will you mass produced crappy shermans or have limted numbers of tiger tanks

[FOARP]

It would make sense to cancel production of I and II as soon as III and IV become available, because both were almost useless against hard targets (other tanks, bunkers etc.) and I was actually worse than some armored cars.

1. Pretty obviously most of the time in the 1939 and 1940 campaign German armour was facing soft-targets with little/no AT equipment, so Panzer Is and IIs were perfectly sufficent for the task they faced.
   
   
2. If you cancel something that's already in production in reality it doesn't mean that you can instantly start producing something else. Instead there's idle time whilst the line is shut down and re-tooled for different work.
   
   
3. Panzer I and II hulls were recycled for use as AA plaforms, SP-guns, tank destroyers, scouting vehicles and command posts. I hope that HOI4 will allow recycling and modification of hulls, as well as allowing easy switching from say, Panzer II tanks to other vehicle types based on the Panzer II hull.
   
   
4. Cancelling production means losing the advantages gained in efficiency and speed (i.e., "gearing bonus" in-game) and starting again.

 

[mursolini]

On the downside, the smaller caliber meant a smaller filling of High Explosive (over all a tank spent much more time fighting soft targets than hard) compared to the 88 or similar Allied guns, it was unreliable mostly due to poor final drives, and the side armour was so thin it did not stop AT rifles. The Panther was great at shooting enemy tanks in front of it, but over all it wasn't a very useful tank.

I once read an amusing quote about the Panther's effect on post war design: "a Main Battle Tank is a tank which has the armour and firepower of a heavy, combined with the speed and versatility of a medium. The Panther had the armour and firepower of a medium with the speed and versatility of a heavy"

The quote you are quoting is an opinion from a guy who writes books about Panthers. It doesn't make it a fact. Of course, my opinion isn't fact either. Do note I didn't say it was "useless" though, it was pretty good at shooting tanks, it was just not too useful at the other important roles a tank had to fulfill. Rather than quoting a lot of facts and figures, I'll just link to another guy's reflections on the Panther, and the French impressions of the Panthers they had after the war ended, both are pretty interesting reads if you have time.
(WoT is a cool game both for shooting tanks and for bringing tankophiles out into the light)

I do not know where did you get all that but:
Panther`s mobility was perfectly enough, in fact it was faster than Pz4, and M4, and had similar power to weight ratio.
Panther`s firepower was perfectly enough against soft targets.
Panther`s side armor was still better then PZ4s side armor.
Panther had more munition in storage.
Panther was only slightly more expensive then Pz4.

I can`t see you point about "not very useful tank".

Somehow, Germans, despite being so clever and efficient, allowed themselves to be in situation to produce 2 different chassis (PZ III and PZ IV) despite both being in same weight class and actually very similar jet not compatible at most(they used same Mybach engine though and even tried early on some standardisation of parts which shows they sough problem ??). So they had 2 diferent production lines for vehicles basically in same class. Great problem, as once PZ III encountered T 34, being unable to penetrate it with its 50 mm gun and not being able to mount larger 75 gun Germans lost many time and resources to counter treat , they ceased PZ III 50 mm production and changed all to STUG with PZ III chassey which was not substitute for tank in offensive role that Germans needed in first half of the war. Standard PZ IV chassy could enable massive quick rearming of all German panzers with killer high velocity 75 mm gun.

The things are even more interesting because PZ III production gearing in pre-war period had tremendous problems. PZ III suspension system was changed many times in preproduction until 1939, and nobody in Germany actually noticed that best will be to use similar PZ IV chassy which had no such problems . Its possible it was because of kapitalistic separate interests, because "Krupp "had PZ IV chassy while "Daimler Benz" pushed their PZ III chassy?. In fact by late 1938 there was no established production lines and tools for mass PZ III chassy production at all, only manufacture of prototypes of which one by one were not satissfactory because of suspension system faliures.There will be no re-tooling of PZ III production lines in 1938 because there was no any. They simply could have decided for tooling and establishing PZ IV chassy production in all factories ,put it on 50 mm AT gun like in PZ III (they could even call it PZ III for distinction ) , and have other version- PZ IV as in RL with short barel 75 mm gun for infantry support. By the time of attack on Poland there was no actual serrial production of PZ III , 98 PZ III overall of which half prototypes with technical problems, while there was almost 300 PZ IV-s with much smoother production gearing up.

