Is Self-Propelled Artillery Useless?

[Terracos]

I still am surprised at the decision that the SPGs do not have breakthrough, the tanks do though. Breakthrough is the attackers "defence" and to prevent the defender from shooting back you need artillery that can move with your attack and deploy fast. This is exactly what an SPG is.

Tanks alone should not provide high breakthrough, their value is soft and hard attack. Tanks without support on the other side will be of no value attacking because they will get destroyed. Combined arms warfare is the key:

Tanks: Main: Soft attack; secondary: Hard attack and Armor
TD: Main: Hard attack, secondary: Armor
SPG: Main: Breakthrough, secondary: Soft attack
SPAA: Main: AA, secondary: Soft attack
Infantry (mech): Main: Defence, secondary Org and HP

This way every unit has its intended role and only a combination of all of them will lead to a good division.

Therefore, take breakthrough away from tanks and give it to SPGs. That would mean: No SPGs division will still punch hard but will also get punched hard back.

 

[Cavalry]

I still am surprised at the decision that the SPGs do not have breakthrough, the tanks do though. Breakthrough is the attackers "defence" and to prevent the defender from shooting back you need artillery that can move with your attack and deploy fast. This is exactly what an SPG is.

The SPG still have breakthrough, just 25% less with 3 men turret. Dev probably think about it more than any of us. Before BBA, SPG is cheaper, higher soft attack. A "standard" template is 3 tank - 4 MOT- 2SPA. With BBA and NSB, the tank have easy access to howitzer gun, the number of vehicle of SPA is the same as tank: 50 for both light and medium SPA. The advantage SPA get is the free soft attack, fixed turret, bigger gun, can have a cheaper armor config.

The tank also have more Org and more doctrine boosts.

 

[Cavalry]

In short, the cases when you may want to use SPA:
- You have old production chassis line that you don't want to produce tank anymore. If you don't want it in the tank division, may be some Royal Guard infantry need it for extra boom and hardness.
- You don't have access to medium chassis yet but want to use the medium gun.
- You want to use the heavy howitzer.


Soft attack per width: 91.3/3=30.4 Here the tank have SF doctrine boost another 10% from frontline battalion. Otherwise tank have lesser soft attack per combatwidth.
Soft attack per supply: 198.5

Howitzer tank:
Soft attack per width: 31.8
Soft attack per supply: 254.4

 

[Terracos]

And everything you just wrote does not matter because SPG is still an IC sink that has no benefit. You do not upgrade past the 1938 Chassis anyway, or if for some reason you rush the 1940 Chassis you do not produce any 1938s as you will not benefit from the built up production efficiency.

So instead of throwing IC at transforming chassis you better just use the same IC to built more tanks, because said tanks do what the SPG do but actually better and cheaper because you build up production efficiency.

At the end of the day the SPG can not do anything better than the tank because it is nowhere good enough to justify the investment in producing them.

Also there is a useful maximum on Soft Attack, so for a competitive division sacrificing breakthrough and Armor (relative to the invested IC) is contra productive because breaking an enemy tile way faster than the movement speed of the unit means you used too much IC for the job, especially if you den struggle against hardened targets.

 

[Cavalry]

You do not upgrade past the 1938 Chassis anyway, or if for some reason you rush the 1940 Chassis you do not produce any 1938s as you will not benefit from the built up production efficiency.

Just play more. I suggest to play China Com for a change.

 

[Terracos]

Just play more. I suggest to play China Com for a change.

Why? You do not have enough research capacity to invest into any tanks at all and due to the massive manpower pool you do way better by going inf + air. There is no need at all to ever use SPGs.

 

[Bolshevik-]

In short, the cases when you may want to use SPA:
- You have old production chassis line that you don't want to produce tank anymore. If you don't want it in the tank division, may be some Royal Guard infantry need it for extra boom and hardness.
- You don't have access to medium chassis yet but want to use the medium gun.
- You want to use the heavy howitzer.


Soft attack per width: 91.3/3=30.4 Here the tank have SF doctrine boost another 10% from frontline battalion. Otherwise tank have lesser soft attack per combatwidth.
Soft attack per supply: 198.5
View attachment 984240

Howitzer tank:
Soft attack per width: 31.8
Soft attack per supply: 254.4

View attachment 984241

The medium tank takes 2 combat width and gives more breakthrouhg. So its better anyway and ends up with more soft attack per combat width.

