How do I know which stats are important and how high do i need them?

[Khaali]

Ok, so after my latest question of how many lines of tanks do you use, i tried designing some tanks.

I came quickly to the conclusion that i dont know how strong my tanks need to be. Of course i could just look at various threads on how strong they need to be and i could like play a game to the end, look at the enemies divisions and then use that knowledge for my next game as i know the enemy will have x armor and y defense and so on.

But what if i want to find it out myself (ingame) and during the course of the game? How is the process of achieving this?

One approach is the usage of spy planes? I am currently in the process of researching them, so i could utilize them, but i am not sure if i get the right answers to know how strong the divisions of the enemy is.


But then there is still the process of designing an individual tank and looking at the stats of an individual tank, but i use them in a division of many tanks. How do i know that if i for example design a tank with a breakthrough of 70 that it will be overall enough breakthrough in the division?



This may sound stupid to some and i understand more or less how the stats work, however i am missing basically how i put them all together. Like, is my approach top down and decide on how strong my division is suppossed to be and then break it down towards each individual tank? Or is my design bottom up and i look what a reasonable tank is and then put them together with tank destroyers and arty until my division is strong enough?
The top down method sounds more intuitive to me, however when i want e.g. 120 armor and 800 breakthrough in my division, how do i know how strong each tank needs to be?

Having infantry, tanks, SPGs, and Tank destroyers often in one division makes it difficult to break down on where to put the lever. Like, is my tank destroyer strong enough? Do i have enough infrantry, or maybe to much? I understand that i can look that all up on external ressources, but i want to like learn it myself so i can adjust better to future changes in the meta and because i am not so much of a big fan of always needing to tab out of the game to search the internet for appropriate division design, and appropriate tank design and so on.

Hope someone can help me find a good structure to build divisions/tanks

Thank you in advance

Kind regards

Khalli

 

[Gort11]

Well, a lot of the stats on a tank are in the "get as much of this as possible" bracket. Like, you'll never be sorry your tank has too much soft attack, you'll just melt enemy infantry divisions.

The main stat you need to be sure of is armour. You need to have enough that your division will not be pierced by the divisions it most commonly faces. This might mean an infantry division with attached AA guns, or an infantry division with attached AT. The easiest way to investigate this is to cheat. Load up a 1939 start as Germany, bring down the console with the button to the left of 1 on your keyboard, and type xp 500. You'll then have 500 land xp to build divisions and design tanks with, and you can see how much armour they end up with.

The harder way is to do the maths. The armour of a division consists of two parts. The first part is 40% of the armour of the most heavily armoured battalion in the division, so you can exploit this by having one very heavily armoured battalion in every division. The second part is 60% of the average armour of the division.

So for example, let's say we have a division with one heavy tank battalion with 100 armour, four medium tank battalions with 50 armour, and five motorised battalions with 0 armour. The first part of the armour is 40% of the heavy tank, for 40 armour. The second part of the armour is 60% of the average armour of the division, which is (100 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0)/10, or 30. So the total armour for the division is 70.

 

[Khaali]

Well, a lot of the stats on a tank are in the "get as much of this as possible" bracket. Like, you'll never be sorry your tank has too much soft attack, you'll just melt enemy infantry divisions.

Ah, ok thanks for the armor maths. Calculating every division would be to much work, obviously, but at least knowing the formula is good to guess the amount.

Regarding the part i quoted above however, that was my biggest problem i had previously. I have the habit of wanting to build the "best" tank with the best upgrades. The one tank which shoots everyone else to pieces and comes out without even scratches. The problem was, however, that i designed that tank full of proud and once the war started i had like 3 of them.

Yes, there is no thing like too much soft attack, however there is "this tank costs too much production and it needs to be cheaper." That is the point i am trying to solve. Building expensive, powerful tanks is easy. I did that previously always in HOI4 and was wondering why i am not having enough tanks, ships etc.
Now i am trying to build efficient tanks. But that i am able to build efficient tanks, i need to understand how it works together and not just look up other desing and copy them.

 

[Corpse Fool]

The top down method sounds more intuitive to me, however when i want e.g. 120 armor and 800 breakthrough in my division, how do i know how strong each tank needs to be?

Part of the top down would also be portioning off some part of the template to things you know you're going to need. You know you need/want some sort of infantry in the template to give HP/org/defense, make a decision how much. In a 42w template some people are having as many as 10 mot/mek, which only leaves 11 'tank' slots that you have to generate the total stats you want the template to have. The higher your target breakthrough/attacks is and the less space you're allowing the tanks to take up in the template, the more you're stress you're going to have to put on the design to meet those goals.

 

[Cavalry]

Usually the armor, piercing, AA, Org, defense is what you need to check. Start with a good base template, then use criteria if you want to change.

For example, good base 20w tank template: 5 med tank - 5 MOT; support Art, support R.art, Eng, support AA, MOT or Armor recon.

Criteria of medium tank divisions:
Armor defeat piercing of majority enemy infantry
Piercing defeat enemy medium armor division
Breakthought bigger than 2 enemy 20w infantry's attack.
Org over 30.
Defense is reasonable (ignore it for now)

Use your own template design to check if you don't see enemy armor and piercing yet. If you find the piercing is too slow, then you can add support AT or MOT AT gun.