We need standardized tank numbers per battalion

[sdplissken]

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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.

Would make it easier to make your 40w tank units for sure. In general the tank divisions have far to many tanks, I think they need to do something about that.

I actually think this would have unintended consequences. There were typically less heavies than mediums in a division overall. This was mostly due to them being much cheaper to produce. I think the production values are getting closer to reality but I would change them first before doing something like this.

 

[vermicious knid]

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

I had not noticed this. I guess that fixes it then.

 

[Dman1791]

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

How about this though:
View attachment 781387
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.

It's also significantly slower, uses a substantially higher amount of fuel, and has 11 less soft attack. SPGs are quite bad at the moment, as the only guns ones worth using are extremely expensive. You can get away with the Close Support Gun and a couple extra MGs early on, and the Heavy Howitzer is at least a little better than standard artillery... The rest is crap. The Improved Medium Howitzer is far too expensive for something that only offers a 2 SA lead over its equivalent artillery (which is lost on the next +10% SA tech), while costing triple the tungsten and almost double the IC. Rocket SPGs are just way too weak to be useful, given that they offer at best around two-thirds the SA of artillery (getting worse as you research more artillery tech), while still managing to be more expensive.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

I generally agree with the thrust of the posts here. Right now certain types are much cheaper(heavy AA) while others significantly costly (light tank). Doesn't make sense.

 

[Cavalry]

One reason for very hard to balance is the developer add supply cost to manufacture cost. That is un real life. The tank need a big supply in attack maneuver in hundreds of km, TD in defense need much less. But when we combine TD with tank, the stats mix together and very hard to balance.\

For current, just remember to use as few tank as possible.

 

[Th3master]

It's also significantly slower, uses a substantially higher amount of fuel, and has 11 less soft attack. SPGs are quite bad at the moment, as the only guns ones worth using are extremely expensive. You can get away with the Close Support Gun and a couple extra MGs early on, and the Heavy Howitzer is at least a little better than standard artillery... The rest is crap. The Improved Medium Howitzer is far too expensive for something that only offers a 2 SA lead over its equivalent artillery (which is lost on the next +10% SA tech), while costing triple the tungsten and almost double the IC. Rocket SPGs are just way too weak to be useful, given that they offer at best around two-thirds the SA of artillery (getting worse as you research more artillery tech), while still managing to be more expensive.

Heavy howitzer costs a ridiculous amount of resources as well. I believe it's 2 chromium and 3 tungsten or something ridiculous. If they added artillery tech bonuses to SPGs as well it might be worth it, but 1943 artillery has about the same offensive stats with less piercing.

What also doesn't make sense is that the gun itself costs twice as much to add than building an entire artillery gun and carriage. It also uses far more resources.

 

[Bayes]

In my mind any kind of tank variant is good for one thing and one thing only and that is to buff piercing and armor. A single heavy TD batallion in either a infantry division or a motorized division gets all the benefits of the new update while avoiding the penalties as you can stack those armor numbers up really high with the tank designer.

 

[Dman1791]

Heavy howitzer costs a ridiculous amount of resources as well. I believe it's 2 chromium and 3 tungsten or something ridiculous. If they added artillery tech bonuses to SPGs as well it might be worth it, but 1943 artillery has about the same offensive stats with less piercing.

What also doesn't make sense is that the gun itself costs twice as much to add than building an entire artillery gun and carriage. It also uses far more resources.

That is in fact the cost of the heavy howitzer. It's also only 1 chromium more than the improved medium one... But yeah, all tank gun costs are kinda nuts at the moment. Howitzers are just the biggest offenders. Honestly, there's pretty much no reason to use anything except close support guns and a few token HV guns until you can actually afford the tungsten.

Why do artillery require tungsten, anyway? I'm not aware of HE shells or artillery tubes requiring rare or dense alloys...

 

[Gyrvendal]

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

I'm not a fan personally. I think the numbers should be the same for everything (could be 30 or 40 or 50 for ex) otherwise there will always be weird exploits were you assign a designation just to get lower numbers.

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

How about this though:
View attachment 781387
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.

Weirdly it has less hardness that motorized arty though, if you researched mechanized.

 

[Th3master]

That is in fact the cost of the heavy howitzer. It's also only 1 chromium more than the improved medium one... But yeah, all tank gun costs are kinda nuts at the moment. Howitzers are just the biggest offenders. Honestly, there's pretty much no reason to use anything except close support guns and a few token HV guns until you can actually afford the tungsten.

Why do artillery require tungsten, anyway? I'm not aware of HE shells or artillery tubes requiring rare or dense alloys...

Close support guns are really good early game for dealing lots of damage. It's a shame that its the only gun that doesn't have upgraded models

 

[Louella]

A battalion equipped with a tank with a 3-man turret, should have a different number of tanks, or different manpower requirement, than a battalion equipped with a tank with a 1-man turret...

but that way madness lies...

 

[Ody_CZ]

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.

This is why i was not happy when they announced the tank designer feature. They never balanced ship designer. They had even a problem giving roles to all types of equipment in an old simple system. Balancing is not a strong side of the HOI 4 dev team.

 

[Ody_CZ]

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

How about this though:
View attachment 781387
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.

it uses much more supply 0,25->0.42 and fuel 1.2->2.0 than motorized arty. also, it has a bad breakthrough it is slower also a worse soft attack. Sure it is cheap for resources but it is much worse.

 

[Cavalry]

Yeah, and don't forget the MLRS is even cheaper on both IC and resource, and never obsolete.

 

[Th3master]

New update just buffed tank variants! Hopefully they standardize the battalion numbers before they release 11.4 from beta.

 

[Bridger15]

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

This is a legacy of them not being able to come up with a way to balance Artillery, which, thematically, shouldn't cost any 'width' since it is stationed BEHIND the front line, not along it. I feel like arty should have less width (0?), and less SA but provide some kind of suppression benefit if you have arty 'superiority' or something.

Another route to balance them (instead of using width) is to significantly increase their attrition rate *in combat*, representing the enormous amount of shells which would need to be produced to cover expenditures. Something like that?

 

[Gyrvendal]

From the latest beta patches, it seems the devs still think they can balance this by throwing a bunch of -95% modifiers on top of battalions... I very strongly disagree with this. The stats in the tank designer should reflect the final stats of the battalion. This stuff will just make it more broken and confusing...

 

[vermicious knid]

If self-propelled artillery designs weren't allowed to have rotating turrets it would fix their breakthrough problem.

That would still leave tank destroyers and SPAA, which did historically sometimes have rotating turrets. Maybe you keep some breakthrough penalty there...but maybe the designer could let you know that reduction is going to happen.

Edit: It has been pointed out that a few WW2-era self-propelled artillery did in fact have rotating turrets. So...I guess the solution has to lie in tweaking the breakthrough penalty.

 

[machineTranslation]

-95% are boring modifications

 

[Dojo704]

It makes me happy to see all the support for such a great suggestion, that i 100% support myself lets hope for a implementation at some point in the nearer future