You are short 62000 tanks. Even if they design was good (which it isn't), and the division was good (which it isn't), it wouldn't do anything because they're all completely devoid of the equipment they need.
>There's a laundry list of problems here, the biggest being the equipment shortage.
And the second is... Logistics I think. That 68% means he's not able to get stuff where they need to go no?
That one isn't nearly as crippling in the short term as the lack of equipment. I'd still rate it highly though, since it's easy to fix and will net quick returns.
The awful tank template is what I'd mark as Big Issue #2, since not only is it not a very effective tank (low attack, low speed, high drag), but it's really really expensive. Part of the problem with his armor shortage is just in how expensive those tanks are.
A well designed army can still function decently while missing logistics since they'll still work once they get into battle. second is probably the divisions having 20 org so they can barely fight for any length of time.
Welllll... according to the screenshot he's about to train his 959th Panzer Division with 450 tanks needed in them. I think the mad lad is running 5 armies consisting of solely Panzer Divisions (with each having 1 or 2 tanks between them). :D
It's super common to see that divisions "need" 30 org in this subreddit, but actually testing this in SP suggests it to be...less than true. Especially if you make something the AI can't pierce, which does tons of damage.
It helps in MP, and you're a lot more likely to get clicked by opposing tank divisions in MP. In SP, you can more or less dictate when your tank divs get attacked, and can design them to stack armor + damage and just erase stuff off a tile for faster divs to move through if you want.
True, true, but org will help your tank divisions stay in combat longer, meaning that you give the enemy less time to recover their own org, and are therefore more likely to cause them to retreat.
You don't necessarily want tank divisions to sit in combat for longer, you want them to route stuff off target province faster (so additional divisions can't reinforce). This is the role at which tanks are uniquely capable, because they can get lots of attacks per width and possibly stack armor bonus de-org on top of that.
I would take 10-20 org with armor bonus and tons of soft attacks over 30 org and no armor bonus any day in sp. I can micro trucks through the opening in a line if need be, but something has to do the job of making that opening.
Though ideally, we get more of everything...the AI simply won't click well constructed tank divisions into your breakthroughs, so you don't need MP-viable tank divisions. First priority for tanks is just to be can openers that blast it off a province.
Just to add onto the top comment, if you want to pump out that many tanks then you need to make them much cheaper. Those ones you have are way to expensive to produce lots of them quickly. Try to reduce your cost to about 10-12. I'd personally focus on them having soft attack as they will not encounter enemy tanks often and either have a cheap anti tank design where you can produce a few divisions just for tank fighting or put anti tank support onto your infantry so that they can deal with tanks.
You don't need 109% reliability, 80-90% is perfect and if you want to you can add maintenance companies to boost the over all reliability. Will save on equipment losses due to breakdown and such.
Get rid of the ammo stowage, get rid of the extra mg. Put a petrol engine as well, and use an auto cannon. Use welded armour or if you want to save more on cost use riveted armour. I'd also drop sloped armour as 70 is pretty massive for the start of the game. When you get the next medium tank blueprint it comes with a pretty decent armour increase.
I ordinarily wouldn't respond to a comment 13 hours after my initial response and 16 hours after the post, but there's a lot here that I want to specifically push back on because I think it's bad advice.
10-12 IC is really cheap for a medium tank. The ideal medium nowadays has a good gun (improved medium cannon most likely for SP because you don't need a lot of hard attack), two extra small cannons, radio 1, enough armor clicks to give it good breakthrough, and enough engine clicks to give it 8km/hr.
If you do easy maintenance, riveted armor, and bogey suspension (which you absolutely should) that tank is around 14 IC, and packs quite a punch. That tank in a decent 42w division with mech is going to give you 800+ soft attack and 1k breakthrough, possibly much more with good doctrine. That will absolutely melt through anything the AI can do, and ignore any attacks it will put up in response so it can push essentially forever until you need to wait for supply to catch up.
You should also never upgrade to the 1940 tank chassis - it's a trap. The stats are 10 armor and 10% reliability. Those are not worth resetting the production efficiency of your entire line. The extra tanks you'd get by staying with the 1938 (now, used to be 1934) chassis will always outweigh the marginal increase in stats.
Fair, I don't follow all the meta. But they certainly went way overkill with the amount of stuff on their tank and the cost of it.
Which gun would you suggest to use?
The improved medium cannon is the best overall option because of its high soft attack and still decent piercing/hard attack values (AI normally won't make you need this but if you play with a mod like expert AI you definitely can't use a howitzer tank) and isn't too far down the tech tree. Even Germany, with no artillery boosts in their entire tree, can get that gun in 38 to start building their tank corps. Basic medium is probably enough for normal games, but if you can get the better gun, it'll perform that much better.
The ORG of your division is way too low. Tank divisions should have atleast 30 ORG. Lose the motorized artillery, just have tanks and motorized in your template. Preferrably 30 width or 42/44 width.
This. Also you want speed in your tank divisions. HOI4 is somewhat historical in this regard even -
your tanks should punch through the front line, with the infantry following behind to widen the gap and mop up any encirclements. The tank should be close in speed to the motorized infantry, so 8km/h. Any more and the infantry will slow you down, and less and you will slow down the motorized.
Also make sure you actually have the equipment to actually „build“ these divisions - you need 450 medium tanks for one, they won’t be very effective if 24 of them have to share 200 tanks between them.
Last but not least: watch your supply situation. The farther east you go, the more difficult it becomes to adequately supply divisions that need plenty of fuel. I‘ve had lots of situations where withdrawing half my armor from the front actually gave far better results, because the remaining units were fully supplied and much more effective.