Well, Germany`s war industry was notoriously corrupt. That said, we do know that it was corrupt because we got asses to every last document, and numerous people wanted to look there and write books about how bad was the regime. Something there was, and still is very little will to do among allied nations, because, you know there are pelnto of people that want silence about every wrong thing that happened in allied nation during the war.
Arguably, one of the reasons for French so fast collapse and Soviet massive loses in 1941, was massive corruption that led to troops being unprepared, but you will never hear about it.

Tooling entire tank industry of Germany to produce only PZ IV chassy, which was ready in 1938, will enable mass production and standardization as well as flexibility of German tank units. The 75 mm high velocity gun could be mounded easily if required(as required in real history) on all tanks since PZ IV concept had better upgrade potential. Germans surely had no clue they will need long barell 75 mm gun one day, but industrial logic is to make standardised tank if both are so simillar.
By some estimates if Germans decided in early 1938 to use only PZ IV chassy as standard one for all tanks in production distributed all over the Germany , they will at the time of attack on Poland have at least tanks for 1 panzer division more. By the time of attack on France at least 2 panzer divisions more, and for attack on USSR enough tanks for 4 Panzer divisions more, not counting all of them be able to be upguned more easily with powerful high velocity 75 mm gun once needed(if needed because probably USSR will collapse). In 1943 alone, if USSR will survive, historically geared German industry could produce minimum 5000 standard PZ IV 75mm long barel alone in that year .Counting long barel PZ IV to T-34 kill ratio of 3:1 this will seal the destiny of USSR. Even if that fails, standard production od PZ IV chassy troughout Germany will enable bettter compensation of destroyed factories in later Allied bombing even a scavenging of parts. For instance destruction of Alkett factory in allied bombing stopped for months delivery of all vehicles based on PZ III chassey.So this will make tank production more immune to allied bombing and prolong the war.

I wander will HOI IV have a features that could adress such important factors of tank production ?

It would be great if we could mend that problem, but it could become overpowering Germany.

Actually, the early Pz IV's were infantry tanks and not main battle tanks used in the Panzer Divisions. It wasn't until the Pz IV F2 replaced the Pz III J in 1942 that the Pz IV's became main tanks (and the Pz III N then took on the infantry tank role.)

There was little difference actually. Pz4 was perfectly capable of being main tank, it is not some sort of Matilda or Churchill.
There was nothing high-tech about Pz4 F2, it should be contemporary to T-34 of 1940, at most.

 

[Centurion1973]

1. Pretty obviously most of the time in the 1939 and 1940 campaign German armour was facing soft-targets with little/no AT equipment, so Panzer Is and IIs were perfectly sufficent for the task they faced.
   
   
2. If you cancel something that's already in production in reality it doesn't mean that you can instantly start producing something else. Instead there's idle time whilst the line is shut down and re-tooled for different work.
   
   
3. Panzer I and II hulls were recycled for use as AA plaforms, SP-guns, tank destroyers, scouting vehicles and command posts. I hope that HOI4 will allow recycling and modification of hulls, as well as allowing easy switching from say, Panzer II tanks to other vehicle types based on the Panzer II hull.
   
   
4. Cancelling production means losing the advantages gained in efficiency and speed (i.e., "gearing bonus" in-game) and starting again.

1. Germans encountered plenty of hard targets even in 39/40, but since they werent concentrated (most of the time) it wasnt a problem - better tanks in that unit or artilery or CAS took care of individual hard targets.

2. Yes I know that very well and I would rather switch from building Panzer I and II ASAP and have less (better) tanks in total, than to have more tanks, but half of them being usefull only against infantry.

