Upgrading infantry equipment
- Thread starter PanzerMan7
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Here's the depressing part if you're an inf fanboy: even with basic equipment, a 14-4 will STILL resist a 14-4 with inf3. basic/art1 will have about 180 SA to 390 defense. Against it, inf3 has 378 SA and 115 breakthrough.
The inf3 will do 0.1*378=37.8 damage to the basic. The basic will do 0.1*115 + 0.4*75= 45.5 damage to the inf3. Now, this is pretty dismal even if it eeks out a victory. Inf1 will deal 65.5 damage defending. Inf2 will deal 85, and inf3 will deal 105.5 damage defending.
So, if the purpose of the infantry is to hold the line, inf1 seems absolutely adequate to this noob
Of course...this is all in a vacuum. There's leader bonuses and terrain bonuses and chiefs of staff and all this and that that tilt things. If suddenly your trash infantry /can't/ defend because you gave them too little leeway, SOL. If your enemy is taking half the losses he should and shuttle attacks you, SOL. Etc.
The inf3 will do 0.1*378=37.8 damage to the basic. The basic will do 0.1*115 + 0.4*75= 45.5 damage to the inf3. Now, this is pretty dismal even if it eeks out a victory. Inf1 will deal 65.5 damage defending. Inf2 will deal 85, and inf3 will deal 105.5 damage defending.
So, if the purpose of the infantry is to hold the line, inf1 seems absolutely adequate to this noob
Of course...this is all in a vacuum. There's leader bonuses and terrain bonuses and chiefs of staff and all this and that that tilt things. If suddenly your trash infantry /can't/ defend because you gave them too little leeway, SOL. If your enemy is taking half the losses he should and shuttle attacks you, SOL. Etc.
Your infantry should primarily be defending, not attacking. Therefore, they'll be most commonly engaged with enemy breakthrough, not defense.
The added soft attack exceeds enemy breakthrough and has a good chance of doing quadruple damage, meaning it will be more than 2x as effective. This allows you to hold the line with fewer infantry divisions, clearing the way for more tanks. For what's relevant, weapons III only competes with tanks for industry in the short term. In the long term, better weapons leads to more supply efficiency allowing more tanks on the field.
Again, you can say this about any upgrade. Fighter III's lose efficiency when you upgrade from Fighter II's or I's, but they're still worth the switch.
South America and the Middle East need to down a major with steel quickly or they can find themselves hated by USA and all other significant sources of steel closing the economy. Minors like South Africa and Australia have access to some steel of their own, can do infra construction for more, and have enough where they can push IC onto more planes than tanks or something to be less dependent on it.
Middle East can usually push India or help beat Axis or Comintern fast enough to secure a supply directly, but it *can* be a problem.
You can but should you say that about every upgrade?
Fighter 3s mow down fighter 2s and 1s at about a 3-1 and 9-1 rate respectively. Likewise, medium 2s and 3s can pierce below without getting pierced (though medium 2s can upgrade their guns to fight medium 3s/TD2s can be added cheaply). I ain't saying infantry weapons don't make a beautiful marginal difference, but not on the levels of fighters!
I wasn't thinking about the AI. I was thinking about my MP group.
We don't prohibit STR in our group, so they are always on the table as an option. And while I know plenty of MP groups disdain AT guns, we keep finding them useful as a deterrent to some Space Marine configurations and LARM strategies. And we've seen nukes used one time in our group, so they are always sitting there in the back of everyone's mind. (What makes Overlord better? Nuclear Overlord!)
I agree it *can* be a problem, but for the vast majority of the interesting countries it won't be. This probably comes down to which areas of the world you like to play in. For me, I don't play in South America any more with all the jank related to Pax Americana, random faction joining, lack of focus trees, and terrible supply. South Africa's on my to-do list as well.
Most of my games have started in the Balkans or (recently) in China, both of which have easy sources of steel. I've played in the Middle East a bit too. When I played Turkey I went west and took over Hungary (which gets a fair bit of steel from Czechoslovakia). When I played Iran I went east into India. In neither situation I recall having major issues with basic resources. Even as Bhutan I wasn't challenged significantly since China has a fair bit of steel as well.