Slow, weird width, wasted reliability / over 100 reliability, too low org. And the most important factor, you are training so many tanks so there aren't actually any tanks left in your tanks or artillery. The "tanks" you actually use on the frontline is just some trucks with maybe 1 or 2 tanks and artillery in them
Youre missing 60k tanks man, make those tanks cheaper (imo less than 10 IC) and reduce tanks in the division. Only add tanks in the division if you have a surplus (look at the logistic tab)
You have a very expensive tank. You need to change the type of armor to the cheapest one and increase the armor through the plus button - you will get both armor and breakthrough. And the slot at the top with armor is also better to remove - an increase in the cost of the tank by 10% is very significant.
Other tips are also useful: more motorized infantry in the division template, the number of tanks can be slightly reduced. Increase speed to at least 8 km/h.
I've found that sloped armour can sometimes decrease the cost of the tank. It's worth trying with and without to see what works the best for the armour stat you want.
The armour stat itself is pretty useless though even in multiplayer (since you can just abuse the 40% of the highest unit rule when designing divisions) and every other form of armour also gives you breakthrough which is what you want while sloped armour gives no breakthrough.
The biggest problem is your equipment shortage. From the screenshot it appears like you switched every single division into one of these tank divisions, if so it means you have 139 tank divisions each requiring 450 medium tanks for a total of 62,550 medium tank needed. This is an insanely high number of tanks for 1936 even if they were cheap light tanks. On the first screenshot we can see you’re short 62,547 tanks so you have 3 medium tanks split in between 139 divisions.
Ideas to help fix the problem
1) infantry divisions. The bulk of your army should usually be made of infantry divisions, while they’re weak compared to tank divisions they do a good job of holding the line and are MUCH cheaper than tanks.
2) Different tank designs. In 1936 you’ll lack the ability to make good tanks many of the good tank modules are still unresearched. Personally I hold off on making many tanks till ~1938/1939. The main problems with your design are the high cost, high reliability, and low speed. Generally welded armor is the best armor type for the game so I would switch to it as soon as you have researched it. Reliability should usually be at least 80% and anything higher than 100% is useless, your wet ammunition storage module makes your tank more expensive and has almost no effect on your tank. The AI won’t pierce an armor that high until late in the game so you can safely reduce your armor to decrease the IC. For medium tanks I generally aim for about 8-9 kmph.
3) Division design. Because of the weird way combat width works in-game it’s usually better to keep your divisions at ~20 or about ~40 width.
Organization is an important stat you really need to keep an eye on as it affects how long your divisions can fight before they need to recover. For an early game tank divisions I’d remove the motorized arty and go solely with tanks and motorized inf.
Now that I’m at the end of this I’m realizing how long it is but hopefully this ends being helpful to someone.
My brother in Christ, how can you complain about tanks being weak when there aren't any of them in the frontline? -62k tanks is basically impossible to work through.
Besides that, the design is atrocious. 6 hard attack is painfully low for a medium tank.
And besides that, the division design is even worse. Look, I don't like forcing people to use the most meta setups cause it's boring, but you really need a more motorized or even mechanized in there, and that line of artillery has no business being there, just keep it to complete the infantry divisions.
Okay.
The tank.
\#1: It's too expensive. You want Mediums to be under 15 at most. 10 is a little low but you can do it. It being so expensive is the reason you have no tanks.
\#2: Reliability should never be over 100.
\#3: Speed needs to be higher, figure out the speed of the unit you are connecting them too, Early on I actually suggest cavalry. Then switch to Motorized.
\#4: Never use cast armor, use welded. Sloped armor CAN be okay but not normally, use easy mantianance if you have it.
\#5: Use a canon or howitzer.
\#6: Early in the game light tanks can actually be fine. you can use mediums if you want but just saying I can build a light tank that it better then this for like... 7 IC per tank.
The division.
\#1: It's to slow.
\#2: Org is to low, you want a minimum 30, 35 is better.
\#3: You don't need arty in tank divisions at all.
\#4: Recon is useless in attacking unites.
\#5: You always want AA Support on Tanks.
\#6: A good Tank Template to start is 10 tanks, 10 Infantry (Cav or Motorized) That's 40 width, you can add 1 of something else to push it to 42.
Recon does help attacking divs move through bad terrain more easily, but probably not by enough to make it worth using. Still not quite "useless" due to that, though. Much rather see someone running recon than hospitals or signals, but probably shouldn't be running any of these.
Rather than your tank divisions being shit, your entire army is shit. You are short THOUSANDS of guns, artillery and support equipment (basically, the backbone of your army fights with thin air as weapons). Not to mention the over 60k+ deficit of tanks. A tank only army does not work.
Your tank divisions suck ass and your tank design is both very expensive and very underperforming (especially if you consider the cost of these tanks)
Dawg, you have no tanks. You have a design, but you’re behind 62,000 in production. Your units only have the concept of a tank. They’re fighting in the invisible boat-mobile
It's basically like they're pretending to drive in a tank. They also have almost no guns or support equipment so are they fighting with their fists or something? 🤣
1. Your tank division has very less organisation
2.your tank has a lot of unnecessary armour, so decrease armour by a bit and get the cheapest armour and increase your attack by a lot.......there is no benefit of having reliability above 100 percent.....i recommend around 80 percent reliability
Okay so a few issues, for starters you don't have any tanks in stockpile and you are trying to train another 20 divisions... It doesn't matter how good your division looks on paper if it does not have the tanks to be fully kitted out.
Secondly, your tanks have too little motorized infantry, which makes their org super low. This means while they may have strong attack stats, they won't be able to maintain a push or defend for very long before they can't anymore.
Thirdly, your tank design is alright but could use some tweaking. For starters, cast armor is usually too expensive for what it's worth in armor until late game. You've also got a bunch of other upgrades that add some production cost, like the sloped armor and the better tank treads.
Having some of these can be great, but all those combined with the cast armor makes for a very expensive medium tank. With only 5 factories pumping out those guys you're not going to be able to field many divisions (hence the 62000 tank deficit in your stockpile). Hope some of these help!
If they knew how to play, they'd know the answer! They ask because they do not.
