Has anyone had success using wheeled or half-track tanks?

[Supremeleaderpies]

Ive messed around a bit with them, but never tried focusing on making a cheap inf support tank or something of the sort.

im pretty sure the forums consensus is that they aren't useful due to the hardness stat, i was just curious if this has changed at all

was curious if anyone had tried or found success using them? especially now with MIOs it seems as some countries might be able to make use of them.

now this is in regards to single player. obviously this isnt in any way going to work for mp

 

[Cavalry]

they cost xp at early game and reduce hardness and may require more tech.
In old patches the easiest way for minor to use tank is just use 1 tank battalion with leg infantry or cavarly, and use cheaper auto cannon gun or machine gun.

 

[Xephos Demonslayer]

I mean, since stats essentially don't matter for flame tanks since they're a support battalion you only use for the attack modifiers they apply to the whole division, yeah, you should probably use wheels or half-tracks to save on production cost, but only if you have the EXP to spare for making the switch. Otherwise, a tank's three most useful stats are armor (to avoid damage), breakthrough (to punch through enemy lines so you can make encirclements), and hardness (a modifier for how much soft-attack damage they do/don't take). Non-tracked means of locomotion screws your hardness, meaning normal infantry can do more damage to your tanks, which defeats the entire point of tanks (to punch through inf with minimal damage due to its hardness and armor). So basically, for anything that's not a flame tank, you'd almost certainly be better off with a tracked suspension, unless you really, really, really need to save on production cost for some reason.

Though looking on the wiki, non-tracked suspension also lowers reliability, which means you're also losing more equipment in the long run, which might honestly also make it not worth using. Again, you can probably get away with it for flame tanks, since you can get as many as you need with like only 2-4 mils on them, but that's about it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

light spg with wheels can mount up to improved medium howitzer, same for td with improved medium cannon. for about 2/3 the cost of a medium, you trade away breakthrough but still have the gun. light spg with the techs for improved medium howitzer + mounting that are only a little behind just spamming howitzer mediums in terms of soft attack, but due to the lower vehicle cost and fewer vehicles per width, are significantly cheaper.

these are legit single player tanks, because you can get enough breakthrough to prevent crits as long as you also have a tank design made for that specifically and put a few in divs. you can also build efficiency on them using improved light chassis on '36 technology, so you can make tons if you want.

i imagine interwar light td on wheels with high vel. cannon or improved high vel. cannon mixed with infantry wouldn't be very fun for tanks to attack. you can make these for not that much more production cost than line at. or even just give them improved medium cannon with squeeze bore and such so that when infantry divs hit them, you're still getting healthy soft damage per width. quite bad on offense though due to almost no hardness and low breakthrough...but hey, probably still better offensively than line at, especially if using the improved med cannon.

Otherwise, a tank's three most useful stats are armor (to avoid damage), breakthrough (to punch through enemy lines so you can make encirclements), and hardness (a modifier for how much soft-attack damage they do/don't take).

concentrating damage output is more important than literally any of these. if you can't concentrate damage, you also can't move the enemy divisons, and there's no point in making tanks.

armor remains very expensive to chase. breakthrough and hardness are both useful, but secondary to the tank div's ability to do damage and create encirclements quickly. these stats help sustain. there's no point to sustaining "no damage".

 

[Fatallight]

The hardness might be a huge problem for a light tank division but you might consider the impact when using them as a supporting element in an infantry division.

Changing the light SP artillery in a motorized infantry division to wheeled or half track only lowers the hardness by a few percentage points while still providing an increase over motorized artillery. Considering the division's defense is already pretty high, it won't make much of a difference in most situations but it will allow you to more widely use them within your forces. Same with TDs and AA.

To your point about MIOs, I don't think they change the calculus too much in this case since their bonuses apply to both tracked and half-tracked tanks. Maybe some reliability boosts there might help mitigate the lower reliability of half-tracks but that's probably it.

 

[Secret Master]

light spg with wheels can mount up to improved medium howitzer, same for td with improved medium cannon.

I wouldn't waste time with SPART right now.

It uses 3 width and has a fairly high supply draw for a single battalion. So, this SPG might look decent:

It creates a battalion that looks like this:

It also requires chromium and tungsten to attain these stats spread out over 3 width.

