Land Combat Battalions

[Dalwin]

Unless I am mistaken, some of those specialty battalions were that only organizationally. They were not fielded as battalions but rather distributed across several units.

Others were battalion in name only but if you compared assets to other Bn types they were more like companies.

 

[tommylotto]

Unless I am mistaken, some of those specialty battalions were that only organizationally. They were not fielded as battalions but rather distributed across several units.

Others were battalion in name only but if you compared assets to other Bn types they were more like companies.

Not sure which ones you are referring to. My understanding of Dr. Niehorster work is that he would give units a designation of battalion, regiment, brigade only if they deserved it regardless of what label was applied. I cannot speak how they were actually deployed, but if you look at the Soviet tank regiment, the heavy battalion consisted of 30 heavy tanks in 3 companies, the medium consisted of 51 medium tanks in three companies, and the flame battalion consisted of 9 light and 27 flame tanks in three companies. The flame battalion was smaller but definitely battalion sized (it had more overall tanks than the heavy battalion).

 

[Dalwin]

Not sure which ones you are referring to. My understanding of Dr. Niehorster work is that he would give units a designation of battalion, regiment, brigade only if they deserved it regardless of what label was applied. I cannot speak how they were actually deployed, but if you look at the Soviet tank regiment, the heavy battalion consisted of 30 heavy tanks in 3 companies, the medium consisted of 51 medium tanks in three companies, and the flame battalion consisted of 9 light and 27 flame tanks in three companies. The flame battalion was smaller but definitely battalion sized (it had more overall tanks than the heavy battalion).

I was thinking of things like the bicycle Bns. I also know the Soviet OOB contained some sniper Bns, but I am fairly certain they were spread out and not deployed as a concentrated battalion type unit. Now I don't think I actually saw snipers on your list but I am not trying to nitpick the list directly, just the concept that a Bn on paper is not the same as a battalion in the field in some cases.

 

[Kovax]

Gee, can I assign at least 8 different forms of AA to my division, as the OP suggests? There's "regular" AA of various sizes, Motorized AA of assorted size, and SP AA of all those flavors. Then we have the AT AA versions of all of them. How do you determine what's an AA, what's an AT and what's an anti-tank AA? If there's a doctrine for using AA as AT, and providing ammo or training for the purpose, that saves a heap of unit types. Considering how unspectacular AA was in HOI3, I'm not sure if anyone would notice the differences in effect.

There are reasons I'm not into Black Ice and similar mods which add tactical "flavor" units to a strategic level game, or provide separate counters for things which should be integral to the individual sub-units. As pointed out, the Brigades in vanilla HOI3 already included the integral AT and ART, all that was really required was AA (which didn't operate at Brigade level in infantry divisions anyway), and any other alternatives were more along the lines of "Corps assets". Now, if I could have adjusted the balance of AA, AT, and ART in the standard infantry brigade, that would have been far more useful.

 

[Dalwin]

Gee, can I assign at least 8 different forms of AA to my division, as the OP suggests? There's "regular" AA of various sizes, Motorized AA of assorted size, and SP AA of all those flavors. Then we have the AT AA versions of all of them. How do you determine what's an AA, what's an AT and what's an anti-tank AA? If there's a doctrine for using AA as AT, and providing ammo or training for the purpose, that saves a heap of unit types. Considering how unspectacular AA was in HOI3, I'm not sure if anyone would notice the differences in effect.

There are reasons I'm not into Black Ice and similar mods which add tactical "flavor" units to a strategic level game, or provide separate counters for things which should be integral to the individual sub-units. As pointed out, the Brigades in vanilla HOI3 already included the integral AT and ART, all that was really required was AA (which didn't operate at Brigade level in infantry divisions anyway), and any other alternatives were more along the lines of "Corps assets". Now, if I could have adjusted the balance of AA, AT, and ART in the standard infantry brigade, that would have been far more useful.

