One thing, which I don't see in latest diary in equipment designer, is "hardness". So that is another indication that something with piercing/armor is changing.
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Why Space marines are not overpowered, and how you can easily counter them
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But what's the rationale behind one's desire to be able to do cost-efficient offense against fortified prepared enemy? Just him having built omg tanks? So what? On the offense, you already can get 1) encirclements and 2) capture tiles, which are both very handy prizes and help shifting capitulation status far quicker than some arbitraty IC damage contest.
In the Soviet war doctrine, it was taken as granted that the attacker has to have 3:1 numerical advantage in order to succeed. Do attacking tests with tanks against infantry+HTDs follow this pattern in the form of IC invested?
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But... for one, tiles are worthless. There are 2400 soviet tiles. Losing a moutain of equipment and manpower, for each tile, ensures that quite fast you're out of divisions to attack, and out of divisions to defend.
If you're out of manpower and equipment, you lose.
And if you fail to push efficiently, you can't create pockets of units.
Yes, in the wonderfull dreamland of tanks can push everything like butter huzza, that works. But the argument is : You can't push those space marines in plains, let alone push them behind a river on a forest time. There is something called "Combat Width", so you can't put an infinite number of tanks on the same tile to win.
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So you seem to say that given the actual advantage, tanks do attack and succeed? And that some tiles can - like Kursk 1943 IRL - get defended to the brim and repel the attacking units?
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I participated in the last few discussions, but I'm kinda over it now. It's become clear to me after a while that arguments to the tune of "in these circumstances tanks can push space marines" and "in these circumstances tanks can't push space marines" are great in that they're testable and replicable, but there are limits to what you can gleam from these to infer to what happens in a real game where tons of buffs and debuffs are going around and concentrating forces is a thing. Even arguments about IC effectiveness are limited because IC effectiveness isn't always relevant, like when your line is broken and you have to respond otherwise get encircled.
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What advantage ? Did you even read the topics and the different discussions those past few days about space marines or are you going just to comment one liners at random about historical facts that are totally irrelevant to the conversation ?
Are "space marines" overpowered (in 2021)?
I played around a bit with some templates and made some screenshots. I want to show them here, because maybe it's interesting for someone else and maybe I can learn a lot from the answers from land warfare gurus. I think everybody agrees that...
Here 10 pages of discussion that show that 8/2s space marines on defense are impossible to breach, yet cheap enough to allow the full 6 divisions per tile along the Staline line and still leaving enough IC to let you put tank divisions.
Here you can see the loss ratio. I'll let you push the 2400 soviet tiles at a loss ratio of 300HT and 125 mechanized against 70 TDs (also in this configuration, the tanks didn't win.)
But if you have a constructive opinion that is not "mah historical accuracy Kursk IRL" please feel free to share it. I'm all in for constructive argumentation, and pretty much everyone is.
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Pretty much all terrain is favourable for defenders but this one is especially so.
You are driving tanks across open fields against opponents who have had time to prepare concealed positions. They will not only see you first, they will fire first.
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But i don't comment anything, my own opinion here is non-existent in the first place.
I merely ask questions, in particular why people think they should enjoy a positive IC trade on offense. As I apparently haven't seen any intelligent and convincing argument to that effect.
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So the fact that not being able to win no matter what is normal and balanced for you ? The fact that you can just prevent any offensive, transforming the game in a stale state ?
You don't seem to have anything intelligent to say clearly.
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The amount of salt this useless threads generate is probably the only thing salvageable from them.
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Dude, it's tiring going through the same explanations again and again and every time some clueless guy comes talking about his historical accuracy when it's completely irrelevant when talking about game balance.
If you don't see why there is a problem with a cheap division that can be literally spammed on the whole front, preventing any kind of offensive from your opponent, I don't know what to say.
If you come with your superior air of "Mah Historical Kursk" without any constructive argument about gameplay balance.
