How do you handle tank building? Only one tank? Multiple different tanks?

[Khaali]

Hello peoples,

i havent played so much with the tank designer, but nevertheless i was always wondering how is the best way to use it.

For example lets just take medium tanks and also disregard Artillery and Anti Air or Anti Tanks Tanks.


Lets assume you have 20 factories for producing tanks:

Do you have always only one line of tank production with 20 mils and then replacing that one line of tank when you get e.g. a new gun?


Or do you have different lines of tanks? For example having 15 mils for a dirt cheap medium tank and then 5 mils for that high tech medium tank, where the cheap tank goes to the bulk of my armored division and the strong medium tank goes only to a couple of special division which i use for e.g. breakthrough



The reason why i am asking is that the game wants me to act like my second suggestion and go even further, building special tank for special occasion, but when i read around the forums and watch videos on youtube i get the feeling that the best strategy is just to churn out one kind of tank and use it for everything.


Insight is greatly appreciated (not neccessarily on multiplayer or "metabuilds")

 

[Cavalry]

Most of the midle powers, 3 slot research like Greece can have two tank line, light and medium, or light and heavy. But I don't recommend heavy for minors, too costly on IC now armor is easy to boost.

 

[The Colonel]

Most of the midle powers, 3 slot research like Greece can have two tank line, light and medium, or light and heavy. But I don't recommend heavy for minors, too costly on IC now armor is easy to boost.

I would basically never recommend mixing tank chassis types for any tag past like 1937 (since you might be producing some light tanks just to cover losses in volunteers while building mediums/heavies for the war). I would never recommend it for minors, you simply cannot afford to split production and research and there is no good reason to mix chassis types in general.

 

[Cavalry]

I would basically never recommend mixing tank chassis types for any tag past like 1937 (since you might be producing some light tanks just to cover losses in volunteers while building mediums/heavies for the war). I would never recommend it for minors, you simply cannot afford to split production and research and there is no good reason to mix chassis types in general.

a new medium tank battalion will boost armor of obsolete light tank division. Several medium tank battalion will lower the cost of heavy tank division. But for now, i use light tank for the important armored recon.

 

[blahmaster6k]

a new medium tank battalion will boost armor of obsolete light tank division. Several medium tank battalion will lower the cost of heavy tank division. But for now, i use light tank for the important armored recon.

A new medium tank battalion is best off in its own division without any light tanks at all. Heavy tanks are best in divisions without any medium tanks to lower their armor, since that's the whole point of heavy tanks in the first place.

 

[Cavalry]

A new medium tank battalion is best off in its own division without any light tanks at all. Heavy tanks are best in divisions without any medium tanks to lower their armor, since that's the whole point of heavy tanks in the first place.

There are country that start with a thousand light tank, that is history.
As for heavy tank division, actually I recommend to add only 1 or 2 heavy to medium tank. It is not "lower armor of heavy", but boosting armor of medium. It is some of the best investment, the heavy battalion provides both armor and piercing. Cost is always a concern in war. Of course the armor bonus still need to maintain.

 

[Corpse Fool]

A new medium tank battalion is best off in its own division without any light tanks at all. Heavy tanks are best in divisions without any medium tanks to lower their armor, since that's the whole point of heavy tanks in the first place.

I'd say that there is a lot more room to argue for throwing a heavy into a medium template these days. The 'balance' within the tank designer means that even when loaded down with max armour, you can hit ~10.5km/h with 70% reliability, which is faster than most people are looking for. Armour now being 40% of highest, that max armour advanced heavy is giving you a minimum armour value of ~110 in the template, which means you can cut costs on the medium tanks and rivet together some metal bawkses.

There are still some arguments that can be made against doing that (all that extra research...), but the option is there.

 

[duke engin]

Just to visualize the choice we're making.

