Reserve Unit Questions

[Poopfaust]

All these questions are when playing as Germany. I am restarting my 5th time trying to learn the ropes in HOI 3.
1a) Is there ever a reason you should NOT be producing Reserve Units that will be completed prior to all the war mongering in mid 1939?
1b) I believe I am seeing that once a unit is created as a Reserve, it retains the Reserve ability (the exclamation mark) even when at full strength (Full Mobilization). If I am correct and they retain their Reserve status forever.., is there a downside to that?
2) I had produced almost all Reserve units. When I Mobilized, I did not observe any sort of crushing cost in my Production (Upgrades or Reinforcements). Maybe I did not notice, but isn't Mobilizing supposed to cost you a lot of "stuff?"
Thanks.

 

[roverS3]

1a) Is there ever a reason you should NOT be producing Reserve Units that will be completed prior to all the war mongering in mid 1939?

It can make sense in case the units will have to serve as a police force. (to deal with uprisings in occupied territory etc.) Another reason might be that you want to have a first strike capability without mobilising before the declaration of war. This can make sense because if you mobilise, this can prompt other nations that feel threatened by you to also mobilise. So, if you have a bunch of units that are not reserves, you can declare war on a smaller neighbour without prior Mobilisation, or possibly on the day your neighbour decides to mobilise. Your full strength units can then brush aside enemy reserve units as they will be lower in strength and organisation until properly mobilised.

In the opposite, if you're playing a smaller nation, it could make sense to have a first line of defence made up of non-reserve units to avoid having to pre-emptively mobilise your forces when a dangerous neighbour starts banging the drums of war.

1b) I believe I am seeing that once a unit is created as a Reserve, it retains the Reserve ability (the exclamation mark) even when at full strength (Full Mobilization). If I am correct and they retain their Reserve status forever.., is there a downside to that?

Yes, indeed. There is no real downside to reserve status during the war. You will however loose manpower if you demobilise and later mobilise again for another war. This won't make the reserve units worse, but it could be a consideration if manpower is tight, and you believe that there will be a lull between two wars during which you want to demobilise. Of course, when your army is demobilised, full strength units suffer from more attrition, use more supplies, etc. The peacetime cost is definitely higher and depending on how long the time is between different mobilisation cycles it might not be worth it.

In my opinion there should be a button that lets you change the status of divisions from reserves to non-reserves etc. and the over-all cost benefit of building reserve divisions should be limited to the reduced attrition, upgrade cost, and supply consumption in peace-time. Then again, maybe that would lead to everyone just not building reserves at all to avoid having to even pick the right time to mobilise.

2) I had produced almost all Reserve units. When I Mobilized, I did not observe any sort of crushing cost in my Production (Upgrades or Reinforcements). Maybe I did not notice, but isn't Mobilizing supposed to cost you a lot of "stuff?"
Thanks.

If you have lots of reserve forces, mobilisation (or a change in conscription law) will result in a significant increase in Reinforcement cost. Note that this reinforcement cost is lower when mobilising from 'Service by Requirement' as you only have to top up the last 10% of your units. It is still substantially cheaper to build reserve units and then mobilise them than to build full strength units.
As your units gain in strength, you'll also notice supply consumption increasing, though this can be a bit less straightforward to notice as there is some latency in the supply system and your existing stockpile could be large enough for this to not become an issue until months, or even years into the war. (depending on the size of your army compared to the size of your supply stockpile)

 

[Poopfaust]

You are THE MAN!! Thank you so much.

 

[Wraith11B]

A side note about the reserve unit: they also have lower threat impacts. So, you can game your threat to other nations by producing reserve units.

I can't recall off hand if the AI uses reserve units at all (aside from starting units).

 

[Poopfaust]

Very Helpful.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

I have seen it claimed ( but never tested myself) that it is more expensive to upgrade full strength reserves than regulars. It was recommended therefore to only produce regulars once at war. For this reason I switch production to regular MOT and ARM units once war is approaching.

 

[Kovax]

The big "trick" in HOI3 with Reserve units is that your initial mobilization only costs HALF of normal for a month, so those Reserve units you built at a fraction of the cost of a non-Reserve unit only cost a fraction of their remaining build cost to bring up to full strength. Once you've mobilized once, you don't get that benefit again if you decide to demobilize. That means, it does a country like Italy no good, since they're already mobilized at the start of the game. For other countries, it's a massive "freebie".

It's more expensive to upgrade full strength units, but then again, it will cost more to bring the upgraded Reserve units up to full strength, so it's a wash in the end except for the effect of your initial mobilization cost.

One VERY important consideration is the amount of supplies and fuel that your army will consume between the time it's built and when war breaks out. If you front-load all of your non-supply-using expenses (building IC, convoys, Infrastructure, airfields, and such), with only enough military units to start ramping up your Practical values, you don't need to pay supplies for the units that you DIDN'T build instead until you actually build them. The few that you do build can (mostly) be constructed as Reserves, so they use less. If you're throwing 20+ IC per day into supplies throughout the year, that's 7300+ IC-days of production doing nothing useful. Minimizing that helps a lot.

For some countries, it can actually pay to disband your entire starting army, set training and conscription laws to the bare minimum, and construct the empty shell of a gigantic reserve army from scratch. When you mobilize, you switch to the most aggressive training and conscription laws, so at least 75% of each unit will consist of personnel with Specialist Training and only 25% of them at the meager 5 experience for Minimal Training, and you only pay half of the mobilization cost as long as you complete your mobilization within a month. That generally means cutting ALL other expenses besides Reinforcement and Consumer Demand to 0, while your troops use up the accumulated surplus of supplies to reinforce up to full strength.

Another trick with production is to stagger the completion times of big-ticket items (capital ships, aircraft, factories), so the increase in Practical values due to the completion of the first will bring the completion date of subsequent units closer to completion. For GER building BCs or BBs, that can speed up the second unit by 3-5 months. If you had built them with simultaneous completion dates, you would lose the 3-5 months of IC-days that could have been saved by staggering them or putting one at the bottom of the queue where it only receives partial IC and falls behind. Once your Practical values increase, further increases will be less significant, so the second Battleship will only speed up the third by a month or so. Note that GER can build one or two BCs, and speed up completion of its first BB to finish well before the outbreak of war. Building IC, the first factory will speed up the rest by around a week, the second by less than a week, and so on. The effect is trivial if you're building your 30th Infantry division when your Infantry Practical value is over 5 points, but HUGE if building expensive items with long lead times at really low Practical levels.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

I couldn't find the thread detailing what I claimed but I did stumble across this thread, where it's claimed that it costs 250 % more in IC to add replacements to Reserves after battle damage. IF still true then worth considering with regard to expensive armour units.

FTM mob costs, reserves versus regulars

This is the start of the testing, I will edit the top post when more additional information becomes available. Testing is now considered complete. This was prompted by another thread. All tests run on HoI3 FTM v3.04 Question: Do reserves cost...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[roverS3]

I couldn't find the thread detailing what I claimed but I did stumble across this thread, where it's claimed that it costs 250 % more in IC to add replacements to Reserves after battle damage. IF still true then worth considering with regard to expensive armour units.

FTM mob costs, reserves versus regulars

This is the start of the testing, I will edit the top post when more additional information becomes available. Testing is now considered complete. This was prompted by another thread. All tests run on HoI3 FTM v3.04 Question: Do reserves cost...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

That thread is out of date, it's only applicable to HOI3 For The Motherland. In Their Finest Hour they changed quite a lot of things. I'd be surprised if this is still the case, as in TFH you pay an experience penalty on reserve units. I haven't seen any new tests on this though.