Tanks tanks tanks 2

[CantGetNoSleep]

I posted a "first look" at tanks post with much the same name a while back, so I thought I'd do an update now with the - as of moment - "meta" tanks. This comes from playing a silly number of hours in MP games.

Template:

You could do more TDs, but most rule sets have a 1TD : 1 Tank cap. Why TDs? They're very very cheap, and apart from breakthrough (an important stat), they're just the same as tanks.

TD:

You can use the HV3 cannon instead, but it's a lot of research (/focuses) to get there. Most people don't bother. Main goal here is to get hard and soft attack.

Tank:

For breakthrough. The flame tank support is the same, with just a flame thrower. The light tank reckon is the same again, but infantry support gun and a light tank chassis. Both obviously for extra breakthrough (and bonuses).

Things to note:
- HV2 on the TD, Improved Medium on the tanks.
- Never go to advanced tanks. It's just not worth killing your production efficiency for a pathetic 4 armour. The extra reliability is nice, but not needed.
- Never upgrade armour/engine above 9 - it increases resource costs making it utterly pointless.
- Heavies aren't worth it - the armour always gets pierced anyway, so what's the point in paying more...?
- Maintenance company is nice if you have the time to research it, but not that big a deal.
- Mechs have 5 upgrades to production, 1 to reliability (do upgrade to production first, save template, add one reliability and save again - costs less XPs that way)
- Stats from GBP. Yeah, it's a good doctrine, trust me. You could do MW instead for more breakthrough and org. Your call.

Overall though, this update has made tanks far less relevant. Air is now the new meta, and everyone has a LOT more factories on air than tanks, always.

 

[Herr B.]

Thanks for posting.

A quick question: Is the TD also a medium? I can't see it from the screenshots.

A point that I personally wouldn't have expected, is to prefer mech over mot. Mot have only 40% hardness (vs. 60%), but are much, much cheaper.

Also, 40 armour is lower than what I would have expected for MP. I only play SP though, I don't have personal experience. As a question: How much piercing does the enemy inf normally have?

 

[Corpse Fool]

A quick question: Is the TD also a medium? I can't see it from the screenshots.

Underneath the top bar, it tells you the tier/weight of the chassis. Says they are improved mediums.

A point that I personally wouldn't have expected, is to prefer mech over mot. Mot have only 40% hardness (vs. 60%), but are much, much cheaper.

I think the point is more about defense and HP. The role of HP is often understated, and without mek the defense drops to very risky levels. I also wouldn't say they are -that- much more expensive. Mek can half their production cost cut in half, which for mek1 means 4 IC, compared to the trucks 2.5 IC. Yes, you only need 35 trucks compared to 40 mek, but this is still only 87.5 IC compared to 160. Which is almost twice as much for that component of the formation, but the tanks themselves are still consuming far and away the majority of the cost.

Towards OP, could yuo talk more about why you've chosen to have a 42w formation rather than any other width? I'm also curious why you're using 2 motorized AA instead of just support AA, seeing as you still have a support slot open. Also, since you're using such a large template and have a lot of the radio techs, as well as using GBP, I'm also surprised you aren't using signals to capitalize on coordination.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Thanks for posting.

A quick question: Is the TD also a medium? I can't see it from the screenshots.

Your're welcome. Yup, both medium. Flamethrower is either medium or light - light is slightly cheaper, but medium tend to be used due to higher reliability (because you've usually researched further techs).

A point that I personally wouldn't have expected, is to prefer mech over mot. Mot have only 40% hardness (vs. 60%), but are much, much cheaper.

Some people do indeed use motorised rather than mech. Motorised is indeed cheaper, and they have slightly more breakthrough, so it's not a bad idea at all. The main reason for using mech is the significantly higher defence (2x that of motorised) and, as you say, higher hardness. This makes it a lot harder to get clicked when defending. Tanks + motorised can easily be pushed back by infantry with some artillery. And as @Corpse Fool said, properly upgraded mechs (see my original post) aren't much more expensive and have a lot more HP (so fewer overall losses for the division in combat).