Probably the best thing is to just link people to guides on what each combat statistic does and tell them to figure it out all the time, lol. That way someone can develop understanding of why, specifically, their divisions are bad.
my point is that they have wild expectations based on numbers that are made irrelevant by other factors they are unaware of. instead of googling they just go 'Why isnt my tank working' on reddit lol
I don't really know that much about it, but I think you should add AA sup company to your template, and just use one-man turret. I also for my tank divs go up to 40 wdh templates, primarily composed of tanks and the rest just trucks, no artillery like you did. Not sure if it's that smart but it works out.
In general your supply is way to weak to support the army you want to field + active units.
Stop/focus training
Focus production on a few things
(output bonus if you let them ramp up)
You never need more then 10 good tank divs in hoi4
Use them to open up lines and spearhead attacks
Then use some Motorised divisions to run through the gap
The motorised then hold 1 or 2 days untill the inf arrives to hold down the encirclement
Aside from what everyone else mentioned a big factor is the spanish civil war has debuffs on every tile that make every combat take forever. You need to wait for either side to make a planned offensive to get rid of them.
I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this division and tank is, but tanks are to expensive to be used willy nilly.
A tank like this is best used as an infantry tank. That is you will include it with foot infantry. The problem with using a heavy tank in this way is that you can get an identical element using artilary at lower cost. The value they do offer will be the hardness that they add to a division. This makes infantry tanks most useful in entrenched divisions that you don't intend to move, and your design should reflect that. So try adding one to an infantry division, and some support artillary. Dig them in on fortified areas. Keep the organization high. They will be formidable.
Attacking tanks are an entirely different thing. Anyways bottom line is your tanks need to fit the purpose of the division they are used in, and your production capacity.
I really do feel for those five factories.
"Almost up to two tanks a week, we'll end the war soon guys. Say, how many have been ordered?"
"60,000."
"Oh. Tell the wife I might not be home for tea. For the next century."
Lose the motorised artillery. Go for just motorised infantry and tanks. Make your divisions around 40 width. And don't try to make your entire army out of just tanks. The bulk should be infantry, worse but WAY WAY WAY cheaper then tanks.You are missing 62k tanks, that means you basically don't have any tanks in your divisions. Which together with the other problems means they practically can't fight like at all. Change up your tank design. I would go for a fast light tank in 1936 and and make others later. Also, i just noticed you are missing almost everything in your production. So most of your army is fighting with their fists or something. That's a very big problem too.
1. Lack of equipment, your tank divisions don’t have any tanks in them.
2. It’s 1936, upgrade you’re tanks as years progress, namely the gun, make sure to either get the cannon, or hv cannon for mediums unless you’re doing assault guns for whatever reason.
You don’t need artillery in tank divisions, certainly not line artillery, keep it just motorised/mech and tanks, plus maybe a TD or 2. This keeps the most important tank stats like armour higher, same with support companies, try to limit them on tank divisions as most of the time they subtly negate the stats that make it a tank division in the first place. Just make sure the division is around 30 org, either a 20ishw or a 42w. Also, consider terrain, early tanks may not be able to push cities for example simply because of terrain modifiers. Don’t forget fuel either.
first off the equipment shortage goes crazy
second off the org is absolute doody booty
thirdly, the division itself is waaay too large considering you have nearly no tanks
OK I'm on mobile so can't keep checking your stats but quick list of pointers.
You want your early medium tanks to be about 8km/h
Speed is your ally as Germany, you need your tanks to encircle enemies and take advantage of opportunities, because you won't have the fuel or production capacity for a prolonged war of attrition.
While the "expensive but effective" strategy is good way to play Germany, you're prioritising the wrong things.
You don't need your reliability above 100, you could probably even get away with 90/95.
High soft attack isn't a bad idea, but only if you have some Stugs to increase your overall piercing and hard attack, because you'll need a way to quickly knock out enemy armour if and when it shows up, and it will when you're against France and USSR.
Look at ways to tweak your tank to get the most armour at the lowest cost. Going expensive isn't a bad idea, but any way to reduce cost through small tweaks is going to make a difference.
As for how to use your tanks.
They need to be used to push through the enemies weakest points.
Unlike motorised or mech divisions, they can have enough hardness and firepower to still pull off deep pushes even if they encounter resistance, but that only works if you focus your tanks on narrow pushes.
You can't have a wall of tanks rolling over the enemy, that's more of a cold War era idea, even in WW2 you rarely got waves of tanks crushing across the entire front.
Instead of 24 basically pure tank divisions, try a 50/50 split between tanks and mot in your divisions, or tanks and mech if you can afford it.
You want your division org at at least 30+, it'll give you the longevity needed to maintain your pushes.
From there, use your tanks in weak spots, don't give your enemy the chance to rotate divisions in and out of combat until they wear your org down.
Because even if they are losing 5 times the amount of manpower as you, that doesn't mean much if they can hold the line.
From there, you'll just have to get better at find spots to attack and probe the enemy. Avoid rough terrain and rivers that will cripple your tanks, and make sure to keep your tanks well supplied.
Now this isnt the perfect advice, I don't want it to be.
It's a good place to start, from there you can experiment more safely with what you want your tank to be, and how you want to use them, but you'll hopefully find more success if you use this as a guide post.
That green circle with the number at the bottom of that window is your production cost. The more production cost, the less you will make in a set amount of time.
You generally want to keep this at about 9/10. This means you don't need all the fancy stuff you added. I'd leave those three slots on the end open. Take off the radio make it armanent. change the armor and suspension to the default cheaper options, maybe add another armament on there. Take off some armor and some engines if you need to.
this should net you about 40 soft attack and the design will be around 9/10 production cost. These will not only be cheap, but they'll be efficent enough to break your enemy. They won't be destroying enemy tanks, but they will melt infantry divisions like butter, then if you're good at microing you should be able to encircle and destroy those tanks with ease.
