Effects of support battalions

[vector1]

I'd say hospital is debatable for line divisions that you don't expect to see excessive combat with those divisions. With a total cost of 297 (from wiki) vs 44 for an infantry brigade it sounds like you could equip a whole light division of infantry in exchange for one hospital brigade. Logistics companies may be more important if fighting in low infra areas, or places where supply is your troop limit (pretty much everywhere in the game excepting western europe, and even then we saw GER vs ENG running into huge supply issues in Italy during WWW). Recon seems to be the 100% choice given that Daniel loves it so much.

 

[tommylotto]

Hoi3 TFH introduced a synergistic effect in the form of a combined arms bonus that gave your divisions a combat effectiveness bonus for each different type of unit -- armor, indirect fire, direct fire, and other -- that you added to an infantry base. It was not perfect, but it gave you a combat bonus for mixing infantry with tanks, artillery and anti-tank guns. It encouraged you to make realistically balanced divisions, but even Secret Master could prove that with limited brigade slots and the high soft attack of artillery you would still be better off with more artillery and less combined arms bonus. But that is just a balance issue. The combined arms bonus was a synergistic effect -- the value of the combination is greater than the sum of the individual units. There is no such effect in HoiIV -- divisions are literally the sum of the individual units (equipment). Sure, artillery has lots of firepower, but it is expensive to build and it was balanced (unbalanced) by giving it a ridiculous unrealistic combat width, restricting the number of divisions with artillery you can get into any given combat. Weighing all of the pluses and minuses, Daniel, the greatest HoiIV player on the planet repeatedly decided to pass on artillery combat battalions, whereas we all know that outside of China a division without a full regiment of artillery would be unheard of.

Artillery should not be optional. Make artillery great again!

 

[vector1]

Then I'd say it's not that HOI4 doesn't have any synergistic effects but rather it's a question of balancing the units properly. It becomes a question on production, and maximum efficiency buildups vs the extra firepower/stats.

Looking at the stats, I'd say including artillery is a no-brainer to me for elite divisions. 1936 INF costs 75 production units, 2 width, 0.07 supply and 6 soft attack. 1936 ART costs 220 production units, 3 width, 0.2 supply and 40 soft attack. That's 3x the cost, supply, 1.5x width and 6x the soft attack.

Taking a 3 regiment (9 brigade setup) as an example. A 2 INF regiment (3x brigades)+ 1 ART regiment would have 1110 cost, 40 org, 21 width, 1.02 supply draw and 156 soft attack, vs a 3 INF regiment of 675 cost, 60 org, 18 width, 0.63 supply draw and 54 soft attack.

So it seems to me that an artillery based division is going to be a lot more efficient at concentrating soft attack than a pure infantry division at increased cost. Sounds pretty balanced to have a mix of both pure INF for larger fronts and artillery based divisions mixed in for extra punch.

 

[Mirage2k]

WWW are all beta builds, let's assume here that we are talking about the game "as it should be", also called "spring 2017 patch"
I really like the introduction of this system, props to paradox!
This gives a lot of interesting options... For USA and Germany, manpower is the only limit and thus hospitals will be mandatory I guess. For France it might make sense to specialize a lot for different fronts: Engineers only for Maginot Line while the Belgian border gets hospitals, signals, recon...

As Japan you might not build a single field hospital as manpower should be plenty, but reduced supply consumption from logistics company means you need fewer convoys to supply your overseas armies, freeing up dockyards for more warship production: You are indirectly using military factories to get more carriers built Also it helps in the poor infrastructure of Asia and Siberia, of course... I think logistics might be the "mandatory" company for Japan.

What companies do you think Russia should put in its vast number of standard infantry divisions? I would put artillery and AT in their own brigades, what would I then have in the support slots that is useful for their situation?

 

[vector1]

My picks would include Recon, logistics, engineers, signals.

Recon for tactics

Logistics to support the huge human wave spam to prevent overloading the infrastructure with waves of conscripts waiting behind for a turn to attack

Engineers to defend the riverlines

Signals so those divisions can actually reinforce in a timely manner rather than losing key provinces because of late reinforcements.