Production line question

[Laffertytig]

Is it not possible to have two different variants of tanks in two different production lines? I tend to roleplay games so as germany when i unlock the tech that give you the panzer 3 and 4 models, i make upgraded versions of both those tanks then have one production line of each but what happens is that for each panzer 3 i make it just upgrades to the panzer 4 which means my tank force will never increase. The panzer 3's end up in reserve and if i feed them back in the same production loop happens.

Same applies to planes. I've got separate lines for 109's which i've modified and FW190's but just like the tanks above production just enters a loop where the FW production starts to upgrade my 109's.

How do i make that not happen?

 

[Andrew0Red]

Production-wise, if you check the little upgrade button in production, it will upgrade old ones, as long as stock lasts. If you don't check it, it will make new ones. (In current versions, you want to make new ones.)


Deployment-wise, the game will attempt to have the best equipment in the field, with older stuff in storage. If the game thinks the Panzer IV is newer and thus better than the Panzer III, it'll try to "upgrade" all your Panzerdivisione by using as many Panzer IVs as possible, only letting them use Panzer IIIs if it has too few Panzer IVs.

Afaik, if you have both the Panzer III and Panzer IV marked as in use (i.e. the little comission/decomission circle is green), it will distribute both to the troops. They are both based on the basic medium chassis, right?


But HoI4 is *not* made to have more than one type of, say, medium tank in one division. Sure, it can handle a running upgrade to a newer model, but it was designed with 4 models medium tanks, with each new model being strictly better than the previous, so it would be outright stupid not to use the newest available. Now, with NSB, we would really like to have, say, 75% howiters and 25% high-velocity, but the game is *not* geared for making that happen.

The work-around I and a few others use is making tanks with howitzers and tank destroyers with high-velocities or heavy cannons. Quite a few others just use a generic tank with medium cannon. (I know this isn't historical, but it saves a lot of frustration...)

 

[Laffertytig]

Production-wise, if you check the little upgrade button in production, it will upgrade old ones, as long as stock lasts. If you don't check it, it will make new ones. (In current versions, you want to make new ones.)

What little upgrade button i can't see.

Yeah all the deployment stuff you said makes sense i guess i just wish the game allowed more than one type of each tank/aircraft from each level, maybe one day it will happen.

Is there any point in keeping older production lines going then if they're just gonna be upgraded? Sounds like it would be more efficient just to change the production line of the older model to the newer one?

 

[Andrew0Red]

What little upgrade button i can't see.

Little green one, on the lower left of the production line for said tank.

Is there any point in keeping older production lines going then if they're just gonna be upgraded? Sounds like it would be more efficient just to change the production line of the older model to the newer one?

You're still producing the "older" tanks, so if you have enough divisions, you will see them in the field.

But you're probably better of deciding which tank you want to use and just spam that one.

The easiest is just spamming medium cannon ones, at least if you're massing them in real Panzerdivisions.

Alternately, you could keep the anti-infantry one as a tank but redesignate the anti-tank one as a tank destroyer, allowing you to control how many of each you field (against the AI, one batallion of TD per division should suffice). The TD gets a lot less breakthrough in exchange for a tiny bit of hard attack and piercing, but you will be able to field both in the same division, and said division will get both the soft attack of the anti-infantry tank and the piercing of the anti-tank one.

 

[Laffertytig]

Ah the convert button you mean! I never use it as it always says there's no equipment in stock.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Are you sure the game isnt just having the 'better' equipment replace the 'worse' equipment in the field, sending that old equipment to stockpile?

 

[Corpse Fool]

Oh, I may have missed the point of the thread. You have noticed the p4's replacing the P3's entirely, and the 190's replacing the 109's entirely, and you don't want that to happen.

There isn't really a 'good' way to make that not happen. You could leave the p4's classed as tanks and make the p3 classed as tank destroyer, and then use the tank and TD in whatever mix you find appropriate in order to force the formation template to use both of them.

As for the aircraft, I believe that when you are forming a new wing, you can flip one of the radio buttons at the top to be some sort of 'specialized wing' that will only use the specific type of equipment you give it, and not auto-upgrade to a different type.