Fair enough.
I assumed you were talking SP since that's how the majority of players (and people on this forum) interact with HoI4 and your original post didn't mention otherwise.
Random Pax Americana is pretty bad (1940 makes it almost unplayable), but the arbitrary "lets bring Hitler to Argentina because reasons" is consistent and deal-breaking to playing the region. At least with Pax you can have until '42 or even '44. With arbitrary faction idiocy you just never know, the next war you could be fighting UK...but also maybe not.
I agree usually ME can right the problem. Even as Iraq you can either go in on Axis or Comintern after getting past early game. Both have steel to work with.
I would definitely second playing as South Africa. The communist "Anti-Colonial Crusade" tree is easily the most fun I've had in HOI4, and really puts your skills to the test managing limited population/industry/resources.
Just to throw my two cents in the discussion, in practical competitive difficulty scenarios (be that from multiplayer, from high difficulty settings in single player, or from playing a weak country) infantry weapons > inf1 is only worth building if you have also the basic production covered and you want to make your 'elite' units function better.
In general this is my personal check list:
1. Do all of your men have guns and have a surplus that is more than sufficient?
Then go to step 2.
2. Do you have enough tanks, artillery, at for your purposes?
Then go to step 3.
3. Do you have any usable air base capacity and lack planes in stockpile to use them?
Then go to step 4.
4. Do you have spare factories?
Then go to step 5.
5. Are you the USSR, Germany, or China?
Then dont switch your production lines and start new ones. Else go to step 6.
6. Switch your production line and dont worry about it.
Now some real life scenarios (all mp oriented)
Case 1:
- Playing as Canada spamming air power and only fielding a small army of marines and infantry to pressure Italy.
In this case I switch infantry equipment as soon as I could because my 3 factories produced plenty of guns for my small army while giving 30k to the USSR. Better guns would give my limited marine forces an easier time applying pressure and the rest of the army doesnt matter. Additionally, the Brits and I had already consumed all useful airbases and still had surplus planes so more plane production was not useful.
Case 2:
- Playing USSR doing essentially a modified 10 width + plane spam.
I always had 15 factories on inf1. After air base capacity ran out and tank reserves hit desired amount for the war I started building inf 2 & later inf 3 in a separate line of 15 new factories to arm my armour and 'good' infantry. In that game though it was a bad call since i burned out of guns by mid 1942 and eventually ended up in the whole by 50k. (I had also been adding more gun factories but planes took priority for new factories since I faced more axis planes than anticipated - aka allies didnt help me enough).
Basically what Im getting at with my anecdotes is that A) the USSR probably wants 200k+ inf equipment stockpile before the war, and B) switching or adding factories to advanced infantry equipment is not a good idea unless you are not doing alot of personal fighting, or your production of regular infantry equipment is already more than enough for your current army. Unlike every other equipment type, infantry equipment burns up really fast and as Panzerman7 has pointed out its benefits dont make infantry able to attack cost effectively, instead they increase the force concentration in your armour divisions. However, tanks make up the majority of the power in those divisions so even +100% soft attack on infantry isnt that noticeable.
In general this is my personal check list:
1. Do all of your men have guns and have a surplus that is more than sufficient?
Then go to step 2.
2. Do you have enough tanks, artillery, at for your purposes?
Then go to step 3.
3. Do you have any usable air base capacity and lack planes in stockpile to use them?
Then go to step 4.
4. Do you have spare factories?
Then go to step 5.
5. Are you the USSR, Germany, or China?
Then dont switch your production lines and start new ones. Else go to step 6.
6. Switch your production line and dont worry about it.
Now some real life scenarios (all mp oriented)
Case 1:
- Playing as Canada spamming air power and only fielding a small army of marines and infantry to pressure Italy.
