It is technically a TO&E and is the same layout as used in real life (although not strictly in that time period).
So yes, while it is cosmetic, it actually serves a purpose of clearly displaying your division to you in a comprehensible manner that it is not just numbers - in this way it feels more authentic because it is more authentic (both in function and form).
So it has relevance, just not game mechanic relevance.
Yeah, that's what I meant. It makes it really understandable because it has real basis and organisation, but not in combat.
I like the new system a lot, adds plenty of flavor & roleplay opportunities as well.
I wanted to discuss the relevance of big vs small brigade designs. A few points
1) All infantry is far cheaper to produce than other equipment types
2) Stats from wiki shows that infantry contributes the highest HP
3) HP loss during combat is directly linked to equipment loss post combat rather than simulating individual loss per equipment in combat
For example, if I have a finite amount of tanks but far more INF/MOT equipment, having a single division of 4x ARM + 8 MOT might lead to higher ARM losses than 2 divisions of 2x ARM + 10 MOT since there's more total HP and less overall losses taken for the same combat. Similar things could occur when discussing ART/AT so spreading out the expensive equipment may be better than concentrating it.
This also depends on the actual combat losses modifiers in defines since HOI3 had terribly small losses during combat, and it took mods to correct those numbers into something more significant.
I know there are other benefits like hardness/breakthrough etc that change the balance, but I'm discussing this because previously in HOI3 armor brigades had the same combat menpower as infantry brigades typically, but here the decoupling of menpower used for building and combat HP suddenly makes tanks far more vulnerable to losses when they have 2HP or around 8% of infantry's 25 HP.
Does this mean that more slots in a division should be filled with INF type other than those used for separate brigade types to reduce overall losses in combat because of the new HP mechanic?
Just to note - it would not be a good idea to combine regular infantry with armor. It would likely need motorized/mechanized support (for the speed and, I believe, additional combat stats), unless you maybe wanted to combine slow super heavy tanks with infantry.
Infantry has much lower all-around stats and is generally weaker according to what's been said. So while tanks might have lower HP, they do have higher strength that makes up for it significantly and can reduce losses through shorter battles or such (which is great for breakthroughs and encirclement).
We should probably wait for the game to be released for an answer to this, though, because I don't think it has a good answer from what we've seen so far (since the gameplay videos don't really elaborate showing tests of battles depending on division build etc. etc., that needs to be done by players). The HP is only a stat that we're making assumptions on, we don't really know every single bit about how it works & interacts with other stats. For all we know, it might just be a balance measure to avoid making tanks heavily overpowered and maybe they're very strong even with low HP.
We're seeing that the stat exists, but we don't know yet every single detail about how it works under the hood, so I don't think a concrete answer can be given yet.
