Stacking boni, whereever you getbthem for the purpose you want. You seem like an superior firepower guy, id like to se me as an mobile warfare one 
How to use support companies effectively?
- Thread starter Fishy101
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Military Hospitals are the best. Allows your divisions to quickly become seasoned veterans (or whatever its called) which gives ALOT of combat bonuses.
Arty is a no-brainer and recon is good too since tactics is king.
Arty is a no-brainer and recon is good too since tactics is king.
Playing Germany my infantry divisions use:
Engineers, Recon, Hospital, Signals, Logistics
in that order. Its fairly historical and as I micro battles, I'll often occupy an adjacent province to an ongoing battle and add additional flanking divisions, the signals help them get into the battle faster. Logistics gets added later to reduce the supply footprint when operating outside central & western Europe.
My mobile divisions use:
Recon, Engineers, Hospital, Signals & Maintenance. The recon boosts speed, the signals do the same job as for the infantry, but are more important as the mobile divisions get into those flanking positions faster and the maintenance cuts down on attrition of valuable tanks etc.
Parachute divisions use:
Engineers, Recon, Artillery, Anti tank & Anti air
The regular divisions above include line Art, AT, AA or SP versions so I wanted the paras to have them as well. It also feels right for paratroopers to be short significant amounts of specialist support like hospitals, sigs & logs. If I was going to change something I might swap hospitals for recon to boost their XP retention.
Engineers, Recon, Hospital, Signals, Logistics
in that order. Its fairly historical and as I micro battles, I'll often occupy an adjacent province to an ongoing battle and add additional flanking divisions, the signals help them get into the battle faster. Logistics gets added later to reduce the supply footprint when operating outside central & western Europe.
My mobile divisions use:
Recon, Engineers, Hospital, Signals & Maintenance. The recon boosts speed, the signals do the same job as for the infantry, but are more important as the mobile divisions get into those flanking positions faster and the maintenance cuts down on attrition of valuable tanks etc.
Parachute divisions use:
Engineers, Recon, Artillery, Anti tank & Anti air
The regular divisions above include line Art, AT, AA or SP versions so I wanted the paras to have them as well. It also feels right for paratroopers to be short significant amounts of specialist support like hospitals, sigs & logs. If I was going to change something I might swap hospitals for recon to boost their XP retention.
- 1
- 1
Is that terrain penalty really that harsh? I'm artillery lover, so my marines got two line arty, and they still had bonuses to fight in almost every type of terrain. i mean, of course its better to have +20% than +10%, but its also better to have +60 SA and full support brigade than +20 SA.
If you're using Superior Firepower doctrines (which I personally prefer), Support Arty can actually be more powerful than Line Arty. Other than that, I like Engineers in almost everything, Hospitals and Recon for frontline units, Maintenance for vehicle units, and then either Logistics, Rockets, or AT/AA depending on the theatre and needs of the front. (I prefer AA to AT, since AA has good piercing values and doubles as a plane-killer)
My two cent.
There's no need to use all five support slots all the time. Here's what I use as a base:
Infantry Division: (ENG/HOS/LOG/ART)
Motorized Division: (ENG/REC/HOS/LOG/ART)
Armored Division: (ENG/REC/HOS/MAIN/LOG)
I'll add AT to infantry division if facing a lot of armor. There's line ART in every division (S-PART and R-ART where needed for the extra speed) and if low on tungsten in early game, AA instead of ART (both support and line). In MP, there's line and support AT in every division.
Some people question my use of hospitals in every division. From a gameplay perspective, I use them mostly to preserve division XP. From my experience, the 50% bonus to combat from seasoned makes a lot of difference. Of course, training new units with HOS is kind of a waste, but it's only a minor issue. Also, if I'm willing to micro in that particular day, I'll make a "green" template without HOS and a "veteran" template with it, changing their template as necessary.
There's no need to use all five support slots all the time. Here's what I use as a base:
Infantry Division: (ENG/HOS/LOG/ART)
Motorized Division: (ENG/REC/HOS/LOG/ART)
Armored Division: (ENG/REC/HOS/MAIN/LOG)
I'll add AT to infantry division if facing a lot of armor. There's line ART in every division (S-PART and R-ART where needed for the extra speed) and if low on tungsten in early game, AA instead of ART (both support and line). In MP, there's line and support AT in every division.
Some people question my use of hospitals in every division. From a gameplay perspective, I use them mostly to preserve division XP. From my experience, the 50% bonus to combat from seasoned makes a lot of difference. Of course, training new units with HOS is kind of a waste, but it's only a minor issue. Also, if I'm willing to micro in that particular day, I'll make a "green" template without HOS and a "veteran" template with it, changing their template as necessary.
