Comparing Tanks - Heavy is the best?

[Cupid Stunt]

I've pumped just under 700 hours into this game now and, as a result of watching guides, I've never used heavy tanks. The consensus seemed to be that they were too expensive and not worth the pay-off.

The other day I decided to compare different tank divisions and have come to the conclusion that Heavies are the best.

All divisions are made without beneficial doctrines and upgrades.

1936 Heavy Tank Division - 2 Heavy Tanks, 2 Heavy SPG's, 5 Cavalry

1939 Medium Tanks Division - 3 Medium Tanks, 2 Light SPG's, 4 Motorised

1936 Light Tank Division - 3 Light Tanks, 2 Light SPG's, 4 Motorised

The Heavy Tank Division is better in every way than the Light Tank except breakthrough and speed for ≈500 more production (prehaps these stats are more improtant than I realise?).

Whilst the Medium Tank Division is better in many ways this is a 1934 tank being compared to a 1939 one. Being able to make Heavy Tanks from the start of the game means that your production efficiency will be maxed out by the time you have even researched Medium Tanks and you will have a much greater number.

Once you reach 1941 and have equally advanced Medium and Heavy Tanks then the real differences can be seen.

1941 Heavy Tank Division - 2 Heavy Tanks, 2 Heavy SPG's, 5 Cavalry

1941 Medium Tank Division - 3 Medium Tanks, 2 Light SPG's, 4 Motorised (Mechanised I researched for extra 100% Motorised hardness)

Again more of everything except Breakthough and Speed for ≈400 more production.

I could be way off here so let me know if I'm missing anything but Heavy tanks seem better to me.

 

[SophieX]

The Heavy Tank Division is better in every way than the Light Tank except breakthrough and speed for ≈500 more production (prehaps these stats are more improtant than I realise?).

Speed could be a better "weapon" than the cannon itself. Always a question of "how to use it"

 

[grommile]

have fun crossing rivers with those heavy divisions.

 

[Cupid Stunt]

have fun crossing rivers with those heavy divisions.

The Medium Tank Division would have -15.5% on river crossings whilst Heavies would have -17.7%. Tanks probably aren't the best at crossing rivers in general

 

[grommile]

huh. smaller than I remembered for the heavies

 

[Swamperino]

The medium tank division seems massively superior here. Equal soft attack, pierces the heavy tank division without being pierced back, more hard attack and higher hardness.
These tank divisions also make little sense to me. Against AI, speed is the more important stat since they won't pierce properly made tank divisions anyways. Against players, you wouldn't want to add SPG since armour and piercing are more important.
I personally don't add SPG since it increases the damage taken by your divisions, and a generic 5-5 or 10-10 will have enough soft attack to break any defence.

 

[Gort11]

Whilst the Medium Tank Division is better in many ways this is a 1934 tank being compared to a 1939 one.

This is true, but the badness of heavy tank models is part of what makes them bad. Because the first decent model of heavy tank is a 1941 one, it's tough to get enough of them onto the field in time for WW2. If there was a 1938 model of heavy tank (to represent something like the KV) they'd be a lot more comparable to the light/medium tank line.

The other thing you're not really mentioning is that the speed difference is very important. An offensive division that goes 9 kph is going to get a lot more overruns and do a lot more encirclements than a division that goes 6 kph.

Heavy tank divisions have their uses, but they're really just for fighting medium tank divisions in the later war. They do this well, but how important a role it is is pretty dubious. In my experience you're generally better off focusing your resources on medium tanks.

 

[Eisscrat]

The sense of heavy tanks IS to be stronger in Firepower and Armor.
The sense of light tanks is to be fast.
Mediums are in the middle.

Its the question for what u want to use the tanks.

If u want to push on slowly at the whole front take heavies.
If u want rush deep behind the enemy lines take lights.

The all have there drawbacks.
Heavies never encircle anything.
Light would be penetrated and can not take a hard ongoing fight.

The mediums are the golden middle. Especily the mediu 2 and 3 are fast enoug to encirle and have enough armor to punch through the front.

Cause your research is very limited it is not advisable to research and build all of it. Better concentrate on mediums and research them ahead of time.

