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and that translates into 60% more max attack - that's far more than any other doctrine, and usually an effective 100% increase or so when you consider the other modifiers you're near-guaranteed to have.
As noted, it isn't 60% more. It's also worth pointing out that only for some division types does GB left with max planning damage outperform SF with max planning, even for generic nations. But SF falls off substantially less when its planning bonus declines.
which is why i always push back on people saying france should go gbp. france can already get ~80% planning easy (30 base, 25 protected by maginot, 15+ tassigney fm, 8+ juin general). going from +80% attack to +110% from planning is actually less than what they would get just from the +20% attack on sf, 1.2 * 1.8 = 2.16 > 2.1 which is what max gbp planning is giving.
I haven't played new focus tree France, but at least with old focus tree version it took so long to remove the penalties towards doctrine research that it might not have been worth the cost/time to switch, and just leave their doctrine at starting value for crucial '39 conflict. Especially since you could still research equipment and air/naval doctrines normally. In MP what is even viable would depend on ruleset (some don't even allow player France IIRC) and who is playing which nations. For SP you could realistically hold/win by fighting Germany ASAP, or simply waiting until WW2 but beating the AI in the air. Especially before the crazy buff to AA, AI Germany would just get completely shredded by air superiority penalties and CAS bombing in low countries river crossings, taking mostly crits in addition to the CAS damage. Not long before they run out of equipment like that (kind of like what happens to beginning player Germany before they understand the mechanics :D ).

Neither of those options depended on land doctrine, or even meaningfully used the land doctrine beyond simply using the Maginot max planning to punch through a bit easier. Maybe the new tree makes using land doctrine a bit more feasible, but people are still holding over on old advice?
 
As noted, it isn't 60% more. It's also worth pointing out that only for some division types does GB left with max planning damage outperform SF with max planning, even for generic nations. But SF falls off substantially less when its planning bonus declines.
yeah, i got it mixed up with entrenchment lol. either way though, with full planning you are usually outperforming SF, which is kind of the whole point of the doctrine.
I haven't played new focus tree France, but at least with old focus tree version it took so long to remove the penalties towards doctrine research that it might not have been worth the cost/time to switch, and just leave their doctrine at starting value for crucial '39 conflict.
you totally can and should get rid of it by late '38 now, and you get 2x200% and 2x100% bonuses to doctrine along the path. if you're playing a MP mod you also can easily have 200 XP from 1 division training, and depending on whether or not tech stealing is allowed (if it is you have to use the XP on your tanks) you can boost doctrines even more. so it definitely is worth it. some mods also make the initial doctrine free, assuming you start with one.
some don't even allow player France IIRC
every comp game ever allows france. otherwise they build factories in the mainland, which kills russia, AND you're near-guaranteed to lose africa.

Neither of those options depended on land doctrine, or even meaningfully used the land doctrine beyond simply using the Maginot max planning to punch through a bit easier. Maybe the new tree makes using land doctrine a bit more feasible, but people are still holding over on old advice?
i dont get your point here. are you saying that you can do whichever doctrine you like in SP and still win? that really doesn't matter - if you're actively choosing one then you can totally judge each doctrine's merits, and GBP, a popular one for france, doesn't have a ton going for it. i hear frances told to go GBP all the time, it's not old advice
 
I'm hesitant to give GBP much more planning that it (left side) already has. Planning is easy to get using field marshal orders and buffs all 3 of the offensive stats.

Yes SF doesn't lose its in any way but most of those bonuses are for soft attack. Those bonuses largely compound on infantry or artillery, not everything at once. Tank bonuses do exist but aggregate to 20% hard and 20% soft, 10% less than GBP left side does, and without giving stacked breakthrough.

So far I feel that giving artillery a bit of org and giving infantry modifiers in woods/hills/marshes/urban would go a long way.

Does anyone happen to have the post that outlines how and why hospitals are bad to use? If I can see the numbers I can play with them until they actually achieve what hospitals are meant to achieve.
 
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Does anyone happen to have the post that outlines how and why hospitals are bad to use? If I can see the numbers I can play with them until they actually achieve what hospitals are meant to achieve.
its hard to do a numbers comparison since hospitals cost ICs (the manpower cost is negligible) and save manpower and experience.
 
its hard to do a numbers comparison since hospitals cost ICs (the manpower cost is negligible) and save manpower and experience.
I may be misrembering, but I feel like I've seen a post detailing that the org hits and other stat hits taken by adding a hospital to a template (I think was a 7/2 at the time) would cost you more lives in combat than it saved. Experience tweaking I'd probably have to do by feel though.
 