In this case I switch infantry equipment as soon as I could because my 3 factories produced plenty of guns for my small army while giving 30k to the USSR. Better guns would give my limited marine forces an easier time applying pressure and the rest of the army doesnt matter. Additionally, the Brits and I had already consumed all useful airbases and still had surplus planes so more plane production was not useful.
Case 2:
- Playing USSR doing essentially a modified 10 width + plane spam.
I always had 15 factories on inf1. After air base capacity ran out and tank reserves hit desired amount for the war I started building inf 2 & later inf 3 in a separate line of 15 new factories to arm my armour and 'good' infantry. In that game though it was a bad call since i burned out of guns by mid 1942 and eventually ended up in the whole by 50k. (I had also been adding more gun factories but planes took priority for new factories since I faced more axis planes than anticipated - aka allies didnt help me enough).
Basically what Im getting at with my anecdotes is that A) the USSR probably wants 200k+ inf equipment stockpile before the war, and B) switching or adding factories to advanced infantry equipment is not a good idea unless you are not doing alot of personal fighting, or your production of regular infantry equipment is already more than enough for your current army. Unlike every other equipment type, infantry equipment burns up really fast and as Panzerman7 has pointed out its benefits dont make infantry able to attack cost effectively, instead they increase the force concentration in your armour divisions. However, tanks make up the majority of the power in those divisions so even +100% soft attack on infantry isnt that noticeable.
I admit I don't have MP experience so this may be silly, but don't you want to research the 38/40 infantry techs every time (given that they improve your army without additional IC cost). That would significantly reduce the opportunity cost, wouldn't it?
And if you're talking about loss of production efficiency, would a scenario where you make a new line with inf2/3 and prioritize armoured divisions and special forces for it, leaving regular and garrison infantry on inf1?
i never go pure infantry i always suppliment with AA guns they may not have the full piercing of at guns but they have better soft attack than AT they provide some extra AA deterent and provide some ability to bust through armor and are fairly cheap and easy to build unlike ART or AT. Kinda like the cheap jack of all trades but master of none and they cost very little width
Support Equipment which is biggest 'free' boost to infantry performance doesn't require Inf Weapons I/II/III. To access +soft attack you do need research better weapons, but if you do not intend on upgrading guns, researching extra ~150 days to get measle +5% soft attack to 3/6 soft attack per unit isn"t that big of a deal.
IMHO support AA and support artillery is the way to go now. Imho switching to new infantry equipment is always worth it as long as you're not about to run a deficit. If you do dispersed industry it's almost never a problem. You have to realise all these passive % boni become better the higher level your infantry equipment is. A 5% boost to Basic equipment's 3 soft attack is 4 times less than the 5% boost to the 12 soft attack of infantry equipment 3. All techs together give 20% bonus soft attack, that amounts to quite a lot in absolute difference.
I said it is a noticable difference if you do switch... what's the officer problem?
I used to agree and only bothered going past Level I to get the SA boosts for most countries as a low research priority. Level 2 guns were for countries that were swimming in Steel and IC (hello USA/Germany). Armor and Arty had enough SA to blast thru anything.
Now in 1.5 with the SA nerf I am going to Level II guns for all of my Armor and Special Forces. I will run a separate Lvl II line just for them and keep Level I going for the line infantry. Lvl II is a base 50% SA increase over I and that applies to all the Motor and Mech in your Armor. SA is at such a premium now I am being forced to expand my horizons. Which is not a bad result from a new DLC.
Naturally this only applies to Germany, Japan, the UK, Russia, and maybe Japan. Italy just can't afford it until late game unless she is rampaging thru the Balkans ahistorically. China, forget it. Switching to Lvl I rifles with China is a major accomplishment. Spain and Sweden maybe, haven't really played them.
Level III guns are still pretty worthless when you consider the production cost (1.0), research cost, and 4 steel per. That really needs to be balanced better.
Well since artillery is useless now, might as well upgrade the inf equip. At least to inf2. Inf 3 comes a bit too late if you are playing with tech rules/don't have bonuses and has 80% reliability instead of the 90% reliability of inf 2 and 1 so inf 3 is questionable but I almost always try to do inf 2 now.