Hopefully your latter point is exactly what battalion size building blocks will allow us to do. Even with Bn size units in game, I don't see good value in adding an extra 30 types for flavor.

 

[Gamer_1745]

Yes, 'Brigades in vanilla HOI3 already included the integral AT and ART'. Some nations at the start of the war had little or no AT or AA in an Infantry Division and no production capability to build them. I think the system BICE uses can better show the difference in different nations divisions. An infantry regiment can have integrated AT & AA and the division they are part of have both an AT & AA Battalions as well. With the new Divisional Planer I hope we can model this very well.

With the new system of production lines & Divisional Planer auto sending the right equipment I hope this will be easy for players to handle.

 

[varsovie]

T
As far as nation specific units are concerned,

Don't forget the Franc-Garde...

What I really want is to be able to build battalions by choosing the OOB of them down to the number of spare socks the troopers has to carry and what model of mobile canteen is used for bringing hot soup to frontline troops.


Mod Edit for content

 

[takedown47]

Someone's been playing Black ICE .

I was thinking the Wargame series like Red Dragon

 

[unmerged(143216)]

A lot of text for someone who failed to address my point on unnecessary bloat. I never claimed that bicycles or motorcycles weren't used in wars or fought as battalions. My point was that they would be better served as simply evolutions or possibly variants depending on how the system works of cavalry battalions. The primary advantage of this is that you don't have to reform a huge chunk of your army if you want to stop using horses in the late 1940s as the US or USSR who has plenty of mechanized assets and no fuel problems.

Likewise there is no such thing as a superheavy TD nor a heavy TD. Simply changes and differences in the doctrines that nations used. The US used light, turreted TDs, Germany used light turretless TDs that eventually evolved into heavier vehicles. Claiming that TDs should be broken up as such is like claiming we should have super heavy, heavy, heavy-medium, medium, medium-light, and light tanks because the Tiger II was much heavier than the Tiger I and later Sherman variants used guns that were more effective against tanks. Honestly i would much prefer streamlining the division process, leaving it moddable so if someone wants 100 types of battalions they can mod in four different TD types, super heavy assault guns, and elite units for each nation. That way I don't have to sift through tons of battalion types that are redundant and that I will never use just so I can make a division with some mechanized infantry, some SPA, some engineers, and some armour. That is what 99% of this is going to be anyway, infantry, combat support, non-combat support, and armour.

I mean I want assault guns and light infantry, but I don't want arbitrary elite units like commandos that can be fielded in large numbers. Sure commando battalions existed, but only a handfu, not 90+ per nation.

 

[Snow Wolf]

can you people finally stop suggesting blackice stuff and other useless things at this stage of development? If you want all those units, I guarantee you you'll have to mod 75% of those yourself.

 

[Had a dad]

Only the moderator staff gets to decree what can and cannot be posted. No one should think they get to decide what things people can or cannot suggest.

 

[tommylotto]

Well, if you review the Tools of War DD, you can see that we have, light, medium, heavy and super heavy tanks. If you look real close, you will also see that there are TD variants of all those tanks. So, we will have TD's on light chassises, medium chassises, heavy chassises, and even super heavy chassises. So, I am afraid you are going to get different types of TD's whether you like it or not.

If done right the units will not be duplicative and will not add bloat. Each unique unit will have their own strengths and weaknesses. Motorcycles will have high mobility, good recon value, but use fuel. Cavalry will not use fuel but more supply and have different terrain modifiers from Bicycle infantry. Really, those saying these units will all be the same just lack imagination. From my experience the big time majors can afford to max out their units and are less likely to use some of these unit types, but to minors and mini-majors these units add quite a bit of flexibility.

And those of you saying this is all from BlackICE, stop. Just stop. BlackICE is great, but it built on DDay's ICE and the DLC Common Weapons. The concept of expanding the unit types long predates BlackICE. Furthermore, changing the building blocks for divisions in HoiIV from brigades to battalions changes everything and makes expanding the unit types almost essential.

