Add examples of meaningful choices in HoI4 (and vice versa, non-brainer choices)

[Corpse Fool]

Below mech 3 we all know we have a speed limiter so I normally don't consider them

Its 8/10/12 for mek1, mek2, mek3/mot. This can be boosted by mobile infantry 10%, up to 8.8/11/13.2. There are certain design companies in the game that can boost the speed of the motorized equipment, but lets not complicate things that much right now. As for the medium tanks, they range from 8/9/10, Guderian is a +10%, engine is up to +20% by 4's, and lets ignore design companies because we're picking heavy designer anyway that doesn't have a speed boost. Armor and gun upgrades would be up to -20% by 2's. This gives us a full range of -20% to +30% under various conditions for a total of 26 different combinations per tank model, 73 in total. I can't make a table that fits that many values in an easy to read fashion, so I'll have a different sort of table instead, the total % modifier needed to match the speed of the mot/mek. To make it more easier to read, a table. I'll try adding headers and other colours this time.

	Mek1 8 (8.8)	Mek2 10 (11)	Mek3/Mot 12 (13.2)
MT1 8​	0% (+10%)​	+26% (+37.5%)​	+50% (+65%)​
MT2 9​	-10% (-2%)​	+12% (+14%)​	+34% (+47%)​
MT3 10​	-20% (-12%)​	0% (+10%)​	+20% (+32%)​
MT1 8+10%​	-8% (0%)​	+14% (+26%)​	+37% (+50%)​
MT2 9+10%​	-18% (-10%)​	+2% (+12%)​	+22% (+34%)​
MT3 10+10%​	-27% (-20%)​	-8% (0%)​	+10% (+20%)​

The red numbers mean that I don't think its possible to get a modifier that high. Yellow numbers mean I think it is possible, but you'd have to use the design company and be germany for guderian. I also rounded things to the nearest 2% interval that allowed you to at least meet the speed.

Depending on what your particular XP upgrades on the tanks are, the only real instance where the mek1 is going to be actually holding you back is when you've got an MT3 on MW doctrine but not MI branch loaded down with all of the upgrades. In all other scenarios, you won't have so much speed on the tanks after the various combinations of +/-% that the mek1 would be holding you back.

I just think its strange that you would say mek1 isn't fast enough, but then also seem to suggest using MT2 with +5 armor and +5 gun. With guderian, you're at -10% which is just fast enough for mek1, that tank would be holding mek2, mek3/mot back in terms of speed. Without guderian, you're even holding back the mek1. Adding +5 engine (and presumably have +5 reliability, how much XP do you have to +5 everything?) only brings you up to +0% or +10%, which still falls short of what you need for MI mek2 let alone mek3/mot.

 

[porta80]

I don't have enough xp to upgrade all to +5 rigth from the start especially not for med 2 therefore armor and reliability and speed>gun if I can hold the armor bonus that way guns is less important.
The ingame template designer tells me a +5 armor and engine med2 division is 11.8 km/h with motorised.

Adding mech 2 11 km/h
So mech 2 does slow med 2 not by much but you absolut go to get med 3 so as I said and you normally do not have mech 2 available in enough quantities for france or afrika anyway the main theatres where your med 2 are fighting...

BTW as you always have those theoretical numbers, what if I take the mobile designer?
How much armor does a 15/5 motorised med 2 eng lt2 recon +5 armor have and when can it be pierced by the 12/8?

 

[wuffer]

Interesting discussion, g'men, with a lot of work, but we need to consider all variables - aren't units reduced to 90% firepower after missing just a few rifles?

I was the biggest believer in theory once, but the elder I get the more I will look at the empirical gained results first^^

 

[Corpse Fool]

The ingame template designer tells me a +5 armor and engine med2 division is 11.8 km/h with motorised.

With guderian, yes. That gives the MT2 +20%, while consulting the chart we see that beyond +12% the mek2 would be holding the tanks back. This means that you could save a whole bunch of XP by spending 2 less on engine, or spend more xp for +4 gun and move just as fast as mek2. But if you care enough about 0.8 KPH, why +5 the armor first? Why not just +5 the engine with guderian and let them cruise around at 12.87? Or with guderian and mobile designer, +5 engine and 1 upgrade in either gun or armor, you get 13.167? Not having the extra armour/gun only brings them up to 13.2, only +0.033 unless you're using Romanian or otherwise speed-boosted motorized equipment.

BTW as you always have those theoretical numbers, what if I take the mobile designer?

