Special forces: are marines really worth it?

[mbrownii]

Depends. If you expect a lot of resistance then you kinda have to. Your infantry will not be able to meet positions that are even somewhat fortified. And you'll them for islands in the pacific theatre too, low supplies will mean you can only send a single division at most and just one infantry division will have a hard time fighting in a fortified Iwo Jima.



You won't need marines for D-Day. They didn't use marines in real life, did they? I mean granted these guys had a lot of training for the invasion but they weren't really marines. Thing with Normandy landing is that it wasn't super well defended, the Allies made sure of that with a bunch of espionage operations that pointed to other landing zones. So defenses were light enough for regular infantry to do the job, there weren't exactly marines available at the time.

What marine landing in WW2 was well defended then, by your standards?

 

[Alluton]

I love when people ask questions about the game that require tons of experience and number crunching when the game isn't even released yet.

 

[Caesar15]

What marine landing in WW2 was well defended then, by your standards?

Iwo Jima. When I say well fortified, I don't mean giant bunkers and such, but just the enemy deeply entrenched. Much like the Japanese at Iwo Jima.

 

[mbrownii]

Iwo Jima. When I say well fortified, I don't mean giant bunkers and such, but just the enemy deeply entrenched. Much like the Japanese at Iwo Jima.

Normandy was much better defended than IWO Jima by any standard. Difference was the force brought to bear. Normandy invasion had overwhelming forces. That doesn't mean that Normandy wasn't well defended however.

 

[Caesar15]

Normandy was much better defended than IWO Jima by any standard. Difference was the force brought to bear. Normandy invasion had overwhelming forces. That doesn't mean that Normandy wasn't well defended however.

Well ok. Let me rephrase, you attack with marines when you can't win with just infantry. If you can bring in 5 divisions against an enemy on an island, you bring 5 marines, not 5 infantry, because you might lose if you only use infantry.

 

[potski]

In this example of the WWW japan SP stream the japanese start with an different layout for their troops. Their main infantry uses 12 instead of 9 infantry battalions for example, while their marines start of with 6 battalions of marines. You can add and remove down up to 25 and down to 1 battalions.

Because the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces from the IJN were usually deployed in small units 1-3,000 men, sometimes even smaller, operating more like commando units. The SNLFs even had some para trained battalions.

Other times they used specially trained infantry from the IJA in Brigade strength, such as at Kota Bharu. The devs are just reflecting the different historical compositions in the templates. The Japanese never used SNLF in Div strength.

In HOI3, MAR also had bonuses for rivers, swamps, and jungle, so there are plenty of places where they could be used effectively. There were German players who would have MAR/ARM/whatever divisions for crossing the 500 rivers in the Soviet Union. There were other options, of course, but it was certainly viable.

Yes, nothing to stop you adding other units in with Marines in HOI4, and you can see in the screenshot that MAR get the same sort of bonuses in swamps, hills, jungle and crossing rivers. Might be particularly deadly in a river crossing role, with engineers attached.

You can easily beef up their strength by temporarily attaching other battalions and support companies to them while they are carrying out ground operations. Then detach them if you want them to go back to amphibious landings, or else fighting somewhere that logistics/terrain is a real problem - Borneo and Papua New Guinea with their jungles and mountains for instance.

Daniel shows here that even with garrison troops with the worst equipment you can use them

He did a very early invasion of China without any real preparation. He may have created more SNLF marine units if he had time. Though IRL the IJA did nearly all of the landings in China at Tianjin, Shanghai, Canton, Fuzhou etc. with standard infantry Divs. But frontline troops, not garrison brigades. That was a very risky move given the garrisons are not prioritised for equipment upgrades/replacements.

 

[Victor Cortez]

I want marines in my army because they look cool when you parade after a victory.

 

[kalauer]

I don't really get what the argument is here, it seems quite obvious to me. But maybe I missed a point?