3. While IIs were decent platforms for specialized vehicles, it would be more effective to standartize weapons as much as possible.

4. already addressed in point 2

 

[Mjarr]

Yeah, why equip your troops with "Ronsons" when you can field a monster like the T-34?

Which really was not exclusive to Sherman. T-34s lack of wet storage and cramped compartment made it equally vulnerable (and perhaps even more so) for complete brewing and writeoffs, unlike Shermans which were very rapidly upgraded with wet storages once the problem became apparent. Name and reputation still stuck however and of course, even wet storage doesn't equal it cannot catch fire by any means. It simply makes it less likely.

This kind of strategy (essentially tech-rushing later techs) only works in a game where you know war won't start until '39. I really, really hope the game punishes you for this - try to tech rush later techs and you run the risk of an earlier war for which you are not properly equipped. The entire reason the Germans had Panzer Is, Panzer IIs, and Panzer IIIs in their arsenal is because they need tanks ASAP and couldn't just wait for better tanks, since they didn't know when war was going to break out.

Additionally, with a '36 start, the player will be playing with a Germany that has already started rearmament, where a production line for Panzer Is is already churning them out, where the Panzer II has just entered production, where the Panzer III is just ready for testing, and where the Panzer IV might be ready for production in small numbers before the end of the year. They will not yet have the combat experience needed to unlock much better designs of the Panzer IV (maybe they get it from experience in Spain? or maybe not until WW2 break outs?).

Simply mass-producing the Panzer IV and cancelling all other models certainly wouldn't be the no-brainer you seem to think it would be, instead war would be something that could start earlier than 1939, in which case you're going to need all the tanks you can get your hands on.

Which could easily be remedied by not really being too meta, and even if you powermetagame there is always the random possibility when those actually enter combat you get reports that you have poor ammunition, poor fuses, inefficient [something] and it requires rectifying which may still take its time regardless of the country you're playing as, and regardless if you powergame or not there still would be own problems that pop up to naturally flow the technology and small things forwards. I find it very interesting if say, you decide to delay the war and jump the guns to big guns for extra hard attack etc only to find out you are losing tanks because the ammunition is too powerful for the gun and current ammo supply situation means it will take some time before in general the problem is solved, thus your tanks have major penalties.

After all, there is a reason why Germans didn't adopt PaK40 shells for their long barreled 75mm (tank) guns to simplify logistics beyond brief test run. They had bad habit of causing internal explosions.

 

[tomstegmeier]

well for PzKw II there where variants like the Marder II and Wespe - Self propelled Art. If you can develop that, you had a good reason to continue production of Panzer II, and not switch asap to the go-to-more-or-less-de-facto-MBT PzKw IV and III (as they are described right now). Because it would be a bit boring if you always switch asap. the earlier models had use even later on, and that should be in hoi4 imho... for the option and the potential tinkering with builds and such - iam strongly against an "optimal way". This can be easily an addition to the do-i-have-enough-tanks-for-poland-dilemma.

except Panzer I... it is questionable if this thing was a tank at all, looks more like a cardbox on tracks

edit: spelling, if you fnd more errors, you may keep them

 

[misterbean]

Panzer I was a training vehicle, not intended for frontline combat.

 

[Darkrenown]

I do not know where did you get all that but:
Panther`s mobility was perfectly enough, in fact it was faster than Pz4, and M4, and had similar power to weight ratio.
Panther`s firepower was perfectly enough against soft targets.
Panther`s side armor was still better then PZ4s side armor.
Panther had more munition in storage.
Panther was only slightly more expensive then Pz4.

I can`t see you point about "not very useful tank".