I may be misrembering, but I feel like I've seen a post detailing that the org hits and other stat hits taken by adding a hospital to a template (I think was a 7/2 at the time) would cost you more lives in combat than it saved. Experience tweaking I'd probably have to do by feel though.
lower org tends to make you take fewer losses, not more. it will have a moderately negative effect on your HP:IC ratio.
the bigger issue with them is more core to how they work - in order for them to be worthwhile, you need to be taking strength and XP losses, and the fewer "initial" strength/manpower and XP losses you take, the fewer will be saved by the hospitals. as the attacker, you have the initiative and should be able to pick fights you can relatively easily win, and as the defender you should be defending with spamfantry whose experience doesn't really matter. basically, higher-value units for whom XP is the most important won't take enough losses to make hospitals worthwhile, and lower-value units for whom XP is less important don't need them either.
 
lower org tends to make you take fewer losses, not more. it will have a moderately negative effect on your HP:IC ratio.
the bigger issue with them is more core to how they work - in order for them to be worthwhile, you need to be taking strength and XP losses, and the fewer "initial" strength/manpower and XP losses you take, the fewer will be saved by the hospitals. as the attacker, you have the initiative and should be able to pick fights you can relatively easily win, and as the defender you should be defending with spamfantry whose experience doesn't really matter. basically, higher-value units for whom XP is the most important won't take enough losses to make hospitals worthwhile, and lower-value units for whom XP is less important don't need them either.
My thinking behind hospitals is two fold.

First its good larp. Trench style warfare continuing into the future would appreciate and utilize more modern medical treatment, and would likely set up better hospitals than other doctrines because that military doesn't expect to move much.

Second, I'm aiming to make large scale infantry offenses possible. Even a well built pushing infantry division is going to take some fair number of losses, because infantry aren't optimal for this job. Scale all those infantry pushes up with an entire front - say its 16 40w arty stacked inf or SF - and you will have a lot of dead bodies, especially if the fighting is back and forth. Field hospitals ideally make these pushes less costly in lives and at least keep intelligently used pushes from turning all those infantry green.
 
Second, I'm aiming to make large scale infantry offenses possible. Even a well built pushing infantry division is going to take some fair number of losses, because infantry aren't optimal for this job. Scale all those infantry pushes up with an entire front - say its 16 40w arty stacked inf or SF - and you will have a lot of dead bodies, especially if the fighting is back and forth. Field hospitals ideally make these pushes less costly in lives and at least keep intelligently used pushes from turning all those infantry green.
well, yeah, doing so with real infantry (i.e. 14/4s) is pretty much the only remotely viable use for FH. problem is, you shouldn't be pushing with infantry much - certainly not in large-wave, battleplan-style attacks - not only for the manpower cost and ineffectiveness but also/moreso for the IC loss. i guess you could say that FH are decent but only for bad strategies. for good strategies, they're outright bad.
 
i dont get your point here. are you saying that you can do whichever doctrine you like in SP and still win?
As noted above, I was saying that under old focus tree the French situation was such that in SP it was probably better off either fighting Germany immediately before doctrine choice mattered, or blasting Germans out of the air. Since I'm not familiar with the new tree, that advice doesn't seem to apply any longer per your summary. But it might be the source of the strange recommendations. Similar to how there are still people in EU 4 that think morale bonuses "fall off" in the late game or give naval advice based on old rules that aren't in play anymore.

either way though, with full planning you are usually outperforming SF
Surprisingly not. Here is a link for sample tables on wiki: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Land_doctrine

For infantry, SF hit harder at max planning/entrenchment respectively, though they also take a bit more damage and more ORG to somewhat offset that. But even when executing an attack at fully planning, you start losing planning and SF's offensive advantage in particular grows. Especially if you need to micromanage (if that front matters, you will).

For tanks, GB left has slightly more soft attack, a significant boost in breakthrough, and less org. Somewhat justifiable at least, you can probably rework division to have more firepower/less breakthrough if the breakthrough is excessive. But again, I have doubts whether planning bonus can be reliably maintained in situations that matter, since relying on battle planner movements in tough fights is not viable.

These tables do mass assault dirty. It might not be meta, but leaving out the extra divisions/hp does make it looks worse than it is.
 