Let's take a different approach:

No chromium and no tungsten cost. Also significantly cheaper and has actual breakthrough. And more hardness. And much lower supply draw. Most countries that start with IW tank tech can build this tank from day 1 as well. The improved howitzer requires quite a bit of research and doesn't come online anytime soon.

And it only uses 2 width:

Now, because the cheap light tank can't mount the howitzer, it does have less firepower per width than the SPG version, but I think it wins out as a cheap AFV that I can just make with off the shelf tech in 1936. Slap it into some foot infantry divisions, and the Soviets should be able to literally put 1 of these in all 300 rifle divisions by Barbarossa. Those production lines are going to be running non-stop for years. And I won't have to import tungsten or chromium for this design. (Which is relevant to a number of countries.)

If you can't tell, when it comes to tanks in foot infantry formations, I'm a firm believer in the following design criteria:

1) Can I build it using day 1 techs?
2) Can I keep the production lines running forever on maximum production efficiency?
3) Can I minimize resource usage for resources I lack?
4) Can I build it during 1936-1937 period as an expansionist country that "acquires" MIC from neighbors while I wait for better techs for real tanks and real planes? (Germany and Japan, I'm looking at you.)

 

[blahmaster6k]

I mean, since stats essentially don't matter for flame tanks since they're a support battalion you only use for the attack modifiers they apply to the whole division, yeah, you should probably use wheels or half-tracks to save on production cost,

You should never use light tanks for flame tank support. Medium flame tanks have much better terrain bonuses compared to light flame tanks(and heavy flame tanks), so use those instead. Medium flame tanks can't use wheeled or half-tracked suspensions, so unfortunately this isn't a good use case for them.

If you absolutely have no other option than to use light flame tanks, then by all means go wheeled. But I would try to use mediums if at all possible. Here's a chart of all the attack bonuses from flame tanks:

	Forest	Hills	Mountains	Urban	Jungle	Marsh	Fort	River	Amphibious
Light Flame Tank	5%	5%	5%	10%	10%	5%	10%	10%	10%
Medium Flame Tank	10%	5%	5%	15%	15%	5%	20%	10%	10%
Heavy Flame Tank	10%	5%	--	10%	10%	5%	25%	5%	5%

 

[goodcigar]

Is there a wheeled or half track "Tank" irl in WW2?

 

[Ringwraith_JP]

Is there a wheeled or half track "Tank" irl in WW2?

Do the M3 GMC and the Sdkfz 251/22 count? They were TDs, iirc.

 

[LordWahu]

I personally suspect those were leftovers from when Motorized and Mechanized equipment was going to be part of the designer

Somewhere down the line that plan got scrapped, but the modules remain

 

[goodcigar]

I personally suspect those were leftovers from when Motorized and Mechanized equipment was going to be part of the designer

Somewhere down the line that plan got scrapped, but the modules remain

Halftracks are kinda pointless in the game because HOI4 doesn't model Road networks, Road speed, Off-road speed, Cross-country speed, vehicle ground pressure, etc. So they don't have much of a role or serve much of a purpose in HOI4.

 

[Herennius]

I personally suspect those were leftovers from when Motorized and Mechanized equipment was going to be part of the designer

Somewhere down the line that plan got scrapped, but the modules remain

Correct...and the devs also said that they are fond of the idea to extend the tank designer one day in that direction

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I wouldn't waste time with SPART right now.

It uses 3 width and has a fairly high supply draw for a single battalion. So, this SPG might look decent:

View attachment 1050827

It creates a battalion that looks like this:

View attachment 1050828


It also requires chromium and tungsten to attain these stats spread out over 3 width.

Let's take a different approach:

View attachment 1050830

No chromium and no tungsten cost. Also significantly cheaper and has actual breakthrough. And more hardness. And much lower supply draw. Most countries that start with IW tank tech can build this tank from day 1 as well. The improved howitzer requires quite a bit of research and doesn't come online anytime soon.

