Still not even remotely close to realistic.
Care to explain why it's not "remotely close to realistic" to expect that a tank can move very short distances at speeds the same as a fit rifleman can sprint short distance (12.7km/h)?
Tanks were valued for their mobility, due to being able to move faster then infantry, not due to being able to move slower!!! (including Heavy tanks).
The reason tanks has tracks to begin with was to be able to negotiate terrain quickly and effortlessly at near maximum speed.
I also love the way out of the 15,000 men only 100-300 make it to the front line yet the STUG's don't seem to suffer from the same low turnout.
In my example over a thousand men made it to the frontline since the numbers I used was a smaller section of the front (where roughly a company of the full battalion of AFVs were located).
And there is a very simple and real reason for not all men being able to be on the front in active fighting, but the STUGs can.
Namely that the STUGs don't have other jobs like a majority of the 15000 men in the division does, and can focus on being near the front fighting.
You don't need STUGs cooking food for the other STUGs, you don't need STUGs driving trucks to haul around stuff for the other STUGs and you don't need STUGs doing paperwork administration for the other STUGs. ( I could go on but I guess you get the point by now ).
Casualty numbers also support this. If you study WW2 closer and start look into how many % of the AFVs a division with good supply of them lost and how many % of their men they lost over X time you are going to find things like 200% AFVs lost and 20% men lost, indicating that the AFVs took 10 times as high casualties (and as such could be expected to be on average 10 times heavier involved in the fighting).
Using the above ratios directly we can assume 1500 men working in combat with the 24 TDs => 250 men for each 4 TDs, which is within my numbers.
Armor advantage isn't just 50% less attacks. It's 50% less damage, 50% less org loss and double org damage done. It's a massive bonus.
The tooltip is a bit unclear and actually also erroneous in this case. While specified as 50% less damage and 50% less org loss taken, damage reference is only to strength here, which means it's just 50% reduction of both ORG and Strength damage taken, not 25% damage done to your org (which it can be interpreted as).
Looking into the defines.lua specification of the extra ORG damage done what it actually does is replace a damage dice of 1-4 (average 2.5) with a dice of 1-6 (average 3.5) instead. That is an increase of +40% damage done, not "double damage"... ( The 50% reference in the tooltip is probably an oversight since a d6 has 50% higher max value then a d4 ).
No one denies that armor is an important advantage here, but it's still not as important as many of the other advantages that can be achieved by numerical superiority or other situational things like for example:
- up to +300% damage from attack values above BRK/DEF ( or up to -75% damage taken when your tanks increase your BRK )
- -80% damage taken from SA for a Heavy tank division with high percentage tanks and thus high hardness
- +300% higher SA for a division with alot of SPGs compared to one with a single TD
- -80% damage done from attacking over rivers into bad terrain
- +133% damage done by Veteran experience divisions compared to what green untrained divisions do
- 3 vs 1 equal divisions can win taking only 11% as much damage each as in 1 vs 1
- Forts reducing damage by up to -99%
- Planning bonus can give over +100% damage on attack with certain doctrines
This is a game of many massive advantages, and armor is just one of many important modifiers. I have both defeated players divisions that I can't hope pierce, or won devastating victories with tank divisions my enemy can easily pierce in so many situations in this game in MP due to utilizing these other advantages ( partially or fully ).
In a recent MP game I played Germany using only Light tank divisions with 1936 model equipment that were easily pierced and won through flooding the Soviet player with 40 mobile divisions in 1940. His infantry being able to pierce them didn't help him at all when my tank divisions moved at 13km/h with great breakthrough, decent hardness and great soft attacks. After 2 months the tanks were in Moscow having 80-90% of the Soviet army encircled and doomed. I've never won any victory even close to as devastating as this when my tank divisions had armor advantage.
When it comes to SP I am sure that you have even more opportunities to use the other advantages then you do in MP as well ( just the same as with the armor advantage ).
Yes, the idea of a handful of tanks providing a magical armored shield to the masses of infantry is absurd. Men don't become bulletproof just because there's a tank sitting a kilometer away.
But it's also absurd to imagine that a state of the art heavy tank would have its own armor riddled with holes just because it is serving in a division with infantry. Tank armor doesn't become thinner just because they're close to soft, fleshy bodies.
This is a good summary of the situation. Tanks divisions already lose hardness when you add infantry to the divisions though, so IMO it doesn't make sense for them to lose significant amounts of their armor as well. This would just make unhistorical divisions with massed tanks and as little mobile infantry as you can get away with an even bigger requirement then it already is.
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