As noted above, I was saying that under old focus tree the French situation was such that in SP it was probably better off either fighting Germany immediately before doctrine choice mattered, or blasting Germans out of the air. Since I'm not familiar with the new tree, that advice doesn't seem to apply any longer per your summary. But it might be the source of the strange recommendations. Similar to how there are still people in EU 4 that think morale bonuses "fall off" in the late game or give naval advice based on old rules that aren't in play anymore.
ok...
Surprisingly not. Here is a link for sample tables on wiki: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Land_doctrine

For infantry, SF hit harder at max planning/entrenchment respectively, though they also take a bit more damage and more ORG to somewhat offset that. But even when executing an attack at fully planning, you start losing planning and SF's offensive advantage in particular grows. Especially if you need to micromanage (if that front matters, you will).
how about we use real divisions, instead of whatever the person who made the wiki was using?
12/7/2, support eng and logi, SF r/l, 1941 techs, no upgrades for simplicity: 500 soft, 498 hard, 763 bkt. multiply that by the base 30% max planning you have 650/647.4/991.9. org is 30.6.

same division, gbp left: 422/423/605. multiply that by 60% max planning and you have 675.2/676.8/968. org is 33.4.
so gbp can actually hit harder, with a minor bkt disadvantage which is offset by a minor org advantage. yes, it loses it quickly, which is why gbp is pretty bad - unless you need to break a single tile or just a few. it also depends on how far down you'll get doctrine-wise; SFs last two are weak in comparison to GBP, but GBP's first 6 will have it stronger than SF's first 6 (just to throw some random numbers around).
 
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how about we use real divisions, instead of whatever the person who made the wiki was using?
What support? SF R in particular gives a lot of extras there, so it can matter.

Planning bonus is also contingent on opponents not screwing with it in espionage and not org-cycling on defense to stall it out. Either of these will decay planning bonus enough that GB starts looking closer to strictly inferior (excepting the trick that applies GB bonuses to SF troops via expeditionary forces, is that still a thing?).

how so? you're paying more for them too. the extra HP doesn't matter since your losses/hit (i.e. HP:IC ratio) remains the same.
The extra battalions adds stats, however. Not enough to close the gap, but the table makes it look worse than it actually is.

Also whether HP:IC remains identical depends on the division compositions. For "space marines" as an example, more HP with same number of tanks (by adding infantry and retaining identical width) would make losses impact the tank equipment less...effectively mitigating a small amount of tank losses (more expensive) in exchange for some more infantry kit losses (less expensive).
 
I have mentioned before in other threads but I would really like to see a return of the "activate plan"-timer from Hoi 2(3?). Perhaps this could tie into GBP if several armies activated their plans on the same date, som bonuses could apply. Maybe if you put at timer on FM and then all generals below him activated on set date.

This would be really helpful to plan and execute a D-day with several allies attacking on the same day and so on.
 
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I have mentioned before in other threads but I would really like to see a return of the "activate plan"-timer from Hoi 2(3?). Perhaps this could tie into GBP if several armies activated their plans on the same date, som bonuses could apply. Maybe if you put at timer on FM and then all generals below him activated on set date.

This would be really helpful to plan and execute a D-day with several allies attacking on the same day and so on.
I've always wondered why battleplans were just a go mechanic. Arrows should be able to activate once another arrow/objective is considered complete. Tiles should be able to be marked as targets as well. That'd let us trigger plans as actual plans, or at least let certain aspects of naval invasions follow through only if the initial marine landing was successful.

Of course, the main reason battleplanner is useless is because the AI is very bad in it. It will attack difficult tiles with poor modifiers or weather relentlessly, not even waiting to any useful level of planning bonus to do so. It won't concentrate forces to break tiles either, instead seemingly randomly assigning divisions to attack places.

well, yeah, doing so with real infantry (i.e. 14/4s) is pretty much the only remotely viable use for FH. problem is, you shouldn't be pushing with infantry much - certainly not in large-wave, battleplan-style attacks - not only for the manpower cost and ineffectiveness but also/moreso for the IC loss. i guess you could say that FH are decent but only for bad strategies. for good strategies, they're outright bad.
14/4 elite infantry or special forces with rockets should def be able to push against other infantry if they have their planning bonus imo. Using field hospitals with GBP to push this way will never be optimal outside of mods that buff infantry/artillery or nerf tanks, but that's not the point. Adjusting this so that it is a viable strategy is.

