Changing Division Types

[Claude Luster]

Why not just disband and use the freed resources?

Cross training took place yes, but is it really worth it?

With such an abstracted army control, it seems rather too "micro" to be fiddling with that kinds of things.

Afterall you get the manpower fully back, and you would lose roughly the same amount of resources in any event...


Or am I missing some crucial here? Other than it being a "nice little touch".. ??

Well, to answer your first question, I think it might take less time to change the division rather than disband it, and have to "train" a whole new division.

 

[unmerged(17829)]

I totally agree that foot infantry should be able to upgrade to motorised. I have 2 bases. The Germans in World War 2 would motorise several of their formerly foot infantry divisions as trucks became more available. To me this makes sense because motorised infantry is basically foot soldiers moving faster. If you have several foot infantry as Germany for example, and you capture huge oil stockpiles, wouldn't you want to take advantage of the new possibilies of motorising some of your slow infantry? In addition, although much more complex and somewhat unnecessary is the ability to convert panzer or mechanized to each other as the Germans also did.

Basically, you could limit those changes to within those 2 options (infantry could be changed from foot to motorised and to save fuel, back again while panzers could change to panzer-grenadiers and vice versa to take advantages of the respective traits). Then it could be confined to realistic historic possibilities.

My humble opinion...

 

[ozbones]

The Germans in World War 2 would motorise several of their formerly foot infantry divisions

Actually The Germans like most nations raised most of there elite units from humble beginings. The first 3 panzers were raised from cavalry. The next 20 where raised from either Infantry, Mot. Infantry or Cavalry. All the Panzergrenadiers started life as foot Infantry.... The same goes for the british, all the old Cavalry regiments became Tanks. In Australia our Militia Cavalry became Mot. Infantry, then Tanks.

If you which to raise Elite Mechanised forces the best beginnings is from a trained functional military organization. All new raisings, no matter what the type require a trained cadre, If you only have to adopt new technology and not have to learn how to function as a military unit its even easier, hence the tendancy for most countries to retrain existing units, instead of building from scratch.

Thanks

Tony

 

[Oscu]

I think you should be able to motorise inf/cav.

Disbanding a unit should give you all the manpower back and some supplies.

 

[steveh11]

I've always wondered why you can't upgrade a unit from (for example) Infantry to Armour, rather than having to disband it and re-raise it.

After all, unless I'm mistaken (and I often am! ), when Germany doubled it's Panzer Divisions after France it did so by stripping a Panzer Regiment out of each of the then current PzDivs and assigning it to an Infantry Division. Obviously this was not 'instant' but it should be reproducible in the game as being less wasteful of resources and taking less time than a disband-reraise.

Or how about the Fallschirmjager divisions/regiments that became elite PzGdr units?

The many Motorised Infantry divisions that turned into Mechanised ones?

Just about all the British Cavalry units that were converted into Armour or Armoured Car ones?

Downgrades should be possible - and even quicker - too, such as making Leg Inf units out of Mech ones.

I repeat: none of these should be instant, they should all require a trip to the build queue. Just a shorter one than for new builds.

Steve.

 

[Dievs]

Most of cavalry division equipment could be used for a motorised division - we are talking about hundreds of supply vehicles, guns, AT-guns, artillery, etc - a WW2 cavalry division is NOT a horde of horsemen.
It is infantry that uses horses for quick transportation, and does have most of it common with motorised infantry. The artillery guns are the same. The whole logistics/supply structure is the same. The men are the same and trained the same way - only they will be riding trucks instead of horses, and will get some larger-calibre guns.

 

[unmerged(22000)]

Upgrades

Hi!

I think the ability to upgrade divisions (similar to the way that air units upgrade their aircraft) is a good idea, with each conversion requiring the current IC and time in the build queue difference consistent with the current division types. I think there's evidence to show the following divison changes happened IRL:

• Add an appropriate brigade to any non-brigaded division. For example, a heavy tank brigade [if they exist in HOI2] could only augment an "armored" (tank or mechanized) unit.
• Cavalry to Motorized Cavalry or Motorized Infantry
• Infantry to Motorized Infantry
• Motorized Units (any type) to Mechanized Units of the same type
• Motorized Units (any type) to Armored units
• Mechanized Units (any type) to Armored units

In general, I suggest the first upgrade step is to convert a non-motorized infantry division (whether on foot or on horse) to a motorized division, where the time and money are spent giving the divisions new transport and training them in the art of mobile warfare.

The second step is to replace trucks with armored halftracks and add assault guns to make a mechanized division, or replace trucks with armored halftracks and add assault guns and tanks to make an armored division. In either case, at least some of the original "infantry" is still there - there were no "pure" armored divisions in WWII - but augmented with better transport and some number of tanks/assault guns.

I would suggest not allowing the following upgrades

• Militia to regular infantry - militia are a bunch of guys (generally conscripts) who aren't in the regular army for one reason or another, and who were handed guns and told to point them in a certain direction. A regular infantryman requires enough training (even in WWII) that you might as well start from scratch.
• Infantry to paratroops, marines, or mountain troops - while some divisions (such as the U.S. 82nd and 101st Infantry) were "converted" to airborne, they didn't actually take the ground pounders and train them to jump from airplanes: they took only the division name and recruited volunteers from across the Army to man it. In general these divisions were created from scratch, so I think In HOI terms this means creating a new division, not converting it from infantry.
• Infantry to armored or mechanized. I think there's a lot more to creating an armored unit than "take infantry, add tanks, and stir." - the infantry leaders need time and training to understand mobile warfare and how to use their new mobility. It seems to me a two-step process to turn infantry divisions into armored divisions would be an easy way to do this using an existing game upgrade mechanism.
• Change one augmentation brigade to a different kind of brigade. Well, if you really want to, but this seems like a real pain to figure out the cost and time to switch between all the possible combinations..

My $0.02!

 

[Darkrenown]

[*]Cavalry to Motorized

*cough* latest screenshot *cough*

 

[unmerged(15982)]

Of course you should be able to convert units and it should not take as long as building a totally new unit from scratch. A serious implication is experience. If a unit is converted to another type it should retain its experience level, which is not the case with new units.
It was done all the time. After 1941 the German 1st Cavalry Division was converted into the 24th Panzergrenadier Divison for example and the three classical Waffen-SS divisions: Leibstandarte, Das Reich and Totenkopf were all motorized divisions until Winter 1942-43 when they were made into Panzer divisions (although nominally "Panzergrenadier" at this stage, they were in reality organized as Panzer divisions).

 

[unmerged(22000)]

*cough* latest screenshot *cough*

I saw the "semi-motorized cavalry" - but I don't see why that would invalidate a suggestion to allow upgrades of cavalry to motorized types. If there's confusion as to the kind of motorized units to which I was referring - OK, I can clarify the post.

More $0.02!

 

[Darkrenown]

Just pointing out the screen shot, whether it validates, invalidates or totally nullifies your suggestion I cannot say
*Back to HoI2*