- 1
- 1
To me, yes. For Marines, for example, in a 7 Mar/2 Art only get a +30% for amphibious as opposed to +50%. Combined with the base amphibious penalty this changes it from -40% to -20%.
Mountaineers in the same 7/2 setup, the terrain bonus goes from +30% to +23.33% in mountains. Combined with terrain modifiers, this means -30% without line art vs -46.67% with. Speed wise, mountaineers without line art get +20%, vs + 11.11% with.
And, of course, Paras can't drop with line brigades.
This is 100% wrong. Not to be offensive, but your view on signal companies being useful demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of the game mechanics.
If you need to cycle troops in a static meat grinder situation you do it manually anyways before your units hit 0 Org. So if 4 divisions fill the frontage, and you have 8 divisions to attack with you manually send in the first 4, and only 4. Once your divisions hit some 20% org you cancle the attack, and immediately attack with your other 4 divisions. Mechanically in game terms there's no change to the amount of time it takes to break the enemy, but this way you never deal with a reinforcement time delay, and more importantly you don't let your troops hit 0 Org and risk having them get bounced out piecemeal.
Defending is the same structure, but a little more timing sensitive. You need to position troops two provinces deep if you are defending against a troop concentration that exceeds provincial combat width. Once your defending troops get close to zero Org, you start a spoiling attack from a neighbouring province to hold the attacking troops. They you manually retreat the low Org troops and cycle forward your fresh troops from the 2nd line.
If you're dealing with a wide front attack and cannot use your neighbouring provinces to launch spoiling attacks, then you start marching your troops forwards before retreating. Just before your troops arive to reenforce, you retreat your front line troops. This breaks the combat cycle in the game engine and the advancing enemy starts a new combat with your fresh troops.
So I will always take better division combat stats that erode your troops Org faster and manually cycle troops in critical areas over allowing the AI to blindly smash troop concentrations together while grunting Zug Zug Zug. Signal companies are utter trash.
Do that on 20 combats on the russian front in mp... secondly, you will not allways be in position to have perfect width numbers and often draw forces to achieve victorie from somewhere else, this is even more apperant in an breakthrough attack with tanks, time is of essence, you cant afford to wait till all division are ready, cause you loose iniative.
Also, leave the ad hominem at home please.
Edit: its not about the meatgrinder situation but the application of tactical superiotity and how fast you can achieve in changing fronts
Also, leave the ad hominem at home please.
Edit: its not about the meatgrinder situation but the application of tactical superiotity and how fast you can achieve in changing fronts
1. That's not the definition of ad hominem. I'm not attacking you the person. I'm stating that you're wrong about something, then giving a justification as to why you're wrong.
2. You do not need to be perfectly timed on all provinces if you have established a proper defense in depth. It's the whole reason why you establish a defence in depth.
3. Key defensive points, 2:3, are all that need to be held to blunt an attack and proceed to a counter attackto regain the strategic initiative. Otherwise you're facing a vastly superior force in which case you need to establish a running defense; where you're trading land for time to carry out a favourable war of attrition. Then again over stacking a province is a terrible idea and will lead to a faster defeat.
4. On the attack your advantage is pre planning and choosing where you are attack from. If you haven't properly concentrated your forces before launching your attack then you're not doing it right anyways. This has nothing to do with waiting for all divisions to be ready. It's about good strategic work on an offensive.
5. To your edit, the way you're using the word 'front' doesn't make much sense in the context of the sentence. Did you mean changing combats, from one province to another, or actual fronts, like Eastern front to African front? Either way signal companies make zero difference since you can stop and restart an attack at will.
6. You may personally benefit from having signal companies due to your style of play, but it doesn't mean they are generally beneficial. Manually controlling your troops in situations where you exceed combat width is much more efficient than using signal companies. Many won't want to bother doing this, but it doesn't change the facts.
The opportunity costs of researching and using signal companies grossly out ways their benefits. Thus they are garbage. If a player doesn't want to manage their troops to the level I'm describing then they may have a utility value that makes them worth while to that player, but from a pure game play metric the division will always be weaker than if they were not included.
As an aside, I find the lack of necessity for signal companies terrible game design by Paradox. Their CIC role in reality, leading to their massive impact on combat performance at the division level means they should be a necessity in combined arms warfare, but alas they currently do not impact that time at all.
2. You do not need to be perfectly timed on all provinces if you have established a proper defense in depth. It's the whole reason why you establish a defence in depth.
3. Key defensive points, 2:3, are all that need to be held to blunt an attack and proceed to a counter attackto regain the strategic initiative. Otherwise you're facing a vastly superior force in which case you need to establish a running defense; where you're trading land for time to carry out a favourable war of attrition. Then again over stacking a province is a terrible idea and will lead to a faster defeat.