Mobile is +5% speed, +10% reliability. Not picking heavy designer means you lose out of peak armor and the pittance of hard attack (after +5 gun, 155% over 150% is only +3.3% extra) , but you are gaining peak speed and can either save XP on reliability or if you are trying to do more than 5 points into armor and gun combined, you don't need maintenance company as much. But if you care enough about armor to want to +5 it, the extra 5% to peak at 30% goes a ways to helping you avoid getting pierced as we can later see in the tables.

How much armor does a 15/5 motorised med 2 eng lt2 recon +5 armor have and when can it be pierced by the 12/8?

	LT2 +0%	LT2+5%	LT +25%	LT2+30%
MT2+30%	81.314~​	81.3375​	81.433~​	81.457~​
MT2+25%	78.205~​	78.228~​	78.324~​	78.348~​

So lets assume targets of 81.5 and 78.4. We know the %highest from MT2+5 gun is 40.5, doing the subtraction is 41 and 37.9 we need from average. Divide by 0.6 and multiply by 22, then subtract the 1215 contribution from the tanks and we get the numbers we need the infantry and supports to add up to. 288.34 and 174.67. Our LT-R using LT2 has a basic 30 and could reach as high as 37.5 with +5 gun for 6 different values, but lets only use bottom and top and assume the engineers are using IE2 or 3 for 5 or 10 piercing.

	30+5	30+10	37.5+5	37.5+10
Against 81.5	253.34 (31.6675)​	248.34 (31.0425)​	245.84 (30.73)​	240.84 (30.105)​
Against 78.4	139.67 (17.45875)​	134.67 (16.83375)​	132.17 (16.52125)​	127.17 (15.89625)​

	IE2+Mot (IE3+Mot)	IE2+Mek1 (IE3+Mek1)	IE2+Mek2 (IE3+Mek2)	IE2+Mek3 (IE3+Mek3)
0 IAT​	5 (10)​	16 (21)​	21 (26)​	26 (31)​
1 IAT​	10 (20)​	32 (42)​	42 (52)​	52 (62)​
2 IAT​	15 (30)​	48 (63)​	63 (63)​	63 (93)​

Red means it won't pierce anything, yellow means it pierces the +25% MT2, blue means it needs gun upgraded LT2, and green means it pierces both the +25% and the +30%.
So, Mek1 with IE2 and 1 IAT upgrade is able to pierce your 15/5+2 (engineers and LT-R), even if its +30% on both items and if our LT-R uses LT2 with no upgrades. This is considerably easier (1 less IAT upgrade, mek1 instead of mek2) than the previous example where neither side had support companies, and it is largely because piercing is less reliant on average and my support companies are adding more piercing than what yours are adding armour

aren't units reduced to 90% firepower after missing just a few rifles?

I've heard this a couple times, but I've never seen it. I've never specifically looked into this particular thing, but when I looked into the things surrounding it (and unless the UI is lying to me) then how much of the stats you actually have depends on how much equipment and manpower is in the division. I don't think division stats change until they are outside of the combat, even if they lose a lot of their HP in the combat. I'll look into it though.

 

[el nora]

Bless you and your tables @Corpse Fool. I know for a fact I do not have the patience to go as in depth as you do on such things. Mea culpa, but I will only consider what I consider to be the most likely scenario and abandon the topic when it becomes more work to consider all the available cases.

 

[porta80]

Wait there is no need to upgrade armor on a lt2 thats really a waste of XP.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Wait there is no need to upgrade armor on a lt2 thats really a waste of XP.

It was more to prove that point that even if you did, you're still pretty easily pierced. Even if we dropped the assumed piercing needed down to 81.32 and 78.21, That is a difference of 0.18 and 0.19 piercing we don't need from the average. This is adding all of 6.6 or so to the total need, and /8 we get -0.825 or -0.871~ from what we need the infantry to have. This does all of three things, it changes the blue to green, makes mot+ie3+2IAT blue, and it changes the mek1+ie2+0IAT to orange, where it needs +gun on the LT2 to pierce.

 

[porta80]

With guderian, yes. That gives the MT2 +20%, while consulting the chart we see that beyond +12% the mek2 would be holding the tanks back. This means that you could save a whole bunch of XP by spending 2 less on engine, or spend more xp for +4 gun and move just as fast as mek2. But if you care enough about 0.8 KPH, why +5 the armor first? Why not just +5 the engine with guderian and let them cruise around at 12.87? Or with guderian and mobile designer, +5 engine and 1 upgrade in either gun or armor, you get 13.167? Not having the extra armour/gun only brings them up to 13.2, only +0.033 unless you're using Romanian or otherwise speed-boosted motorized equipment.