Also, 40 armour is lower than what I would have expected for MP. I only play SP though, I don't have personal experience. As a question: How much piercing does the enemy inf normally have?

The main reason is cost / benefit. Going higher armour (e.g. welded armour), increases the costs significantly - the tanks above would all costs ~30 rather than low 20s. Then you're faced with infantry with AT (usually 1 support, 1 line), which have 70 piercing using level 2 techs. You can't stop them piercing you almost no matter what you do. Much better to have 2x the number of tanks. The reason the tank is highly upgraded (and the TD is barely at all) is breakthrough. Increasing armour increases breakthrough. Given the TD has no breakthrough, there's not a huge amount of point doing it (you could leave it at zero really).

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Towards OP, could yuo talk more about why you've chosen to have a 42w formation rather than any other width? I'm also curious why you're using 2 motorized AA instead of just support AA, seeing as you still have a support slot open. Also, since you're using such a large template and have a lot of the radio techs, as well as using GBP, I'm also surprised you aren't using signals to capitalize on coordination.

Width
These are Eastern front tanks. Most fighting is done either in plains or forests. For plains, you'd want something larger (45w), but then when putting them on forests you'd have significant overstacking penalties. So you're better off doing 42w - they fit perfectly in forests and sure, you're going to be slightly under the combat width in plains, but it makes very little difference.

If you're SAF, for example, and you are going to fight mostly in desert tiles, you might want to do 45w - but then you'd have significant over-stacking penalties if you ever tried to attack the mountains in North Africa (though of course, tanks in mountains is probably a bad idea anyway...).

Overall, 42w is very versatile, so it's what people tend to use.

AA
Yeah, you could put in support AA. The templates are from an actual game played last night - I'd left the slot open because I was thinking about doing maintenance company but never got round to it.

 

[Secret Master]

@CantGetNoSleep

I was just about to make a post arguing that players are not valuing breakthrough enough as a stat, but I see your post covers it well.

I also see some other MP communities have decided that resource costs are a big deal when building and designing tanks.

I don't see a lot to argue with you in your post, but I have a few questions.

1) Are anyone using 12 kph panzer formations in your games? Since your group doesn't seem to value actual armor values that much, I'd think at least someone was pushing towards higher speed. Are they?

2) While I know the width of SPART makes it less attractive to some players, I was wondering if anyone in your group had tried to stack Superior Firepower with the bonuses to SPART in the artillery tree? Since all those bonuses should integrate with things like stacking secondary turrets and extra machine guns, I was wondering if anyone had tried it in an MP environment.

3) Are you guys using MECH1 in significant numbers? Or are you scamming the research system to get large numbers of MECH2 in place before historical Barbarossa?

4) Regarding the "You will always get pierced" argument: When facing enemy tanks designed by competent players, I agree. But when facing infantry divisions, I don't necessarily agree. At 1941 techs, the stacking of AT guns required to beat the armor on these tanks in this division approaches 2 line AT, a support AT, and some AA.

With these tanks:

And this is what an infantry division looks like at 1941 techs:

It's just not enough to pierce with either more AT guns or swapping in a bunch of TDs.

Are you guys facing lots of TDs in foot infantry divisions, or are players really putting that many AT guns in all their line infantry?

 

[MattZed]

Does motorized rocket artillery see any action in MP, or is it really just tanks?

 

[Corpse Fool]

2) While I know the width of SPART makes it less attractive to some players, I was wondering if anyone in your group had tried to stack Superior Firepower with the bonuses to SPART in the artillery tree? Since all those bonuses should integrate with things like stacking secondary turrets and extra machine guns, I was wondering if anyone had tried it in an MP environment.

Why bother with SPG, even if you're going SF X/L? TD get +20%, are generally cheaper and have more attacks.

 

[mursolini]

4) Regarding the "You will always get pierced" argument: When facing enemy tanks designed by competent players, I agree. But when facing infantry divisions, I don't necessarily agree. At 1941 techs, the stacking of AT guns required to beat the armor on these tanks in this division approaches 2 line AT, a support AT, and some AA.