We know the stats as they are currently quite well from WWW. Simple comparison of them (marine has been shown here, INF following) Shows that marines have much better (+180%!!1einself) ORG while costing 40% more. So that's that. As it is right now, I would just use the Special Forces (assuming PAR and MOU are the same) as elite Units, regardless of the specific Task at hand. After that, one might consider special requirements by theatre ot strategy in choosing PAR or MAR/MOU.

Of course, this hefty ORG-Bonus might very well be balanced but atm I see no reasons to assume special troops are useless. That is ,of course, even more true in case the ridculous Manpower issue we saw in the first WWW is fixed (and thus is a limited resource again).

Pic related:

(Marines pic from @LordOfWar16 )

But to get to other points:

I would think that there are very few major nations that can be positive never to do a naval Invasion, so you'll probably want some marines anyway. Remember you do not need 20 divisions but a spearhead, nothing more. And 25% Bonus is a lot. I'm not sure but I believe air superiority does not give you much more.

Just to stress this some more: +180%ORG means that if encountering enemy divisions of equal size stuffed with INF, you can fight almost 3 times as long as the enemy. Seems like auto-win to me, even if the enemy has 1.4 times the amount of troops. He'd still have to reinforce! Alternatively, you could insert some more artillery, easily taking the ORG hit and soft-attack the fun out of the enemy.

edit: So thinking of that... pretty sure the Org-bonus will be balanced.

edit2: Due to a base value of 40 ORG and a at this Point intransparent calculation of total ORG, the influence of the higher ORG of the Special troops is not as high as stated above.

 

[Number 7]

speed of taking a beachhead matters. because taking a beach head isnt the hard part, the enemy has to garrison their entire coast line and you get to concentrate force as the attacker.

the faster the beach head is secure, the sooner your follow up invasion force can begin landing and expanding their reach and campaigning. This translates into capturing airports, extra ports, states that generate resources etc.

the losses on the division level dont matter, the speed does. Germany can only respond so quickly to a US invasion, but when they do they will be trying to force them back off the beaches and every troop you've landed and every bit of land you grabbed is going to help you withstand the counter attack.

breaking naval fortresses like gibraltar will also highly benefit from marines, especially seeing as if you cant truly guarantee naval supremacy, the longer the battle takes the more chance the enemy navy will be able to reinforce. the royal navy has every chance to simply sweep thei talian navy aside and end the invasion of gibraltar if they are given time to group the appropriate response force. but if their navy is spread thin and marines who invade faster and more competently are used, tehre is less chance the UK can group an appropriate navy unless one is permanently stationed to defend gibraltar with enough numbers to ensure victory over the italian navy, and then you are winning a huge battle against the UK by being a fleet in being that is pinning them down to defend like that giving you more operational leeway elsewhere.

any time that speed or quality matters, use marines. Against inadequate enemy forces, like landing japanese troops in china you wouldnt need specialised marines. another example would be the US taking sicily / north africa. marines are nice, but at that point you dont even need them, your naval supremacy is unshakeable and even if germany and italy are given months to respond to your landing (you land and sit there and do nothing) it really doesnt mean anything, they wont be able to hold north africa no matter how much time you give them when you have 20 fleet carriers patrolling the med.

 

[Denkt]

They are some of the cheapest battalions, 70 production is nothing as things like motorised cost 200 and light tanks 600.

I don't see why marines should have better org then infantry, the ability to do one thing much better then infantry is very well worth it otherwise they should be no better then infantry, probably worse because the need of specialised equipment while experience should be the only factor in who is more elite.

 

[Telenil]

You won't need marines for D-Day. They didn't use marines in real life, did they?

No, mostly because the 5 or 6 marines divisions were needed for an offensive in the Pacific (the US were pushing in both Europe and the Pacific simultaneously). Transporting the marines to the other side of the Earth and back was not practical. The Pacific war involved fewer combat troops than the European theater and involved dozens of landings on small islands, the marines were better used there.

 

[Katarian]

No, mostly because the 5 or 6 marines divisions were needed for an offensive in the Pacific (the US were pushing in both Europe and the Pacific simultaneously). Transporting the marines to the other side of the Earth and back was not practical. The Pacific war involved fewer combat troops than the European theater and involved dozens of landings on small islands, the marines were better used there.

