We need standardized tank numbers per battalion

[Gyrvendal]

With the new tank designer, all numbers balance has been thrown out of whack, with most tanks now being overpriced/underpowered, while a few specific combinations like SHTD are way over the top.
Balancing this is going to be tough. And I think one thing that NEEDS to be done to make it possible, it to normalize the number of vehicles per battalion across the board.
Current numbers:

	Tank	SPART	TD	SPAA	Flame
Light	60	36	30	30	15
Medium/modern	40	36	24	24	15
Heavy	30	24	20	16	15
Super-heavy	15	12	7	/	/

Also: light tank recon: 24
As you can see, the numbers are all over the place and have no internal consistency: why are light SPArt same numbers as medium?, Why are flame tanks always 15, etc, etc
There are some clear winners, like the aforementioned SHTD, and some clear losers like basic light tanks.

This is bad, because:

1. You need tons of math or trial and error to find out how much your new tanks is actually going to cost you in terms of outfitting battalions/divisions. This contributes to a steep learning curve for Hoi4 with no discernable benefit.
2. Now that all tanks have the same modules at the same cost, it means that battalions with fewer vehicle get each module much cheaper for the same stats benefit.
3. There are a bunch of hidden modifiers trying to balance it. If you make an AA tank, it will get -100% breakthrough to balance the fact that it's cheap. Flame tanks and recon tanks get huge nerfs to their stats, etc, etc. Those modifiers should IMO go away (with potential exceptions, since support battalions don't cost width and there should be something to compensate). In general, the stats of the tank in the tank designer, should be the stats of the battalion, including cost. This makes sense, and would save huge headaches.

Potential objections:

1. "This is going to require rebalancing everything, it's too much work" Right now everything requires rebalancing anyway, and doing this will make it much easier in the long run, as you don't have to consider the different cost of everything in each battalion/
2. "This is historical": I don't know if it is, but I think this is a necessary sacrifice in terms of gameplay.

 

[Th3master]

I totally agree. This seems like something that should not have been carried over into the new patch.

On top of this they completely nerfed SPART and SPAA. SPAA is worse at shooting down planes than regular AA and SPART is plain worse than Motorized Arty for attack.

There's also no reason to designate a tank as SPART as long as it doesn't use the superstructure module besides on light tanks where it requires half of the vehicles. It's essentially a width vs cost thing which makes very little sense. Perhaps giving a SA bonus to SPART BATs would incentivize their use.

Most of these issues are easily fixed, but the current state of the tank designer is abysmal.

 

[Corpse Fool]

To make even the inconsistency inconsistent, the various amphibious tank battalions are standardized around 50 vehicles each.

 

[dmdelor]

I'll ++ this. Or, at a minimum, it would be nice to have the cost per battalion displayed in the editor. (recognizing that this isn't the cost per armored recon company)

I also agree with Th3master's comments. The fact that AFV variants basically amount to "I'm trading production cost for combat width inefficiency" is a bit silly, and the fact most of what that swap does is invisible in the tank editor is bad. It feels like you could probably just bake TD modifiers into fixed superstructure and SPG and SPAAG modifiers into new SPG/SPAAG turret types and have everything be transparent. The type tag could then become a generic "this unit fills this role" for division design purposes so you have more control over which tanks go to which division. (and add a few more, like "Infantry Tank"...)

 

[Gyrvendal]

To make even the inconsistency inconsistent, the various amphibious tank battalions are standardized around 50 vehicles each.

Totally missed those, LOL.

There's also no reason to designate a tank as SPART as long as it doesn't use the superstructure module besides on light tanks where it requires half of the vehicles. It's essentially a width vs cost thing which makes very little sense. Perhaps giving a SA bonus to SPART BATs would incentivize their use.

I think the SP-Art, TD, and other designations should not affect the stats at all, including combat width. It should just be there to help you organize your designed vehicles into appropriate battalions, not add a bunch of modifiers. This would put the focus on the tank designer and eliminate weird situations where you designate a vehicle as something just for stat advantages.

 

[ETAIPOS]

What do you think about numbers like this:

L/M/H/SH/M
50/50/40/40/50

LTD/MTD/HTD/SHTD/MTD
40/40/40/40/40

LSPArt/MSPart/HSpart/SHSPart/MSPart
36/36/36/36/36

LSPAA/MSPAA/HSPAA/SHSPAA/MSPAA
30/30/30/30/30

 

[seldon]

To make even the inconsistency inconsistent, the various amphibious tank battalions are standardized around 50 vehicles each.

I didn't realize that. It does make the argument to make all AFV battalions 50 vehicles even stronger. The other thing that struck me, is that pre-NSB there was no downside to spending XP to make varients, other than the 10% reduction in production. Now there is a relatively minor amount of experience to make modest tweaks, the same 10% reduction in production, but often a dramatic increase in production. Looking at various varients of the PZ IV, I wonder if the production increase in real life was as significant as it is in NSB?

 

[Ruck]

I would rather have the same number of tanks needed for every single type of tanks, whatever number fits the best, for the simple reason to have it easier to calculate how costly/cheap my tank is going to be.

I think thats one of the best situations where Im absolutely willing to choose gameplay over historical. All the balancing steps needed should be done then through balancing the chassis and module costs.

AND/OR show the price for the whole batallion directly in the designer.

 

[seldon]

Agreed.

I'd a;so say there is very little historical evidence that tank destroyers, assault guns, etc. had a lower number of tanks per battalions, or light had more than mediums. Tiger battalions were smaller)
Or put it this way pretty much any number of vehicles between 40 and 60 is a reasonable number for any type of WWII AFV battalion, since you can point to that number being in the TOE of one of the majors.