View attachment 792753

View attachment 792752

With these tanks:

View attachment 792754

View attachment 792755

And this is what an infantry division looks like at 1941 techs:

View attachment 792756

It's just not enough to pierce with either more AT guns or swapping in a bunch of TDs.

Are you guys facing lots of TDs in foot infantry divisions, or are players really putting that many AT guns in all their line infantry?

If you replace non-motorized AT with motorized AT, Piercing goes up to 74, for additional 120IC cost. Motorized AT has 150 piercing at 1941 tech.
That is cheaper and more effective than having extra AT.

 

[Corpse Fool]

If you replace non-motorized AT with motorized AT, Piercing goes up to 74, for additional 120IC cost. Motorized AT has 150 piercing at 1941 tech.
That is cheaper and more effective than having extra AT.

You don't even have to actually give them trucks.

 

[Secret Master]

Why bother with SPG, even if you're going SF X/L? TD get +20%, are generally cheaper and have more attacks.

To hard attack and piercing, but I don't think they get a boost to their SA like SPART do.

I count 3 different SA upgrades of 10% each on SPART from the artillery portion of the tree. I count 2 HA and piercing upgrades (10% each) on the AT tree to TDs.

This is the difference I'm talking about:

But with superior firepower, they look like this:

I mean, both the TD and SPART benefit from Superior Firepower, but even with the differences in vehicle counts and costs, we end up with more SA per point of IC spent with SPART under Superior Firepower than we do with the TD.

Consider these numbers:

Unless I forgot how to do basic arithmetic, the SPART battalion costs 1.57 times the cost of a TD, but has 1.68 more soft attack. The TD has a ton of HA, but against most foot infantry divisions, it won't matter at all as you can expect 99% softness.

So, I think my question is a reasonable question to ask even if the SPART has more width than the TD.

 

[Secret Master]

If you replace non-motorized AT with motorized AT, Piercing goes up to 74, for additional 120IC cost. Motorized AT has 150 piercing at 1941 tech.
That is cheaper and more effective than having extra AT.

Hmmm, I'd forgotten about that. In fact, that seems like a weird bug, not WAD. Why would MOT AT have that much higher piercing than regular AT?

But to beat that I need 14 armor steps on the Panzer IV and Jagdpanzer TDs.

If I swap in some maintenance hatches and a MAINT on the division, those reliability levels should be acceptable if not great. It costs 1 more chromium to do this, but both AFVs already use 1 chromium, so I guess you have to decide what you are valuing.

 

[aletoledo]

Whats the value in speed on armor at all? Every time I breakthrough, I'm hampered by supply and I'm not seeing as many overruns. Am I doing something wrong?

Also whats the logic in using the 2nd turret rather than just another mg on tanks?

 

[mursolini]

Hmmm, I'd forgotten about that. In fact, that seems like a weird bug, not WAD. Why would MOT AT have that much higher piercing than regular AT?

It was added in update, it is sort of "Historical" since usually there was a heavier less produced AT gun, that had to be motorized to be moved anywhere.
Game play impact wise, It actually means you can build better AT into infantry without having to venture into medium-heavy TDs.

But to beat that I need 14 armor steps on the Panzer IV and Jagdpanzer TDs.

View attachment 792775

View attachment 792776

View attachment 792777

If I swap in some maintenance hatches and a MAINT on the division, those reliability levels should be acceptable if not great. It costs 1 more chromium to do this, but both AFVs already use 1 chromium, so I guess you have to decide what you are valuing.

+1 steel, +1 Chromium per factory, +1.5 IC/tank, and will be pierced by once enemy gets to 1942 infantry and AT tech, unless you put in more armor, that will cost you another +1 Chromium.

 

[Corpse Fool]

I count 3 different SA upgrades of 10% each on SPART from the artillery portion of the tree. I count 2 HA and piercing upgrades (10% each) on the AT tree to TDs.

