Does the vanilla game feel kind of easy now? Like more than usual.

[Herennius]

That's more an issue with hoi4's game mechanics than anything else. You don't have the research slots/time to research everything. even as the player. Going for both medium tanks and heavy tanks is prohibitively expensive, so you can really only afford to pick one. If Germany went both medium and heavy tanks, then their infantry guns, or their AT, or their industry, or anything really, would be further behind.

And mixing mediums and heavies isn't even particularly strong from a gameplay perspective either. Functionally its best use is to add a bit of armor to mediums in a mp environment while being cheaper than using full heavy tanks, but the heaviest heavy tank still gets easily pierced by a human opponent so the best strategy is still to do mediums with no armor. The only reason heavy tanks have ever been meta is before NSB where the only things that could pierce heavy tanks were other heavy tanks and heavy TDs. Now cheap MTDs and even line AT can pierce a typical heavy tank division, so heavies are never worth the cost.

Back to singleplayer, mediums with a little bit of armor are sufficient to not be pierced by the vanilla AI so heavies are completely unnecessary there too.

All that sounds resonable, but I still hope that at some point in the future the rules/mechanics will allow heavy tanks to have their niche. It just feels strange and ahistorical that the game both renders them useless by its balance and teaches even the AI not to use them (I concede that the latter is kind of consequent and makes the AI even better under the current rules/balance, but given all ahistoric plunders the AI is allowed to do it is unfortunate that explicity here mechanics trump historic realism)

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

All that sounds resonable, but I still hope that at some point in the future the rules/mechanics will allow heavy tanks to have their niche. It just feels strange and ahistorical that the game both renders them useless by its balance and teaches even the AI not to use them (I concede that the latter is kind of consequent and makes the AI even better under the current rules/balance, but given all ahistoric plunders the AI is allowed to do it is unfortunate that explicity here mechanics trump historic realism)

Its the same with light tanks, why bother at all?
Worse stats than mediums in every way, and mediums are only slightly more expensive

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Its the same with light tanks, why bother at all?
Worse stats than mediums in every way, and mediums are only slightly more expensive

i tried to come up with niche for light tanks scumming through wiki and tank designer. it's hard to compete with the cost + stats combination of mediums. really hard.

only use cases are bargain basement trash tanks for garrisons (trash mediums are technically a little better, but have a significantly higher initial price point too), and possibly armored recon with sf. usually with armored recon, you're doing this just as a more-expensive source of support soft attack. however, it can also be used in mod settings like mittleafrika in kaiserreich to guarantee armor bonus against all the african statelets that pop out on one of the paths to quickly put them down. 2-3 armor is enough to prevent even partial penetration...

the one exception was when screwing around in rt56, i somehow got an improved medium howitzer onto light tank chassis while the game still allowed me to designate it as a tank. this means you can put it on armored recon with sf (pretty crazy), and there are some tradeoffs using it as a line battalion, but it is a little cheaper. so if you can figure out how to reproduce a bug, it *might* be worth using light tanks outside of very niche roles, lol!

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

i tried to come up with niche for light tanks scumming through wiki and tank designer. it's hard to compete with the cost + stats combination of mediums. really hard.

only use cases are bargain basement trash tanks for garrisons (trash mediums are technically a little better, but have a significantly higher initial price point too), and possibly armored recon with sf. usually with armored recon, you're doing this just as a more-expensive source of support soft attack. however, it can also be used in mod settings like mittleafrika in kaiserreich to guarantee armor bonus against all the african statelets that pop out on one of the paths to quickly put them down. 2-3 armor is enough to prevent even partial penetration...

the one exception was when screwing around in rt56, i somehow got an improved medium howitzer onto light tank chassis while the game still allowed me to designate it as a tank. this means you can put it on armored recon with sf (pretty crazy), and there are some tradeoffs using it as a line battalion, but it is a little cheaper. so if you can figure out how to reproduce a bug, it *might* be worth using light tanks outside of very niche roles, lol!

Its the same thing with heavies, why use them at all? Unpierceable heavies aren't really a thing anymore
And yeah agreed on the lights, i tried a 80 light tank ussr, it sucked big time

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i think heavies are in an even worse place right now than lights, because they cost so much more. light tank at least has niche uses, even though mediums are typically the real option. you can at least make the bare minimum cost light tank, slap that in your production line, run it in garrisons, and feel okay about it. and you can squeeze a little more sf support damage out of them. neither of those are much, but they're *something*.

i can't come up with any use case for heavy tanks where i couldn't just use mediums. in sp, you can get sufficient armor with mediums (which frankly you don't need anyway, but if you want it you can get it for cheaper using mediums). in mp, fixed superstructure mediums (for td) will dab on armor gouged heavy tanks too easily, at a comical fraction of the cost of getting enough armor where that's even necessary. thus i can't picture when you'd design and build these.