 

[Feltan]

While I am sure there were historical exceptions, the 40-60 range does indeed seem reasonable to me.

As an additional consideration, why couldn't the player decide the size of an AFV battalion when designing units? A simple small-medium-large option for AFV battalions would render much of this discussion moot.

Regards,
Feltan

 

[Corpse Fool]

The larger offense in my mind, is how fewer vehicles somehow take up more width when we compare tanks with TD.

 

[Zanthra]

Totally missed those, LOL.

I think the SP-Art, TD, and other designations should not affect the stats at all, including combat width. It should just be there to help you organize your designed vehicles into appropriate battalions, not add a bunch of modifiers. This would put the focus on the tank designer and eliminate weird situations where you designate a vehicle as something just for stat advantages.

I think this could work. If there was something like a -30% production cost reduction on fixed superstructure, alongside the -20% production cost on rivited armor, would allow for low cost vehicles for SPART and TD when the soft attack or piercing is needed. There should also I feel be a 10% hardness penalty on both the fixed supersturcture and the rivited armor modules. That way one could get the cheaper stats, but lose breakthrough and hardness, as was true previously, without having to worry about combat width complications or numbers of tanks per batallion.

 

[Th3master]

The larger offense in my mind, is how fewer vehicles somehow take up more width when we compare tanks with TD.

SHTD is 7 tanks for 3 width meaning that 4 SH tanks take up the same amount of frontage as an entire battalion of infantry or 60 light tanks.

 

[Dman1791]

I think this could work. If there was something like a -30% production cost reduction on fixed superstructure, alongside the -20% production cost on rivited armor, would allow for low cost vehicles for SPART and TD when the soft attack or piercing is needed. There should also I feel be a 10% hardness penalty on both the fixed supersturcture and the rivited armor modules. That way one could get the cheaper stats, but lose breakthrough and hardness, as was true previously, without having to worry about combat width complications or numbers of tanks per batallion.

I'd only attach a hardness penalty to a hypothetical open-top turret/casemate. Stuff like the German tank hunters (Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger) were quite well protected, even without the turret. I can see a small hardness penalty on riveted construction. Definitely keep the breakthrough penalty on casemates, though.

Either way, casemate tanks definitely need to be significantly cheaper than turreted tanks. There's a reason Germany could pump out StuG III's like no tomorrow.

 

[vermicious knid]

Everything historical I've been able to find indicates that the battalion numbers for TD should be higher, the numbers for SPG should be lower, and SPAA are roughly correct. 36, 24, and 24 seem like reasonable numbers for the 3 categories.

Also agree that the numbers should be universal apart from super-heavies.

Would also like to see an assault gun or infantry tank category.

 

[Dman1791]

Everything historical I've been able to find indicates that the battalion numbers for TD should be higher, the numbers for SPG should be lower, and SPAA are roughly correct. 36, 24, and 24 seem like reasonable numbers for the 3 categories.

Also agree that the numbers should be universal apart from super-heavies.

Would also like to see an assault gun or infantry tank category.

I don't think there needs to be a special assault gun role. You can just make some particularly well-armored SPGs and mark them with a special badge if you're looking for assault guns.

 

[Jays298]

I think the numbers per division was always sliding like this, and a compromise to allow creating divisions while IC costs soared.

On top of this they completely nerfed SPART and SPAA. SPAA is worse at shooting down planes than regular AA and SPART is plain worse than Motorized Arty for attack.

There's also no reason to designate a tank as SPART as long as it doesn't use the superstructure module besides on light tanks where it requires half of the vehicles. It's essentially a width vs cost thing which makes very little sense. Perhaps giving a SA bonus to SPART BATs would incentivize their use.

Most of these issues are easily fixed, but the current state of the tank designer is abysmal.

This is kind of a pattern. introduce new design elements. But make them weaker in game so as to eliminate the need to actually use them.

We got a naval designer. Great. But ships are weak so just build destroyers or subs.

We got a tank designer. Great. But tanks are too expensive to use, or too weak to be effective. Just build Motorized artillery. Forget about niche classes like SPAA, SPG (cheaper to just use Mot Art).

 

[vermicious knid]

I don't think there needs to be a special assault gun role. You can just make some particularly well-armored SPGs and mark them with a special badge if you're looking for assault guns.

If you build a tank destroyer intended for the assault gun role and a tank destroyer intended to kill tanks on the same chassis it isn't possible to tell a division template which one to use.

You can get around that by only using basic medium chassis for your assault gun and making an actual TD on an improved medium chassis, for example. Not a perfect solution though.

 

[Dman1791]

If you build a tank destroyer intended for the assault gun role and a tank destroyer intended to kill tanks on the same chassis it isn't possible to tell a division template which one to use.

You can get around that by only using basic medium chassis for your assault gun and making an actual TD on an improved medium chassis, for example. Not a perfect solution though.

Sure you can. You can tag each one with a different badge, and set the division to use the correct one, or just manually un-check the one you don't want in the equipment list.

Though I don't think there's a way to have a specific mix, which is rather annoying. I'd rather have had the tag system be (optionally, perhaps) per-battalion rather than division-wide.

 

[Highlord Alarak]

If you build a tank destroyer intended for the assault gun role and a tank destroyer intended to kill tanks on the same chassis it isn't possible to tell a division template which one to use.

Actually, with the newly-introduced badges not unlike the ones used by ships, it is possible to make the division only use certain models.

Just build Motorized artillery. Forget about niche classes like SPAA, SPG (cheaper to just use Mot Art).

How about this though:

A battalion of those costs only ~30 more than a motorized arty battalion, but at the same time takes ONE iron and no tungsten to make. Also, dozer blades.