You can get up to +40% SA from techs on the SPG, +10% from SF. TD would get +20% from SF. Comparing equivalent widths, 2 battalions of SPG would be up to 300% of the equipments soft attack, while the 3 TD would be 360% of their equipment. MHow2+2 cannon and 2 MG is 49*3=147. TD using HVC2 would be 34*3.6=122.4, but using HC2 (which is unlocked at the same time as HVC2 and has similar costs to MHow2) would be 39*3.6=140.4. That means the SPG only really has an advantage of all of 6.6 SA for every 6 width, which is not very big. Of course, the TD lose a bit of their cost and resource advantages if you decide to outfit them all with HC2. Of course, using MC2 TD they have 46*3.6=165.6 SA which is higher than the SPG and cheaper and lighter.

Unless I forgot how to do basic arithmetic, the SPART battalion costs 1.57 times the cost of a TD, but has 1.68 more soft attack. The TD has a ton of HA, but against most foot infantry divisions, it won't matter at all as you can expect 99% softness.

What I had neglected to consider is that you were already using a medium TD, and you can't really mix two different types of equipment into the same battalion and control how much it gets very well. Putting medium cannons on all of them means we lose some of the hard attack and piercing, putting heavy cannons on all of them bumps up their costs. You'd have to be mixing in either light or heavy TD, which is also going to hurt your costs, or your armour, or whatever else.

If you weren't already using a TD though, TD would be a great way to add soft attack.

Hmmm, I'd forgotten about that. In fact, that seems like a weird bug, not WAD. Why would MOT AT have that much higher piercing than regular AT?

There is +20% piercing and hard attack for motorized AT attached to the AT2 tech, for whatever reason.

 

[Secret Master]

+1 steel, +1 Chromium per factory, +1.5 IC/tank, and will be pierced by once enemy gets to 1942 infantry and AT tech, unless you put in more armor, that will cost you another +1 Chromium.

But Barbarossa might be effectively decided before the 1942 techs are in place. This might also turn on whether your divisions have enough Tier 2 kits or are still sitting on a significant number of Tier 1 kits diluting the already meager piercing of the INF battalions. Whereas I can produce those Panzer IVs for a significant amount of time before Barbarossa. You'll also want enough Tier 2 AT guns to form those MOT-AT battalions. If you don't have enough, then you are in the unenviable position of thinking you are safe, but you really aren't.

Time matters in these discussions. The Soviets do have access to ART research boosts, but right off the top of my head, I'm not sure they are positioned well in terms of optimal NF progression.

But if someone was absolutely confident that they could pierce German tanks with 1941 techs and MOT-AT in an MP game due to what they think is the META (which is something that players do), and you rolled up with something like I posted, there would be substantial swearing in Discord voice chat I'd wager.

Then again, I'm sure I could make some players swear even more if I managed to pull off an idea I had for mass production of AMTRACs and amphibious medium tanks for breaching the Riga-Kiev-Cherson river line.

What I had neglected to consider is that you were already using a medium TD, and you can't really mix two different types of equipment into the same battalion and control how much it gets very well. Putting medium cannons on all of them means we lose some of the hard attack and piercing, putting heavy cannons on all of them bumps up their costs. You'd have to be mixing in either light or heavy TD, which is also going to hurt your costs, or your armour, or whatever else.

This is a tangent, but...

If I was testing actual SPART, I could swap in LTDs instead of MTDs if I wanted. They are limited by not being able to mount the best high-velocity gun or heavy cannons (unless the weird bug with light fixed mounts allows it for some reason). I suppose I could go back into the game and look at ratios of SPART to LTD battalions and see what I could come up with.

It's worth thinking about since if there is no legitimate use for SPART at all, then the game has a serious problem. But if SPART is just kind of being ignored due to how some players work the game or have house rules in MP, then the designer isn't as bad as some people say it is.

