How to use support companies effectively?

[Ptirodaktill]

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.

Yes, my bad. Thats not 25% bonus, just a plain 14 defence bonus. Well, now i tink they are uterly useless.

 

[Thrac]

The most efficient use of suport comapanys is on big divisions, you save the numbers of equipment requierd per division and get the same effect as for small divisions and in the same time you increse the organisation lvl of the division on avrage.
In MP games as germany i use only 40/44 wide divisions. Makes me track all my divisions far mor better and its more efficient. Now you ask why 40 or 44, well a battle from 1 direction is 80 wide and any additional direction is 40 and if your troops ar comanded by a field marshall with offensive trait that give 10% wide ... so 44.

40 wide Inf. Division :
-14 inf
-4 arty
- suport logistic, eng, recon, hospital, signal
This div is superior then 2 avrage 7inf 2 arty division. And in the same time you can swich 1 arty for 1 inf and 1 AT

I still ironicaly lough when ppl talk about how many divisions they got or can do ...numbers dont matter, division strenght
Matters.
Btw for Panzer div:
-7 medium/light armor
-2 spg
-10 moto/mech
-eng, log,recon,hospital,signal
Mobile div:
-15 moto/mech
-2 spg
-2 td
-same suport as above
Why 2 tds in the moto? To hold the breakthru line when you encirle huge army and repel the enemy tanks that try to save ther encircled troops

 

[mld0806]

Yes, my bad. Thats not 25% bonus, just a plain 14 defence bonus. Well, now i tink they are uterly useless.

They're the only support company that adds any sort of appreciable defensiveness besides engineers. Not to mention they actually have Org so dilute your division org less than other support companies. And you're completely ignoring the movement bonuses, which are not insignificant. All in all, you're focusing in on the one thing that may not be working right (or not statistically significant enough for some to consider) and ignoring all the other things that they have in relation to other things that could fill that slot. They're cheap for a support company and benefit in a bunch of ways. You may find them useless, but I think they're more valuable than support Art, especially given the relative costs.

 

[Indigo Blue]

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?

For the most part. Long battles with large reserve backups is where a reinforcement rate bonus is more important. (Its also why you find the reinforcement bonus in the planning doctrine - the intent is longer battles). So a radio company may be more useful in a player on player situation.

 

[TheOrangeGuy]

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.

I'm really curious, have you tried doing this in a MP game? As minor or major? I'm not saying signal is worth it, but saying its useless because you can micro your whole front is a bit crazy when you can't pause every 10th seconds

 

[Indigo Blue]

They're the only support company that adds any sort of appreciable defensiveness besides engineers. Not to mention they actually have Org so dilute your division org less than other support companies. And you're completely ignoring the movement bonuses, which are not insignificant. All in all, you're focusing in on the one thing that may not be working right (or not statistically significant enough for some to consider) and ignoring all the other things that they have in relation to other things that could fill that slot. They're cheap for a support company and benefit in a bunch of ways. You may find them useless, but I think they're more valuable than support Art, especially given the relative costs.

Recon companies are more important in the sense that when tactic rolls come up it ups the chance of picking a better tactic and the rate at which tactics change. The mechanics of yet to be fully elucidated. On top of that the 10% movement speed also means potential overruns.

 

[mld0806]

Recon companies are more important in the sense that when tactic rolls come up it ups the chance of picking a better tactic and the rate at which tactics change. The mechanics of yet to be fully elucidated. On top of that the 10% movement speed also means potential overruns.

Read up, I'd already mentioned that. Though a couple people are disagreeing with the fact that that actually works.

 

[scroggin]

Everyone who mentioned feild hospitals suggested using them if you expect manpower shortages. Aren't they also useful for keeping your units at higher levels of experience if you have less attrition you dont bring in as many green reinforcements so your units remain as veterans. Or am I misunderstanding this mechanism?

 

[mld0806]

Everyone who mentioned feild hospitals suggested using them if you expect manpower shortages. Aren't they also useful for keeping your units at higher levels of experience if you have less attrition you dont bring in as many green reinforcements so your units remain as veterans. Or am I misunderstanding this mechanism?