If you barge in a discussion without even reading what was said prior claiming "I don't see a problem you are all morons I'm the only one intelligent here mah kurks 43".
No, this is no salt, it's being tired of reading the same useless comment over again and again.
If you don't see why there is a problem with a cheap division that can be literally spammed on the whole front, preventing any kind of offensive from your opponent, I don't know what to say.
If you come with your superior air of "Mah Historical Kursk" without any constructive argument about gameplay balance.
If you barge in a discussion without even reading what was said prior claiming "I don't see a problem you are all morons I'm the only one intelligent here mah kurks 43".
No, this is no salt, it's being tired of reading the same useless comment over again and again.
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When I say cost efficient, I'm not suggesting a 1:1 relationship between defender IC costs and attacker IC costs. (Although some players no doubt mean it this way.) If Germany could win against the Soviets using 1:1 IC cost on tiles, that would be stupid.
But what I'm thinking of in terms of "cost effective" is the following:
1) The attacker can afford to put 3:1 or better firepower on a particular tile without the rest of the front collapsing to counter attacks.
2) If the attacker is using tanks, and the defender is using tank destroyers (or tanks, or SPART), the attacker and defender lose tanks in proportion to the number employed, terrain, entrenchment, disparity between stats on tanks, and application of air power.
What happens in some cases (due to how attrition works and other things) is that the space marines don't end up losing the number of TDs you might think they should be losing when their divisions take combat or attrition damage. Thus, TDs become more IC efficient through a quirk of mechanics than they really should be compared to the historical record.
I'm reminded of a particular battle for Leningrad that illustrates this handily. I'm the Soviets, and Germany is attacking Leningrad with a panzer army via Finland. I have several TD divisions that are basically space marines using 1941 HTDs. I say basically space marines, but they really aren't as awesome as some of the ones better players use.
There were several attempts to break the defense around Leningrad (including the climax of the defense of the city when Italy dropped a nuke on it in 1945). What's relevant for this discussion, though, is that the space marines defending Leningrad were basically getting 15:1 or better kill ratios on German medium tanks in battles despite Axis air power and solid leaders and doctrines. These kill ratios were only battlefield kills; when factoring in attrition, German losses were ridiculously higher. Note that I was using mostly 1941 TDs for a large portion of the war, while the Germans waltzed through Finland with Panthers.
Sure, a lot of infantry died in those battles, and yes, I did improve Soviet infantry weapons and gave Soviet infantry the anti-tank techs, but at the end of the day, Leningrad was a graveyard of thousands (tens of thousands?) of German tanks while the cost in Soviet tank destroyers was hilariously small.
Note: the defense of Leningrad wasn't just the urban tile, but the plains and forests in the area as well.
Now, if I were an arrogant man, I'd sit here and claim that it was my brilliant micro and strategic vision that gave the Red Army victory. But to be honest, before we tweaked some parts of land combat in our mod, the cost efficiency of TDs was a bit too good in some situations.
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First, do you actually think I was asking about IRL and not in-game, or are you trolling?
And second, it's just as easy/easier to hide in a forest/hills and still see your enemy first, IRL too.
Unfortunately, at least in my case, that's what the test I responded to on the other thread suggested and the stalwart defense of it seemed to confirm. That's why I was gobsmacked when you 'respectively disagreed' with me, I couldn't understand how anyone who wasn't as you described above could, and I didn't have you in that category nor several others who rushed to the defense of that test. Now if instead that was more in defense in El Nora as I wasn't particularly restrained in my ridicule of the ridiculous, that I do understand. I like reading his posts and he seems like a nice guy, thus I definitely could have been more diplomatic in my evaluation of the evidence he proffered. I still can't see how that test could serve as anything but a cautionary tale of what can happen if you attack foolishly with your HTs, but I've exhausted my interest in the topic for now due to the reason below.