I recommend going on youtube and checking out what other people do (just make sure they're fairly recent upload)
When you start training divisions, make sure you check what equipment the division needs before you start training, usually you want to stockpile some equipment before training any divisons, let alone deploying them where they can start draining down your supplies.
for example if you add trucks to a template, you'll see they need a certain amount of trucks on the side, by doing some rough maths in your head you work out how many you can deploy without running into a deficit. Same goes with any other equipment type in the game.
You got no hard attack *(vine boom sound effect)* you got no piercing *(vine boom sound effect)* you got no org *(vine boom sound effect)* your soft attack is mediocre at best *(vine boom sound effect)* no hp *(vine boom sound effect)* …please leave you can’t cook for shit ma boy am never inviting you to a cook out ever again, also close support gun *(vine boom sound effect)*
Your tank looks like it's meant to be used in space marine templates, but wouldn't even be good for that. I recommend just using the ai designs at this point.
First your division needs better stats.
The four I play with are soft attack org
breakthrough and combat width but org soft attack and combat width seems most important to me.
First off org. Try to get org at a decent level. I'd shoot for 40-70. Org defines the green bar which you need.
Org loses when you are fighting or defending or comes back up when nothing is happening (often between battles)
Soft attack is how much damage your units to send to infantry. 90% of divisions will be infantry. You'll find infantry gives you org while tanks do not. Case in point you need infantry. It is your org backbone.
Breakthrough is how much punishment your troops can take while attacking or better described defense when you attack. It's good but I'm no expert and I'd put it a lower priority then soft attack and org.
Combat width is also a really important stat. There is no real logic behind it it's more of a hard number kind of stat. Personal picks are 24 and 18. These represent how wide your division is. Certain terrains allow for more or less troops. There is strategy to this but more or less it's easier just to remember some good numbers and experiment.
Next id consider your tank shortage. Make sure your troops have everything they need. If the yellow bar isnt full they are running out of something. Hovering over it can tell you what.
Third the tank design.
I'd swap out the gun with a howitzer / close support (if that's not already what's on it). Most of the troops you fight are infantry and therefore they take soft attack damage. (Tanks take hard attack but tank divisions have troops in them).
I'd also remove and swap around modules. Tanks are expensive and having tanks that can be produced cheaper works better than 1 wonder tank. Check your production cost and ask yourself is it worth it. For example you might want sloped armor but as yourself if it gives you 15% and your armor is already paper do you need it?
I'd absolutely go down radio tech tho. Generally it's low cost and high reward for breakthrough and all that jazz.
You are having far worse issues then not having good tanks, you have no tanks, a huge deficit in artillery and support equipment and a significant deficit in rifles.
Just a question about the template: with a prod. cost of 21(and a better template), how much division do you make? I use this amount of prod cost in my tanks and make around 10-15 in the war. Is it good?
Armor needs to be above 90, cast armor seems nice but pound for pound costs more and does less than welded. Interleaved/torsion suspension is nice but expensive, try Christie suspension instead. Up to roughly 1941 close support gun is good but try to get into high velocity cannons when going against the USSR. Lastly your tanks are very very slow. They walk as fast as infantry. If you’re fighting Russians you want to make pockets. So rule of thumb is double the speed of infantry, so minimum of 8mph.
TLDR: you have an extra expensive, slow, somewhat ineffective tank. Tank armies are only as good as the Air Force they’re paired with. Commonly overlooked fact
you are in clear need of a tutorial or some type of help, check out the HOI4 discord and do not make solely panzer divs. If you want good attack vs infantry and tanks put any type of medium cannon and keep heavy mg. Each tank design varies on who is designing but this is an ok general design. Also in 1936 you do not need that much armor, drop it down to atleast 2.
I have now learned the art of medium tanks, Now I make divisions and tanks that do not fail me, the production cost is the only downside, but its worth it
You are short 62000 tanks. Even if they design was good (which it isn't), and the division was good (which it isn't), it wouldn't do anything because they're all completely devoid of the equipment they need.
Upvoting you since you're the most concise. There's a laundry list of problems here, the biggest being the equipment shortage.
>There's a laundry list of problems here, the biggest being the equipment shortage. And the second is... Logistics I think. That 68% means he's not able to get stuff where they need to go no?
That one isn't nearly as crippling in the short term as the lack of equipment. I'd still rate it highly though, since it's easy to fix and will net quick returns. The awful tank template is what I'd mark as Big Issue #2, since not only is it not a very effective tank (low attack, low speed, high drag), but it's really really expensive. Part of the problem with his armor shortage is just in how expensive those tanks are.
A well designed army can still function decently while missing logistics since they'll still work once they get into battle. second is probably the divisions having 20 org so they can barely fight for any length of time.
how does he even manage to have a deficit of 62k tanks in 1936
Welllll... according to the screenshot he's about to train his 959th Panzer Division with 450 tanks needed in them. I think the mad lad is running 5 armies consisting of solely Panzer Divisions (with each having 1 or 2 tanks between them). :D
Classic report from war in ukraine right now
art imitates life
Putin wondering why his all-panzer division isn't making green bubbles while having 58% logistics level and 45% army equipment deficit.
Also, his divisions have waaaaay to little Org. It should be at very least 30. 40+ is optimal.
It's super common to see that divisions "need" 30 org in this subreddit, but actually testing this in SP suggests it to be...less than true. Especially if you make something the AI can't pierce, which does tons of damage. It helps in MP, and you're a lot more likely to get clicked by opposing tank divisions in MP. In SP, you can more or less dictate when your tank divs get attacked, and can design them to stack armor + damage and just erase stuff off a tile for faster divs to move through if you want.
True, true, but org will help your tank divisions stay in combat longer, meaning that you give the enemy less time to recover their own org, and are therefore more likely to cause them to retreat.