I said I consider mech 2 sometimes but especially for france and afrika I dont have them in enough quantities available and if you start moving to med3s they will hold you more off, as they can go full speed possible together with mech3 and full armor. You already have enough production to do to phase out the med2s first.

 

[Corpse Fool]

I will only consider what I consider to be the most likely scenario

Is that why you haven't bothered to enter, the premise of using MT2 instead of MT3 or heavies, and going +5 armour first is not what you would consider the most likely scenario to be? The only real angle I can see for a 15/5 needing +5 armor is that while using tier 2 and mediums, they have low armour. Infantry types are probably able to pierce them rather easily. Instead of worrying about this tank v tank of equivalent weight and tier stuff where chasing the armour bonus is futile, we should probably be exploring the infantry v tank angle.

I said I consider mech 2 sometimes

You did not say that anywhere in this thread. The closest thing you've said to that is...

so as I said and you normally do not have mech 2 available in enough quantities for france or afrika anyway the main theatres where your med 2 are fighting...

To me, that reads like you're putting mek2 off the table because you doubt you'll have produced enough.

The reason I don't want to talk about mek3 that much is because amphibious mechanized caps out at mek2, and amphibious mech has wonderful terrain boosts across rivers, and more org. The difference in org between a 15/5 MT/mot and a 12/8 MT/AMek is pretty slim, with engineers and recon its ~39.5 to ~42.

Anyway, long story short, even when it comes down to using MT2, a 12/8 with +5 gun is still able to pierce a 15/5 with +30%. So you're still wrong about that, unless you're going to specifically ban the techs that would allow it. I've also been restraining myself to using otherwise identical templates, using support AT or AA would be pretty big boosts to my piercing.

 

[porta80]

You did not say that anywhere in this thread. The closest thing you've said to that is...

I did last post previous page. #40
Maybe mech 2

 

[porta80]

Anyway, long story short, even when it comes down to using MT2, a 12/8 with +5 gun is still able to pierce a 15/5 with +30%. So you're still wrong about that, unless you're going to specifically ban the techs that would allow it. I've also been restraining myself to using otherwise identical templates, using support AT or AA would be pretty big boosts to my piercing.

I am forcing you to get advanced tech spending resources on this while I did just spend some xp, I would say job done.

 

[Corpse Fool]

I did last post previous page. #40
Maybe mech 2

Not sure how I missed that. Probably because it doesn't say that you consider using mek2 sometimes, it says...

But first of all motorised, mech comes to late to have it first of all available in the quantities needed and 2. Below mech 3 we all know we have a speed limiter so I normally don't consider them, maybe from mech2, but your first desire is to have more tanks, improving quality by exchanging mot to mech comes later.

It still says that you're inclined to take mek off the table because of research timings and production costs preventing you from being able to field enough of them by whatever time. Your reference to mek2 seems to be more in consideration of mek1 being too slow, and that from mek2 onwards might be fast enough. That doesn't really indicate to me that you are bringing them back onto the table, given the previous and later contexts of not believing you can produce enough and preferring to worry about tanks before mek. I was not led to believe that you were actually considering to use mek2 but I guess that is my mistake. Sorry.

I did just spend some xp

You're spending a lot of XP while also being less reliable and maybe slower. Or you're spending around the same XP and having way less attacks. And getting pierced either way, unless that hasn't been made clear yet. On an MT2 model you're going to abandon for MT3 soon enough anyway, that is 1150 XP to +20 the tank for armour, engine, reliability and then gun. That is more than 2 full rounds of 500 xp. It only costs 325 to +10 it for gun and reliability. Going to +13 for 3 extra engine and also be faster than you with 100% reliability is only 520 XP.

In our latest example with mek1, IE2 and 1 IAT upgrade you aren't even pushing that far ahead, and these are techs you should be doing anyway because of how powerful they are. I'm going to be pursuing mek and infantry AT upgrades, and slapping the gun with +5 no matter what you're doing with your stuff. In a tank v tank fight of equivalent weight and tier, both sides piercing each other goes without saying the vast majority of the time, unless one of them is particularly light on the tanks (like 10/10). If you could reach mek2 for it to be on the table or considered, you can definitely be rushing IAT1, its the same ahead of time and a shorter base research time. I'm sure that if I put some actually good sources of piercing in the supports like AA or AT, we probably won't even need the IAT upgrade, and those are definitely things you will be researching and producing anyway in a spess-mehreen banned game.

What is the drive behind wanting to +5 the armour? Is it specifically to try to get a leg up on 12/8 tanks?

 

[walt526]

I've been enjoying the back and forth, but have kind of lost track of who is arguing for what. Is it CF for 12/8 and P80 for 15/5?