As noted above, I was saying that under old focus tree the French situation was such that in SP it was probably better off either fighting Germany immediately before doctrine choice mattered, or blasting Germans out of the air. Since I'm not familiar with the new tree, that advice doesn't seem to apply any longer per your summary. But it might be the source of the strange recommendations. Similar to how there are still people in EU 4 that think morale bonuses "fall off" in the late game or give naval advice based on old rules that aren't in play anymore.


Surprisingly not. Here is a link for sample tables on wiki: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Land_doctrine

For infantry, SF hit harder at max planning/entrenchment respectively, though they also take a bit more damage and more ORG to somewhat offset that. But even when executing an attack at fully planning, you start losing planning and SF's offensive advantage in particular grows. Especially if you need to micromanage (if that front matters, you will).

For tanks, GB left has slightly more soft attack, a significant boost in breakthrough, and less org. Somewhat justifiable at least, you can probably rework division to have more firepower/less breakthrough if the breakthrough is excessive. But again, I have doubts whether planning bonus can be reliably maintained in situations that matter, since relying on battle planner movements in tough fights is not viable.

These tables do mass assault dirty. It might not be meta, but leaving out the extra divisions/hp does make it looks worse than it is.
Though I'm having some trouble with it, I'm creating a combat tactics mod. Plan is to add some more depth to tactics, traits, terrain and doctrines. For GBP this means extra attack or -enemy attack if the divisions have enough planning or entrenchment. Night Assault for example gives attackers 20% attack if they also have x planning bonus. Helps keep stats a bit more stable, and locking the best tactics behind plan/entrenchment means you still have to keep those numbers up.
 
Keep in mind that tactics are damage modifications, not attack modifications.
What do you mean? Tactics give bonus % dmg to the units in that battle. Everything else normal, an division with 10 planning and no buffs/debuffs from tactics would do the same attack as a division with no planning but a +10% tactic right?
 
What do you mean? Tactics give bonus % dmg to the units in that battle. Everything else normal, an division with 10 planning and no buffs/debuffs from tactics would do the same attack as a division with no planning but a +10% tactic right?
No. Tactics do not modify attacks, like planning does. If all of the attacks were either defended or undefended, 10% would be the same either way, but we realistically only have situations where either all or only some of the attacks are being defended. For example, If we had 100 attacks against 100 defense, +10% from planning would be 110 attacks, which is 14 hits average, while +10% from tactics would be 100 attacks with an extra +10% damage, 11 'hits'.
 
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No. Tactics do not modify attacks, like planning does. If all of the attacks were either defended or undefended, 10% would be the same either way, but we realistically only have situations where either all or only some of the attacks are being defended. For example, If we had 100 attacks against 100 defense, +10% from planning would be 110 attacks, which is 14 hits average, while +10% from tactics would be 100 attacks with an extra +10% damage, 11 'hits'.
That really complicates things. It looks like planning makes it easier to crit, and tactics makes critting hurt more. Defenders taking -25% from a tactic like ambush would greatly increase the staying power of anything, especially if they were unpierced tanks.

I just reread the wiki article on dealing damage. They use an example where a slightly understrength tank division attacks an infantry division resulting in this equation:

25 * 3.5 * 90% * 0.05 = 3.9 damage per hour

25 is avg expected hits, 3.5 is avg dmg per attack due to the tanks getting armor bonus, the tanks are slightly underequippied so dmg is reduced by .9, and then the 0.05 is a constant from some defines list for org dmg.

Where does a tactics damage modifier fit in? As they are decimal values, simply multiplying them by the rest of the formula would reduce damage significantly.

Are they applied to the 3.5 value after the fact? Any tank division which cannot be piereced but pierces everything does 3.5 dmg per roll on average, so I'd expect this to be changed. If this tank division has only 1 tactic available which does 20% attacker dmg, this would increase 3.5 to 4.2.

25 * 4.2 * 90% * 0.05 = 4.725 damage per hour, a 35% 20% increase.
 
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a 35% increase.
I'm not sure how you're getting 35%. 4.725 is +20% of 3.9375, which is the amount of damage for those 25 hits you would expect.

The tactics damage modifier applies just like that damage reduction from having suffered damage in the combat. I wonder if it is multiplicative with that modifier, or if it is additive. Who knows. Probably @bitmode
 
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I'm not sure how you're getting 35%. 4.725 is +20% of 3.9375, which is the amount of damage for those 25 hits you would expect.

The tactics damage modifier applies just like that damage reduction from having suffered damage in the combat. I wonder if it is multiplicative with that modifier, or if it is additive. Who knows. Probably @bitmode
You're right, I messed up and compared my dmg output to 3.5 instead of the 3.9