 

[mursolini]

But Barbarossa might be effectively decided before the 1942 techs are in place. This might also turn on whether your divisions have enough Tier 2 kits or are still sitting on a significant number of Tier 1 kits diluting the already meager piercing of the INF battalions. Whereas I can produce those Panzer IVs for a significant amount of time before Barbarossa. You'll also want enough Tier 2 AT guns to form those MOT-AT battalions. If you don't have enough, then you are in the unenviable position of thinking you are safe, but you really aren't.

Time matters in these discussions. The Soviets do have access to ART research boosts, but right off the top of my head, I'm not sure they are positioned well in terms of optimal NF progression.

But if someone was absolutely confident that they could pierce German tanks with 1941 techs and MOT-AT in an MP game due to what they think is the META (which is something that players do), and you rolled up with something like I posted, there would be substantial swearing in Discord voice chat I'd wager.

Then again, I'm sure I could make some players swear even more if I managed to pull off an idea I had for mass production of AMTRACs and amphibious medium tanks for breaching the Riga-Kiev-Cherson river line.

It is true, but as with any other thing in HOI4 it is your choice. If you absolutely must pierce, include one more Mot-At, and reduce their numbers once 1942 comes. Also AT is something Allies might LL, if that is feasible, and 1940 tech isn't particularly hard to get in 1939, even without tech boost.

End of the day, it works both ways. German player could be quite surprised by Soviets infantry piercing their armor.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Does motorized rocket artillery see any action in MP, or is it really just tanks?

Tons - in marines for breakthrough. I'll do another post on that later.

 

[Corpse Fool]

It's worth thinking about since if there is no legitimate use for SPART at all, then the game has a serious problem.

This depends how you define legitimate I suppose. There would technically be advantages to using MSPG over LTD, even in the face of the disadvantages.

MSPG has more armour, can mount the heavy howitzer and a second secondary turret, and has more reliability. It also lets you focus your research down mediums only, rather than mediums and lights. It will consume less fuel and manpower and weight.

LTD with MC2, 1 secondary cannon and 3 machineguns is 43*3.6=154.8 soft attack per 6w, which is better than the 49*3=147 of the MSPG. Only +7.8 SA per 6w, not that huge of a margin, though it is more and has massively more hard attack and piercing.

Before engine/armour ups, ltd3 gas/christie would have 125 reliability, 5.45+35% speed, and if we weld it 20.75 IC. Across 90 vehicles that is 1867.5 IC. 2 steel 2 tungsten 1 chrome. Only 20+40% armour.

MSPG3 using gas/christie MHow2 would have 120 reliability unless it uses fixed super for 140. 4.6+35% speed. Welded, a cost of 30 IC, across 72 vehicles would be 2160 IC. 2 steel 3 tungsten 1 chrome. 50+40% armour.

More than double the base armour is fairly noteworthy. If armour is something you care about reaching a particular value of, this could be the deciding factor.

If we added 20/20 upgrades that would be a flat +7 IC on either vehicle, 27.75*90=2497.5 IC, 37*72=2664. LTD is still cheaper even at its most extreme, and would often require fewer upgrades because it is naturally faster and/or you might be dropping armour.

MSPG does have the potential advantages of heavy howitzer and rocket2 weapons, but those are very late unlocks you might not be able to produce enough of to have meaningful impact on the game. Rockets cut resources down to only 2 steel, cost by 3.5 IC (1908 total IC), +10 reliability and +0.2 speed for the same attacks. Heavy howitzer is 64*3=192 SA per 6w, which is better than what TD can manage by a notable amount unless we start getting silly with heavy/super heavy chassis for 4 secondary cannons and the super heavy gun.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

@CantGetNoSleep

I was just about to make a post arguing that players are not valuing breakthrough enough as a stat, but I see your post covers it well.

I also see some other MP communities have decided that resource costs are a big deal when building and designing tanks.

I don't see a lot to argue with you in your post, but I have a few questions.

1) Are anyone using 12 kph panzer formations in your games? Since your group doesn't seem to value actual armor values that much, I'd think at least someone was pushing towards higher speed. Are they?