 

[Corpse Fool]

I've been enjoying the back and forth, but have kind of lost track of who is arguing for what. Is it CF for 12/8 and P80 for 15/5?

This started out SF v MW, which shifted to 12/8 v 15/5, and now it seems to be +5 gun v +5 armour.

 

[el nora]

Is that why you haven't bothered to enter, the premise of using MT2 instead of MT3 or heavies, and going +5 armour first is not what you would consider the most likely scenario to be? The only real angle I can see for a 15/5 needing +5 armor is that while using tier 2 and mediums, they have low armour. Infantry types are probably able to pierce them rather easily. Instead of worrying about this tank v tank of equivalent weight and tier stuff where chasing the armour bonus is futile, we should probably be exploring the infantry v tank angle.

Kinda, yea.

MT2 is only relevant in breaking France, and even then not really. Because it's been literally forever since I played against a Germany* that went medium. It's simply too easy for infantry to hold mt3, much less mt2. And France is going to have at least two divisions of HT2 to face germany's 4 of mediums anyway so what's the point? HT win that engagement no matter which side clicked first. The mediums need numbers to win, but even numbers won't really help them win against HTD. That is an engagement that a 15-5 will bleed for every single time they take it. If UK is doing their job and France has air, and France knows how to micro, then the heavies will be able to intercept the mediums anywhere they try to break a hole in the line. It takes a medium Germany to be skilled at trapping the French tanks in engagements with their own tanks while breaking through the line with whatever's left over.

HT2-mot-HTD2 11-8-1 pierces HT2-mech1 15-5, much less MT2. Piercing is always easier to come by than armor as TD exist. End of story. Well not the end, but the continuation of this argument, as you pointed out lies in infantry. 11-8-1 are not great at punishing infantry, as they will get pierced themselves by inf-AT.

*I try to not disparage others as much as I feel that I possibly can. I will prefer to ignore the existence of the less than competent Germany players that I've faced off against - who really needed to have done their homework - than allow them to cloud my judgement.

I am forcing you to get advanced tech spending resources on this while I did just spend some xp, I would say job done.

You hwat now?

You're *forcing* me to go for more advanced tech? As if I wasn't doing that already? And when you inevitably have to match me in tech, the hundreds of extra xp that you poured into your mid-tier tanks is wasted. And no, all you did was not just spend some xp. For one thing, xp is a scarcer resource than tech as it takes much more xp than you ever have available to upgrade your tanks. And that is to discount all the xp that you want to be spending on doctrine. For another thing, the xp boosted tanks don't all magically get distributed through your divisions. They need to be produced and distributed to them, phasing out all the unupgraded tanks. That takes time, even if you're converting instead of producing new. What takes barely any time at all is replacing a tank battalion with TD. That "extra research" is very fast as it is only 1/4 of the base tank research time and they cost half as much to produce as a tank. Especially because France was making HT1 since 1936 in preparation to convert them to HTD2. Irrespective of their added piercing, they have much higher hard attack. Adding more than one battalion of TD is still better value than having those same battalions being used for tanks in defensive divisions anyway because of that added hard attack making it all the harder for an attacker to click them unpunished.

 

[Secret Master]

I may have missed it, but has anyone considered whether it's better to just put more MIC on tanks (whatever tanks you are using) than to burn MIC and rubber on MECH?

I haven't run a purely vanilla game in some time against humans, so I'm not sure how having extra tanks shakes out against tanks backed by MECH. I'm assuming that the fewer MECH/MOT battalions there are in play in the template, the more important the extra tanks become.

 

[Corpse Fool]

I may have missed it, but has anyone considered whether it's better to just put more MIC on tanks (whatever tanks you are using) than to burn MIC and rubber on MECH?

Better in what regard? In terms of org, HP, defense, terrain mods, supply consumption, fuel, terrain, more tanks is worse.

Before supports, a 15/5 with motorized and IE2 costs 10665 IC and consumes 13500 manpower, while offering 155 HP. This gives you HP ratios of ~68.8 IC/HP and ~87.1 MP/HP. A 12/8 with mek2 costs 12264 IC and 15600 manpower, but offers 264 HP, for HP ratios of ~46.5 IC/HP and ~59.1 MP/HP.

The 15/5 might be cheaper up front to put into the field, but once it is in the field the HP is going to make it bleed nearly 50% more IC and manpower per point of HP lost.

I haven't run a purely vanilla game in some time against humans, so I'm not sure how having extra tanks shakes out against tanks backed by MECH. I'm assuming that the fewer MECH/MOT battalions there are in play in the template, the more important the extra tanks become.