 

[wesleytj]

Another thing to note is that the parameters you've set for the division templates hide a lot of the cost of the heavies. You chose to use cavalry in the heavy divisions, and motorized in the others. In the circumstance you've presented where there are no doctrines being used, that makes some sense - the main benefit of motorized over cavalry is speed.

However, once you bring doctrine advances into the equation, you'll see that there are FAR more doctrine improvements that benefit motorized, and far fewer for cavalry. This is intentional - traditional cavalry way obsolete by 1940, so there was less room for growth in that type of unit.

Once you do an apples/apples comparison using motorized in all 3 templates, you'll see how much more expensive heavy tanks actually are.

As others have said heavy tanks have their place, mainly on the eastern front. You can use them to blunt your opponent's armored thrusts using mediums, to prevent those key encirclements. But for the most part, you will want most of your armored forces to be composed of mediums, while converting most of your light tank chassis to self-propelled artillery or anti-tank support.

 

[Cupid Stunt]

Some Interesting points for sure, I only really play single player so can't talk for multiplayer. A few reasons for my thinking on Division Design:

- Heavy SPG's use 24 tanks for 3 width and a regular tank would use 40 for 2 width, greatly increasing the cost. With the main tradeoff being reduced breakthrough and hardness/armour for increased soft attack.
- I was also lead to believe that breakthrough drops off whereas soft attack increases exponentially (breakthrough is used to block incoming attacks when attacking so vs the standard 7/2 infantry division with 110 SA and 13.2 HA having over 150 or so breakthough would be a waste)

With Mediums not being availiable till 1939 is it worth making heavies up until then as opposed to light tanks?

The other thing you're not really mentioning is that the speed difference is very important. An offensive division that goes 9 kph is going to get a lot more overruns and do a lot more encirclements than a division that goes 6 kph.

Is there information on how overruns are worked out? I have never really understood them.

However, once you bring doctrine advances into the equation, you'll see that there are FAR more doctrine improvements that benefit motorized, and far fewer for cavalry. This is intentional - traditional cavalry way obsolete by 1940, so there was less room for growth in that type of unit.

This is a very good point and something that I hadn't noticed until now. If you replaced the cavalry for infantry you would recieve all of the buffs but lose speed, as I said before speed could be much more important than I realised, epecially in the overrun equation. Although could you not have a small division of motorised used for overruning once the enemy is retreating?

Cheers for all of the great info. Trust Paradox to make a game where you know so little about it after 700 hours xD

 

[Zauberelefant]

Some Interesting points for sure, I only really play single player so can't talk for multiplayer. A few reasons for my thinking on Division Design:

- Heavy SPG's use 24 tanks for 3 width and a regular tank would use 40 for 2 width, greatly increasing the cost. With the main tradeoff being reduced breakthrough and hardness/armour for increased soft attack.
- I was also lead to believe that breakthrough drops off whereas soft attack increases exponentially (breakthrough is used to block incoming attacks when attacking so vs the standard 7/2 infantry division with 110 SA and 13.2 HA having over 150 or so breakthough would be a waste)

With Mediums not being availiable till 1939 is it worth making heavies up until then as opposed to light tanks?



Is there information on how overruns are worked out? I have never really understood them.



This is a very good point and something that I hadn't noticed until now. If you replaced the cavalry for infantry you would recieve all of the buffs but lose speed, as I said before speed could be much more important than I realised, epecially in the overrun equation. Although could you not have a small division of motorised used for overruning once the enemy is retreating?

Cheers for all of the great info. Trust Paradox to make a game where you know so little about it after 700 hours xD

What strikes me is that you shoehorn all three tanks into the same template.
Light tanks work better in Tank heavy divisions, MARM do great in medium numbers with more infantry support and heavy tanks are most useful for getting armour stat Up: not getting pierced by anything the enemy has is extremely useful in mid war.

 

[wesleytj]

This is a very good point and something that I hadn't noticed until now. If you replaced the cavalry for infantry you would recieve all of the buffs but lose speed, as I said before speed could be much more important than I realised, epecially in the overrun equation. Although could you not have a small division of motorised used for overruning once the enemy is retreating?

