Halftracks and armoured cars

[Jorgen_CAB]

The main reason I believe for abstracting trucks into generic equipment was becasue almost all infantry used at least some trucks, some more than others.

German infantry divisions had trucks to move some of their heavier equipment and supplies but used allot of horse drawn carriers.

The UK had very good coverage of trucks for their division while US relied a little more on rotating trucks where needed, they still had plenty of trucks though.

The Japanese were more like German infantry but with even less trucks overall, both for organic transportation and in the supply chain.

Chinese had even less trucks than the Japanese and lacked quite allot in their supply chain as well.

In any way, trucks were so common and were present in every division in some form they you might as well abstract them away. It's not like they would be very interesting to design and you would only produce them in low numbers in comparison to how many you would use overal in all the branches of your military.

The half-truck was special in that they were almost exclusively used as either personnel carriers or fitted with support weapons, so they warrant more special attention.

I'm not sure about armoured cars though and how they will be handled, but they also blur with light armour and mechanized equipment.

 

[Axe99]

One thing to keep in mind is this whole equipment set-up is a huge change of approach for HoI, so I would expect things to evolve over time. It may well be that after the game's had some time put into it, that it looks like working trucks in would make sense, but given the size of the change at this stage, implementing a phased approach, and testing trucks later when there's time isn't a bad way to do it. We're getting a _heap_ more than we had in previous HoI's with this new system just on first release - give it time to evolve (and be modded/etc and who knows where it could take us (personally, I'm hoping we get trucks at some stage, and armoured cars as well, but it doesn't need either in separate production lines to be a great game ).

 

[Gratch11]

The important part for me is that I can capture trucks, and armoured cars(if not single equipment) tp make new units. Germany used a lot of french trucks to make new mot divisions, also mech tractors were used to make SP guns etc.

 

[Mabzie555]

No armored car techs?

 

[Porkman]

Don't go out of your way to be a jerk, please. Just trying to ask a question, here.

He's quoting podcat who said that to me in another thread when I was upset that infra wasn't going to be on the map. (It's why it's in quotes)

That said, abstracting trucks into general equipment is a bad idea. I worry that this is going to lead to a WAD bug from HOI2 where upgrading normal infantry led to it having to use fuel at the 1945 model. If you read '44 AAR's, you'd have Japanese and German players refusing to research 1945 infantry because they didn't want to lose all of their fuel to the voracious demands of the leg infantry.

Whether or not to use motorized logistical support, horse drawn logistical support, or no logistical support, was a very important choice made by each army based on their tech base, theater of operation, and fuel supply. I don't like that the Devs are abstracting it out.

This also makes it harder to do the Axis and Allied minors right. Why is a Hungarian or Romanian division worse than a German one? Some of it's down to doctrine and training, but a lot of it is inferior equipment. For example, a Hungarian division in 1942 had 15000 men while a German one had 16500. They seem comparable, but a German division had 75 antitank guns to the Hungarian 40, while the Hungarians had only 24 pieces of light artillery of all types and the Germans had 3 times that amount. A German division had 500 trucks and a whole lot more horses, all of the Hungarian trucks were diverted to their armored formations.

Also, as SniperTianhao pointed out earlier, Chinese divisions didn't have trucks. (Or to be more accurate, about 10 divisions out of 300 had any trucks.)

When this comes out, someone needs to mod it so that a basic infantry division has 4 components: Basic equipment (guns and machine guns), logistics equipment (trucks, horses or nothing), anti-Tank weapons, and light artillery.

This way we can have an actual historical war where the equipment disparity between the minors and the majors can be well represented as well as allowing the majors to buff up the minors by sending them advanced equipment.

 

[Wyrm]

And what about armored cars? are they lumped in with mech? i personally liked throwing in armored cars with my mot divisions is that out of the game now?
Well as far as I know I haven't seen anything about this but I'm just a little worried that the new interesting system will as a result lead to a reduction of actual units.

George parr: I think its not necessarily more inf eq but more specific inf eq, so mot inf eq instead of inf eq atleast I think it was laid out like that, if i am incorrect please do correct me.

Since recon elements seems to be part a part of divisions i'd say armoured cars is a must have

 

[Mabzie555]

I really hope regular infantry and MOT infantry will be separate. I.e. Foot inf not requiring trucks and fuel.
Yes, foot infantry did often use trucks for transport at times but it seems like a system like this in game would cause far more problems than it would benefits.

As for armored cars, wtf.

How can you have an in-depth WW2 game without armored cars?

I loved armored cars in hoi3, and will be extremely disappointed if they're not in hoi4.

 

[1alexey]

I am guessing that anything inf related will be an equipment style that we need to produce or a quantity of 1 generic equipment needed to equip infantry units rather than seperate production lines.