I'd say the fewer mek/mot battalions there are in the template, the more important it is to have extra mek/mot, not extra tanks. HP ratios aren't on a linear scale, armour/piercing is binary on/off and attacks/org are more or less linear. In order for the extra tanks to be worth sacrificing so much of their org/HP for, it basically has to be getting you the armour bonus. But even then, depending on how much armour/tanks you would need, if you end up at some of the higher concentrations of tanks you've sacrificed so much HP that even with the armour bonus, you could very easily still be bleeding more equipment than if you had more mot/mek for HP.

 

[Secret Master]

Better in what regard? In terms of org, HP, defense, terrain mods, supply consumption, fuel, terrain, more tanks is worse.

Before supports, a 15/5 with motorized and IE2 costs 10665 IC and consumes 13500 manpower, while offering 155 HP. This gives you HP ratios of ~68.8 IC/HP and ~87.1 MP/HP. A 12/8 with mek2 costs 12264 IC and 15600 manpower, but offers 264 HP, for HP ratios of ~46.5 IC/HP and ~59.1 MP/HP.

The 15/5 might be cheaper up front to put into the field, but once it is in the field the HP is going to make it bleed nearly 50% more IC and manpower per point of HP lost.


I'd say the fewer mek/mot battalions there are in the template, the more important it is to have extra mek/mot, not extra tanks. HP ratios aren't on a linear scale, armour/piercing is binary on/off and attacks/org are more or less linear. In order for the extra tanks to be worth sacrificing so much of their org/HP for, it basically has to be getting you the armour bonus. But even then, depending on how much armour/tanks you would need, if you end up at some of the higher concentrations of tanks you've sacrificed so much HP that even with the armour bonus, you could very easily still be bleeding more equipment than if you had more mot/mek for HP.

What I mean is something like this:

Instead of putting MECH in my templates and putting MIC on MECH, I just keep MOT with the Tier 1 MECH tech for the extra MOT hardness. Since MOT is cheaper than MECH, I can just allocate more MIC to tanks, and then have more panzer formations.

Put another way, how many more ARM/MOT formations can I put into the field compared to ARM/MECH formations, assuming equal tech. While the individual divisions would fight worse, would there be enough extra tanks to create enough extra panzer formations to actually matter?

 

[Vlad123]

There is indeed a problem, which is present in many games (especially online).
That is, once the best units are sought, the old units are no longer made. Now it's okay that if you research medium tank 2 you don't make medium tank 1 anymore.
But there are entire branches of research here that are not sought after. For example, armored cars are never made! NEVER! because they do not agree, same thing some things (as demonstrated here). If tanks> exceed the MECH in everything and it is not convenient to put MIC in MECH the MECH techs are useless!
There is indeed a problem, which is present in many games (especially online).
That is, once the best units are sought, the old units are no longer made. Now it's okay that if you research medium tank 2 you don't make medium tank 1 anymore.
But there are entire branches of research here that are not sought after. For example, armored cars are never made! NEVER! because they do not agree, same thing some things (as demonstrated here). If tanks> exceed the MECH in everything and it is not convenient to put MIC in MECH the MECH techs are useless!

 

[Corpse Fool]

Since MOT is cheaper than MECH, I can just allocate more MIC to tanks, and then have more panzer formations.

This depends on the particular layout of the division. The more infantry types in the division, like a 12/8 compared to 15/5 has 3 more infantry things, the more expensive the mechanized version is going to be compared to the motorized.

Comparing mot to mek2, using IE2 and MT3, its +375 IC per infantry thing. In a 12/8, the motorized costs 9864 IC total, the mech costs 12864 IC. Mek adds +3K IC cost, or around 30% more. So you could field about 30% more divisions if you opted to use motorized instead. But with a 15/5, mt3+mot is 11415 ic while with mech is only +1875 IC, only about 16.5% more cost, the motorized would only allow you about 16.5% more divisions.

That ignores support companies but their total cost is often going to be pretty small in comparison to the total cost of the division. It also ignores heavy tanks, where the cost of the tanks is making up a larger part of the cost of the division and whether you use mot or mek doesn't have near as much impact.

More divisions is more divisions and is certainly an advantage at the strategic layer. For operations, there is only so much space you can be using tanks to begin with, having more beyond saturation isn't helping much. In tactical combat the lack of mechanized means they will often perform a bit worse, but not having the mech to boost armour/piercing could shift the armour bonus around and is going to make a massive different in combat.

A pretty big reason to be using mek which is often getting left out of the conversation is amphibious mechanized. More org, more soft attack, better terrain mods for marshes and rivers,