Yes, and that is an option - but it has to attack at the same time as the first, or soon after. You may not have noticed this yet, but while you're engaged in combat, the attacking units are still moving into the province they're attacking, and have made substantial progress into the province before the enemy even starts to retreat. So if you do try the tactic you're suggesting of using a fast division to follow up specifically to get overruns, you'll need to make sure it's tough enough to still be involved in the combat. If you try to rush in after the fact you'll almost never make it. Maybe a mix of mot and armored cars, so it's still cheap, fast, and can still stick around in a fight. Just make sure that anything you add doesn't subtract from the max speed category when you're in the template designer.

Cheers for all of the great info. Trust Paradox to make a game where you know so little about it after 700 hours xD

I'm over 2200 hours, and have played all the HOI's before now, and I'm still learning stuff too. Enjoy the journey

 

[Harin]

Is there information on how overruns are worked out? I have never really understood them.

You might want to read this thread Light Tank Blitz. Some knowledgeable people are talking up speed. It is an extreme case for the fun of it, but it is teaching/reminding all of us how to increase speed and why it can be important.

 

[Gort11]

With Mediums not being availiable till 1939 is it worth making heavies up until then as opposed to light tanks?

You could ignore both heavy and light tanks, rush to medium tanks, spending any resources that you might have spent on light or heavy tanks on fighters and CAS instead.

If I was forced to build either one or the other I'd probably consider the enemy I'll be fighting. If they're going to have AA or AT guns in their divisions, heavy tanks won't be pierced by them. If they aren't, light tanks won't be pierced and will be able to go hog wild doing encirclements.

Is there information on how overruns are worked out? I have never really understood them.

As I understand it, this is how it works:

1. Tank division attacks infantry division in province A.
2. Infantry division runs out of organisation, starts retreating towards province B.
3. Tank division arrives in province A, starts moving to province B.
4. Tank division arrives in province B.
5. Infantry division arrives in province B, is overrun and eliminated because the enemy tank division is already there.

The key is that the tank division has to arrive in province B before the retreating infantry do. This is hard, because retreating gives you a bonus to speed, and the retreating division has a head-start a lot of the time before the attacking division arrives in province A.

There are a few ways you can make overruns more likely.

1. Micromanage your tank divisions so they set off for province B the moment they arrive in A, instead of relying on the battleplanner to do it for you
2. Make your tank divisions as fast as possible. I think the fastest division just consists of a single 1941 light tank battalion (which start at 14 kph and can be modified for extra speed on top of that, but that's a pretty cheesy division that's useful for basically nothing but overruns. A more standard light tank battalion will go 12 kph to start with, then you can get faster with ministers, the mobile warfare doctrine and so on.
3. Make the enemy as slow as possible. The main way to do this is by getting air superiority.

 

[Eh up me duck]

I've been using heavies for years, as Germany they are my favourite tank.

Lights/mediums are only for minor powers who are concerned about IC use.

 

[grommile]

Heavies shine brightest as the USSR, because you have more chromium than God (especially if you do an early war against Turkey) but have something resembling availability concerns where tungsten is concerned.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Heavies shine brightest as the USSR, because you have more chromium than God (especially if you do an early war against Turkey) but have something resembling availability concerns where tungsten is concerned.

"Liberate" norway and sweden?

 

[Secret Master]

except breakthrough and speed for ≈500 more production (prehaps these stats are more improtant than I realise?).

Speed kills. There's no other way to put it.

The overrun mechanic in the game ensures that there will always be a place in HOI4 for divisions that move quickly. Divisions that are retreating from combat can be wiped without firing a shot if an attacker's division reaches the province the retreating divisions are heading towards before they do it. And you can stack wipe an infinite number of divisions this way. I've bagged 20 at a time before, and I'm not even the expert.

Now, someone is about to say "But I can use MOT to go fast." But MOT is not as fast as LARM. Someone mentioned a few posts up the light tank blitz discussion we are having. 20 kph LARM is not even that difficult to create, but the truly insane players are creating 30 kph LARM that can drive through the Ukraine faster than they can be moved via strategic redeployment.

Now, having laid down my thoughts about the value of speed, I'd like to point out that the choice of what armor to make is often a strategic and economic one, not a tactical decision. Because of how research boosts work, there is an argument to be made that the Soviets should go heavy tanks so that they can put the 1945 modern tank into production in late 1943. This has nothing to do with the value of these tanks in combat; it's a choice predicated on the value of getting a super awesome tank researched and into production faster.