I've seen a lot of people try it using light tanks. I can't say it has been a huge success. The main reason is, I think, that light tanks are softer and therefore de-org quicker against infantry which almost always has more soft than hard attack.

I can't say I've seen people try fast mediums. I think one of the issue is you'd lose 20% breakthrough (can't upgrade the armour), and you'd need to use motorised rather than mechanised. It might be worth a try, but since my entire line in barb is always 2 depths as the soviets, often with tanks in second line (I've seen this movie before...), I'm not sure being faster would be that helpful. Have you guys been using it?

2) While I know the width of SPART makes it less attractive to some players, I was wondering if anyone in your group had tried to stack Superior Firepower with the bonuses to SPART in the artillery tree? Since all those bonuses should integrate with things like stacking secondary turrets and extra machine guns, I was wondering if anyone had tried it in an MP environment.

We've seriously gone off SF as a doctrine. It used to be the most versatile and have very strong stats, but now breakthrough is so important, and that motorised have breakthrough, attack divisions tend to have a tons of motorised stuff instead for breakthrough, and then GBP is the better doctrine to boost that.

3) Are you guys using MECH1 in significant numbers? Or are you scamming the research system to get large numbers of MECH2 in place before historical Barbarossa?

Huge numbers of MECH 1. The main reason is that you don't want to reduce the production efficiency, the secondary reason is that it takes XP110 to fully upgrade a mech (5 production, 1 reliability), and XPs are hard to come by so upgrade to MECH 2s is painful (even if it's canada AC, they need XP for doctrines for manpower).

Finally, I think MECH 1 is probably better, oddly, because they have less hardness - by "softening" the tank divisions, they make it harder for tanks to break them since tanks tend to have more slightly hard attack than soft attack. I could be wrong on that one, open to correction.

4) Regarding the "You will always get pierced" argument: When facing enemy tanks designed by competent players, I agree. But when facing infantry divisions, I don't necessarily agree. At 1941 techs, the stacking of AT guns required to beat the armor on these tanks in this division approaches 2 line AT, a support AT, and some AA.

View attachment 792753

View attachment 792752

With these tanks:

View attachment 792754

View attachment 792755

And this is what an infantry division looks like at 1941 techs:

View attachment 792756

It's just not enough to pierce with either more AT guns or swapping in a bunch of TDs.

Are you guys facing lots of TDs in foot infantry divisions, or are players really putting that many AT guns in all their line infantry?

Thanks, interesting templates. I think you can probably afford to do them because you have more TDs/fewer tanks than we'd allow so the cost isn't prohibitive. Even then, I suspect your template cost is probably 30% higher than mine (?) so it means 30% fewer tank divisions, which is a lot.

Yes, we do have a fair amount of ATs in infantry. I see something slightly different, because (a) I have 1 less support company and (b) I always have 1942 passive bonus researched by barb. Btw, why 23 width? You're going to be mostly in forests, I would have thought 21w would be better.

Of course, it's not yes/no any more, i.e. you will get quite a few of the benefits of the armour given you're only slightly below my piercing. However, you're going to waste a lot of tanks breaking my inf and then - hopefully - my tanks will click you right back the minute you do - particularly since I'm likely to have more of them since they're cheaper... I'd love to test it one day.

We use elwolf/hmm mods and with those I can get 400 infantry out by barb - at least 350 will be the template above, the rest will be the same without the line AT for port/coast garrison (I could remove support AT but I'm never really short of them, and I like having the option to redeploy them and them being versatile if I get really desperate).

Still, the risk of higher armour (and need to increase hard attack) is why some people go do the 2 focuses needed as the soviets to get to AT3 well before barb (Soviet Artillery and the one before). Personally, I don't think they're worth it because I've not seen anyone invest quite as much as you do in tanks, but if that started to change, I'd need to change my mind...


PS: Henschel is probably a better tank designer for your tanks. 10% reliability is much stronger than 5% armour and hard attack imho.
PPS: Just saw your later posts with template costs. Yeah, they're expensive tanks - would be interesting to see if it pays off.