Hello!
1) Certainly the Panther was a very mobile tank. When it worked. Average life on its final drive was ~150km of easy driving though, so good luck using that mobility on anything other than the tactical scale. Rough ground or trying to neutral steer cuts down on that already pitiful number.
2) There's no such thing as too much firepower. Certainly if you get shot by the Panther's cannon you die, but there's no denying it fired much less of a HE load than its peers, or even slightly less than the PzIV that it was meant to replace, so it's hard to hard it was an improvement
3) Since it was twice the weight of the PzIV I should hope it had better armour. The oddest thing was that they upped the side armour but not enough enough to help against anything that would hurt the PzIV It still wasn't enough to stop even AT rifles, which the Russians used in great numbers, so it was an odd choice not to add another 5mm. The Germans were aware the side armour was greatly lacking, BTW, it was one of the points of the Panther II project, and later Panthers had side skirts added.
4/5) I didn't mention the ammo carried or the cost

There's just a bunch of crippling problems with it, it's good at shooting tanks in front of it at long range, but bad at breakthroughs or infantry support. As a medium tnak it makes a neat Tank destroyer.

 

[FOARP]

well for PzKw II there where variants like the Marder II and Wespe - Self propelled Art. If you can develop that, you had a good reason to continue production of Panzer II, and not switch asap to the go-to-more-or-less-de-facto-MBT PzKw IV and III (as they are described right now). Because it would be a bit boring if you always switch asap. the earlier models had use even later on, and that should be in hoi4 imho... for the option and the potential tinkering with builds and such - iam strongly against an "optimal way". This can be easily an addition to the do-i-have-enough-tanks-for-poland-dilemma.

Yup. There's something tiresome about playing the game knowing that you're going to do Poland in '39, France in '40, and Russia in '41-42, and being able to make all your plans with this knowledge. There's something tiresome about having a bunch of no-brainer choices that bascially encourage you to do the same thing every time.

except Panzer I... it is questionable if this thing was a tank at all, looks more like a cardbox on tracks

Yeah, they were originally supposed to only be training vehicles but the Germans ended up equipping entire divisions with them - however they did make some pretty cool variants of this as well, such as the Panzerjaeger I tank-destroyer and the sIG 33 self-propelled gun.

Panzer I was a training vehicle, not intended for frontline combat.

Yup, but they ended up using it as one of their main tanks because they needed it to make up their numbers. 1493 of them were made in all, which is enough to equip a couple of divisions.

EDIT: And whilst I'm at it, I really hope that peacefully annexing territory like the Germans did with the Czech territories results in you capturing their production lines and equipment stocks intact, so you can field the Panzer 38(t).

 

[tomstegmeier]

@Panzer I
Yeah, they were originally supposed to only be training vehicles but the Germans ended up equipping entire divisions with them - however they did make some pretty cool variants of this as well, such as the Panzerjaeger I tank-destroyer and the sIG 33 self-propelled gun.



Yup, but they ended up using it as one of their main tanks because they needed it to make up their numbers. 1493 of them were made in all, which is enough to equip a couple of divisions.

EDIT: And whilst I'm at it, I really hope that peacefully annexing territory like the Germans did with the Czech territories results in you capturing their production lines and equipment stocks intact, so you can field the Panzer 38(t).

yeah, the trainingvehicle Panzer I...then used in battle, but didnt know even that piece of papercutout had usefull variants.
And the idea with the captured productionlines sounds great, maybe limited variation for them to encourage switching production sooner or later, so you can have them run a little while to bolster your forces but you have to switch ater on to produce more usefull stuff in the long run?

 

[jju_57]

So why switch to Pz-III or Pz-IV? After all you most likely will be able to do WC's using just your starting Pz-II's.

Unless of course HOI4 is nothing like HOI3 and what units you have actually make a difference. To be honest we only make different units and tanks in HOI3 for fun. You can already easily win with just a bunch of militia units using no air or ships.

 

[mursolini]

Hello!
1) Certainly the Panther was a very mobile tank. When it worked. Average life on its final drive was ~150km of easy driving though, so good luck using that mobility on anything other than the tactical scale. Rough ground or trying to neutral steer cuts down on that already pitiful number.