Spoiler: One of these

or

Spoiler: 3 of these

Techs are '40, heavies are as armoured as they get, with improved heavy cannon.
German starting light tank is used with the mixed one, didn't even touch its design (sub-optimal for our purposes). Porsche is hired for all heavy designs.

With the mix approach we already get something that is still virtually unpierceable by infantry anti-tank guns (even 5 line AT added to a decent number of infantry can't do it at this tech year). This is almost immune to attrition, and has roughly -10% penalty compared to the other one in most terrain.

The cost of "best of the best" is three times that of the other. If not 4, considering the head start in production of early lights, and the fact that full heavy design will bleed much more.

When these two engage each other, the mixed approach has no hope of piercing the non-mixed and has no way of being unpierced itself without beating its purpose.

This cost ratio somewhat makes sense considering that being armoured while piercing the enemy is roughly equivalent to 3 times combat effectiveness.

Depends on what you need and what you want I guess. I'd take three of the mixed template rather than one of the non-mixed heavy on a big front with more room for error and more space to maneuver.

Having at least one or two of the best stuff would probably be desirable for certain areas though.

P.S. I should include the old philosophy as well. If the below is what the design looks like with the non-mixed heavies as the old meta was, I think it's a terrible choice now. These will be pierced by the cheap mix divisions and the stats won't save them when they are outnumbered 3 to 1.

Spoiler: ill-advised

 

[blahmaster6k]

Just to visualize the choice we're making.

Spoiler: One of these

View attachment 865480

or

Spoiler: 3 of these

View attachment 865481

Techs are '40, heavies are as armoured as they get, with improved heavy cannon.
German starting light tank is used with the mixed one, didn't even touch its design (sub-optimal for our purposes). Porsche is hired for all heavy designs.

With the mix approach we already get something that is still virtually unpierceable by infantry anti-tank guns (even 5 line AT added to a decent number of infantry can't do it at this tech year). This is almost immune to attrition, and has roughly -10% penalty compared to the other one in most terrain.

The cost of "best of the best" is three times that of the other. If not 4, considering the head start in production of early lights, and the fact that full heavy design will bleed much more.

When these two engage each other, the mixed approach has no hope of piercing the non-mixed and has no way of being unpierced itself without beating its purpose.

This cost ratio somewhat makes sense considering that being armoured while piercing the enemy is roughly equivalent to 3 times combat effectiveness.

Depends on what you need and what you want I guess. I'd take three of the mixed template rather than one of the non-mixed heavy on a big front with more room for error and more space to maneuver.

Having at least one or two of the best stuff would probably be desirable for certain areas though.

Show the designs of the tanks you're using and I'll figure out what's wrong with them to make them that expensive. That being said, the meta is mediums currently afaik so I don't think most players are arguing in favor of heavy tanks at all.

 

[duke engin]

Show the designs of the tanks you're using and I'll figure out what's wrong with them to make them that expensive.

Techs are '40, heavies are as armoured as they get, with improved heavy cannon.
German starting light tank is used with the mixed one, didn't even touch its design (sub-optimal for our purposes). Porsche is hired for all heavy designs.

Spoiler: so, roughly this

 

[pheonicia]

I just try to slap together what I can afford and call it good enough.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Spoiler: so, roughly this

View attachment 865498

And there's your problem. Cast armor, bogie suspension, 14 armor upgrades. Drop cast for welded, 10% armor isn't worth 20% cost. Drop some of the armor upgrades and swap motorized for mechanized. You'd end up with a cheaper division with just as much armor and better reliability, defense, and hp. I'd also swap at least 1 heavy tank out for a mechanized, 12-9 is better than 13-8 imo. 11-10 might even be better. Cheaper and still just as good at accomplishing its task. A 13-8 is dangerously close to the very old "meta" of 15-5 which everyone swore by before they realized that all you needed to do was be able to push and trade IC efficiently with enemy tanks.

