Armor Penetration

[incognitus]

I think the way people here seem to believe Armor Penetration works, is not how the game actually handles it. I mean, I might be wrong, who am I to argue with the likes of @Kovax - I'm just going by what I keep seeing in-game.

So basically, the way I understand this, impenetrable armour gives a penalty to the side in the battle that cannot penetrate it. If one side has armor and the other side can penetrate it, it basically acts as if there was no armor at all.
Now, if I understand you correctly, you claim that it is sufficient to have one brigade in the battle that can pierce the enemy's armor in order to negate the armor's effects and have thus advised me that not every division needs an AT/TD brigade.

BUT I have tested this in-game, and I have found that whenever ALL my divisions have sufficient Piercing capacity to penetrate the enemy armor, the little symbol with the glancing projectile disappears. But whether I have no units with piercing capacities or not all my divisions have sufficient piercing capability, the symbol remains.

Unless I completely over-interpret this, that really seems to indicate, that the penalty for failure to penetrate enemy armor is actually calculated on a 'per division' and not on a 'per battle' basis!

 

[marxianTJ]

It's per division - the reason you don't need to over stack AT anyways is because it's highly unlikely you'll fight multiple armored divisions that you can't pierce (marm or above) in a single combat and your units that have higher soft attack will still do lots of damage anyways - as divisions are normally soft.

So for example let's say you've got a 2xINF + 2xART in 1940 against a unit it can't pierce for a total Soft attack of 20.8/2 (the engine pry rounds it up to 21 but we'll just not for simplicity) for a total SA of 10.4 which is still going to hurt quite a bit. Vs. the unit that *can* pierce doing 16 Soft attack to everything it fights - but *most* units you fight won't have an unpierceable component.

Yes, you'll take higher MP losses in battles against armor with less AT because fights will last longer, but as long as you're not playing a human that will have 25+ ARM carrying divisions, you'll still gain an advantage whenever attacking soft units - which will be the majority of the army of every country in the game. So, you'll likely save MP overall by outgunning the majority of your opposition's army.

 

[incognitus]

I see! Thanks for that. But... how much of a difference does it make then, when fighting an enemy division with ARM/HARM, whether I have 1 division out of 4 fighting with AT or none?

 

[marxianTJ]

Well if you have all AT stacked up you'll do more damage more quickly because you're not suffering the 50% malus. Which is nice, the point is that is going to apply only in a very rare amount of occasions (for example AI Germany throughout 1940 often has 8 ARM brigades or less depending on how it chooses to build) so out of the total of 90+ divisions, your AT is only actually doing anything about 8% of the time, and probably less because the AI can't tell if it's attacking you with a tank division or not so sometimes it relegates its tanks to port guarding duty . Obviously that tank total goes up precipitously as the war drags on, but even still it'll never reach 25%+ so the vast majority of the time you don't really need that much AT and should instead focus on packing as much soft-attack as possible in a given division because you'll absolutely paste 85+% of your opposition's units by having more soft attack.

A real flaw of the AI for majors is that it's incapable of attaching ANY brigades to its starting units - so you typically see player built ART having massively positive effects for the player because they will always tremendously outclass their opposition in available soft-attack (which are stuck at 3x INF), it's even worse if you build air attack and combine that SA with the superior SA of your units. That's also why player built tanks are so strong against the AI - because the AI can't use its own tanks to stop your advance (because it can't tell if it's manipulating a tank or an INF division) and it typically doesn't build much AT at all until later in the war (1941+) and by then it's usually too late for it to have any impact against the absurd number of human-player built tanks.

If you were playing against a *human* I would probably strongly advise using AT in every division, and never taking your research off of its piercing tech because it's likely the human will attempt to attach HARM to every division they have because you can do things like that - the AI simply can't lol.

 

[Kovax]

I see! Thanks for that. But... how much of a difference does it make then, when fighting an enemy division with ARM/HARM, whether I have 1 division out of 4 fighting with AT or none?

Fighting against ARM will matter, because the divisions without AT will suffer the penalty. Your division(s) with AT should do enough damage to turn the tide of the fight, with the other divisions soaking up a disproportionate share of ORG loss in the process, and inflicting half damage. As MarxianTJ says, that's a rare enough occurrence that you can take that damage and still come out ahead because of your far better performance against the enemy's softer units. I can generally pull several divisions with AT together to fight an enemy ARM division, as long as I have one or two divisions with AT per Corps. I can also bring in my own ARM division, preferably with an attached TD to pierce even opposing HARM, or call in air support. CAS laughs at your silly HARM and SHARM, and refers to them as "prey".

Fighting against HARM, it doesn't matter whether you have 1 out of 4, 0 out of 4, or 4 out of 4 divisions with AT, because the Piercing value of that AT will be insufficient to deal with the Armor value of HARM unless you research your Ammo and Carriage tech ahead of the opponent's Heavy Armor tech. The AT's Hard Attack value will only be used part of the time (depending on the opposing division's Softness), and the times where it's not, its Soft Attack value will be considerably lower than the INF or ART brigade that could have replaced it. Oddly enough, it's better to face HARM or SHARM with more ART and INF than with AT.

