60 Combat Width Base instead of 40

[RaptorCommander]

I hear a lot about how if you don't field 10 20 or 40 width you are wasting your time. Why doesn't the base combat width be moved to a base 60 instead of 40?

Factors of 60: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60 (6 above 10)

Factors of 120: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 30, 40, 60 and 120 (9 above 10)

Compared to:

Factors of 40: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 20, and 40. (3 above 10)

Factors of 80: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16, 20, 40 and 80 (5 above 10)

 

[walt526]

Seems to me like it would create pretty ahistorical divisions in terms of manpower size. 40w are bad enough, IMHO.

 

[ctl3]

IMO the problem of combat width does not lie in what number it should be. Combat width mechanism applies a soft constraint to division design base on an abstract number. In every playthrough, whatever country you play, whatever doctrine you choose, you end up using similar division design. This is boring and ahistorical. We want a system promote players to use different division design according to their situation. The reason HOI4 failed to achieve this, I guess, is that many variables in this game is static. Combat width is static wherever you fight, all countries have nearly identical unit stats, doctrines have little to no effect to division designer ( except -0.4 infantry combat width in MA ). If the static nature of these mechanisms doesn't change, players can quickly find another optimal division design after you change any number.

 

[RaptorCommander]

Yes all the problems you raised would not be solved by the 60. But it would open up more options within the current context. Especially if the benfit of larger divisions over 2 smaller ones is reduced.

 

[blahmaster6k]

If 60 width is the new combat width:
Say Hello to 60 width Heavy Tanks:
10 Heavy Tank
5 Mechanized
10 Heavy SP Artillery

With these stats:

 

[sekelsenmat]

There is a significant issue with 60 width that it changes dramatically how many troops you need before you are forced to flank to increase the combat width.

Basically it makes flanking less relevant in the game.

I still think the solution is making a combat formula which is width-agnostic. Decreasing the combat width exceeded from 2x to 1x is also needed.

 

[blahmaster6k]

There is a significant issue with 60 width that it changes dramatically how many troops you need before you are forced to flank to increase the combat width.

Basically it makes flanking less relevant in the game.

I still think the solution is making a combat formula which is width-agnostic. Decreasing the combat width exceeded from 2x to 1x is also needed.

This is partially true, but the system still favors as big of a division as you can make. So if it was width agnostic you'd just see people filling up the division designer with the maximum number of battalions because of how stats add up. One giant 50-60w division with 1000 soft attack is going to do massive damage to any number of 20 width divisions that cap out at 200-300 defense, and a 50w infantry with its massive defense stat will be all but invulnerable to say a 20w division.

 

[walt526]

Seems to me like the solution to a goliath division is to create an organization penalty for divisions above a certain threshold (maybe nonlinear). That could be used to bring 40w into greater parity with (2) 20w.

 

[ladner]

The following snippet is from , a Department of the Army Publication 20-255 "The German Campaign in Poland 1939". It has a lot of historical information and the TO&E of divisions. The historical order of battle/TO&E would create a very large width unit. I'll have to look at other sources to find what constituted the brigade size forces if just one or two regiments.

 

[sekelsenmat]

The following snippet is from , a Department of the Army Publication 20-255 "The German Campaign in Poland 1939". It has a lot of historical information and the TO&E of divisions. The historical order of battle/TO&E would create a very large width unit. I'll have to look at other sources to find what constituted the brigade size forces if just one or two regiments

A brigade is two regiments, but the regiment could have 2k, 3k or 4k man...

Yes, for Poland germans used large Panzer divisions, but before Barbarossa they changed all their Pzr Divisions to smaller sizes, closer to 20w:

Barbarossa, 1941

panzerworld.com

Poland 1939 (Fall Weiß)

panzerworld.com

Also for infantry they started with 9 inf + 3 artillery battalions (27 width) and decreased in size in the later part of the war.

 

[ladner]

The 1939 order of battle was too tank heavy, theoretical strength of 562 tanks, the company size was reduced after the Polish campaign. Familiar with 1941 composition from reading and other war games.

 

[Harin]

It is ironic that we call a marine division with a tank battalion a space marine, when such a division would be quit normal in the war. What truly looks like something from outer space is an infantry division without any line artillery, AA, AT, logistics, signals, etc... That division did not exist in the war except in the worst of times, yet current mechanics make that an excellent defensive division for mass production.

When the game mechanics have us building units that are not logical or intuitive, then the mechanics need to change, not the players.

A new player should be able to add an artillery unit to his infantry division and feel like he just made that unit more powerful, harder to defeat, and reduce his casualties. Instead, he most likely will break the combat width efficiency, reduce org, increase his own casualties, and the unit is just going to cost more MIC that should be used to make an equally unrealistic tank division.

I know, it is a game. Learn the rules and play by the rules. But rules were not meant to be followed blindly. When they are wrong, they should be fixed.

There is good news, though. There is growing hope/evidence that the developers are going to work on land combat soon. I suspect they know all to well the complaints and shortcomings. Once they confirm that work has started, I am confident they will get a deluge of advice from these forums. It is a series of discussions I look forward to following.