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

i think heavies are in an even worse place right now than lights, because they cost so much more. light tank at least has niche uses, even though mediums are typically the real option. you can at least make the bare minimum cost light tank, slap that in your production line, run it in garrisons, and feel okay about it. and you can squeeze a little more sf support damage out of them. neither of those are much, but they're *something*.

i can't come up with any use case for heavy tanks where i couldn't just use mediums. in sp, you can get sufficient armor with mediums (which frankly you don't need anyway, but if you want it you can get it for cheaper using mediums). in mp, fixed superstructure mediums (for td) will dab on armor gouged heavy tanks too easily, at a comical fraction of the cost of getting enough armor where that's even necessary. thus i can't picture when you'd design and build these.

12 base ic just for the chassis lmao vs 3.31 for a basic medium
yeah light have the niche of garrisions and that's pretty useful
but heavies do? kinda nothing

 

[Swamperino]

A single battalion of heavy tanks massively boosts your armor. This also feels near-historical, since tank divisions only had a small amount of heavy tanks

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

A single battalion of heavy tanks massively boosts your armor. This also feels near-historical, since tank divisions only had a small amount of heavy tanks

The world wonders why we still don't have Heavy Tank Abteilungs in Support slots, given how even flame tanks are already there and which ironically are available in the heavy format too.

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

A single battalion of heavy tanks massively boosts your armor. This also feels near-historical, since tank divisions only had a small amount of heavy tanks

A single medium can boost your armour to the point where your unpierceable by the ai, for way cheaper

 

[marcelo r. r.]

if u reach very end game as "rich" to afford heavies, its worth more switch to modern tank(and AI is doing that).

 

[Herennius]

Its the same with light tanks, why bother at all?
Worse stats than mediums in every way, and mediums are only slightly more expensive

Not denying that using them ATM makes probably no sense from a mechanical persepctive (I lack knowledge and experience to judge myself, but I'm trusting you and the others here), so taking that as a fact my point is just: Is that fact a good and desireable situation for a strategy game about WW2? A war in which at least some major participants used very heavy tanks (or even experimented with super-heavy variants)?

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

Not denying that using them ATM makes probably no sense from a mechanical persepctive (I lack knowledge and experience to judge myself, but I'm trusting you and the others here), so taking that as a fact my point is just: Is that fact a good and desireable situation for a strategy game about WW2? A war in which at least some major participants used very heavy tanks (or even experimented with super-heavy variants)?

No i don't think its a good thing tbh, its the same with navy tbh

 

[TheMeInTeam]

you want the game rules to align to history as closely as you can get w/o breaking gameplay. it's a game first, but ideally you want to give nod to the history that inspires the setting.

generally speaking, it is silly to have options in a game with absolutely no use case too. thus there are both historical and gameplay reasons that having heavy tanks possess 0 niche in hoi 4 isn't ideal.

the real question is what changes to heavy tanks, such that they are usable, also make the game better?

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

you want the game rules to align to history as closely as you can get w/o breaking gameplay. it's a game first, but ideally you want to give nod to the history that inspires the setting.

generally speaking, it is silly to have options in a game with absolutely no use case too. thus there are both historical and gameplay reasons that having heavy tanks possess 0 niche in hoi 4 isn't ideal.

the real question is what changes to heavy tanks, such that they are usable, also make the game better?

Lazy option, more stat buffs, buff the heavy guns only on heavy tanks

 

[TheMeInTeam]

reminds me of the stat discussions for games like league of legends. it's pretty hard to tweak stats in context of something that depends on raw stats vs something more dynamic. pure stats thing is sticky in usage, until all of a sudden people notice it's broken and it gets nerfed, only for it to again...tends to mostly average out to permanently a little below average again.

a more damaging heavy isn't too attractive in context of "still wins when it clicks, still loses when clicked". however, if you pump up the jam enough that it starts also winning when clicked, all of a sudden you can't use mediums in mp anymore.

 

[nuarbnellaffej]

The world wonders why we still don't have Heavy Tank Abteilungs in Support slots, given how even flame tanks are already there and which ironically are available in the heavy format too.

The support role has been there in mods no problem so it would be nice to see in vanilla.

you want the game rules to align to history as closely as you can get w/o breaking gameplay. it's a game first, but ideally you want to give nod to the history that inspires the setting.

generally speaking, it is silly to have options in a game with absolutely no use case too. thus there are both historical and gameplay reasons that having heavy tanks possess 0 niche in hoi 4 isn't ideal.

the real question is what changes to heavy tanks, such that they are usable, also make the game better?

I think you need to balance “a use case” vs “best for role X”. The Germans obviously fielded a great many heavy tanks, and got good use out of them. But it’s up for debate whether or not it was worth it to invest so many resources into so competitively few chassis. For a number of reasons the other powers didn’t see fit to follow the same path.

Another example of game-ification would be aircraft mounted anti tank cannons. Historically they were ineffective. In game though they can be quite useful.

 

[Secret Master]

and possibly armored recon with sf. usually with armored recon, you're doing this just as a more-expensive source of support soft attack.

As a filthy heretic, I like armored recon in my panzer divisions.

But...

...I don't waste time researching light tanks or making good ones. I decide on a speed for panzer divisions and take an existing light tank design, modify it to be that speed, then put it into production. I refit all existing versions and run the production line with 1 MIC. It's usually sufficient.

I have also been known to use flame tanks.

For the record, light tanks weren't all that great in actual war. I wouldn't lose any sleep over not using them that much in HOI4.