Military Staff bonuses don't work they way you think they do.

[Torakka]

Somewhat off-topic question, but do you know if Air Superiority (Expert / Genius) or similar traits work now? If I recall correctly they used to have no effect at the launch.

EDIT:

You are talking about stacking 2 bonuses per Division? That would be an exploit.

According to @Zwireq 's post above, stacking two bonuses is possible even now. For example Division consisting of 6 INF and 3 ART would be considered Artillery division and thus receive bonuses from both Infantry and Artillery traits.

 

[Zarathustra_the]

You are talking about stacking 2 bonuses per Division? That would be an exploit.

Hardly it depends on where it applies. If the bonus only applied to respective type, then it would not be stacking two bonuses, rather it would be increasing two separate stats separately.

 

[TallTroll]

It's just an opaque way of doing it with a poor ui tacked on

I'm not going to disagree with that sentiment. It could be better presented and explained, and that would help in a lot of ways.

a division made of 6 marine, 6 mountaineer and 3 artillery battalions

I get the point you want to make is that 12 > 6, which is perfectly true... However, that specific division would be a wierd, unworkable beast IRL (which is what the game purports to simulate, after all) since Marine and Alpine units have very little in common, and anyone who ever designs such a monstrosity deserves to end up with crappy units Similarly, some of the other hypothetical divisions you quote would also be wierd hybrid monsters that have absolutely zero RL parallels, but I take your general point. As the player, you are free to construct any illogical, counter-intuitive, unworkable-IRL design you like and not be massively penalised for it though, which actually you probably should be. There does seem to be some unstated assumptions built into the Div template designer like "noone will ever be dumb enough to combine multiple SF Batt. types in a single division template" which can produce these wierd effects, which is part of the problem here. I'm actually OK with that division being Arty, since it would properly punish the player for violating basic tenets of unit organisation. As an SF unit, it would be neither fish nor fowl, and should therefore get none of the benefits of being either. Maybe they shouldn't get the Arty guy bonus either, but if you refuse to conform to RL practice, you can't really complain too much about your Div design bonuses not making sense. What Div type do you think the game should rate the following as :

2 x Marines, 2 x Paras, 2 x Mountain, 2 x Mech Inf, 2 x Mot Inf, 2 x Mot RA, 4 x Cav, 4 x Arty, 1 x SH Arm, 1 x HSPG, 1 x LTD, 1 x Mod SPAA, 1 x M Arm.

Technically, that is a valid Division... but what a mess. What is it for? What kind of battle is it intended to fight? Why does it deserve any bonus whatsoever, from any source?

You do see something of this effect with paras, since any Div containing ANY non-Para Battn cannot be dropped (although I guarantee you will see Air Landing Div types in a future DLC, which allow straight leg inf, airmobile arty and airmobile light tanks to be attached to Para Battns, and be droppable, so long as you have the glider capacity - when gliders get introduced. And the airmobile versions of LTs and arty, presumably on an extra research tab like the TD / SPG / SPAA armour variants in the current version)

Anyway, whilst all that is a bit removed from the original topic, this is a bit of a wall of text already, and I've said most of what I wanted to say, I think. Yes, there is a bit of gameyness in it, and possibly the whole thing needs a bit of polish, and definitely more transparency, but I don't think it's all that bad as it stands

 

[Fulmen]

Back in September I posted something related to what the OP has brought up in this thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/inf-div-arm-exploit-or-wad.968470/

Basically you can add a little SF into your template to make the game consider an >80% soft division an armoured division. The only downside to this is cost as you must have a little bit of armour in it. The real question is do said divisions get tank-specific tactics in battles. Some say said tactics only trigger in >50% hard divisions, but I'm not so sure about that.

Btw useful post @Zwireq , I'll have to bookmark that.

 

[Tecrinarep]

IMO, it's not a good idea to apply this modifiers on battalions instead of divisions. The experts providing those bonuses are experts for using some type of units on a strategic scale, it doesn't mean that the troops receive a superior training or anything like that.

 

[Fulmen]

For example Division consisting of 6 INF and 3 ART would be considered Artillery division and thus receive bonuses from both Infantry and Artillery traits.

No, a 6+3 is still INF. You'd have to go 6+4 to get an ART div. (or alternatively swap one of the INF btns. to an SF btn. for example).

Btw according to @Zwireq ART Staff bonuses only apply to ART divs. So an INF div. with ART btns. in it would not gain these bonuses? Is this absolutely confirmed?

