Uselessness of Cast Armor

[Kanitatlan]

This post is really an appeal to Paradox to make Cast Armor, amongst other things, no longer a useless choice and I'm going to talk about this as a general discussion about divisional hardness and , in particular, divisional hardness late game because that's when all the different factors come into play.

First point is to discuss cast armor. The only benefit it brings over welded armour is +2% hardness. This comes with a major cost increase and actually reduced breakthrough and defence. My argument is that this is actually never a useful improvement.

To put this in context let's first consider the sources of hardness for tanks. Currently this comes from your base chassis, a possible 2% from cast armour and a further 2% if you select casting specialists as a MIO policy. These stated figures don't seem quite right as casting policy takes my heavy tanks from 95% to 97.3% and the combo gives 99.4%. I can't see where the extra comes from (maximised OKMO MIO). This takes us incredibly close to 100% but in turns out that isn't particularly useful.

If I put together an armoured division (late game) with, for the sake of a simple example) 50% mechanised infantry and 50% my heavy tanks then I get a hardness (using base equipment hardness) which is the average of the mechanised (75%) and the tanks (95%). which is 85%. This is a very hard division but what benefit do I get from using my tank hardness improvements. This takes hardness to 87.2% which is a tiny improvement. If we consider the case where we are fighting a low hard attack division then we just reduced their firepower by 15% but they were already too weak to do use much damage in the first place. If we are fighting anything better than this then the benefit is less

My next point is that my actual mechanised hardness happens to have a 10% bonus on the mechanised adding 7.5% to the mech hardness. This makes a significantly larger contribution to divisional hardness than my two rather expensive tank improvements and is down to a couple of simple MIO trait choices. Even if I significantly expand the tank content of the division my mechanised MIO contribution is still going to be as good.

As a final point, I can completely sabotage the hardness of my division by doing something like adding a single motorised AA battalion. Even in a large division this has the same negative impact as adding both tank improvements completely neutralising it.

This does raise a bunch of other issue like how useless casting specialists is but eh point of this post is to appeal for cast armour to acquire some useful purpose in the game as currently it is pretty close to pointless.

 

[BurningEGO]

You forget one important part.

Cast Armor requires no chromium.

In many cases you will want something different than Riveted Armor in order to increase armor stats. Welded Armor is a good choice but it requires chromium. Many countries lack chromium, and importing might be bad due to convoy raiding, or due to the hit it causes to industry, or both.

Its very situational, but I have had cases where I opted for Cast Armor because of this. Your special modules are already being used, and/or you don't want to go past 4 armor ticks because it will increase steel costs as well. Or because it (increasing armor ticks) might reduce (already low) reliability values beyond (in)sane values.

For big countries, yeah you might be right, but for those minor or small majors, it might be a big difference. Specially if you lack the resources AND civ factories for importing.

As for the MIO, most MIO upgrades are very irrelevant IMO. Many, like research, only kick in very late. By the time they do you no longer care that much about it (unless you are fine with farming MIO xp by converting old stockpile or something). You already smoke your enemies alive or the upgrade will come in too late to actually matter. The only one I usually take is either the one that gives less resources consumption or extra reliability. Because those are the only ones that actually cause any real impact by the time you reach level 6.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

For big countries, yeah you might be right, but for those minor or small majors, it might be a big difference. Specially if you lack the resources AND civ factories for importing.

small countries struggle to field meaningful numbers of tanks in the first place. going from -20% cost per unit to +20% cost per unit is dubious value compared to simply having more tank battalions doing damage.

also, just making sure, but changing armor type is severely penalized for doing conversions right? it should be, but we're playing a game where it was once possible to recover kamikaze planes by making them reliable enough...so i wouldn't assume it is lol. if it isn't, then you might legit be better off doing resource laundering conversions. in nearly every case though, you're probably just making riveted tanks if production is a bottleneck.

 

[BurningEGO]

small countries struggle to field meaningful numbers of tanks in the first place. going from -20% cost per unit to +20% cost per unit is dubious value compared to simply having more tank battalions doing damage.

It isn't if you are going for armor stats. Placing a max of 4 points and going for cast armor allows you to retain a lot of stats like speed and reliability while getting something like 70% of the armor that riveted +14 ticks of armor gives (and without paying extra steel, which is the point). Hard to give numbers to be honest, but its something I do depending on the nation we are speaking of, the exact time war is to be declared and one or another factor.

The only problem is that production increases like 1-3 points. But its doable as a cheapo early war infantry/cavalry tank (or even as SP AA) for minors or small majors. You can also increase its usefulness by trading atk/soft power and by giving it armor skirts / sloped armor to increase armor stats and even easy maintenance to reduce overall costs. The point of these builds is getting a tank for less than 10 production costs, 1 steel per factory and with a lot of unpierceable armor for space marine-like divs for countries that cannot afford to import a lot of crap. Just don't overdo it, or you might as well just go straight for 1 semi-naked(barebones) heavy tank (will be more costly and have less reliability, but at least won't take long to research either - but in many cases you will want a med or even a light template instead nevertheless because of MIO restrictions on the country we are speaking of).

If you are thinking of pure tank divs with mots / mechs, then forget it. Thats far outside of scope of the industry of most small nations. But its definetely more than doable (in many cases) to have almost a full army (24 divs) with one tank batttalion attached per div before war kicks in.