In essence, Hard Attack is only used on occasions where the random number generator rolls higher than the opposing division's Softness, so a very hard division (less than 50% softness, such as HARM+MEC) will be attacked with your HA value more often, and even a softer armor division (such as ARM+MOT) will more frequently take fire from your Soft Attack value than from your HA. A high SA value can be very preferable to more HA against most of the armored divisions that the AI will use, as long as you can Pierce them. That falls apart in multiplayer, because the human opponents WILL pull stunts like building super-hard divisions (including SHARM), and research their armor ahead of time so your AT brigades can't possibly pierce them, yet your INF and ART will frequently be force to use their HA values.

 

[incognitus]

Okay, this is really interesting! Thanks guys. Since you mentioned it, I was reminded of a question I meant to ask a while back... I have noticed, that TDs tend to have higher piercing values than ARM. Does it make sense to give armoured divisions a TD to take the pressure off heaving to research AT tech ahead of time? Maybe ARM/MOT/TD/SPART? Or do you think it is wiser to make most divisions ARM/MOT/MOT/SPART and only 1-2 divisions per corps ARM/MOT/TD/SPART?

 

[Kovax]

Does it make sense to give armoured divisions a TD to take the pressure off heaving to research AT tech ahead of time? Maybe ARM/MOT/TD/SPART? Or do you think it is wiser to make most divisions ARM/MOT/MOT/SPART and only 1-2 divisions per corps ARM/MOT/TD/SPART?

Depends on what you're using the armored divisions for. If you're employing them for encirclements and overruns, then the TD will slow them down. If you're using them to engage enemy armor, then the TD makes sense.

I often have some of each division function, split into entirely different groups, if my country's economy and research can support them. The exploitation Corps generally has some combination of LARM+MOT+AC and ARM+MOT+AC divisions (possibly with one division substituting ENG for the AC), while the heavy hitters have mostly ARM+MOT+TD+SPART. I want my exploitation divisions to move and operate independently if needed, with fighting as a secondary but still important consideration, while the armored attack divisions are designed for firepower against a combination of targets, and will be heavily supported or closely followed by INF in most cases.

 

[incognitus]

The exploitation Corps generally has some combination of LARM+MOT+AC and ARM+MOT+AC divisions (possibly with one division substituting ENG for the AC)

You say "a combination", which brigade are you most likely to double? 2xLARM, 2xMOT or 2xAC?

 

[Kovax]

You say "a combination", which brigade are you most likely to double? 2xLARM, 2xMOT or 2xAC?

Normally MOT (LARM+2xMOT+AC), but I've built 2xAC in a few cases where Manpower was more important than the extra durability. There's really not much reason to double up the LARM.

 

[incognitus]

True. Doubling up ARM gives the unit more power than MOT, but LARM doesn't really do a whole pile.
Edit: Thinking of which... what does LARM actually do? Doesn't ARM have the same speed as MOT? In that case, the extra speed of LARMs would be negated by the slower MOT anyways, wouldn't it?

I just wish it was possible to deliberately produce units at a lower tech level. CAV is fastest without any upgrades and Japan starts with such a high level of CAV tech, that they are significantly slowed down... maybe I'll just mod away any CAV techs that a country I plan to play has.

 

[Wraith11B]

Light armor towards the higher marks has significant speed. Indeed, a LARM/MECH/AC combo moves at something like 10+ KPH. Which is wicked fast.

Be cautious with editing the techs, though. Editing them out can have repercussions elsewhere, and if you don't know how those files link with one another, it can be problematic. My recommendation would be to copy the effects of the CAV/MIL/GAR forces, and put them in under the INF techs. Perhaps for balance maybe reducing the impact. This way, you can also go into the country files and lower their AI focus on those techs in particular (preventing them from wasting research on them).

 

[incognitus]

I think you misunderstood what I was going to do. I just meant to remove the levels of CAV tech that a country I plan to play as starts with.

 

[Wraith11B]

Oh. Gotcha. The problem would be then that your forces would likely be worse off than any infantry that it wound up in combat against. Perhaps instead just toss the ones that slow it down (or maybe slow it down least, for instance, the CAV-AT tech only reduces speed by 0.01 each level).

That said, you need level three of all the CAV techs in order to get Motorized infantry... as Japan that might not be that big a deal, but as any other major it would be catastrophic.

 

[incognitus]

Good points.

Regarding the CAV techs and CAV combat performance: True, I think Small Arms is the only one without a speed penalty, I might leave that one. AT is not important enough, I'd say. How often do you encounter LARM in those wastelands where you would use CAV?

Regarding MOT, when setting up a country's starting techs, you can give higher tier techs without fulfilling the requirements. In Finlands case, I gave them Construction Engineering and Advanced Construction Engineering (in order for them to be able to build Factories and (Rail)Roads), without giving them advanced Production Technology and Production Efficiency, which are required for researching Advanced Construction Engineering. In the case of Japan, removing the CAV techs will not remove the alreasy unlocked MOT tech that Japan starts with (they even start with a MOT unit), so that wouldn't be an issue.

By the way, I'm thinking about modding AC techs as well, because to me it makes no sense that you have to have research LARM in order to improve your armoured cars. I might even make researchable those two LARM techs that affect ACs, because... why not? If you cannot build LARMs you cannot profit from those techs anyways and you cannot proceed to ARM without having ALL LARM techs on lvl 2, not just 2 of them. This would allow smaller nations to build and improve ACs without having to research LARM.
I also think there should be a separate "truck" branch, that affects MOT and SP-RART, because neither of those have anything to do with any form of tank/panzer/armoured vehicle. They can, but they don't need to.