I will probably surprise you with this, but WW2 found tanks fighting without infantry support to be easy targets and pretty much useless. Which then begs for questions of what is the speed of armored column and what kind of infantry-carying viechles are there. M3 halftrack that allies had has similar tactical range to panther. Which, I think renders your point moot, as it is impossible for allies to exploit the greater range of their tanks, unless they want to sent only tanks in.

2) There's no such thing as too much firepower. Certainly if you get shot by the Panther's cannon you die, but there's no denying it fired much less of a HE load than its peers, or even slightly less than the PzIV that it was meant to replace, so it's hard to hard it was an improvement

There is too much. There is execive HE power, for example using 105mm in city combat is way worse then 75mm. Then there is a question of ammo capacity and rate of fire.

3) Since it was twice the weight of the PzIV I should hope it had better armour. The oddest thing was that they upped the side armour but not enough enough to help against anything that would hurt the PzIV It still wasn't enough to stop even AT rifles, which the Russians used in great numbers, so it was an odd choice not to add another 5mm. The Germans were aware the side armour was greatly lacking, BTW, it was one of the points of the Panther II project, and later Panthers had side skirts added.

AT rifles have limited range. They very bad weapon and are only used when it is impossible to field proper artillery pieces.
The fact that Panthers suffered from them, says more about the quality of German infantry.

There's just a bunch of crippling problems with it, it's good at shooting tanks in front of it at long range, but bad at breakthroughs or infantry support.

Honesly, I think that is mostly your opinion, not really backed by facts. I could probably say that T-34 was a bad tank in 1943-1945, since late in war, it was penetrated by any type of German AT from front, hence why it was bad at breaking through, and in early war T-34 was horrible due to small engine resource, and very slow rate of fire and horrible optics. So, it is a nice blind TD in eary war, and more or less gun-carriage in late war, not very usefull thing, Soviets should`ve just built SU-76 and SU-152 instead.

 

[Mjarr]

AT rifles have limited range. They very bad weapon and are only used when it is impossible to field proper artillery pieces.
The fact that Panthers suffered from them, says more about the quality of German infantry.

To be fair, AT rifles were standard equipment in Soviet divisions all the way to the end of the war, and ignoring the fairly obvious point of being borderline obsolete already by early to mid phases of the war it's not like the Soviets had shortage of proper AT equipment by 1943 to 1944, yet they still kept it in service.

 

[D Inqu]

To be fair, AT rifles were standard equipment in Soviet divisions all the way to the end of the war, and ignoring the fairly obvious point of being borderline obsolete already by early to mid phases of the war it's not like the Soviets had shortage of proper AT equipment by 1943 to 1944, yet they still kept it in service.

AT rifles were allright against light vehicles, like halftacks and armored cars (which the Germans used a lot). Plus they were a good psychological weapon to keep infantry holding the line, instead of breaking due to a armor attack.

 

[D Inqu]

I will probably surprise you with this, but WW2 found tanks fighting without infantry support to be easy targets and pretty much useless. Which then begs for questions of what is the speed of armored column and what kind of infantry-carying viechles are there. M3 halftrack that allies had has similar tactical range to panther. Which, I think renders your point moot, as it is impossible for allies to exploit the greater range of their tanks, unless they want to sent only tanks in.

There is no question. Go to any major mobile operation. Whether 1941 Barbarossa or 1945 Vistula-Oder, or final allied offensives across France, armored columns could advance up to 70km/day once breakthrough was achieved to a depth of around 400-500km. By having Tigers and Panthers, the Germans resigned themselves to not be capable of strategic offensive.

There is too much. There is execive HE power, for example using 105mm in city combat is way worse then 75mm. Then there is a question of ammo capacity and rate of fire.

Which why every major city battle in WW2 required heavy and super heavy artillery in large numbers... Oh, wait.

AT rifles have limited range. They very bad weapon and are only used when it is impossible to field proper artillery pieces.
The fact that Panthers suffered from them, says more about the quality of German infantry.

Still, for a tank weighing 45 tonnes, armor was poor. 45mm side turret (and inferior quality armor compared to front). Every single allied or soviet AT gun could penetrate that. And allied and soviet in the same weight class had much better thickness.