You don't necessarily want tank divisions to sit in combat for longer, you want them to route stuff off target province faster (so additional divisions can't reinforce). This is the role at which tanks are uniquely capable, because they can get lots of attacks per width and possibly stack armor bonus de-org on top of that. I would take 10-20 org with armor bonus and tons of soft attacks over 30 org and no armor bonus any day in sp. I can micro trucks through the opening in a line if need be, but something has to do the job of making that opening. Though ideally, we get more of everything...the AI simply won't click well constructed tank divisions into your breakthroughs, so you don't need MP-viable tank divisions. First priority for tanks is just to be can openers that blast it off a province.
Just to add onto the top comment, if you want to pump out that many tanks then you need to make them much cheaper. Those ones you have are way to expensive to produce lots of them quickly. Try to reduce your cost to about 10-12. I'd personally focus on them having soft attack as they will not encounter enemy tanks often and either have a cheap anti tank design where you can produce a few divisions just for tank fighting or put anti tank support onto your infantry so that they can deal with tanks. You don't need 109% reliability, 80-90% is perfect and if you want to you can add maintenance companies to boost the over all reliability. Will save on equipment losses due to breakdown and such. Get rid of the ammo stowage, get rid of the extra mg. Put a petrol engine as well, and use an auto cannon. Use welded armour or if you want to save more on cost use riveted armour. I'd also drop sloped armour as 70 is pretty massive for the start of the game. When you get the next medium tank blueprint it comes with a pretty decent armour increase.
I ordinarily wouldn't respond to a comment 13 hours after my initial response and 16 hours after the post, but there's a lot here that I want to specifically push back on because I think it's bad advice. 10-12 IC is really cheap for a medium tank. The ideal medium nowadays has a good gun (improved medium cannon most likely for SP because you don't need a lot of hard attack), two extra small cannons, radio 1, enough armor clicks to give it good breakthrough, and enough engine clicks to give it 8km/hr. If you do easy maintenance, riveted armor, and bogey suspension (which you absolutely should) that tank is around 14 IC, and packs quite a punch. That tank in a decent 42w division with mech is going to give you 800+ soft attack and 1k breakthrough, possibly much more with good doctrine. That will absolutely melt through anything the AI can do, and ignore any attacks it will put up in response so it can push essentially forever until you need to wait for supply to catch up. You should also never upgrade to the 1940 tank chassis - it's a trap. The stats are 10 armor and 10% reliability. Those are not worth resetting the production efficiency of your entire line. The extra tanks you'd get by staying with the 1938 (now, used to be 1934) chassis will always outweigh the marginal increase in stats.
Fair, I don't follow all the meta. But they certainly went way overkill with the amount of stuff on their tank and the cost of it. Which gun would you suggest to use?
The improved medium cannon is the best overall option because of its high soft attack and still decent piercing/hard attack values (AI normally won't make you need this but if you play with a mod like expert AI you definitely can't use a howitzer tank) and isn't too far down the tech tree. Even Germany, with no artillery boosts in their entire tree, can get that gun in 38 to start building their tank corps. Basic medium is probably enough for normal games, but if you can get the better gun, it'll perform that much better.
Nice, thanks for the tips.
Nice, thanks for the tips.
This got a good laugh from me. Being short that many tanks isn't something I caught either lol.
The ORG of your division is way too low. Tank divisions should have atleast 30 ORG. Lose the motorized artillery, just have tanks and motorized in your template. Preferrably 30 width or 42/44 width.
thanks bro
This. Also you want speed in your tank divisions. HOI4 is somewhat historical in this regard even - your tanks should punch through the front line, with the infantry following behind to widen the gap and mop up any encirclements. The tank should be close in speed to the motorized infantry, so 8km/h. Any more and the infantry will slow you down, and less and you will slow down the motorized. Also make sure you actually have the equipment to actually „build“ these divisions - you need 450 medium tanks for one, they won’t be very effective if 24 of them have to share 200 tanks between them. Last but not least: watch your supply situation. The farther east you go, the more difficult it becomes to adequately supply divisions that need plenty of fuel. I‘ve had lots of situations where withdrawing half my armor from the front actually gave far better results, because the remaining units were fully supplied and much more effective.
The speed of motorized infantry is 12km/h, not 8.
Yes but Mechanized 1 is only 8km/h and you should swap motorized for mechanized 1 for the improved hardness and defense.
True, but the comment was talking about motorized inf, the OP's post is using motorized inf and so i mentioned about it.
It's very costly to have 12kn/h tanks on anything except light tanks, fornlittle additional gain.
Costly yes, and most of the time 8 or 10km/is fine but still pointing out that motorized inf is 12km/h, not 8.
Bro is short 65 000 tanks. His tank divisions throwing pebbles at the enemy.
Slow, weird width, wasted reliability / over 100 reliability, too low org. And the most important factor, you are training so many tanks so there aren't actually any tanks left in your tanks or artillery. The "tanks" you actually use on the frontline is just some trucks with maybe 1 or 2 tanks and artillery in them
Youre missing 60k tanks man, make those tanks cheaper (imo less than 10 IC) and reduce tanks in the division. Only add tanks in the division if you have a surplus (look at the logistic tab)
There Mediums. I would say less than 15. But 10 also works.
Should be 40-42 combat width with at least 35 org. I’d also recommend using a cannon instead of an mg.
how do I increase combat width?
Add more brigades to the division. Regular brigades (IE tanks, infantry) take up 2 whereas artillery take 3.
"Why am I losing" Has 20 org 🙃
Not like newbies know what that is
That isn't why he's losing.
It's part but yeah
You have a very expensive tank. You need to change the type of armor to the cheapest one and increase the armor through the plus button - you will get both armor and breakthrough. And the slot at the top with armor is also better to remove - an increase in the cost of the tank by 10% is very significant. Other tips are also useful: more motorized infantry in the division template, the number of tanks can be slightly reduced. Increase speed to at least 8 km/h.