Don't forget the Franc-Garde...

They look like fascist militia for Vichy. They would be the same as SS militia and CCNN militia.

 

[unmerged(143216)]

Well, if you review the Tools of War DD, you can see that we have, light, medium, heavy and super heavy tanks. If you look real close, you will also see that there are TD variants of all those tanks. So, we will have TD's on light chassises, medium chassises, heavy chassises, and even super heavy chassises. So, I am afraid you are going to get different types of TD's whether you like it or not.

Not really, it doesn't mean that they will be entirely different battalions, simply the same battalion with different chassis. Similarly to how you can make a variant of a heavy tank with slightly heavier armour and a slightly bigger gun at the cost of mobility and reliability. Doesn't suddenly make a heavy-heavy tank battalion, just means that you can field different variants of the same vehicle. This I do not mind as it doesn't add bloat for no reason, the stats may be different but you don't have to sift through 4 tank, 4 TD, 4 Self Propelled AA, 4 self propelled rocket artillery, and 4 self propelled artillery battalion types just to find the battalion you are looking for.

 

[tommylotto]

I don't know. I think I could come up with significantly different stats between a battalion of these

Jagdtiger​

and a battalion of these

Semovente 90/53​

We already know there will be multiple types of armor battalions. We have already seen medium armor and light armor in the division builder. I assume we will have heavy too. I imagine designating a battalion "light" or "medium" tells the game where to send your medium tanks and where to send your light tanks. I guess a single TD battalion unit type might just be a vessel in which you fill your TD equipment. If you fill it with Jagdtigers, it will be a heavy TD battalion. If you fill it with Nashorns, it will be a light or medium TD battalion. Still, I would prefer TD's to be treated the same as tanks so that I can identify my Jagdtigers from my Nashorns and the game will know where to send my heavy TD's and where to send the light ones. If not, it might be difficult to control which equipment goes where. The units will get commingled, and gas hog Jagdtigers might end up in North Africa.

 

[Dalwin]

Likewise there is no such thing as a superheavy TD nor a heavy TD. Simply changes and differences in the doctrines that nations used. The US used light, turreted TDs, Germany used light turretless TDs that eventually evolved into heavier vehicles. Claiming that TDs should be broken up as such is like claiming we should have super heavy, heavy, heavy-medium, medium, medium-light, and light tanks because the Tiger II was much heavier than the Tiger I and later Sherman variants used guns that were more effective against tanks. Honestly i would much prefer streamlining the division process, leaving it moddable so if someone wants 100 types of battalions they can mod in four different TD types, super heavy assault guns, and elite units for each nation. That way I don't have to sift through tons of battalion types that are redundant and that I will never use just so I can make a division with some mechanized infantry, some SPA, some engineers, and some armour. That is what 99% of this is going to be anyway, infantry, combat support, non-combat support, and armour.

I mean I want assault guns and light infantry, but I don't want arbitrary elite units like commandos that can be fielded in large numbers. Sure commando battalions existed, but only a handfu, not 90+ per nation.

If there are no heavy TDs, how would you classify the Elefant?

I am with you on avoiding unneccesary bloat of battalion types, but let's not go so far in the other direction that we are restricting choices to only what was done instead of what could have been done.

 

[misterbean]

It wouldn't make much sense to have Heavy TDs in a Larm division, since they'd be too slow. In a Harm division, the Light TD might be a little fragile, or not be able to support the proper gun or something like that.

 

[Dalwin]

It wouldn't make much sense to have Heavy TDs in a Larm division, since they'd be too slow. In a Harm division, the Light TD might be a little fragile, or not be able to support the proper gun or something like that.

Right it would not make much sense. Any good player would avoid dong that. Hopefully the AI avoids it as well. Heavy TD belong in an infantry division.

 

[unmerged(143216)]

If there are no heavy TDs, how would you classify the Elefant?