 

[Invader420]

As a new player I find this mechanic in the game to be annoying. It wasn't uncommon in real life to mix and old and new equipment together. In my last game before I knew about the game always updating older equipment I upgraded my 109's and thought I would add those onto what I already had, about two thousand fighters before the war started and then it starts upgrading all my old fighters too and couldn't find a way turn that off.

 

[Anaraxes]

What little upgrade button i can't see.

Vehicles have a small circle in the lower left, greyed out by default. I circled it in red for the light tank in the screenshot below. Checking that box means you want the production line to convert obsolete equipment in the stockpile to whatever is produces. Often this is used for converting old tanks to tank destroyers, SPAA, or SP artillery. But it also works for upgrading tanks of the same general type.

Yeah all the deployment stuff you said makes sense i guess i just wish the game allowed more than one type of each tank/aircraft from each level, maybe one day it will happen.

You can get multiple types of the same hull if you're willing to designate them as different roles (tank, tank destroyer, SPG, etc). The roles themselves do affect the stats of the battalion, so you might or might not want to do that.

In the case of the early German Pz III / IV, where the IV is the short-gun model, you might leave the marking of the Pz III as a "medium tank" and change the IV to "artillery" (since it's got the soft attack gun). You could do it the other way around -- mark the Pz III as a "tank destroyer" and keep the IV as "medium tank" -- except that the starting designs for the III don't allow it to be a TD. (It needs the high-velocity cannon to qualify for that role. But if you liked that setup, you could change that out.)

It would probably be useful to have an extra role label or two for "tank" just to distinguish close support / infantry tanks from general-purpose or tank-hunting tanks (that aren't "tank destroyers"). The only reason would simply be to handle this sort of problem with multiple roles of equipment where you don't want the modifiers of the drop-down list.

You can use the role markers (turtle, rabbit, etc) to make that distinction as well, but those don't help within a division. I don't think these prevent conversion of one type into the other, either.

Is there any point in keeping older production lines going then if they're just gonna be upgraded? Sounds like it would be more efficient just to change the production line of the older model to the newer one?

In the longer term, changing the model will be better than build and convert. In the short term, you get a production efficiency hit for changing models. If you're really short of equipment and in the middle of a close battle, you might want to keep building and deploying the older model, even though you know it's going to get replaced and upgraded. You'll have more equipment sooner, but it will cost you more in the long run to rework the older version.

 

[Laffertytig]

Excellent stuff very informative cheers for that!

 

[Corpse Fool]

except that the starting designs for the III don't allow it to be a TD. (It needs the high-velocity cannon to qualify for that role. But if you liked that setup, you could change that out.)

It does have the basic high velocity, and I prefer to change the 3 to be a TD to avoid having the 4 being counted as SPG increasing width/supply consumption.

                create_equipment_variant = {
                    name = "Panzer III Ausf. A"
                    type = medium_tank_chassis_1
                    parent_version = 0
                    modules = {
                        main_armament_slot = tank_high_velocity_cannon
                        turret_type_slot = tank_medium_three_man_tank_turret
                        suspension_type_slot = tank_bogie_suspension
                        armor_type_slot = tank_welded_armor
                        engine_type_slot = tank_gasoline_engine
                        special_type_slot_1 = tank_radio_1
                        special_type_slot_2 = smoke_launchers
                    }
                    upgrades = {
                        tank_nsb_engine_upgrade = 6
                        tank_nsb_armor_upgrade = 3
                    }
                    icon = "GFX_GER_basic_medium_tank_medium"
                }

 

[Anaraxes]

It does have the basic high velocity

Sorry; I only glanced at the one (Pz III Ausf. F) in a 1939 start save I happened to have. It has the Improved Small Cannon, and can't be a TD. But I rarely play Germany, so I'm not up on the various IIIs and when they might appear.

I do agree in general that it's usually preferable to mark a tank as a TD rather than an SPG if you're trying to squeeze both models into a division.