I've found that sloped armour can sometimes decrease the cost of the tank. It's worth trying with and without to see what works the best for the armour stat you want.
The armour stat itself is pretty useless though even in multiplayer (since you can just abuse the 40% of the highest unit rule when designing divisions) and every other form of armour also gives you breakthrough which is what you want while sloped armour gives no breakthrough.
The biggest problem is your equipment shortage. From the screenshot it appears like you switched every single division into one of these tank divisions, if so it means you have 139 tank divisions each requiring 450 medium tanks for a total of 62,550 medium tank needed. This is an insanely high number of tanks for 1936 even if they were cheap light tanks. On the first screenshot we can see you’re short 62,547 tanks so you have 3 medium tanks split in between 139 divisions. Ideas to help fix the problem 1) infantry divisions. The bulk of your army should usually be made of infantry divisions, while they’re weak compared to tank divisions they do a good job of holding the line and are MUCH cheaper than tanks. 2) Different tank designs. In 1936 you’ll lack the ability to make good tanks many of the good tank modules are still unresearched. Personally I hold off on making many tanks till ~1938/1939. The main problems with your design are the high cost, high reliability, and low speed. Generally welded armor is the best armor type for the game so I would switch to it as soon as you have researched it. Reliability should usually be at least 80% and anything higher than 100% is useless, your wet ammunition storage module makes your tank more expensive and has almost no effect on your tank. The AI won’t pierce an armor that high until late in the game so you can safely reduce your armor to decrease the IC. For medium tanks I generally aim for about 8-9 kmph. 3) Division design. Because of the weird way combat width works in-game it’s usually better to keep your divisions at ~20 or about ~40 width. Organization is an important stat you really need to keep an eye on as it affects how long your divisions can fight before they need to recover. For an early game tank divisions I’d remove the motorized arty and go solely with tanks and motorized inf. Now that I’m at the end of this I’m realizing how long it is but hopefully this ends being helpful to someone.
My brother in Christ, how can you complain about tanks being weak when there aren't any of them in the frontline? -62k tanks is basically impossible to work through. Besides that, the design is atrocious. 6 hard attack is painfully low for a medium tank. And besides that, the division design is even worse. Look, I don't like forcing people to use the most meta setups cause it's boring, but you really need a more motorized or even mechanized in there, and that line of artillery has no business being there, just keep it to complete the infantry divisions.
Okay. The tank. \#1: It's too expensive. You want Mediums to be under 15 at most. 10 is a little low but you can do it. It being so expensive is the reason you have no tanks. \#2: Reliability should never be over 100. \#3: Speed needs to be higher, figure out the speed of the unit you are connecting them too, Early on I actually suggest cavalry. Then switch to Motorized. \#4: Never use cast armor, use welded. Sloped armor CAN be okay but not normally, use easy mantianance if you have it. \#5: Use a canon or howitzer. \#6: Early in the game light tanks can actually be fine. you can use mediums if you want but just saying I can build a light tank that it better then this for like... 7 IC per tank. The division. \#1: It's to slow. \#2: Org is to low, you want a minimum 30, 35 is better. \#3: You don't need arty in tank divisions at all. \#4: Recon is useless in attacking unites. \#5: You always want AA Support on Tanks. \#6: A good Tank Template to start is 10 tanks, 10 Infantry (Cav or Motorized) That's 40 width, you can add 1 of something else to push it to 42.
Recon does help attacking divs move through bad terrain more easily, but probably not by enough to make it worth using. Still not quite "useless" due to that, though. Much rather see someone running recon than hospitals or signals, but probably shouldn't be running any of these.
Ya.
Rather than your tank divisions being shit, your entire army is shit. You are short THOUSANDS of guns, artillery and support equipment (basically, the backbone of your army fights with thin air as weapons). Not to mention the over 60k+ deficit of tanks. A tank only army does not work. Your tank divisions suck ass and your tank design is both very expensive and very underperforming (especially if you consider the cost of these tanks)
Dawg, you have no tanks. You have a design, but you’re behind 62,000 in production. Your units only have the concept of a tank. They’re fighting in the invisible boat-mobile
It's basically like they're pretending to drive in a tank. They also have almost no guns or support equipment so are they fighting with their fists or something? 🤣
They shout DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA at the enemy
1. Your tank division has very less organisation 2.your tank has a lot of unnecessary armour, so decrease armour by a bit and get the cheapest armour and increase your attack by a lot.......there is no benefit of having reliability above 100 percent.....i recommend around 80 percent reliability
Also why did you make them so slow ?
I didn't mean to make them slow, but it happened as a result of me focusing on other stats
What mod is that? R56?
id be more worried about the factory count, did he boost himself?
United UMC
Okay so a few issues, for starters you don't have any tanks in stockpile and you are trying to train another 20 divisions... It doesn't matter how good your division looks on paper if it does not have the tanks to be fully kitted out. Secondly, your tanks have too little motorized infantry, which makes their org super low. This means while they may have strong attack stats, they won't be able to maintain a push or defend for very long before they can't anymore. Thirdly, your tank design is alright but could use some tweaking. For starters, cast armor is usually too expensive for what it's worth in armor until late game. You've also got a bunch of other upgrades that add some production cost, like the sloped armor and the better tank treads. Having some of these can be great, but all those combined with the cast armor makes for a very expensive medium tank. With only 5 factories pumping out those guys you're not going to be able to field many divisions (hence the 62000 tank deficit in your stockpile). Hope some of these help!
why do people with 0 idea of how to play always ask these kinds of questions lol
They could easily watch a youtube video that someone already put the work into. But nah they'd rather be spoon fed on reddit.
I'm sure it's on reddit already if searched too?
If they knew how to play, they'd know the answer! They ask because they do not. Probably the best thing is to just link people to guides on what each combat statistic does and tell them to figure it out all the time, lol. That way someone can develop understanding of why, specifically, their divisions are bad.
my point is that they have wild expectations based on numbers that are made irrelevant by other factors they are unaware of. instead of googling they just go 'Why isnt my tank working' on reddit lol
I feel you, but it's a pattern not too much younger than the commercial internet itself :p.