And it only uses 2 width:

View attachment 1050837

Now, because the cheap light tank can't mount the howitzer, it does have less firepower per width than the SPG version, but I think it wins out as a cheap AFV that I can just make with off the shelf tech in 1936. Slap it into some foot infantry divisions, and the Soviets should be able to literally put 1 of these in all 300 rifle divisions by Barbarossa. Those production lines are going to be running non-stop for years. And I won't have to import tungsten or chromium for this design. (Which is relevant to a number of countries.)

If you can't tell, when it comes to tanks in foot infantry formations, I'm a firm believer in the following design criteria:

1) Can I build it using day 1 techs?
2) Can I keep the production lines running forever on maximum production efficiency?
3) Can I minimize resource usage for resources I lack?
4) Can I build it during 1936-1937 period as an expansionist country that "acquires" MIC from neighbors while I wait for better techs for real tanks and real planes? (Germany and Japan, I'm looking at you.)

you can build up efficiency on spg right away too (same gun at first), swapping gun is almost no hit to it. we're also comparing 60 vehicles per 2w to 50 vehicles per 3, hence the production per width only favors the close support guns a little bit.

i think wheel howitzer is better on a budget tank div than with infantry though, and you just put mech and breakthrough tanks in with that too. weaker but cheaper tank div, but at least it's significantly cheaper.

the more toxic thing to put with infantry is probably at designation with high vel or medium cannons + squeeze bore. medium cannon still hurts infantry that attacks a bunch and has both hard attack and piercing for opposing tanks. i don't think howitzer lights have much place against players, but these might if "space marine" got unbanned. i could picture them finding their way into roach builds, and at the end of the day improved medium cannons can still do healthy damage to infantry offensively when it comes time for a counter-offensive, even if the breakthrough isn't very good.

 

[Dalnar]

You can create some very cheap light SPGs with the tank mass producing MIO if you have access to it. But imho, it's usually waste of tungsten. Now if you are content with close support gun or automatic cannon (+secondary cannon), that can yield some nice 'steel only' models that you can mass produce in thousands, mechanized chasis or not.

 

[Xephos Demonslayer]

light spg with wheels can mount up to improved medium howitzer, same for td with improved medium cannon. for about 2/3 the cost of a medium, you trade away breakthrough but still have the gun. light spg with the techs for improved medium howitzer + mounting that are only a little behind just spamming howitzer mediums in terms of soft attack, but due to the lower vehicle cost and fewer vehicles per width, are significantly cheaper.

these are legit single player tanks, because you can get enough breakthrough to prevent crits as long as you also have a tank design made for that specifically and put a few in divs. you can also build efficiency on them using improved light chassis on '36 technology, so you can make tons if you want.

i imagine interwar light td on wheels with high vel. cannon or improved high vel. cannon mixed with infantry wouldn't be very fun for tanks to attack. you can make these for not that much more production cost than line at. or even just give them improved medium cannon with squeeze bore and such so that when infantry divs hit them, you're still getting healthy soft damage per width. quite bad on offense though due to almost no hardness and low breakthrough...but hey, probably still better offensively than line at, especially if using the improved med cannon.


concentrating damage output is more important than literally any of these. if you can't concentrate damage, you also can't move the enemy divisons, and there's no point in making tanks.

armor remains very expensive to chase. breakthrough and hardness are both useful, but secondary to the tank div's ability to do damage and create encirclements quickly. these stats help sustain. there's no point to sustaining "no damage".

You should never use light tanks for flame tank support. Medium flame tanks have much better terrain bonuses compared to light flame tanks(and heavy flame tanks), so use those instead. Medium flame tanks can't use wheeled or half-tracked suspensions, so unfortunately this isn't a good use case for them.

