Anti-Tank brigade always has higher piercing than Heavy Tanks
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What I think they should do is change the armor advantage away from being a discrete bonus. Instead it should be given in smaller steps.
Something like you get a little bit of bonus for every point of armor you have more than the enemy's piercing, up to a maximum value. This would let older equipment still be somewhat useful for piercing/armor but not give the full benefit of newer equipment.
Something like you get a little bit of bonus for every point of armor you have more than the enemy's piercing, up to a maximum value. This would let older equipment still be somewhat useful for piercing/armor but not give the full benefit of newer equipment.
I'm liking the system and I think the binary approach works well, I think you can either pierce the frontal armor of a tank at a reasonable range or you can't.
Let say the Germans launch the invasion in 41 with a Panzer division that has 6 battalions of light tanks and 3 motorized their armor would be 20. (2/3 of 30).
They face the standard Russia infantry division of 9 battalions of infantry with a support anti tank company their average piercing is (9*5)+102/10 = 14.5.
They wouldn't put up much of fight. On the other hand if the standard Russia Infantry contained both anti tank company, and an antitank battalion this moves the piercing attack well over 20, with a large number of hard attacks over 50. The Germans will be taking some real loss, but of course the Soviet have raised the cost of their division by almost 50%.
On the other hand , if the soviets don't bother with any Anti tank companies the Germans could react by changing their division template to only 3 tanks and 6 motorized letting the field a lot more panzer divisions. Anyway, I can see both sides reacting to their opponents use of anti-tank weapons by tweaking their divisions. Hopefully, the AI is able to handle this at a least a basic level.
Let say the Germans launch the invasion in 41 with a Panzer division that has 6 battalions of light tanks and 3 motorized their armor would be 20. (2/3 of 30).
They face the standard Russia infantry division of 9 battalions of infantry with a support anti tank company their average piercing is (9*5)+102/10 = 14.5.
They wouldn't put up much of fight. On the other hand if the standard Russia Infantry contained both anti tank company, and an antitank battalion this moves the piercing attack well over 20, with a large number of hard attacks over 50. The Germans will be taking some real loss, but of course the Soviet have raised the cost of their division by almost 50%.
On the other hand , if the soviets don't bother with any Anti tank companies the Germans could react by changing their division template to only 3 tanks and 6 motorized letting the field a lot more panzer divisions. Anyway, I can see both sides reacting to their opponents use of anti-tank weapons by tweaking their divisions. Hopefully, the AI is able to handle this at a least a basic level.
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There are some event triggers that concern combat, and *may* be use to script improvement or tweaks to AI division composition. Personally I think simply scripting a general type division is more than enough because the AI in HOI3 was notoriously bad at using special divisions in the right place.
hardness Checks lowest/highest hardness level in combat Needs to be tested
less_combat_width_than_opponent Checks for combat width in combat Needs to be tested
has_reserves Checks for reserves in combat Needs to be tested
frontage_full Checks for full frontage in combat Needs to be tested
If armor and piercing is averaged out in divisions it's most likely a very good thing armor has such a low strength/HP to balance out the inherent armor advantage of a pure tank division.
@Da9L would you care to comment on how armor and piercing calculated?
hardness Checks lowest/highest hardness level in combat Needs to be tested
less_combat_width_than_opponent Checks for combat width in combat Needs to be tested
has_reserves Checks for reserves in combat Needs to be tested
frontage_full Checks for full frontage in combat Needs to be tested
If armor and piercing is averaged out in divisions it's most likely a very good thing armor has such a low strength/HP to balance out the inherent armor advantage of a pure tank division.
@Da9L would you care to comment on how armor and piercing calculated?
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I know... i tried to calculate the armor stats of each battalion, but came up short. I posted it anyway because i still believe armor and piercing is an average. But i could be wrong though.
The reason why i believe it is because i am 95% sure i have seen in a WWW video that adding a battalion to an armor division reduced the armor and piercing stat.
The 2nd reason is that if it is like you describe - that the battalion with the highest armor stat is the one that counts this would lead to one and only one gameplay.
Produce a tank variant and max buff the armor stat. Put one and only one battalion of these in your tank division.
Then produce a 2nd tank variant where you ignore armor and max buff the gun on it. Put these battalions in every other tank slot.
By this you would have the armor advantage and can use maximum soft/hard attack.
This would in my opinion be bad game design. It worked in HOI3 because you could only use 4 regiments in a division. In HOI4 where there is up to 25 battalions this would not work very well.
Just my opinion.