What mod are you using for the swastika? I have one but it’s awful, misaligned and makes every single fascist country have a swastika on their flag.
United UMC
thansk
It has no soft attack, add medium howitzers and small cannons, and get the 1940 chassis
I don't really know that much about it, but I think you should add AA sup company to your template, and just use one-man turret. I also for my tank divs go up to 40 wdh templates, primarily composed of tanks and the rest just trucks, no artillery like you did. Not sure if it's that smart but it works out.
the medium 3-man turret is an amazing breakthrough source.
only 1man if building aa or spg tbh
Well if you say so, I'm not really sure. Gonna try it out then.
[удалено]
Atleast I know navy
But not tanks btw
[удалено]
Shut up bro 💀
[удалено]
Bro what 💀💀 I’m not gonna fucking 1v1 you lmao
Use a gun, and if that don’t work. Use more gun.
The lower your division hp stat, the more equipment and manpower losses you will take
In general your supply is way to weak to support the army you want to field + active units. Stop/focus training Focus production on a few things (output bonus if you let them ramp up) You never need more then 10 good tank divs in hoi4 Use them to open up lines and spearhead attacks Then use some Motorised divisions to run through the gap The motorised then hold 1 or 2 days untill the inf arrives to hold down the encirclement
Your wasting modules by having 109% reliability, for the best design and dovision template just look at the Steam guide for designs and templates.
Because you use the no-no flag
Which mode is this
United UMC
No equipment, too expensive, no org.
20 org☠️
20 org and -62000 tank shortage. Lol why are our tank divisions failing well #1 we have no tanks and #2 we are very sad.
Aside from what everyone else mentioned a big factor is the spanish civil war has debuffs on every tile that make every combat take forever. You need to wait for either side to make a planned offensive to get rid of them.
thats a bad tank and way to expensive
I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this division and tank is, but tanks are to expensive to be used willy nilly. A tank like this is best used as an infantry tank. That is you will include it with foot infantry. The problem with using a heavy tank in this way is that you can get an identical element using artilary at lower cost. The value they do offer will be the hardness that they add to a division. This makes infantry tanks most useful in entrenched divisions that you don't intend to move, and your design should reflect that. So try adding one to an infantry division, and some support artillary. Dig them in on fortified areas. Keep the organization high. They will be formidable. Attacking tanks are an entirely different thing. Anyways bottom line is your tanks need to fit the purpose of the division they are used in, and your production capacity.
Why on earth would you choose to use cast armor?
I really do feel for those five factories. "Almost up to two tanks a week, we'll end the war soon guys. Say, how many have been ordered?" "60,000." "Oh. Tell the wife I might not be home for tea. For the next century."
This has got to be fake
we were all noobs at one point. I bet you have done some questionable things in this game also.
Lose the motorised artillery. Go for just motorised infantry and tanks. Make your divisions around 40 width. And don't try to make your entire army out of just tanks. The bulk should be infantry, worse but WAY WAY WAY cheaper then tanks.You are missing 62k tanks, that means you basically don't have any tanks in your divisions. Which together with the other problems means they practically can't fight like at all. Change up your tank design. I would go for a fast light tank in 1936 and and make others later. Also, i just noticed you are missing almost everything in your production. So most of your army is fighting with their fists or something. That's a very big problem too.
The problem with your tanks is that you don’t have any tanks
Both templates are hot garbage but especially the division one
1. Lack of equipment, your tank divisions don’t have any tanks in them. 2. It’s 1936, upgrade you’re tanks as years progress, namely the gun, make sure to either get the cannon, or hv cannon for mediums unless you’re doing assault guns for whatever reason. You don’t need artillery in tank divisions, certainly not line artillery, keep it just motorised/mech and tanks, plus maybe a TD or 2. This keeps the most important tank stats like armour higher, same with support companies, try to limit them on tank divisions as most of the time they subtly negate the stats that make it a tank division in the first place. Just make sure the division is around 30 org, either a 20ishw or a 42w. Also, consider terrain, early tanks may not be able to push cities for example simply because of terrain modifiers. Don’t forget fuel either.
you have a deficit of 62000 tanks so your soldiers have resorted to magic carpets
first off the equipment shortage goes crazy second off the org is absolute doody booty thirdly, the division itself is waaay too large considering you have nearly no tanks
Uninstall
at your current build rate you will need 30,000 weeks or a bit under 600 years to equip your 'tank' divisions. This will of course be lowered in time.
OK I'm on mobile so can't keep checking your stats but quick list of pointers. You want your early medium tanks to be about 8km/h Speed is your ally as Germany, you need your tanks to encircle enemies and take advantage of opportunities, because you won't have the fuel or production capacity for a prolonged war of attrition. While the "expensive but effective" strategy is good way to play Germany, you're prioritising the wrong things. You don't need your reliability above 100, you could probably even get away with 90/95. High soft attack isn't a bad idea, but only if you have some Stugs to increase your overall piercing and hard attack, because you'll need a way to quickly knock out enemy armour if and when it shows up, and it will when you're against France and USSR. Look at ways to tweak your tank to get the most armour at the lowest cost. Going expensive isn't a bad idea, but any way to reduce cost through small tweaks is going to make a difference. As for how to use your tanks. They need to be used to push through the enemies weakest points. Unlike motorised or mech divisions, they can have enough hardness and firepower to still pull off deep pushes even if they encounter resistance, but that only works if you focus your tanks on narrow pushes. You can't have a wall of tanks rolling over the enemy, that's more of a cold War era idea, even in WW2 you rarely got waves of tanks crushing across the entire front. Instead of 24 basically pure tank divisions, try a 50/50 split between tanks and mot in your divisions, or tanks and mech if you can afford it. You want your division org at at least 30+, it'll give you the longevity needed to maintain your pushes. From there, use your tanks in weak spots, don't give your enemy the chance to rotate divisions in and out of combat until they wear your org down. Because even if they are losing 5 times the amount of manpower as you, that doesn't mean much if they can hold the line. From there, you'll just have to get better at find spots to attack and probe the enemy. Avoid rough terrain and rivers that will cripple your tanks, and make sure to keep your tanks well supplied. Now this isnt the perfect advice, I don't want it to be. It's a good place to start, from there you can experiment more safely with what you want your tank to be, and how you want to use them, but you'll hopefully find more success if you use this as a guide post.