They do that. I use hospitals on all of my infantry. I don't on my non-infantry because speed, armor, and hardness account for most of their benefits, and you need working equipment for that, so I switch them out with maintenance.

 

[scroggin]

They do that. I use hospitals on all of my infantry. I don't on my non-infantry because speed, armor, and hardness account for most of their benefits, and you need working equipment for that, so I switch them out with maintenance.

Ive been using feild hospitals on all my elite units to try to keep them at high experience levels

 

[Indigo Blue]

Read up, I'd already mentioned that. Though a couple people are disagreeing with the fact that that actually works.

The Luas suggest it does.

The tactic change is every day with a 5 point increase per recon difference. So I think this turns 0.25 into 0.3 and so forth or 0.25 down to 0.2 if its an unfavorable tactic.

 

[fabius]

Engineers and hospital with everything. The experience gain from hospitals is just too tempting.

I've always taken recon. But some people have cast doubt on that. Recently started using Signals and combined with recon they seem to be getting many more enemy tactics nullified when I look.

Started using supply much more too. The negatives for dropping into the red just say bring them.

Against the AI production is not so much of an issue so I've been dropping maintenance. But may try dropping something else to get them back in tank units.

 

[fredgiblet]

Everyone who mentioned feild hospitals suggested using them if you expect manpower shortages. Aren't they also useful for keeping your units at higher levels of experience if you have less attrition you dont bring in as many green reinforcements so your units remain as veterans. Or am I misunderstanding this mechanism?

Yes, though I still rarely see units staying even at Regular these days.

 

[Anthropoid]

This thread deserves to be reawakened. The wiki is profuse with comments about how what is written there is not "up to date" and this thread seems as good as any to get a discussion about that going.

This section may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. The last version it was verified as up to date for was 1.3.

Sadly, there is not much point in going through such a nice wiki if it is not up to date, and in particular when it includes suggestive statements like this which do not fully clarify:

AA will primarily help protect against tactical bombers and CAS attacking a battle that the division is participating in, allowing multiple divisions in the same battle to pool their AA fire. Towed and self-propelled Anti-Air will only fire at enemy planes attacking that division or other divisions that take part in the same battle.

In essence, my questions are:
I. Do support companies provide benefits to Divisions OTHER than the one's in which they are most proximately embedded?

As an example: Army Group North--contains Army A, and Army B

Army A--contains Div 1, Div 2
Army B--contains Div 3, Div 4

Div 1 contains a hospital
Div 2 contains a mechanic
Div 3 contains an AA
Div 4 contains a logistics

Do these support companies afford any benefit to the other three Div that they are not directly embedded in?

 

[Tecrinarep]

In essence, my questions are:
I. Do support companies provide benefits to Divisions OTHER than the one's in which they are most proximately embedded?

No they don't

 

[him_15]

Is signal company really worth it? What type of division is advised to have it?

 

[Less2]

The main reason for Signal companies is 40-width divisions. When you can only fit 2 divisions in a fight, and usually the same division, they'll almost always rout within a few hours of each other and then everything in the province routs. Even if the province is still occupied by an army of armor divisions.

 

[Anthropoid]

No they don't

Thanks! I'm not certain how realistic that is; I suppose two div in the same corp wouldn't necessarily share resources like logistics companies or hospital companies in real life??

Seems a shame that the model in the game skips the corps level.

 

[Tecrinarep]

The game fails to represent ressources and units allocated to armies/army corps, such as individual tank battalions or REC groups for instance. Tried to recreate the French OOB in 1940 but it becomes a mess when you care about details, I guess it's the same for all countries.

About SIG companies, they impact the reinforce rate of your divisions, they're very useful in defense when you rotate your divisions. I also like to have them in my MOT/ARM divisions if I can afford it so they can quickly impact the battles they join.

 

[Anthropoid]

I think I need to review how the game handles combat calculations and what this "width" thing amounts to. Rather than the quick cake-walk it was in real history my Germany attempt to conquer Yugoslavia drug into a nearly year long slug fest.