Then there's the economic side of the equation. If you think you will have plenty of chromium on hand to build tanks, but will have to import tungsten, there are economic arguments to be made that heavy tanks are the right answer. My first LaR game as France, I went this way for precisely this reason. France has more chromium than she can shake a stick at. Might as well save the CIC and build heavy tanks. The Soviets are also in this position. On the other hand, someone playing Germany might be thinking "I'll occupy Portugal and the tungsten." In that case, medium tanks may make more sense.

There are also other considerations. Countries that want to focus on a HTD strategy for their infantry divisions will go heavy tanks, not because they want to make actual panzer divisions, but just because they want those heavy tank destroyers. I've also seen MP games where one country chooses a specific emphasis in tank types based on information they have about their enemies.

 

[Horrordar]

As I see it, they all have their own uses, especially at different points in the game.

Light Tanks - Especially effective in the early game when the enemy army is mostly just a heap of infantry, often very few divisions in reserve to prevent an encirclement, industries and industry tech are underdeveloped to say the least, and few CAS to make up for their infantrys weaknesses against armored units. Not a bad idea to go for these when you're trying to rush yourself to a formable, such as Scandinavia, Austria-Hungary, or really rushing in general, so that you can get all of that oh-so-important industry early on.

Medium Tanks - Bread and butter of a mechanized army. Sufficiently fast to encircle, well-armored enough to keep from being penetrated by most infantry divisions without AT, cheap enough that you won't break your bank making them, and with enough damage and breakthrough to bash a hostile division into submission. If you make an entire army of 24 20-width divisions out of these guys (with motorized for org), you'll have a much easier time making wider pushes into the enemy.

Heavy Tanks - When you really, REALLY want to murder that one defensive division that's stopping your tanks moving. Especially good in the later stages of the war. Where infantry trying to attack an entrenched position immediately deorg and die, these badboys will just. Keep. Going. Unless there's a lot of CAS in the sky and the enemy have air-superiority (be sure to add AA to these to reduce their effect). This comes at the cost of, well, the cost! You'll be lucky if you can get 10 divisions of these nightmares on the field without the rest of your production suffering, even fewer if you go with 40-width! The investment can definitely be worth it, as very few things will stand up to these armored behemoths. Just beware of nukes.

Modern Tanks - Expensive, fast, deadly. Easier to field en-masse than heavies, sure, but really resource intensive, to the point that you'll be looking to conquer Turkey just to get enough chromium if you want to make a full-transition. If you're legitimately thinking about going for these, you have either gone on for long enough that the game's just turned into an eternal slog, or you're just trying to mop up the rest for a full world conquest. I still prefer to stick with mediums over these.

S. Heavy Tanks - Memes on wheels (tracks?). Their usage is extremely limited and situational for a few reasons. 1. They're unbearably slow, I'm fairly certain they're at the same speed as regular foot infantry, which does give the niche of putting one company of these in your infantry divisions to give them an ungodly amount of pierce and some armor. 2. They have a bonus against fortifications, so they make good for breaking through the Magiburg Line if you've got the Germans on the run as the US. 3. Their expense. S. Heavies are ridiculously expensive, both in the amount of resources you have to put into them, but also in general production costs. Sure a single company is like, what, 15 tanks? But that's across dozens of infantry companies, if you want make some machine-enhanced space-marines. At this point in the game, the enemy will have researched AT, either from having to deal with tanks previously, or because they're preparing for whatever tank-based shenanigans they think you have in store for them.

 

[bitmode]

Is there information on how overruns are worked out? I have never really understood them.

The general principle was already answered, but it can appear a bit muddled in single player because the AI can control retreating divisions in ways a human can't (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ivisions-that-were-forced-to-retreat.1298526/). So sometimes retreating units will be able to fight you again when they should have been overrun or change direction while retreating.

Looking at the three templates you posted,

The Heavy Tank Division is better in every way than the Light Tank except breakthrough and speed for ≈500 more production (prehaps these stats are more improtant than I realise?).

You made another less visible trade-off by putting one less armored battalion in the heavy template compared to the others. It has a lower hardness than even the light tank division. Breakthrough and hardness need to be seen in combination. Lower hardness generally means the enemy has more attacks against the division, increasing the need for breakthrough. A harder division tends to need less breakthrough. In your case the heavy division is both softer and has less breakthrough than the others.