4. On the attack your advantage is pre planning and choosing where you are attack from. If you haven't properly concentrated your forces before launching your attack then you're not doing it right anyways. This has nothing to do with waiting for all divisions to be ready. It's about good strategic work on an offensive.
5. To your edit, the way you're using the word 'front' doesn't make much sense in the context of the sentence. Did you mean changing combats, from one province to another, or actual fronts, like Eastern front to African front? Either way signal companies make zero difference since you can stop and restart an attack at will.
6. You may personally benefit from having signal companies due to your style of play, but it doesn't mean they are generally beneficial. Manually controlling your troops in situations where you exceed combat width is much more efficient than using signal companies. Many won't want to bother doing this, but it doesn't change the facts.
The opportunity costs of researching and using signal companies grossly out ways their benefits. Thus they are garbage. If a player doesn't want to manage their troops to the level I'm describing then they may have a utility value that makes them worth while to that player, but from a pure game play metric the division will always be weaker than if they were not included.
As an aside, I find the lack of necessity for signal companies terrible game design by Paradox. Their CIC role in reality, leading to their massive impact on combat performance at the division level means they should be a necessity in combined arms warfare, but alas they currently do not impact that time at all.
This whole screed completely ignores a lot of different mechanics in which reinforcement isn't simply "piling men into the meat grinder".
If you've gotten a tactic which suddenly gives you 25% more frontage, the faster it gets filled, the better. If your enemy adds a direction, and thus more frontage, the faster it gets filled, the better.
Even in your manually cycling divisions, when divisions are added to a combat in question, they enter as reserves, not in the front line. Until they come in, there are fewer targets that can be shot at in the front line and they'll take more damage. End result, you'll have to have more divisions to cycle in and out. Unless you break off the combat and start a new one, in which case you're resetting movement in the movement-is-combat mechanic.
The problem with this whole mindset is the complete undervaluation of soft stats. Recon gets you better tactics, increasing your damage and decreasing the enemy's, especially if you get the counter. Reinforcement happens in situations other than divisions breaking.
Soft stat support companies are force multipliers. They are far from useless. They are not an either/or, they are an and. IC per gun, I'd rather take a soft stat support company over AT or Art any day of the week, with the exceptions I've mentioned in this thread already.
- 4
Not gonna get into the signal company debate, but recon really are useless. I have yet to see any statistical proof that the recon stat works. Ive documented close to a dozen other bugs already. I never get a response from a dev despite showing concrete proof that something isn't working correctly. I haven't run any tests yet but in all of my experiences so far having higher recon either does not change the chance to pick a counter tactic or the chance is so miniscule that it's useless. Until someone does a test and proves otherwise everything people say on the forums is just heresay bassd on what the devs want you to believe. Unfortunately it's been proven unequivocally that what they want you to believe and what's actually going on under the hood are two different realities.
Is signal worth using? I've never felt the small reinforce rate is important. Radio gives so much already. Troops already get into the battle very fast.
Realy? i havent noticed any effect of recon on tactics. Probably its bugged and dosent work.
- 1
I'll maybe buy the statement from KevinG because he actually seems to try and objectively test, but in your original misguided estimations you say that they offer +25% defense and suggest they are useful for garrison units. This is flat wrong. They give +10% to movement in every terrain other than urban. The one group of units they are useless for is garrison forces.
So, regardless of Recon bonuses to tactics, I'd still take a 10% movement buff any day of the week. We spend valuable limited resources (Army XP, PP for ministers) on movement buffs already, why would one of the cheapest support companies be useless?
It might be broken, but until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm going to go with your more likely statistically rare.
The thing is not all tactics have counters, and a lot of tactics rely on skill advantage or specific traits. So this aspect of Recon is far more situational. Unless tests are run from angles that include all tactics unlocked by research, and from a skill advantage/disadvantage standpoint, and with all traits that unlock tactics involved, I think a definitive answer will be tough to obtain one way or another.
Still gives you the movement bonus, though.
But that's late game signalists right? I just don't feel what the reinforce rate is supposed to do. In what situations are they good? I never feel that battles are short enough for reinforce rate to matter. Most battles continue for days and if a reserve reinforces at 04.00 or 07.00 doesn't matter at all.
Now i'm confused. Isn't it the exact opposite? i.e. that the longer you fight the more opportunity you will get for reinforcing troops to join the fight? And, in that regard, that battles are currently considered to be going to fast (because of lackluster AI and bad AI division makeup) in order for the bonus to make it really worthwile?