 

[Tecrinarep]

Yes it is

 

[Fulmen]

Yes it is

That's rather stupid.

Someone ought to tell the Great War mod guys.

 

[Tecrinarep]

As I stated before, the guys giving the bonuses are better at managing big formations of a certain arm. it doesn't mean that all the said arm of the country is better trained, or by essence superior to those of other countries.
For instance a guy giving bonus to ART divisions encourages the player to use such divisions instead of infantry ones.

 

[Fulmen]

As I stated before, the guys giving the bonuses are better at managing big formations of a certain arm. it doesn't mean that all the said arm of the country is better trained, or by essence superior to those of other countries.
For instance a guy giving bonus to ART divisions encourages the player to use such divisions instead of infantry ones.

I'm guessing you haven't played a lot of MP. ART spam, aka space marines, is very broken when done right and a common rule in MP is to restrict ART to 1 per 10 width, making ART Staff guys useless in the current state of the game.

 

[Tecrinarep]

I'm aware of the issue, but I consider it as a balance problem between ART and other weapons. The way staff guys affect divisions have nothing to do with it. The fact that the ART guy is useless because of house rules is a consequence of this lack of balance.

 

[Dalwin]

Was this actually a mystery? Didn't the tool tip on the bonus say "division"? They meant it literally. The further tool tips during battles supported this as well. Either you saw a bonus or not. I never thought any of this was unclear except the bit about artillery counting as both artillery and infantry.

To my mind this is another basic reason to use counters instead of 3d models. The type is clear.

 

[Emnel]

Was this actually a mystery? Didn't the tool tip on the bonus say "division"? They meant it literally. The further tool tips during battles supported this as well. Either you saw a bonus or not. I never thought any of this was unclear except the bit about artillery counting as both artillery and infantry.

To my mind this is another basic reason to use counters instead of 3d models. The type is clear.

Some of the do, some of them don't. I believe infantry one does, but neither special forces one nor artillery one has "division" in the tooltip.

 

[Axe99]

Restricting Division wide bonuses to certain battalions within a Division defeats the whole purpose of a Division; to allow the pieces to function as a greater whole. It also runs counter to the whole point of Combined Arms doctrine, where several branches work co-operatively to achieve objectives none of them could have achieved individually. Wishing that such bonuses were restricted by battalion type would be madness, since that would set aside perhaps the greatest single advance in military science to emerge from WWII - not a feature I'd like to see in a WWII strategy game, personally

edit for correct terminology

Perhaps, but could it potentially be better to have leaders who are better at certain types of units (inf, special forces, artillery, armour and so on) and then maybe a bonus for combined arms as well? At the moment, it seems to be a bit of a jumble as to what can be stacked up more effectively, in a way that doesn't intuitively feel particularly realistic (and from a gameplay perspective seems to push things towards min-maxxy accounting) - noting I'm far from an expert on these things.

 

[Pashahlis]

I'm guessing you haven't played a lot of MP. ART spam, aka space marines, is very broken when done right and a common rule in MP is to restrict ART to 1 per 10 width, making ART Staff guys useless in the current state of the game.

Exactly. I mean, even without the restriction, most people build 7 INF 2 ART divisions. So these divisions do not get the bonuses of the ART guy at all. Who would build more ART just to get that bonus? Well, I would not. Costs too much IC. 2 ART is already much IC.

The only thing where I see that it would make sense to build more ART to get the ART bonus from the ART Staff is to build specialised breakthrough divisions, lets say something like 5 INF 3 ART 1 HT. That would have alot of soft attack and could easily breakthrough through a stalemate, but due to the low org has to recover after a battle.

 

[Poopfaust]

I just came upon this when someone linked it in another thread. I am going to assume it still works like this? If so, please change it so it is at the battalion level. This is another case of needless confusion in this game - forget the reality stuff. Jeezus Christ. Does this also apply to the Infantry Weapon research too? Like when it says Infantry firepower 5%..,etc.., please tell me that is at the battalion level.

Again, I love this game - but they have to cut this dumbsh*t out. Like the focuses being super mysterious, and airplanes teleporting, and naval invasion clicks being super pain in the as* stuff. It just goes against common sense and adds no value. And it will frustrate the living sh*t out of new people attempting to play this. HOI 4 is mega great, these little things would make it.., mega mega great.

 

[FrancescoT]

Necromancy is not allowed. A more than a month old thread should rest in peace.

Closed.