HOI4 Piercing/Armor Reference Table

[Secret Master]

It does but by long term I mean weeks/months over a front.

It makes a difference over the course of days once the supply grace period runs out.

Against the AI it's simply not as visible, since the AI is not that tenacious. But against a semi-competent human, it's a bigger factor.

 

[KiwiNoob]

It makes a difference over the course of days once the supply grace period runs out.

Against the AI it's simply not as visible, since the AI is not that tenacious. But against a semi-competent human, it's a bigger factor.

85% of games are against the AI and having no supply is a different issue to suggesting armor/piercing has a middle tier bonus/malice for when the values are very similar.

 

[Secret Master]

85% of games are against the AI

Which goes back to my earlier point that the complaint really seems to be that the AI is bad, not that the mechanic is bad.

 

[KiwiNoob]

Which goes back to my earlier point that the complaint really seems to be that the AI is bad, not that the mechanic is bad.

Not really. As mentioned in an earlier post this has two components.

1 - The current mechanic is too broad (on/off), isn't intuitive and is unrealistic. Splitting it into 3 levels (easily pierces, on-par/trouble piercing, cannot pierce) makes a lot more sense and would make the interaction between ARM divisions and AT more interesting.

2 - The AI is poked.​

However I'm focused on item 1 because the AI is bad at most things and the change makes sense regardless of the AI.

The maximum armor bonus should be for divisions with a good chunk more armor than the oppositions piercing. Having a difference of 0.1 and getting the max bonus doesn;t make sense.

 

[Praetori]

If there was a very small difference it might mean you can pierce at 300m instead of 500m. This does put you at a slight disadvantage but nowhere near the current malus that represents being unable to pierce at all.

To be fair those differences are too small to even begin to matter in a GSG. While it would be nice to have everything modeled or simulated through various mechanics it would even out even on the operational level and make such mechanics quite superfluous (definitely so on the GSG level). The relative differences here are more along the line of a 37mm gun being sub-optimal for dealing with Tigers and will thus be a lot less effective. And in a binary way since those guns, in order to contribute, would have to be restricted in deployment to very specific conditions to be of use whereas a 75mm or 88 could be placed on high ground with good fields of fire and the armor would instead be forced to restrict their operations accordingly. The "granularity" lies within the different armor-trees and the tiers (of both armor and AT).
As piercing or armor doesn't linearly affect or directly translates to armor "losses" (indeed SA contributes a fair chunk on all but the lowest of softness-divisions) it wouldn't scale properly with more granularity. Even adding a "medium" level in between the current two could break the balance.

It does but by long term I mean weeks/months over a front. Not so much the immediate battle being fought. Equipment loss within a battle is usually not significant enough to make a large difference to that specific battle.

It does even out the small differences in piercing vs armor that you previously outlined though, and quite immediately. The ratio of equipment available to a specific division at any given time can make or break the bonus that particular battle for the given units involved, especially if it's touch and go in terms of stats.

 

[KiwiNoob]

No. We're not talking about 37mm guns and Tigers - that would result in a large difference between piercing and armor and the current bonus/malus makes sense.

We're talking about adding a few extra mm of effective armor and suddenly the armor division becomes immune to AT that was previously fine (or vice versa). Life doesn't work that way - nor should the game.

Equipment loss during a single battle does not often affect that particular battle in a significant way. If you want to go and get fringe cases where a small equipment loss makes the difference between being able to pierce and not then:

A) Those fringe cases make up such a massive minority that there is no point trying to base an argument off of them

B) Even if you do go with those examples it just proves my point. You lose one AT gun and suddenly all the others stop working entirely

If you actually think that it's good that a difference of 0.1 between armor and piercing to make such a massive difference then that's fine. But don't pretend that in any way it makes sense or reflects how things actually work.

 

[Sernista]

So is the complaint that there has to be a breakpoint in the system?

Because that's a simple matter of mechanical legibility. It provides a visible marker for "Does my unit have enough AT threat to keep the enemy tank formations honest", and vice versa.

Clean breakpoints mean that you have tangible goals to design around and metrics to check. The more sliding scales and blurriness you have, the harder it is to really see what's working out for you and what isn't. That way lies fatalistic apathy, because you might as well just throw shit together and hope for all the information you're getting. Clear information, on the other hand, lets you prepare. If you are fairly certain they'll have ~30 Armor, then you can budget for enough AT to get ~35 Piercing in your divisions (all numbers totally arbitrary for illustration only), and then in the field you'll be able to check and adjust your decision making to fit.

 

[KiwiNoob]

So is the complaint that there has to be a breakpoint in the system?

Because that's a simple matter of mechanical legibility. It provides a visible marker for "Does my unit have enough AT threat to keep the enemy tank formations honest", and vice versa.

Clean breakpoints mean that you have tangible goals to design around and metrics to check. The more sliding scales and blurriness you have, the harder it is to really see what's working out for you and what isn't.

Absolutely - however the goal is to find the right balance between too few breakpoints and too many. I don't see any issue with having 3 stages instead of 2 in either legibility or UI. But the mechanic would make more sense than it does right now.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Absolutely - however the goal is to find the right balance between too few breakpoints and too many. I don't see any issue with having 3 stages instead of 2 in either legibility or UI. But the mechanic would make more sense than it does right now.

Another level with a bit bigger penalties if you have say less then 10-20% of the required piercing ( no chance to pierce even from rear or even lighter vehicles ) could be useful to make having at least obsolete AT or low levels of piercing more of a requirement then it currently is.


There are some real problems in the UI though since the armor bonus is shown on the tank division, but in practice it's a penalty to attack of specific divisions targeting it. This means for example what symbol do you show when you have 2 enemy divisions that have no piercing ( getting the new max armor penalty ), 2 enemy divisions that have some piercing ( current armor penalty), and 1 enemy division that has great piercing ( can pierce )?

There are alot more combinations possible where symbols in use now wouldn't make much sense in the UI.

 

[KiwiNoob]

I agree that the current UI is a bit odd. Instead of an icon showing when a unit can pierce one or more armor divisions it would make more sense to have an icon showing when they cant.

So icons could be:

If a division is getting the full armor bonus = yellow shield (broken yellow if some enemy can fully pierce)
If a division is getting a partial armor bonus = green shield (broken green if some enemy can fully pierce)

If a division is facing one or more units they absolutely cant pierce = new 'no pierce' icon (with 'partial' option if they can pierce some enemy divisions - same sort of thing as the broken shield)
If a division is facing one or more units they have only partial piercing against = new 'partial pierce' icon (with 'partial')
(They could also just be the same icon with different colors)

And do away with the current piercing icon.


This way the icons are directly representing either bonuses or penalties for that specific division. Instead of the current 'piercing' icon which just tells you that the division is not suffereing a penalty which is a bit unintuitive. (If it's not suffereing a penalty then no icon)


Even without the extra tier of piercing penalty/bonus I think this would be clearer