If you absolutely have no other option than to use light flame tanks, then by all means go wheeled. But I would try to use mediums if at all possible. Here's a chart of all the attack bonuses from flame tanks:

	Forest	Hills	Mountains	Urban	Jungle	Marsh	Fort	River	Amphibious
Light Flame Tank	5%	5%	5%	10%	10%	5%	10%	10%	10%
Medium Flame Tank	10%	5%	5%	15%	15%	5%	20%	10%	10%
Heavy Flame Tank	10%	5%	--	10%	10%	5%	25%	5%	5%

Tried a Finland game recently. Apparently I know jack-sxxx, because I went and tried making a couple small light SPG divisions with wheeled suspension, with light flame tanks with wheeled suspension and dozer blades as well. I think I got production cost down to around 4 and a half, and managed to field 6 divisions of them by the time I was closing in on Moscow and Germany started Barbarossa. Finland gets enough ludicrous army bonuses that my infantry with support AA could pierce their tanks, so I realistically only needed my super budget tanks for stacking soft-attack and speed to punch through strongpoints and make small encirclements. Worked like a dream, so I'll admit I was pretty wrong with my initial assumptions and my prior personal experience had misled me.

So wheeled suspension and other bonuses to stack lowering production cost to make super-cheap SPG and Light Flame tanks (I am aware mediums are better, but when you're a country like Finland you only have so much research and industry you can put to use by the time a major comes knocking). That being said, after killing the Soviets and quadrupling my industrial capacity, I could actually afford to switch off super-cheapo-mode for tank production and instead shifted to making some super speedy boys with tons of soft-attack with med flame tank support.

So thanks for the advice. I learned a lot from this thread.

 

[Caeric]

Tried a Finland game recently. Apparently I know jack-sxxx, because I went and tried making a couple small light SPG divisions with wheeled suspension, with light flame tanks with wheeled suspension and dozer blades as well. I think I got production cost down to around 4 and a half, and managed to field 6 divisions of them by the time I was closing in on Moscow and Germany started Barbarossa. Finland gets enough ludicrous army bonuses that my infantry with support AA could pierce their tanks, so I realistically only needed my super budget tanks for stacking soft-attack and speed to punch through strongpoints and make small encirclements. Worked like a dream, so I'll admit I was pretty wrong with my initial assumptions and my prior personal experience had misled me.

So wheeled suspension and other bonuses to stack lowering production cost to make super-cheap SPG and Light Flame tanks (I am aware mediums are better, but when you're a country like Finland you only have so much research and industry you can put to use by the time a major comes knocking). That being said, after killing the Soviets and quadrupling my industrial capacity, I could actually afford to switch off super-cheapo-mode for tank production and instead shifted to making some super speedy boys with tons of soft-attack with med flame tank support.

So thanks for the advice. I learned a lot from this thread.

You can probably just use the interwar medium you get from the very first tank research if you want ultra-cheap in both research and resources.

 

[Xephos Demonslayer]

You can probably just use the interwar medium you get from the very first tank research if you want ultra-cheap in both research and resources.

I think more modern light tanks go a little faster, and I wanted every ounce of horsepower I could squeeze out of them to counter enemy air-superiority maluses. I could dedicate one slot to armor by the time the Winter War kicked off, but not more than that. I'll keep interwars for even cheaper budget SPG in mind though. Maybe when I get around to an Estonia or Latvia game (Because who in their right mind doesn't go commonwealth as Lithuania for all that Polish manpower and industry?)...

 

[Caeric]

I think more modern light tanks go a little faster, and I wanted every ounce of horsepower I could squeeze out of them to counter enemy air-superiority maluses. I could dedicate one slot to armor by the time the Winter War kicked off, but not more than that. I'll keep interwars for even cheaper budget SPG in mind though.

I don't think that matters for flame tanks as a support company as mediums give a better bonus.

 

[Xephos Demonslayer]

I don't think that matters for flame tanks as a support company

I'm running off of 4 hours of sleep RN, so that didn't occur to me. I was using Light Tank 1 for my flame supports, tho. Will probably downgrade to interwar for even less IC on future runs.

 

[blahmaster6k]

I think more modern light tanks go a little faster, and I wanted every ounce of horsepower I could squeeze out of them to counter enemy air-superiority maluses. I could dedicate one slot to armor by the time the Winter War kicked off, but not more than that. I'll keep interwars for even cheaper budget SPG in mind though. Maybe when I get around to an Estonia or Latvia game (Because who in their right mind doesn't go commonwealth as Lithuania for all that Polish manpower and industry?)...

If you're wanting to make up for enemy air superiority, two battalions of motorized AA (more efficient air attack per width than SPAA) will cover your bases without needing any research other than trucks and basic AA guns.