I also wouldn't bother with heavy cannons. If your goal is soft attack, use howitzers or the improved medium cannon. If your goal is hard attack, use the high velocity cannon. Heavy cannons are expensive and absolutely tank your reliability while not even being that good. They also have a bigger speed penalty.

And to top it all off, your design isn't even fast enough to keep up with mechanized 1.

Here's a template with 1940 heavy tanks, mech 2, and 1942 high velocity cannons. It's 5k IC cheaper, is much faster, and has more other stats particularly 750 defense and 317 hp to your heavy template's 236 defense and 215 hp. Also almost 48 org to your 22, though I suspect you didn't use doctrines when designing your template which probably accounts for the org difference. I have full mobile warfare right-right for these examples since you will realistically have it finished by war as Germany.

It's still more expensive than I would consider worth it to build, but it's way better and also not intentionally designed to be as expensive as possible. Further, it absolutely shreds that light tank template, is impenetrable to that light tank template, and is even faster than it due to including a slow heavy tank battalion.

One of these heavy tank divisions could fight by itself against any number of those light tanks and beat them back with few to no losses, while being barely more than twice as expensive.

Here were the heavy designs I used:

If I were facing an army made up of your light tanks though, I might decide to instead build a division that looks like this: It's still faster, is barely more than half the cost of your 42w light tanks, pierces them, and has better hard attack, defense, and HP despite being half the size and cost. I could match each of your light tank divisions with one of these and use the leftover IC to have a few of the big 42w heavy tanks that your lights would be incapable of answering.

 

[blahmaster6k]

To add to the discussion, I typically aim for something like this in single player: Medium tanks with howitzers and mechanized 2. I use extra machine guns instead of small turrets to avoid losing so much speed and because they're cheaper. Using 2 small turrets instead of 2 extra machine guns gives you a whole 6 extra soft attack while destroying reliability and speed.

If I were wanting to get the most bang for my buck I'd probably do something like this for multiplayer, though admittedly I don't really keep up with the meta anymore so these could be outdated:

They don't have much armor, but they're very cheap, fast, and can blast through pretty much any enemy division they run across with very high hard attack and breakthrough, and still plenty of soft attack to melt infantry. They do get pierced by AT2 infantry, but they have high HP from the mechanized and enough attack and breakthrough to block most of the damage. I would have to bump the armor up until the division has about 70 armor in order to avoid being pierced by an 8-2 infantry division with 2x line AT2 and support AT2. That can be accomplished by switching from riveted to welded and adding 4 armor to the TDs, with enough engine upgrades to keep the speed to 10kph, for about a 2000IC cost increase:

Here are the various designs I used in these examples:

Spoiler: designs

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

Medium tank: I take the middle armour, the speed suspension, whatever gun has the highest combined soft+hard+piercing, radio, sloped armour, skirts, and then either auto loader or the other one that increases breakthrough. Then I increase speed and armour values until I'm just below 100% reliability, at 12km/h.

Well, truth be told, I don't really make tanks anymore. I just use motorised 8/2 infantry.

 

[The Colonel]

@blahmaster6k I'm curious about those support company choices. Why armored recon and no flame tanks or arty/rocket arty or logistics or maintenance?

 

[blahmaster6k]

@blahmaster6k I'm curious about those support company choices. Why armored recon and no flame tanks or arty/rocket arty or logistics or maintenance?

Because I'm stupid and forgot to fill out the support companies. It's debatable whether armored recon or motorized is the better option, I like having one or the other for the movement bonus and armored gives the most consistent one, as well as the most combat stats if you optimize your tank designs.

I don't use maintenance because reliability is generally high enough to not care.

Realistically I'd probably add normal arty, logistics, and medium flame tanks if my brain wasn't on vacation when making those template examples.

One thing though - it used to be a meta consideration before NSB whether to fill out support companies at all - heavy tanks were the meta and there were some edge cases where adding extra support companies lowered the average armor more below an enemy piercing benchmark.