 

[Cavalry]

Why? You do not have enough research capacity to invest into any tanks at all and due to the massive manpower pool you do way better by going inf + air. There is no need at all to ever use SPGs.

Why use infantry when you can use tank? I didn't talk about SPG here but about the phrase " all you need in HOI4 is 1938 medium tank".

Armorred attack is much easier because it's has +50% Org breaker. Much better than have some extra attack and breakthrough. The golden shield is probably misleading because there are some infantry can still pierce your tank. The +50 Org attack only happen if armor > piericing. But you get reduced casualties with higher armor anyway,

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well... I like to think that if pdx did turn down artillery width, they would also adjust the stats. There is a not insignificant amount of evidence suggesting they wouldn't do that, so I guess your concerns aren't completely invalid.

More realistically, I don't think tanks would be completely pushed out. They are basically the one good source of breakthrough, which will become more important because of how many attacks could be floating around out there.

you never know with pdox, especially at first pass of modifiers . either way, the poster didn't mention reworking the stat penalties, so i go off information given.

the breakthrough modifier of spg is -25% on mediums, thus if you get 2x copies per width, it shouldn't be hard to come up with reasonably-costed designs that would outperform present tanks in breakthrough per width. and speaking of attacks, these things would be absolute kings of that.

 

[Kanitatlan]

In short, the cases when you may want to use SPA:
- You have old production chassis line that you don't want to produce tank anymore. If you don't want it in the tank division, may be some Royal Guard infantry need it for extra boom and hardness.
- You don't have access to medium chassis yet but want to use the medium gun.
- You want to use the heavy howitzer.

Soft attack per width: 91.3/3=30.4 Here the tank have SF doctrine boost another 10% from frontline battalion. Otherwise tank have lesser soft attack per combatwidth.
Soft attack per supply: 198.5

Howitzer tank:
Soft attack per width: 31.8
Soft attack per supply: 254.4

... which perfectly makes the point BUT the SPA costs roughly the same per vehicle as the tank and you get more soft attack per IC because you need a lot less vehicles. This is the only real benefit of SPA, you can bulk out your armoured forces with SPA to save on IC cost of the division whilst maintaining hardness and armour levels. However, as others have pointed out. If you need the additional breakthrough then they don't work and if you don't need the hardness and armour levels you can use motorised artillery as a much cheaper way to bulk out soft attack. SPA has a sweet spot where you might use it but any drift away from the sweet spot and something else will be better.

As I said earlier in the thread, the real problem here is that HOI4 has no model of artillery as anything but a source of direct firepower and effectively ends up modelling SPA as assault guns rather than as actual self propelled artillery.

 

[Secret Master]

... which perfectly makes the point BUT the SPA costs roughly the same per vehicle as the tank and you get more soft attack per IC because you need a lot less vehicles.

This is why it should be more popular, but in practice, the firepower per width and supply considerations make it less useful.

As I said earlier in the thread, the real problem here is that HOI4 has no model of artillery as anything but a source of direct firepower and effectively ends up modelling SPA as assault guns rather than as actual self propelled artillery.

Yeah. HOI4 has always struggled with this with artillery in general. If I could redesign the game from the ground up, I might look at creating an entire bank of support slots in the division template that are locked to artillery alone (whether regular guns, motorized, or SPART). That way, they'd cost no width at all, wouldn't compete with slots for support companies, and you could balance them from there. You could also restrict the slots per division as a "brute force" approach to keeping them from being stupidly powerful.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This is why it should be more popular, but in practice, the firepower per width and supply considerations make it less useful.

it's a similar idea as using line arty vs tanks in general, still applies to spg. players are making tanks to concentrate stats. spg allows you to do more damage than line arty, but less per width than non-spg tanks. players usually don't want "more stat per cost, but more diffuse". if they did, they'd build more line arty...but many of the game's systems do not reward this nearly as much as concentrating stats.

 

[Secret Master]

it's a similar idea as using line arty vs tanks in general, still applies to spg. players are making tanks to concentrate stats. spg allows you to do more damage than line arty, but less per width than non-spg tanks. players usually don't want "more stat per cost, but more diffuse". if they did, they'd build more line arty...but many of the game's systems do not reward this nearly as much as concentrating stats.

