some of the modules that in there are just not good for grand strategy game, but, they do provide people role play opportunities if they want it.

2) You have so much visibility into stats that you can make easy decisions. When the Soviets built the T34 they couldn't look at a sheet and say "if we add this it will give us 30 soft attack and only lower our reliability to 80. As long as it's above 75 we're good! Oh and we know the enemy will have 75 armor so we don't need to go above 80 on piercing." You're able to look at modules and designs and call them useless because they don't maximize stats, but they did not have that type of visibility. Lots of trial and error in tank design, lots of "oh my enemy did this, let's do this" and lots of "oh crap, we thought this would work but not reports from the frontline that it's breaking down."

You're spot on. I've said this before on this forum: reality is too complex to be able to be incorporated into a spreadsheet. The necessary abstractions to make this a game are never going to achieve a level that appeases min maxers and history buffs equally, because it is impossible. Granted, efforts shall be made to strike an adequate balance between the two, this aspect should not dominate the discussions or we are at risk of having a absolutely unenjoyable game at our hands. For what it's worth, I think Paradox's efforts at being "adequate" have mostly succeeded.

 

[Gort11]

I think this would be much easier for the AI to implement, and more interesting for the player, if different provinces had different levels of maximum port infrastructure. Not everywhere can be the Themes estuary. Ports often need natural harbours, and the game should model that. Once you give the AI more structure about where to build, it is possible for it to do a better job.

That's a good idea. I remember back in HoI2 there were also only certain places where the coast was suitable for amphibious landings. They should bring that back so the AI can stop wasting divisions garrisoning literally every coastal province in remote areas.

 

[bigredsnake]

The issue with this stuff, like most stuff in a game like this, are as follows:

1) You're playing a game on a grand strategic level. Therefore, most nuanced uses of vehicles, equipment, etc. are easily lost. You operate on a mass production scale so it's hard to replicate the idea that it might be useful to build a few dozen flail tanks to help clear beaches. So some of the modules that in there are just not good for grand strategy game, but, they do provide people role play opportunities if they want it.

2) You have so much visibility into stats that you can make easy decisions. When the Soviets built the T34 they couldn't look at a sheet and say "if we add this it will give us 30 soft attack and only lower our reliability to 80. As long as it's above 75 we're good! Oh and we know the enemy will have 75 armor so we don't need to go above 80 on piercing." You're able to look at modules and designs and call them useless because they don't maximize stats, but they did not have that type of visibility. Lots of trial and error in tank design, lots of "oh my enemy did this, let's do this" and lots of "oh crap, we thought this would work but not reports from the frontline that it's breaking down."

God Bless you for this post.

I feel this is my irritation with designers as a whole. The game before MtG (which mostly didn't matter because most players hate the navy and it takes to long to make anything amazing) wasn't dominated with trying to get some edge on everyone through silly designs. Outside of this forum, when PDX asked in a survey what players wanted: more designer additions or templates people wanted templates. Even their own numbers showed the vast majority of players just auto design and move on. We were fine with 1940 medium is Sherman to the US, Panzer to the Germans, and T-34 to the Soviets. Like you said this game is trying to simulate from a larger perspective than War Thunder or Steel Division.

Sure you could try to improve upon those old templates but it was XP intensive to get much out of it. The way they handled something like the Zero was the enemy got a 1940 design before you did, so you're at a disadvantage trying to catch up. But the rock paper scissors mechanics worked a lot better between a fighter v bomber v heavy v naval plane. Nowadays I'm guaranteed to win with 6 guns and self sealing tanks, because the bad guys rarely do that.

For the historical side I was far less irritated with the old school experience upgrades to the same design without literally naming the parts. The in game explanation now ruins the "well how did the P-40 get more speed?" Instead of just assuming there was some sort of design upgrade within sane realms I see now someone turned a single engine P-40 into a 2 engine plane.

Also it's turning this more into a design game without the real life capturing their gear, spying on the enemy, reverse engineering it, testing it for weaknesses, etc that all the powers did do. And it's far too slow in production to make counters.

The AI as well feels outpaced by all the designers and I'm sure it partially why it's become a lot easier. Holding the line as France, Poland, or not giving an inch as the Soviets (without massive amounts of forts) was significantly harder to do before the designers. Now it's easy. I don't feel that super chess experience anymore and the only thing that slows that whole process down is XP which is crucial to so many other things in the game they can't be as stingy with it.

Maybe that was the point, to make it into a designer focused MP game, but I really don't have a lot of natural desire to play online like I used to and even if I did I'm winning or losing to what amounts to in-game gimmicks which undercut the whole process of being this hardcore-esque WW2 GSG.