Honesly, I think that is mostly your opinion, not really backed by facts. I could probably say that T-34 was a bad tank in 1943-1945, since late in war, it was penetrated by any type of German AT from front, hence why it was bad at breaking through, and in early war T-34 was horrible due to small engine resource, and very slow rate of fire and horrible optics. So, it is a nice blind TD in eary war, and more or less gun-carriage in late war, not very usefull thing, Soviets should`ve just built SU-76 and SU-152 instead.

You are perfectly correct about the early war T-34. It was horrible due to small engine resource, and very slow rate of fire and horrible optics, overtasked commander, lack of good observation, obsolete spring suspension and a few other things. Which was why it it was supposed, according to pre-war plans, to be pulled out of production by autumn 1941 and be raplaced with T-34M.

You are aslo correct that T-34 was a bad tank in 1943, it was penetrated by any type of German AT from front and could not penetrat it, hence why it was bad at breaking through. So the soviets switched production to the T-34-85, which was adequate for the end of the war, as it was cost effective enough. The soviets had operational prototypes of T-44 , but chose not to put it into production, as they felt the reliabilty, production numbers and cost effectiveness of the T-34-85 outweigh its disadvantages during wartime.

SU-76 was not a T-34 chassis, it was a T-70 chassis. and yes, the soviets stopped build the T-70 and built SU-76 instead, making it the second most produced armoured vehicle in the USSR.

 

[Mjarr]

Still, for a tank weighing 45 tonnes, armor was poor. 45mm side turret (and inferior quality armor compared to front). Every single allied or soviet AT gun could penetrate that. And allied and soviet in the same weight class had much better thickness.

To be fair (and I know I am using this lot these days) AT technology outpaced armour design for the most part during the 40s, so even 50-60mm side armour - unless heavily sloped which of course would present physical problems how to even shape the metal box without making it look like some Red Alert sea transport - could be penetrated with mere six pounder or even 50mm gun from any moderate combat distance. Even Tiger would be realistically quite unprotected at close range against even Sherman in hypothetical "less than ~200 yards flank shot" situation. Same side armour Allies could penetrate could also be penetrated by Germans and so on and so on.

Or you could even go up close and fire Bazooka to Tiger's side\rear and relatively high chances of witnessing penetration.

 

[jju_57]

And now we will get the 1000 different posts on the better tank, tacktic, AT etc etc. But at the end of the day most likely it all comes down to what you want as whatever you pick won't have that great an impact anyway. Unless the devs plan a real shocker here and decide to make our choices have actual and real consequences.

 

[podcat]

And now we will get the 1000 different posts on the better tank, tacktic, AT etc etc. But at the end of the day most likely it all comes down to what you want as whatever you pick won't have that great an impact anyway. Unless the devs plan a real shocker here and decide to make our choices have actual and real consequences.

Thats the plan.

As for Panther: I agree with Darkrenown that studies have shown that it really wasnt as amazing as claimed, but when making games we are free to ignore certain stuff and cater a bit to the legends. Lets call it the Discovery Channel Factor or Don't Crush Podcats Boyhood Dreams Factor People told stories of how awesome the Panther was and there is no reason the panther the player builds has to have a flawed drive system - because where would be the fun in that.

I'd also argue that at the end of the war the Panther was in large part used defensively where a lot of its flaws werent very apparent.

 

[tomstegmeier]

plus panther and tiger may had there flaws, big ones. but they sure as hell scared the living s***t out of allied soldiers whom where facing them

 

[Secret Master]

So, this about sum up meetings between the Devs of HOI4?

 

[Cybvep]

Lets call it the Discovery Channel Factor or Don't Crush Podcats Boyhood Dreams Factor People told stories of how awesome the Panther was and there is no reason the panther the player builds has to have a flawed drive system - because where would be the fun in that.

So, that means more dumbing down, right? Shame on you. I lost faith in the PDS. The humanity has no hope for the future...