Armored army composition: Your thoughts?

[der Kriegsherr]

For the longest time when I'd play this game, I'd ideally have a corps/army of either four armored divisions or three armor and one motorized/mechanized. But after reviewing quite a few other posts, I'm pretty sure that there's a more efficient and economical way to use ARM divisions than this.

So to all fellow armor aficionados, what do your armored armies/corps look like? And for what purposes?

 

[diplay name]

3xARM+SPART: There is no combined arms bonus in DH.

MOT should be kept separate to make full use of their mobility, while MEC is just generally pointless to bother with. The difference between a hard and soft unit is massive; if you're going to build MECs, you might as well build ARMs or MOTs instead.

 

[Furor_Teutonicus]

3xARM+SPART: There is no combined arms bonus in DH.

MOT should be kept separate to make full use of their mobility, while MEC is just generally pointless to bother with. The difference between a hard and soft unit is massive; if you're going to build MECs, you might as well build ARMs or MOTs instead.

You can mod the combined arms bonus in misc.txt: Combat Modifier: Offensive Combined Arms Bonus and Combat Modifier: Defensive Combined Arms Bonus

 

[Eugenioso]

For the longest time when I'd play this game, I'd ideally have a corps/army of either four armored divisions or three armor and one motorized/mechanized. But after reviewing quite a few other posts, I'm pretty sure that there's a more efficient and economical way to use ARM divisions than this.

So to all fellow armor aficionados, what do your armored armies/corps look like? And for what purposes?

My armored corps are usually 3 ARM divs with an engineer brigade, for that little bit of extra speed and a reduced penalty to river crossing, as well as minor hard/soft attack value advantages. 3 div corps are usually enough to hold a position efficiently or flat out dissuade counterattacks, while you wait for motorized/infantry to take the position and hold the exploit.

As stated, MEC is pretty much the really expensive brother of MOT. They are hard units though, and thus will resist much better than MOT, but they are frankly way too expensive to bother with them, except perhaps for the US.

 

[diplay name]

As stated, MEC is pretty much the really expensive brother of MOT. They are hard units though, and thus will resist much better than MOT, but they are frankly way too expensive to bother with them, except perhaps for the US.

MECs aren't actually hard units- you can't get them below 50 softness within the timeframe of WWII (fastest would be '48 MEC+SH.ARM... with a speed cap of 9), unless the hard/soft divide is higher than that. Pretty sure it's 50 though..

 

[TemporalAnomaly]

The difference between a 49soft and 51soft unit really is HUGE. Here are the lines that govern the big bonus hard units have against soft units. If I am reading it right, it works out to about double damage.

I think on balance, the hard-hard and soft-soft bonus don't change losses (or who wins), but make combat faster.

Spoiler: From misc.txt

# Land unit - Min inflicted ORG damage - starting value, it is modified before being used.
    1.0 #1.0
# Land unit - Additional inflicted ORG damage (random) for Hard vs Hard or Soft vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    2 #2   
# Land unit - Additional inflicted ORG damage (random) for Hard vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    4 #4
# Land unit - Min inflicted STR damage - starting value, it is modified before being used.
    1.0 #1.0
# Land unit - Additional inflicted STR damage (random) for Hard vs Hard or Soft vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    2 #2
# Land unit - Additional inflicted STR damage (random) for Hard vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    1 #1

 

[Baron Jukaga]

I used to be a big ARM+SP ART guy, but I generally go with ARM+ENG these days as I like the reduced penalties for river crossings, and the odd time you attack a fort with your tanks. SPART is still probably more efficient with the extra firepower, but when I go MOB doctrine I like to maximize my mobility.

 

[Gort11]

I also usually go ARM+ENG, but maybe I ought to just avoid river crossings more often instead - there's usually somewhere flat and riverless you can attack if you look for it.

 

[IconOfEvi]

My usual composition is,

1 Arm + 1 Engineer
1 Arm + 1 Armored Car or Cav
1 Mec + 1 SPArt
1 Mec + 1 SPAA

and sometimes included 1 Cav + 1 SPAT

 

[vcgetdown]

MECs aren't actually hard units- you can't get them below 50 softness within the timeframe of WWII (fastest would be '48 MEC+SH.ARM... with a speed cap of 9), unless the hard/soft divide is higher than that. Pretty sure it's 50 though..

The difference between a 49soft and 51soft unit really is HUGE. Here are the lines that govern the big bonus hard units have against soft units. If I am reading it right, it works out to about double damage.

I think on balance, the hard-hard and soft-soft bonus don't change losses (or who wins), but make combat faster.

Spoiler: From misc.txt

# Land unit - Min inflicted ORG damage - starting value, it is modified before being used.
    1.0 #1.0
# Land unit - Additional inflicted ORG damage (random) for Hard vs Hard or Soft vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    2 #2  
# Land unit - Additional inflicted ORG damage (random) for Hard vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    4 #4
# Land unit - Min inflicted STR damage - starting value, it is modified before being used.
    1.0 #1.0
# Land unit - Additional inflicted STR damage (random) for Hard vs Hard or Soft vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    2 #2
# Land unit - Additional inflicted STR damage (random) for Hard vs Soft units - starting value, it is modified before being used. Don't use fractions!
    1 #1

Actually despite having higher than 50 softness MECs are considered 'Hard' units. Which means they are way better than I thought considering the bonus damage they get according to that second quote. I had an issue a while back where I wanted MECs to be considered soft units so I went to mod their softness and at that point I realized softness is not what determines a unit's classification in game, it's hard coded to unit type. A MEC will always be considered a hard unit and now that I know they get bonuses I want to try them out more.

 

[Limith]

I usually don't bother with MOT or MEC, too expensive and requires another research that I often don't have a good team for as a minor. I prefer CAV+ARM(Brigade, if the nation I start with has LARM/ARM brigades assigned to INF in their starting OOB) or CAV+ENG (any new CAV I build because ENG is cheaper) as my faster infantry due to them being cheaper and easier to research. ARM+ENG for the breakthrough.