 

[Kayzer-i Anadolu]

God Bless you for this post.

I feel this is my irritation with designers as a whole. The game before MtG (which mostly didn't matter because most players hate the navy and it takes to long to make anything amazing) wasn't dominated with trying to get some edge on everyone through silly designs. Outside of this forum, when PDX asked in a survey what players wanted: more designer additions or templates people wanted templates. Even their own numbers showed the vast majority of players just auto design and move on. We were fine with 1940 medium is Sherman to the US, Panzer to the Germans, and T-34 to the Soviets. Like you said this game is trying to simulate from a larger perspective than War Thunder or Steel Division.

Sure you could try to improve upon those old templates but it was XP intensive to get much out of it. The way they handled something like the Zero was the enemy got a 1940 design before you did, so you're at a disadvantage trying to catch up. But the rock paper scissors mechanics worked a lot better between a fighter v bomber v heavy v naval plane. Nowadays I'm guaranteed to win with 6 guns and self sealing tanks, because the bad guys rarely do that.

For the historical side I was far less irritated with the old school experience upgrades to the same design without literally naming the parts. The in game explanation now ruins the "well how did the P-40 get more speed?" Instead of just assuming there was some sort of design upgrade within sane realms I see now someone turned a single engine P-40 into a 2 engine plane.

Also it's turning this more into a design game without the real life capturing their gear, spying on the enemy, reverse engineering it, testing it for weaknesses, etc that all the powers did do. And it's far too slow in production to make counters.

The AI as well feels outpaced by all the designers and I'm sure it partially why it's become a lot easier. Holding the line as France, Poland, or not giving an inch as the Soviets (without massive amounts of forts) was significantly harder to do before the designers. Now it's easy. I don't feel that super chess experience anymore and the only thing that slows that whole process down is XP which is crucial to so many other things in the game they can't be as stingy with it.

Maybe that was the point, to make it into a designer focused MP game, but I really don't have a lot of natural desire to play online like I used to and even if I did I'm winning or losing to what amounts to in-game gimmicks which undercut the whole process of being this hardcore-esque WW2 GSG.

Somedays I dream about unique tech trees which US have awesome Garands, Germany have cool and effective early tanks and planes later lose major advantages after 40-41 wlth emmergence of UK’s unique planes and cheap and effective Soviet designs and all of them come close at historical dates. The energy and potential over designers on each DLC may spend over mechanical changes over field and battle on land-air-sea. Maybe we could have scenarios like Midway instead of 300 vs 300 ships looking and shooting each other or horrible battles like Kursk instead of focusing over reinforce meme. But then I remember this is not a simulation game.

 

[Cornutus]

The issue with this stuff, like most stuff in a game like this, are as follows:

1) You're playing a game on a grand strategic level. Therefore, most nuanced uses of vehicles, equipment, etc. are easily lost. You operate on a mass production scale so it's hard to replicate the idea that it might be useful to build a few dozen flail tanks to help clear beaches. So some of the modules that in there are just not good for grand strategy game, but, they do provide people role play opportunities if they want it.

I guess there are three problems:

1) To make these modules have strategic choices, you need to have variability.

2) Variability means you need a lot of module choices. Not just medium cannons I, II but short 75mm, long 75mm, very long 75mm, 85mm short, 85mm long.

That will clutter the screen with options that most people never use. You could then either keep it all lumped together, or split it into folders.

In both cases, people will complain about "why all the complexity"

So either you need to keep things simple or complex. The tank designer is more towards complex, but instead of calling cannons something historic like "75mm/70" you have generic "medium cannon II".

3) You need to have a lot more terrain interaction and influence.

An Italian CV-33 tankette looks like it's useless because of weak armor and armament, but it was great for mountain warfare due to the inclination it could climb at.

A tank operating in lowland terrain has its armor be much more effective than a tank in the jungle: the distance of fire is vastly different.

Tanks operating in the desert need to be more mobile and reliable. A 80km range is insufficient.

2) You have so much visibility into stats that you can make easy decisions. When the Soviets built the T34 they couldn't look at a sheet and say "if we add this it will give us 30 soft attack and only lower our reliability to 80. As long as it's above 75 we're good! Oh and we know the enemy will have 75 armor so we don't need to go above 80 on piercing." You're able to look at modules and designs and call them useless because they don't maximize stats, but they did not have that type of visibility. Lots of trial and error in tank design, lots of "oh my enemy did this, let's do this" and lots of "oh crap, we thought this would work but not reports from the frontline that it's breaking down."