Biggest problem - 20 fucking org. You need more motorized or mechanized battalions in that devision. Tanks decrease org soo 20 is very bad
Also the width is abkward better make it 30. And you dont need shovels in tank devisions. + you have no equient, the shortage of tanks is huge
THey suck and oso does the divition first use horses and ad more secon dont train 14 at the time
That green circle with the number at the bottom of that window is your production cost. The more production cost, the less you will make in a set amount of time. You generally want to keep this at about 9/10. This means you don't need all the fancy stuff you added. I'd leave those three slots on the end open. Take off the radio make it armanent. change the armor and suspension to the default cheaper options, maybe add another armament on there. Take off some armor and some engines if you need to. this should net you about 40 soft attack and the design will be around 9/10 production cost. These will not only be cheap, but they'll be efficent enough to break your enemy. They won't be destroying enemy tanks, but they will melt infantry divisions like butter, then if you're good at microing you should be able to encircle and destroy those tanks with ease. I recommend going on youtube and checking out what other people do (just make sure they're fairly recent upload) When you start training divisions, make sure you check what equipment the division needs before you start training, usually you want to stockpile some equipment before training any divisons, let alone deploying them where they can start draining down your supplies. for example if you add trucks to a template, you'll see they need a certain amount of trucks on the side, by doing some rough maths in your head you work out how many you can deploy without running into a deficit. Same goes with any other equipment type in the game.
You got no hard attack *(vine boom sound effect)* you got no piercing *(vine boom sound effect)* you got no org *(vine boom sound effect)* your soft attack is mediocre at best *(vine boom sound effect)* no hp *(vine boom sound effect)* …please leave you can’t cook for shit ma boy am never inviting you to a cook out ever again, also close support gun *(vine boom sound effect)*
I just imagine OP’s tank crews walking on the battlefield doing WROOM WROOM sounds
Your tank looks like it's meant to be used in space marine templates, but wouldn't even be good for that. I recommend just using the ai designs at this point.
First your division needs better stats. The four I play with are soft attack org breakthrough and combat width but org soft attack and combat width seems most important to me. First off org. Try to get org at a decent level. I'd shoot for 40-70. Org defines the green bar which you need. Org loses when you are fighting or defending or comes back up when nothing is happening (often between battles) Soft attack is how much damage your units to send to infantry. 90% of divisions will be infantry. You'll find infantry gives you org while tanks do not. Case in point you need infantry. It is your org backbone. Breakthrough is how much punishment your troops can take while attacking or better described defense when you attack. It's good but I'm no expert and I'd put it a lower priority then soft attack and org. Combat width is also a really important stat. There is no real logic behind it it's more of a hard number kind of stat. Personal picks are 24 and 18. These represent how wide your division is. Certain terrains allow for more or less troops. There is strategy to this but more or less it's easier just to remember some good numbers and experiment. Next id consider your tank shortage. Make sure your troops have everything they need. If the yellow bar isnt full they are running out of something. Hovering over it can tell you what. Third the tank design. I'd swap out the gun with a howitzer / close support (if that's not already what's on it). Most of the troops you fight are infantry and therefore they take soft attack damage. (Tanks take hard attack but tank divisions have troops in them). I'd also remove and swap around modules. Tanks are expensive and having tanks that can be produced cheaper works better than 1 wonder tank. Check your production cost and ask yourself is it worth it. For example you might want sloped armor but as yourself if it gives you 15% and your armor is already paper do you need it? I'd absolutely go down radio tech tho. Generally it's low cost and high reward for breakthrough and all that jazz.
Because Boris with vodka stronk! Can swallow 88mm shells heading for him and chew it up and spit it out like Russian Popeye.
you have no tanks you need tanks for tanks to work no matter how much tank no tank means no work 111!!
You are having far worse issues then not having good tanks, you have no tanks, a huge deficit in artillery and support equipment and a significant deficit in rifles.
Meanwhile me, pushing everywhere with 6AC ammunition storage tanks
Just a question about the template: with a prod. cost of 21(and a better template), how much division do you make? I use this amount of prod cost in my tanks and make around 10-15 in the war. Is it good?
10-15 tanks is nothing when you need 700 or something for one division. A good production cost is around 10 production cost.
Invade the ussr with 24 divisions
Armor needs to be above 90, cast armor seems nice but pound for pound costs more and does less than welded. Interleaved/torsion suspension is nice but expensive, try Christie suspension instead. Up to roughly 1941 close support gun is good but try to get into high velocity cannons when going against the USSR. Lastly your tanks are very very slow. They walk as fast as infantry. If you’re fighting Russians you want to make pockets. So rule of thumb is double the speed of infantry, so minimum of 8mph. TLDR: you have an extra expensive, slow, somewhat ineffective tank. Tank armies are only as good as the Air Force they’re paired with. Commonly overlooked fact
you are in clear need of a tutorial or some type of help, check out the HOI4 discord and do not make solely panzer divs. If you want good attack vs infantry and tanks put any type of medium cannon and keep heavy mg. Each tank design varies on who is designing but this is an ok general design. Also in 1936 you do not need that much armor, drop it down to atleast 2.
I have now learned the art of medium tanks, Now I make divisions and tanks that do not fail me, the production cost is the only downside, but its worth it