So regular Inf requires 10 generic equipment
mot inf requires 15 generic equipment
mec requires 20 generic equipment

As I say this is only a guess

We don't know how many production lines we will be able to run atm as we have only seen alpha screen shots so factories per production line mean nothing atm.

We have seen production lines for tanks,artillery and planes.

Armoured cars I cant see them having there own production lines personally.

Or maybe something along the lines of:
Infantry: 20 inf. eq.
Motorized: 20 inf. eq. + 10 *mechanized* equipment
Mechanized: 20 inf. eq. + 40 *mechanized* equipment

I know, I know, K-rations and toilet paper are probably considered supply usage. I'm just being humorous. Trucks are abstracted with rifles, machine guns, mortars, helmets, uniforms, boots, etc.

And what is the "Mechanized" equipment line supposed to represent if not trucks and APCs?

 

[AmpsterMan]

No. Trucks are not in the game in that sense. If trucks were in the game like that, you could give a division 100 trucks (for example) and it would be considered semi-motorized with a speed of 6. Or you could give that same division 200 trucks and it would be considered motorized with a speed of 8. But trucks are not in the game like that. Since trucks are abstracted with regular infantry equipment, you would equip either a foot infantry division or a motorized infantry division. The foot infantry division would require 100 infantry equipment kits and the motorized division would requite 200 infantry equipment kits.

Heh. So a MOT and MECH will be seperate brigae types that just have a higher supply cost? can see why some people are disapointed with that. Being a veritable WW2 newb, I myself am a bit disapointed; woulda been cool to have an "engine" tech that increases speed or an "efficiency" tech that increaes range; or a "capacity" tech, decreasing trucks needed per unit. Oh well...

 

[Kovax]

It appears that MOT and MEC will simply require more "basic infantry equipment".
....so does that mean the division moves 100% faster because everyone has to carry twice as much basic infantry equipment?

I'm confused.

As for half-tracks and Armored Cars, Germany managed to blur the line between them quite nicely. There was at least one version of the SdKfz. 250 half-track factory-fitted with the same Czech-designed turret as used on the PzKw.35(t), essentially a half-tracked AC.

 

[tommylotto]

Or maybe something along the lines of:
Infantry: 20 inf. eq.
Motorized: 20 inf. eq. + 10 *mechanized* equipment
Mechanized: 20 inf. eq. + 40 *mechanized* equipment


And what is the "Mechanized" equipment line supposed to represent if not trucks and APCs?

That is interesting. You might be right. In fact, if you are not right, I like your idea better -- put a division's truck requirement in the mech equipment basket. However, if I recall correctly, I remember a comment by Podcat that gave me the impression that trucks were part of the infantry kit, and the mechanized cost was just for mechanized infantry. Furthermore, the example above came from a division with two mechanized battalions and two motorized battalions. I assumed the placeholder cost per battalion was 100 so two Mech Bn. required 200 mech equipment, but that is just an assumption. I hope you are right though.

 

[Gratch11]

"Why is a Hungarian or Romanian division worse than a German one? Some of it's down to doctrine and training, but a lot of it is inferior equipment. For example, a Hungarian division in 1942 had 15000 men while a German one had 16500. They seem comparable, but a German division had 75 antitank guns to the Hungarian 40, while the Hungarians had only 24 pieces of light artillery of all types and the Germans had 3 times that amount. A German division had 500 trucks and a whole lot more horses, all of the Hungarian trucks were diverted to their armored formations. "

I remember when I first got interested in ww2 I just thought italy and most axis minors were terrible but the fact is that the soldiers really were not that bad, they just had terrible equipment and logistics.

So think about the statement above when u play

 

[Kovax]

"Why is a Hungarian or Romanian division worse than a German one? Some of it's down to doctrine and training, but a lot of it is inferior equipment. For example, a Hungarian division in 1942 had 15000 men while a German one had 16500. They seem comparable, but a German division had 75 antitank guns to the Hungarian 40, while the Hungarians had only 24 pieces of light artillery of all types and the Germans had 3 times that amount. A German division had 500 trucks and a whole lot more horses, all of the Hungarian trucks were diverted to their armored formations. "

Also note that the 40 AT guns in a Hungarian division were largely a mix of 37mm and 25mm, while the German AT equivalent began with a mix of 50mm and 37mm, and was slowly replacing the 37mm guns with 75mm. That explains in part why Hungarian troops did nearly as well as their German allies against Soviet infantry, despite the shortage of artillery, but had serious trouble dealing with Soviet armor. Bulgarian and most Romanian divisions were even less well equipped, and generally had poorer training on top of that. At that point, determination and morale aren't enough.

 

[dav77-b]

I cant wait to build a full german mech army