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Early game rushing, otherwise no. It's sad because light armour has a long history even after WW2.
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Yes. IW SP both G and AA are quite efficient in terms of stats per manpower*IC.
Also they quite conveniently turn an infantry division into armor to farm panzer leaders without resorting to a trick of single battalion divisions attached to a general but taking no part in actual combat.
Another thing is if course them sharing the chassis with your garrison tankettes, yes. This means ease of conversion for just a slight drop in line efficiency, provided you even switch it back and forth rather than use two lines (the problem I constantly face with two lines is severe overproduction of tankettes).
I do use subsequent light tanks too, but mostly just because I can rather than them being particularly useful, though.
Also they quite conveniently turn an infantry division into armor to farm panzer leaders without resorting to a trick of single battalion divisions attached to a general but taking no part in actual combat.
Another thing is if course them sharing the chassis with your garrison tankettes, yes. This means ease of conversion for just a slight drop in line efficiency, provided you even switch it back and forth rather than use two lines (the problem I constantly face with two lines is severe overproduction of tankettes).
I do use subsequent light tanks too, but mostly just because I can rather than them being particularly useful, though.
AFAIK, you can make a pure mech defeinsive division with light tank recon, while the light tank recon has a fixed superstructure and a medium HVC + support AA. This way you get decent piercing and some additional hard attack into the division. If necessary add support AT too. trades very well against tank divisions.
As far as I can see light tanks have a potential role if you are strictly resource limited and want to deploy a single player soft attack tank that only uses steel and, if possible, very little steel. This kind of assumes that you have also decided you either can't get enough armour levels to be useful or your enemy is so pitiful your don't need much. In this case light tanks are as good as medium tanks and somewhat cheaper (and faster) so they can performa a useful role. For me this is currently a fairly theoretical point but the argument for this usage is fairly sound, it's just not a mainstream game scenario.
However, I have made practical use of light tanks by using them to add some oomph to fast moving divisions. I often have some of these as the Soviets mixed in with the main offensive force. They use light tanks and motorised or, once available, fast mechanised to provide divisions that move sufficiently fast to outpace the AI response to a successful offensive and maximum the speed and depth of penetration before the offensive stalls. They need to be managed very carefully as they have last hitting power then "regular" armoured divisions but still enough to smack retreated divisions out of the way AND they will run out of fuel and you need to be very careful to stop them when (or just before) this happens. They can be suprisingly useful for those situations where speed matters as you can get a bunch of overruns that otherwise might not occur and achieve encirclements before anything gets in the way. They require a lot more micro management than regular armour. They do benefit from the properties of my first paragraph, they are cheap and use a tiny fraction of the resources of better tanks.
To emphasise the resource issue. I have had late game light tanks where the best tanks I was building took a total of 58 times the resources of the light tanks I was using.
However, I have made practical use of light tanks by using them to add some oomph to fast moving divisions. I often have some of these as the Soviets mixed in with the main offensive force. They use light tanks and motorised or, once available, fast mechanised to provide divisions that move sufficiently fast to outpace the AI response to a successful offensive and maximum the speed and depth of penetration before the offensive stalls. They need to be managed very carefully as they have last hitting power then "regular" armoured divisions but still enough to smack retreated divisions out of the way AND they will run out of fuel and you need to be very careful to stop them when (or just before) this happens. They can be suprisingly useful for those situations where speed matters as you can get a bunch of overruns that otherwise might not occur and achieve encirclements before anything gets in the way. They require a lot more micro management than regular armour. They do benefit from the properties of my first paragraph, they are cheap and use a tiny fraction of the resources of better tanks.
To emphasise the resource issue. I have had late game light tanks where the best tanks I was building took a total of 58 times the resources of the light tanks I was using.
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AFAIK light tank recon is meta in MP for more hard attack
I usually play with mods that makes the AI design more competent divisions so sometimes I put it on a dedicated TD division
Other than that, for me I don’t really care for them much. Light tank paratroopers are too cheesy for me
I usually play with mods that makes the AI design more competent divisions so sometimes I put it on a dedicated TD division
Other than that, for me I don’t really care for them much. Light tank paratroopers are too cheesy for me
Also for Japan they are okish as china cant bring piercing so the tanks are helpful to have armour bonus. You can eiter use absolut cheap builds in regular batalions or you build more expensive ones as recon support (which needs certain level of armour to hit the threshold). Not sure if they are allowed in MP though (Space marine rules and stuff).
light tanks are unrealistically gimped in multiple ways. they cannot mount guns that historical versions used with turrets. fixed superstructures are double-penalized, to a cartoony degree, yet they are forced to use them for all medium guns and this gets further penalized by forcing role designation.
their only selling point as a line battalion is if you're doing a 1936 or 1937 style war with them and already begin with the techs needed to produce them day 0. in this case they make a case over basic mediums (which won't be available yet), although interwar mediums also make a case in this hypothetical.
they are legit in garrison duty (strictly better than armored cars) and are reasonable when used as a support company since that gives your real tank battalions more hard damage. hard damage matters in mp. in that way, they are in a better place than some other things which saw use in actual ww2 but are meme options in hoi 4. but they are still not portrayed well. making something like marder 3 sucks. m18 hellcat is impossible to make.
stugs were not light tanks, but they are also massively penalized by hoi 4's rules.
their only selling point as a line battalion is if you're doing a 1936 or 1937 style war with them and already begin with the techs needed to produce them day 0. in this case they make a case over basic mediums (which won't be available yet), although interwar mediums also make a case in this hypothetical.
they are legit in garrison duty (strictly better than armored cars) and are reasonable when used as a support company since that gives your real tank battalions more hard damage. hard damage matters in mp. in that way, they are in a better place than some other things which saw use in actual ww2 but are meme options in hoi 4. but they are still not portrayed well. making something like marder 3 sucks. m18 hellcat is impossible to make.
stugs were not light tanks, but they are also massively penalized by hoi 4's rules.
an argument against this is that mediums barely cost more, and if resources are an issue you can launder them with equipment conversion to get much better soft attack tanks. hence there aren't many practical positions where you have enough factories to produce tanks at all, but are also resource strapped and don't quite have enough factories to make slightly fewer mediums more effectively.
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