I am with you on avoiding unneccesary bloat of battalion types, but let's not go so far in the other direction that we are restricting choices to only what was done instead of what could have been done.

As a TD that has a bigger gun and more armour than a regular TD. They are more akin to variants than different unit types. I imagine (and prefer if) it will be more like this, if you want a TD you can choose a tank chassis (or research independent TDs, there was another land tech tree that showed artillery which I imagine to be support assets). Once you do this you have a TD model, it is still a TD, from this you can make different variants. So while a super heavy tank being used as the chassis of a TD might have more armour and you can make a variant which is all gun and all armour it is still just a TD from the game's perspective. So you can use TD's from a heavy tank chassis with a bigger gun and more armour to support heavy armour divisions and use TD's from a medium tank chassis with a bigger gun and more armour (than the medium) for regular armour divisions. They are both classified as TDs even if they have very different capabilities.

Simply speaking logically, lets assume that we have light, medium, heavy, and super heavy TDs based on the known tank tech tree. That also means we have light, medium, heavy, and super heavy self propelled AA, Artillery, and rocket artillery just based around the chassis. That alone is 20 types of units where just 8 would work fine. That is horrible bloat.

I would like to see variants used to their fullest instead of PI just saying "yeah you have 90 different types of battalions to choose from to represent the slightest difference."

 

[Dalwin]

As a TD that has a bigger gun and more armour than a regular TD. They are more akin to variants than different unit types. I imagine (and prefer if) it will be more like this, if you want a TD you can choose a tank chassis (or research independent TDs, there was another land tech tree that showed artillery which I imagine to be support assets). Once you do this you have a TD model, it is still a TD, from this you can make different variants. So while a super heavy tank being used as the chassis of a TD might have more armour and you can make a variant which is all gun and all armour it is still just a TD from the game's perspective. So you can use TD's from a heavy tank chassis with a bigger gun and more armour to support heavy armour divisions and use TD's from a medium tank chassis with a bigger gun and more armour (than the medium) for regular armour divisions. They are both classified as TDs even if they have very different capabilities.

Simply speaking logically, lets assume that we have light, medium, heavy, and super heavy TDs based on the known tank tech tree. That also means we have light, medium, heavy, and super heavy self propelled AA, Artillery, and rocket artillery just based around the chassis. That alone is 20 types of units where just 8 would work fine. That is horrible bloat.

Even for the human player, it would be much easier in the template system to have more than one type of TD Bn instead of only variants. I may want to build both a light and heavy TD variant. IT is going to be micro hell to get the right vehicles into the right divisions if there is only one type of TD Bn.

I would like to see variants used to their fullest instead of PI just saying "yeah you have 90 different types of battalions to choose from to represent the slightest difference."

I don't know about you but I would not even consider making heavy or SH AA or SPART. Upgunned, yes, but if these things are in the direct line of fire of the enemy something has gone seriously wrong with the battle. TD are another story.

If we treat heavy TD as only a variant and have only one type of TD Bn, how is the AI going to cope with this? Are you sayng that it should not consider making variants? Maybe you are assuming, would be nice if correct, that it will be smart enough not to make slow moving variants to fill its existing template slots in mobile divisions.

Even as the human player, it will be hard to get the right type of vehicle into the the right division if there is only one type of TD Bn. I may want to have both heavy and light variants, but these would belong in different types of divisions. This is one situation where the template system would not be your friend. The micro involved would be much less with more than one type of Bn available for use in templates.

 

[safe-keeper]

I have a strong feeling that Super-Heavy Artillery and whatnot will be like Rocket Interceptors and Super-Battleships in HOI3. They're in the game and can be researched and built, which is good in my eyes, but how often do you actually see them in action?

So yes, let us build Tiger Tanks and then put quad Flak guns or rocket launchers on them if we want to for whatever reason. It's a serious war game, sure, but I want the ability to build the occasional "strange" weapon or two.