 

[ladner]

I wonder if adding a modifier to combat width to Generals/Field Marshals is the answer. This would be a way of abstracting some of the better doctrine organization of some of the major combatants. Could also add unique modifiers for the Soviets to better represent just the sheer mass of the Red Army and how their formations were employed.

This way you could have historical orders of battle but the leader could make a check or have a modifier to have your units “fit” into good width , so your 24/27 W unit is now 20.

 

[SigurdStormhand]

There are things you can do to mitigate the combat width issues that the game doesn't currently do. For example, you could force a division to only attack along the width of the enemy division if both sides have saturated the width. In the basic 80 width field if one side deploys four 20-width divisions and the other deploys two 40-width divisions then the latter can only use half their attack values whilst the former can use all their attack values. That pretty much kills the 40-width meta out of the gate.

The logic of this change would be that the 40-width division has to defend against the division it isn't fighting - i.e. half the frontage is taken up with the OTHER 20-width division it isn't actively attacking but has to still "oppose" otherwise there's a gap in the line.

Another option would be to make every brigade in a division attack separately which would encourage the player to build more logical divisions which integrate their own artillery or AT, or to build divisions with "support" brigades where all the AT and Artillery are grouped together.

Right now the whole division system is far too abstracted and this is demonstrated by the fact that on a conceptual level the designers obviously expected people, especially early on, to build infantry divisions and separate armoured brigades, but in reality that's a waste of time because shortly after war breaks out those separate tank brigades all get slaughtered as soon as they get stuck in a defensive combat. That's another issue - the battleplanner, even when a unit is assigned to a front line, doesn't prioritise the optimum units for attack and defence in the opening of an engagement. Too often you'll see infantry at the top of the stack on an offensive and armour at the top in defensive combat.

 

[SophieX]

I would prefer a terrain-based frontline-width; ( like plains 90w, hills 80w, marsh 70w, forest 65w.... or what ever values seems practicable ) or a terrain-based combat-width for the units ( like +20% in forest, - 10% in plains,...etc )

 

[blahmaster6k]

Another option would be to make every brigade in a division attack separately

Multiplying the number of required calculations per battle by anywhere from 2x to 25x would be a nightmare for performance.

 

[RaptorCommander]

I would prefer a terrain-based frontline-width; ( like plains 90w, hills 80w, marsh 70w, forest 65w.... or what ever values seems practicable ) or a terrain-based combat-width for the units ( like +20% in forest, - 10% in plains,...etc )

That might help but it still would be better to make sure all those width are made with numbers that habe a lot of factors, to maximise options to players without to much micro.

 

[SophieX]

That might help but it still would be better to make sure all those width are made with numbers that habe a lot of factors, to maximise options to players without to much micro.

Yes and no.
Yes: because it will be easier for the player to control.

No: War ( or battles ) can not be precalculated. Every hour you are engaging a new ( non-precalculated ) friction/imponderability* on which you have to react, IF you ( as a division-commander or even higher ) will get this new "Information" in time.
Hoi4 is a war-game; in my opinion a good war game should reflect on those aspects ( make a decision even without haven all informations. Mostly a "not so good" decision is better than no decision. )
War is pure micro

*"friction" – the disparity between the ideal performance of units, organisation or systems and their actual performance in real-world scenarios ( C.v.Clausewitz Book I, Chapter VII )

 

[DukofDeth]

40 W is more akin to a corps, so if people want to play with corps sized units, let them, but then the unit should count as two or more divisions. I don't play online, so I don't fuss over it much. I only ever used 40W doing border wars as a Chinese warlord. Normally I don't bother, and what bugs me about such things is that the AI is scripted to aim for that. Most of the AI nations have enough trouble with material shortages and manpower - bigger divisions is not the answer. The answer is in finding a way to stop the AI from drawing front-lines along every war front, and then trying to fill up all the gaps. The AI has nothing in it to give it a reason to husband resources material and manpower for their military goals - the AI just jumps in wherever it can. So you have Italy surging units out of German ports and through the English Channel in an effort to reinforce the already failing position in Italian East Africa. Or the Polish and Dutch GIE's squadering their few remaining units grinding away in the Norwegian mountains, all because the British AI invaded some ports, which it did just because it could - the AI has no plan. No objectives, nothing but grind and grind and grind. If the AI could be shown how to focus on an objective while maintaining a reserve for emergencies, that would be awesome. That would be a challenge to struggle against. Increasing width isn't an answer - much of the line units are probably overly wide anyway.

 

[Meglok]

Rather than tinkering with the max width allowed before penalties, I think I would rather see a harder cap on the allowed width of a divisional template. In real life, there was a limit on the size of a unit that a divisional commander can actually control during ww2. At a certain point control bogs down just due to informational overflow. 40 width is bad enough, but having a 60 width division where you have 5 brigade sized regiments of 20 or more battalions reporting to one divisional staff is asking for info overload. And I pity the poor G4 trying to supply this beast.

I think it would be better to reduce the allowed template size to better reflect ww2 reality as part of a larger overall revision of doctrines, land combat, and supply.