One of the most frustrating things I found about (mostly) lurking this board the past few years is that so many are playing with such diverse rulesets and mods that can dramatically change what strategies and tactics will be successful yet are so devoted to the conditions they prefer and post as if their 'meta' must be universal and anyone not playing the same way must be intellectually and morally inferior. I can certainly understand that it may very well be that the plethora of house rules and mods you and some others are playing lead to unenjoyable games if even forty-width HT divisions can be pierced by 20 width divisions containing mostly infantry.
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You sound like you're confirming yourself as "just going "oh stupid metagaming noobs are so set on the "meta" that they can't counter space marines."
The reason I "respectfully disagreed" with you was, as you guessed, somewhat due to your general reaction to nora - which also seemed to express that sentiment - but mostly because saying someone is bad for attacking infantry with heavy tanks 1:3 is completely baseless as well. You can attack fully-upgraded AT infantry 3:1 with heavy tanks and win, even if you're being pierced (though it will have a cost, but that is a given with tanks). You can probably attack normal 10/0 infantry ~2:20 with heavies and win on plains, with planning bonus at least. And then you said something along the lines of "if you attack a division with AT/TDs with heavies you're bad," ignoring the fact that these are cheap enough to cover every tile of a front and then some.
To me, it feels like a lot of people have just been bashing on "meta" players and comparing themselves to them skill-wise, hence the plethora of responders in different threads who are responding without having even read through it. This isn't unique to this topic at all, either.
The issue is that just by lurking this board, you don't get an insight into how the game is played multiplayer. You assume that you're able to counter these strategies and tactics. And maybe you can and are a genius HOI4 player. Although that's not very likely. The best players are usually the ones with the most practice against equally good opponents. That's how the meta is made. Someone tries a strategy, if it works people emulate it.
If you watched the Masters of the Mediterranean match you see one side, the devs with a huge advantage in industry, tech, manpower, resources, etc. versus some of the weakest nations in the game. The only advantage they had was the terrain since they just had to hold ground. But they also knew about the meta because they're play multiplayer actively. Most of the things they did that won them the game are not allowed or limited in competitive multiplayer games. Like the Space Marines Turkey built. Or the Sub 3 + Snorkel Greece built. Or the 2 width division spam Spain built.
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Why not bomb their factories so they can’t produce the tank destroyers to replace losses and grind them down through attrition? Or bomb their silos and refineries so the tank destroyers have no fuel. That would be a valid strategy, if not for strategic bombers being banned in MP as well...
War is never a 1 to 1 trade. I don’t know why people think it should be. Just because your tanks cost the same “industrial capacity investment” as their tank destroyers doesn’t mean you should win attacks against them.
If anything combat width should be re-examine, since IRL offensives need a 3:1 numerical advantage (if not more) to succeed. For the most part at least. That’s not represented well in HoI4.
War is never a 1 to 1 trade. I don’t know why people think it should be. Just because your tanks cost the same “industrial capacity investment” as their tank destroyers doesn’t mean you should win attacks against them.
If anything combat width should be re-examine, since IRL offensives need a 3:1 numerical advantage (if not more) to succeed. For the most part at least. That’s not represented well in HoI4.
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I was just trying to respond satirically to what I saw as an egregiously bad test design, I didn't really think anyone was going to take it literally, but the underlying point would be so obvious to most they'd see what I was getting at. It was an attack no one would make (more than once at least!) and without a comparison to other types of divisions had no value except to confuse the issue and even with that comparison it would be of marginal utility. If those units are going to be expected to be able to fend off or at least delay 160 width of HTs hitting them with oodles and scads of CAS as well they damn well better be able to utterly thrash them in a eighty width battle when they have reinforcements and the HTs do not.
People can and do bomb with TACs. The issue is that they trade horribly with AA, and the Axis will also often struggle with fuel.
The reason strats are banned is because if I put 500 over a zone, all its airfields can be destroyed within a few days, and by the time the victim gets the red air notification it's usually too late. Unless you think it's fun and makes sense for each faction to need to have 1k fighters over each airzone at all times?