*cough* Royal Marines *cough*

I always use Marines as the UK to do most of my naval invasions in earlier HoI. They aren't necessary and in HoI3 in North Africa I would often use normal infantry and even armoured divisions but that was because North Africa was so poorly defended by the AI. I used them mainly because I can rather then they were needed.

 

[Wimpola]

Marines get bonuses fighting in all terrain and get amphibious invasion boosts allowing you to invade another country easily. Try attacking the US without marines. You won't even get out of the beaches because you won't have the combat modifiers with you.

 

[potski]

*cough* Royal Marines *cough*

The Royal Marines didn't operate independently, instead providing men to serve in the four Commando Brigades. Each Brigade numbered far less than 3,000 men, around the strength of 2 infantry battalions. About half overall were from the Royal Marines, the rest commandos from the Army.

1st Commando Brigade were used on D-Day at Sword Beach, the most eastern beach. This Brigade included only about a quarter from the Marines. It was supplemented for the operation with two Troops of French commandos.

The first wave of attack consisted of Sherman DD tanks (13th/18th Royal Hussars) followed closely by infantry from 8th Infantry Brigade, part of British 3rd Infantry Division. Their objective was to capture the beach itself.

The Commando Brigade came in the second wave. Their objective was to push into the town of Ouistreham which overlooked the beach, and deal with a blockhouse and some batteries. They then proceeded as quickly as possible to link up with units from the British 6th Airborne Division which had landed by glider at Pegasus Bridge.

So, very few men from the Royal Marines featured on D-Day, and their role was not assaulting the beach. That role was carried out by infantry and tanks.

 

[Katarian]

I know normal Infantry did most of the work on D-Day. My post was more a tongue in cheek indication that it was not only the US who had marines and multiple countries were involved in D-Day .

 

[kalauer]

Fyi, Special Forces seem to have 60 base ORG, while normal infantry has 50. So way more balanced than it seemed to me before (#28), given the 40% higher costs.

 

[Denkt]

I think they should have same org, experience should be the decider in which is more "elite".

 

[keynes2.0]

I think they should have same org, experience should be the decider in which is more "elite".

Special forces were significantly more likely to be volunteers and had more intense training then regular troops. That means that green special forces have an advantage on green regular army. And keep in mind that experience can't do everything, eventually battle fatigue means that experience is doing more harm then good as the experienced troops become psychological casualties and have to be rotated off the front lines to a secondary role.

 

[Commissar Yossarian]

Given the design changes in HOI4 such that your SF infantry Doctrine advances aren't so split out from your reg infantry there's no advantage to go mono force composition like in HOI3.

From what's been shown as it is primarily an equipment penalty and increased training time to get more Org for most countries the use will be much more situational.

Early game it makes alot of sense with very little armour in play and a long build up time to have tonnes of elite light infantry around to keep up operational tempo.
As the war progresses and you start to become capacity constrained the extra equipment penalty will likely be more meaningful, and later technology wrt artillery etc will make the Org loss less and less of a problem as the increased soft attack/hard attack will be worth it, especially factoring in combat effectiveness to manpower ratios.

Japan is still one exception where I think a monolithic marine force could be advantageous (short of some LL armour/motorised to seize Eastern Russia). You really don't have the research cap to do, air, land and sea, so sacrificing land stuff makes sense. Due to the supply constrained nature of Asia good light infantry makes sense. Mobility comes from your Navy, not trucks. Even capturing Burma and India in HOI4 is still going to rely on pinning Allied forces in combat followed by a succession of naval invasions to take ports behind the front lines to complete the encirclement.

In this case having an all marine force that can fight longer and further than infantry backed by artillery makes sense. Though you'd have to really push the infantry anti-armour technology so you don't bounce off a bit of light armour holding a port...

 

[Denkt]

You can make your whole army special forces if you want as they are not much more expensive then normal infantry.

The much better combat ability in a certain situation is good enough, the extra org can not really be justified otherwise players may start replacing infantry with special forces as they with the extra org is better everywhere.