That sort of visibility is normal. Check how battleships were designed since the late 19th century, especially the German ones. "We know at this distance we will be not pierceable, while the enemy will be pierceable".

The big difference with tanks was nobody knew in 1936 what type of tanks will dominate the battlefield 7 years later. You couldn't say if everyone will stop at building mediums, mass heavy tanks or mass out superheavy monsters. In 1936, nobody had the funds to even build mediums: you still had a sizeable portion of German tanks being Pz. IIs or even Pz. Is even in 1941.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The AI as well feels outpaced by all the designers and I'm sure it partially why it's become a lot easier. Holding the line as France, Poland, or not giving an inch as the Soviets (without massive amounts of forts) was significantly harder to do before the designers.

was it though? this is from 5 years ago, before any designer as non-aligned poland using its focus tree at the time

Spoiler

similarly, players were posting very fast times to win wars long before designers, mostly because ai unit control and handling of modifiers is so poor that templates and equipment quality become a distance second in terms of importance. whether you're using "fighter 2s and 3s" vs "improved small airframe with hmg", you can out trade the ai dozens of times to one.

if anything, focus tree changes altered these countries more than the designer.

The big difference with tanks was nobody knew in 1936 what type of tanks will dominate the battlefield 7 years later. You couldn't say if everyone will stop at building mediums, mass heavy tanks or mass out superheavy monsters. In 1936, nobody had the funds to even build mediums: you still had a sizeable portion of German tanks being Pz. IIs or even Pz. Is even in 1941.

even so, there were attempts to up-gun and figure out what would be needed. having something akin to "soft attack, hard attack, and piercing" for own tank is reasonable in game terms; armies tested their guns and how well their own armor performed. what they lacked was knowing what exactly the enemy would do, as you say. we can only say "you don't need more than x piercing" in hoi 4 because the ai is predictable. this is a fault of ai scripting, not how the mechanic itself is implemented (although the latter could be improved; right now, failure to pen armor is something people mostly don't worry about even in mp).

 

[justtxyank]

even so, there were attempts to up-gun and figure out what would be needed. having something akin to "soft attack, hard attack, and piercing" for own tank is reasonable in game terms; armies tested their guns and how well their own armor performed. what they lacked was knowing what exactly the enemy would do, as you say. we can only say "you don't need more than x piercing" in hoi 4 because the ai is predictable. this is a fault of ai scripting, not how the mechanic itself is implemented (although the latter could be improved; right now, failure to pen armor is something people mostly don't worry about even in mp).

This is exactly what I was saying. We have so the ability to know the AI, know what available armors they have and what they will choose, know exactly what reliability % balances against the game engines attrition mechanic, combat width meta, how much "hardness" you need to negate infantry, how much armor you need in a division to get a 50% reduction to piercing, etc.

It's not a thing the game is doing wrong, it's just the nature of the game. Personally when I play this game I want to know basic mechanics, but I like to roleplay. When I play USA i build tank destroyers and research to fighter III even though I don't need to and when I play Germany I build Tigers even though I don't need to.

But if you look at it through the numbers, most of the modules for all of the designers are "useless." They don't fit the meta calculations and aren't necessary. But absolutely that is NOT how the real world worked. Every single nation in WW2 built vehicles, and lots of them, that an HOI4 mathematician would say was "useless."

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But if you look at it through the numbers, most of the modules for all of the designers are "useless." They don't fit the meta calculations and aren't necessary. But absolutely that is NOT how the real world worked. Every single nation in WW2 built vehicles, and lots of them, that an HOI4 mathematician would say was "useless."

these modules that are "useless" in hoi were often not great with benefit of hindsight in actual ww2 also. however, nations at the time didn't have access to hindsight, only their best predictions. some did better than others.

that said, might be worth exploring how many modules fit each category of "always use", "situationally use", and "actually useless", as hyperbole tends to over-exaggerate a bit. stuff like auto loader is so pricey that it gets outcompeted in nearly every case, but for things like easy maintenance, armor skirts, fuel drums, extra ammunition, small cannon, hmg, radio, even sloped armor i've seen on builds in at least some cases. that's a significant fraction of available modules.

similar deal for guns. rockets are junk, but depending on anticipated opposition, any of howitzer, medium cannon, and high vel cannon lines see use, same for flamethrowers. there are mostly-dead options, but i'm not sure it's actually "most" of them.

planes are arguably more centralized. there are more plane roles and they specialize more, but the balance between options there is worth a look in some cases.