Tank Design Guide for SP?

[papapyro]

Seen a few of them on YouTube but they seem to be more tailored for MP.
Also, it's great if people can explain why they're designing tanks as they are, rather than just posting a design and not explaining the principles behind it—especially when Paradox are changing tank stats in every update.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Talking about how you want your tanks designed ends up talking about how stats work. The design of the tanks is just figuring out how to get the stats you want, which means you need to know what you want (by knowing how the stats work) and what you're willing to pay for it.

So, if you would kindly please give us a demonstration of your knowledge of how the stats work, we can go from there.

 

[Cavalry]

For medium tank, armor is the most important stats, get wield armor, sloped armor, and +9 or higher armor boost. Then you will need to give +9 or more to speed to recover speed. Use the best medium cannon. They have the best total soft attack + hard attack and piercing. The medium tank will provide the tank division with armor, piercing, breakthrough, and hardness. Try to keep reliabiltity at 80% or higher, but make sure your tank division have armor bonus vs enemy regular infantry.

For light tank in armor recon support, or supply a mix tank division, the armor will not be enough to give armor bonus so you use the cheapes armor and go for soft attack or breakthrough. Automatic cannon is cheap and good. If you are poor or need to produce tank fast then you start with cheapest option first but the same chassis. After that you can change production to more expensive version, but don't change chassis unless you need more armor, to keep production high.

If the light tank can give armor bonus, then build it like the medium tank above and use the best small cannon.

 

[Cavalry]

To sum up:
Criteria for medium tank division design:
- Armor bonus defeat enemy regular infantry division' piercing (except some enemy specialized AT division)
- Piercing defeat enemy medium tank division' armor.

 

[MR2]

I'd break it down even further by stating major/minor, offense/defense, 4klm/6-8klm/22klm, light/medium/heavy.

 

[papapyro]

Talking about how you want your tanks designed ends up talking about how stats work. The design of the tanks is just figuring out how to get the stats you want, which means you need to know what you want (by knowing how the stats work) and what you're willing to pay for it.

So, if you would kindly please give us a demonstration of your knowledge of how the stats work, we can go from there.

As far as I understand it:
Soft attack: kills the soft parts of divisions (infantry, mostly).
Hard attack: kills the hard parts of divisions (armour, mostly).
Armour > opponent piercing: halves damage taken (they were supposed to change this in NSB so it wasn't binary and there were bonuses for partial piercing, but I hear that this never happened).
If a unit's breakthrough/defence (for attacking or defending, respectively) is greater than the opponent's attack, then those attacks have only a 10% chance to hit. Each attack over the breakthrough/defence value has a 40$ chance to hit.

For medium tank, armor is the most important stats, get wield armor, sloped armor, and +9 or higher armor boost. Then you will need to give +9 or more to speed to recover speed. Use the best medium cannon. They have the best total soft attack + hard attack and piercing. The medium tank will provide the tank division with armor, piercing, breakthrough, and hardness. Try to keep reliabiltity at 80% or higher, but make sure your tank division have armor bonus vs enemy regular infantry.

For light tank in armor recon support, or supply a mix tank division, the armor will not be enough to give armor bonus so you use the cheapes armor and go for soft attack or breakthrough. Automatic cannon is cheap and good. If you are poor or need to produce tank fast then you start with cheapest option first but the same chassis. After that you can change production to more expensive version, but don't change chassis unless you need more armor, to keep production high.

If the light tank can give armor bonus, then build it like the medium tank above and use the best small cannon.

To sum up:
Criteria for medium tank division design:
- Armor bonus defeat enemy regular infantry division' piercing (except some enemy specialized AT division)
- Piercing defeat enemy medium tank division' armor.

Is there an easy way to tell, when designing the tank, how much armour/piercing the division will have? Because it'll get reduced by the other battalions in the division (MOT, MEC, etc.).

 

[Xinamon]

Seen a few of them on YouTube but they seem to be more tailored for MP.
Also, it's great if people can explain why they're designing tanks as they are, rather than just posting a design and not explaining the principles behind it—especially when Paradox are changing tank stats in every update.

For Singleplayer the auto design is fine.

For MP in my understanding it's to make as much armor/piercing and breakthrough as possible.

 

[Cavalry]

Is there an easy way to tell, when designing the tank, how much armour/piercing the division will have? Because it'll get reduced by the other battalions in the division (MOT, MEC, etc.).

Not easy, but we can open designer and add more armor if the division don't have enough.

 

[PK_AZ]

Is there an easy way to tell, when designing the tank, how much armour/piercing the division will have? Because it'll get reduced by the other battalions in the division (MOT, MEC, etc.).

Last time I checked* armor division armor was 30% of highest-armor battalion and 70% of average of all battalions. For division of 6 tank, 6 mot and 6 other battalions, that means actual armor is about 50% of tank armor, and for division with single tank battalion and 17 other battalions it is 33%.

Rule of thumb: for armored divisions you want to double enemy piercing, while for single-tank divisions you want to triple it.

Piercing is 40% of max-piercing battalion + 60% of average (yes, values were different from armor formula last time I checked). AT-piercing is so big that i don't think you can really get over it without specifically-designed tanks. Infantry in 1939 has 5 piercing, which increase to 20 and 30 in 1942 and 1943, I think.

Basically speaking, I will try to achieve armor values for armored division battalions:
1939 - 10
1942 - 40
1943 - 60

and for infantry division tank battalion, if I decide it is really worth trying:
1939 - 15
1942 - 60
1943 - 90

They were quite conservative values last time I checked, btw. 15 is base value for Light Tank II, 60 should be achieveable for Medium Tank I in cost below 600 per battalion.

* I have reasons to believe it was changed to 40% and 60%, respectively