Yeah, it's the Unholy Triangle of division design in HOI4.

Firepower per width <> Firepower per IC <> Firepower per supply

(Use any stats, not just firepower, but you get the idea.)

At the big strategic level, firepower per IC is always attractive. But at the division level, you can only add a finite amount of firepower to any particular battle regardless of cost. And neither of those matter if your fancy divisions are sitting completely out of supply and fuel because of supply limits. (It's one reason I value LOG so much; even if you have perfect supply on your start line, you won't have perfect supply as you push into enemy territory.)

How many times have I seen players get supply-locked and ask why their offensive fails? How many times have I seen players fail in attacking France because they don't have enough firepower per width? And how many times have I seen players ask for help, only to realize that they are way behind in winning the war due to a having wildly inefficient IC use in divisions and air forces?

 

[vermicious knid]

I think the best option to balance artillery (all forms) in the game as it exists is to make the primary constraints cost, supply usage, and org/hp. That would more accurately reflect real world reasons that divisions aren't composed solely of artillery. Players will quickly learn that glass cannon divisions that are perpetually out of supply aren't worth fielding.

I've always assumed that combat width was an evolution of stacking limits in classic boardgames (where you'd have actual piles of cardboard chits)...which was just an abstraction to prevent absurdities like the whole German army sitting in one hex. The game needs abstractions like that to function, but the weird width penalty for artillery has outlived its usefulness.

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

Why use infantry when you can use tank? I didn't talk about SPG here but about the phrase " all you need in HOI4 is 1938 medium tank".

Armorred attack is much easier because it's has +50% Org breaker. Much better than have some extra attack and breakthrough. The golden shield is probably misleading because there are some infantry can still pierce your tank. The +50 Org attack only happen if armor > piericing. But you get reduced casualties with higher armor anyway,

communist china cannot build tanks, it does not have the eco nor the research time to build them, and reasonable amounts of them
don't forget you also have to make trucks, and communist china has barely any industry

 

[Cavalry]

communist china cannot build tanks, it does not have the eco nor the research time to build them, and reasonable amounts of them
don't forget you also have to make trucks, and communist china has barely any industry

Let's play it succesfully then you will have it at some time. You just need a few tank battalion to add into infantry, like 1 tank-6 inf. By saving from not build line artillery you can get it, and you get 100 old tanks from focus. At the end of capture Manchuria I can even have CAS.

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

Let's play it succesfully then you will have it at some time. You just need a few tank battalion to add into infantry, like 1 tank-6 inf. By saving from not build line artillery you can get it, and you get 100 old tanks from focus. At the end of capture Manchuria I can even have CAS.

if you capture manchuria, you've won the war lmao, that obvious
communist china has way more important things to produce than tanks such as guns, support equipment, arty
also 100 tanks? lmao that's not enough to fill out 3 divs

 

[Cavalry]

if you capture manchuria, you've won the war lmao, that obvious

You won, but still care for the IC and tech, cannot use MEC at will! Any tank will help attack, just mix with infantry in attack if you don't have enough

 

[TruckerBarry65493]

You won, but still care for the IC and tech, cannot use MEC at will! Any tank will help attack, just mix with infantry in attack if you don't have enough

and by the time you can produce enough, you have busted generals, most of your divs will be veterans
you will have japan capped by then lmao

 

[Terracos]

Let's play it succesfully then you will have it at some time. You just need a few tank battalion to add into infantry, like 1 tank-6 inf. By saving from not build line artillery you can get it, and you get 100 old tanks from focus. At the end of capture Manchuria I can even have CAS.

Wtf am I reading here??? Nothing is more cost efficient than support artillery. To be able to train lots of divisions you need to build guns guns guns. Then Artillery and Supportequipment. And every province you conquer will increase your manpower (as long as you are within chinas borders). You need so many guns to arm them new divisions you can not add any SPA at all. On top of that zhe enemy will have cas and you will not have enough soft attsck to click enemy divisions. So his cas will shred your SPA. So instead or wasting IC on that you better build more guns and burn their manpower. Your China for heavens sake, as long as you have guns you win. You can trade 1:10 on manpower it does not matter, just make sure you have guns and you win.