I don't think it's an average, but there's something deeper/complex to how it calculates
Here are two images of adding 1 light tank followed by a second light tank from japan WWW
As we can see, the first adds 1.7 armor and 6.5 piercing. The second adds 0.2 armor and 0.7 piercing. There's no direct coefficient between the changes for the two values other than it being a smaller value. Japan has only 1934 light tanks 1 in this playthrough. There's no direct image but I saw that the LT1 variants had 15 armor so I assume it'll be the same for LT1.
Seems like the first tank gives the largest bonus and subsequently adding tanks doesn't exactly increase the armor as much as giving it to another division (if this can even overcome infantry weapons piercing it might be useful) Armor values of 15/1.7 = 8.8, but there were 12 INF + 2 support + 1 LT so it doesn't look like an average either.
Here are two images of adding 1 light tank followed by a second light tank from japan WWW
As we can see, the first adds 1.7 armor and 6.5 piercing. The second adds 0.2 armor and 0.7 piercing. There's no direct coefficient between the changes for the two values other than it being a smaller value. Japan has only 1934 light tanks 1 in this playthrough. There's no direct image but I saw that the LT1 variants had 15 armor so I assume it'll be the same for LT1.
Seems like the first tank gives the largest bonus and subsequently adding tanks doesn't exactly increase the armor as much as giving it to another division (if this can even overcome infantry weapons piercing it might be useful) Armor values of 15/1.7 = 8.8, but there were 12 INF + 2 support + 1 LT so it doesn't look like an average either.
There may be some combined arm bonus or bonus for the first tank battalion?
Looks interesting. Cant wait to explore it further in the game.
Looks interesting. Cant wait to explore it further in the game.
Yet again I state for the record we have no clear idea how the combat system works. The mathematics behind division stats evades us at the moment. The assumption that combat calculations are the same is in HOI3 is simply that, an assumption. Without a DD I fear we will remain in the dark until after the games release.
One thing I think is a bit weird is that PDS and Podcat has mentioned that they want to remove as much "hindsight" as possible for the player. With this philosophy in mind, shouldn't HA have about 1 year grace period before adequate amount of good enough AT to reach the units? I'm not 100% sure, but hasn't it almost always been a period from a new tank enters the field by a nation, and before the AT is up to snuff? Matilda, the french tanks, T34 , Tiger etc
Edit: My point is that a player would probably upgrade and try to distribute newer AT a lot earlier then in the real world
Edit: My point is that a player would probably upgrade and try to distribute newer AT a lot earlier then in the real world
The interesting thing is that if a player tries to upgrade and distribute "new" AT early in the game, you can counter it by bringing artillery or just more infantry to overwhelm him. Without deeper espionage mechanics it's going to be relatively easy to conceal production and division design, even to the point you can stockpile equipment and only deploy it when there's a need/when you have army experience to spare.
The second value is actually more or less 10% of the first (though I guess 0.65 should be rounded to 0.7).
I think the more interesting pieces are these:
Infantry have basically no piercing until 1942, even Light SP Artillery can be used to gain armor advantage in the early years.
Engine upgrades to vehicles do basically nothing: 2% speed per point for a grand total of 10% increase if you go all in on speed! Light tanks thus go from 14 to 15,4 km/h speed with MAX focus on speed, which is a pitiful increase.
Tank gun upgrades reduce speed more than tank armor does... How does that make sense? Combined with the pitiful engine upgrade, this makes the fast glass cannon build slower than unupgraded one. Upgrading guns twice and engine to the max with no armor actually makes your tank slower!
I really hope that 2% number in the Wiki is a mistake...
Infantry have basically no piercing until 1942, even Light SP Artillery can be used to gain armor advantage in the early years.
Engine upgrades to vehicles do basically nothing: 2% speed per point for a grand total of 10% increase if you go all in on speed! Light tanks thus go from 14 to 15,4 km/h speed with MAX focus on speed, which is a pitiful increase.
Tank gun upgrades reduce speed more than tank armor does... How does that make sense? Combined with the pitiful engine upgrade, this makes the fast glass cannon build slower than unupgraded one. Upgrading guns twice and engine to the max with no armor actually makes your tank slower!
I really hope that 2% number in the Wiki is a mistake...
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Indeed, and from a game theory perspective, the loss is greater for the person making the expensive tanks than the person filling its divisions with cheap AT. If the meta becomes adding AT to every division, that will cause armor to be ignored.
Multiplayer games might turn into infantry spamfests.
And since the impact of producing AT brigades isn't too great, given its cost, they could still recover if an opponent does not make armor as you state.
That is why I propose giving HA an advantage, just for one year, so as to promote its use even if the meta is for everyone to include AT brigades.
Its high cost, for HA, will be the balancing factor. No one will be able to both spam HA and maintain a large enough force to cover all flanks.
This video also shows that adding a support unit reduces the armor and piercing stat.
Watch from 02:50
Watch from 02:50