There are also many cases where you havent gotten hands on enough chromium, or the chromium is being diverted to other projects and/or you cannot have acess to any chromium on the market because it is all under enemy control (either directly or indirectly). This might make welded armor a no-go in many cases. In many of these cases you can easily afford to allocate extra war factories, but you cannot afford the chromium welded armor requires, and since riveted is limiting armor stats, you are forced to go Cast Armor. I have been there many times, specially on countries where I had countless naval dockyards pumping BBs or SHBBs non stop. They eat chromium for breakfast.

 

[Caeric]

I think I'd rather stay on riveted and produce 40% more tanks if concerned about the chromium cost. The loss in stats isn't the end of the world and fielding enough vehicles is more important.

 

[BurningEGO]

I think I'd rather stay on riveted and produce 40% more tanks if concerned about the chromium cost. The loss in stats isn't the end of the world and fielding enough vehicles is more important.

Sounds good on paper but focusing on prod and adding one extra riveted tank battalion (if this is what you are suggesting) to increase armor stats on infantry/cavalry will also increase supply, costs and fuel usage. With 2 riveted tank battalions you will get the added bonus of extra breakthrough / soft / hardness / hp but you will also be missing extra armor stats that 1 cast armor tank battalion with the exact same armor level gives.

I did try this in the past, and overall I gave up because its not sustainable, specially if supply is a problem. You will be running out of tanks very fast and if you are on a budget this is a no-go. Of course it will depend on a lot of factors as well, but overall I find it less useful. A 6 infantry/cavalry battalion division with just 1 armor battalion consumes very little supply specially with a logistic company. And it is very versatile and has some kick. If you add 2 (riveted) armor battalions instead of one (cast), you will see supply increasing and if you start decreasing infantry battalions to compensate, you will end up with worse stats than 1 cast armor battalion + 6 inf/cav.

Of course if you are not suggesting adding another battalion to the template, than, in many cases, yes, you don't need that much armor to remain unpierceable. But it will also depend on the enemy and year. In many cases, you will also notice that the enemy is starting to get many divs able to pierce your units, so you can quickly change your template to cast and potentially add extra armor ticks. Replacing pratically the same template like this retains efficiency and is much better than redoing a new tank from scratch. You will eventually need/want to replace tanks with stronger variants (1938/1934 with 1940/1943, etc), but in the short term this helps.

tldr: Cast has its uses specially when you want more armor and cannot pay the chromium / steel that higher armor levels require or that welded armor needs. The other stats are irrelevant. Its all about the production/resource costs (and/or extra armor) baby.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It isn't if you are going for armor stats. Placing a max of 4 points and going for cast armor allows you to retain a lot of stats like speed and reliability while getting something like 70% of the armor that riveted +14 ticks of armor gives (and without paying extra steel, which is the point). Hard to give numbers to be honest, but its something I do depending on the nation we are speaking of, the exact time war is to be declared and one or another factor.

The only problem is that production increases like 1-3 points. But its doable as a cheapo early war infantry/cavalry tank (or even as SP AA) for minors or small majors. You can also increase its usefulness by trading atk/soft power and by giving it armor skirts / sloped armor to increase armor stats and even easy maintenance to reduce overall costs. The point of these builds is getting a tank for less than 10 production costs, 1 steel per factory and with a lot of unpierceable armor for space marine-like divs for countries that cannot afford to import a lot of crap. Just don't overdo it, or you might as well just go straight for 1 semi-naked(barebones) heavy tank (will be more costly and have less reliability, but at least won't take long to research either - but in many cases you will want a med or even a light template instead nevertheless because of MIO restrictions on the country we are speaking of).

If you are thinking of pure tank divs with mots / mechs, then forget it. Thats far outside of scope of the industry of most small nations. But its definetely more than doable (in many cases) to have almost a full army (24 divs) with one tank batttalion attached per div before war kicks in.

There are also many cases where you havent gotten hands on enough chromium, or the chromium is being diverted to other projects and/or you cannot have acess to any chromium on the market because it is all under enemy control (either directly or indirectly). This might make welded armor a no-go in many cases. In many of these cases you can easily afford to allocate extra war factories, but you cannot afford the chromium welded armor requires, and since riveted is limiting armor stats, you are forced to go Cast Armor. I have been there many times, specially on countries where I had countless naval dockyards pumping BBs or SHBBs non stop. They eat chromium for breakfast.

giving up soft attack to (maybe) not be pierced seems extremely dubious. soft attack is universally useful, greatly so in single player. it makes you deal more damage and take less damage, both on offense and on defense. it can be resisted, but not toggled off entirely. i can picture scenarios where the armor bonus is worth more than the marginal attack differential if you're only shaving attacks on one battalion. i don't see this holding up reliably across a game, or during the timeframes i would consider it.

however, i have a stronger criticism: nations that can do this are almost always better off simply fielding more infantry divisions sooner and conquering more territory sooner in single player. the window between "we're expanding asap with infantry + support arty + micro" and "it's worth making cast tank chassis" is tiny, if it exists. i would even extend this to many of the majors; you can just immediately attack nations as germany or italy, justifying before taking a focus, and win that war. winning vs axis immediately as soviets is possible, but you can also permanently put the screws on them by attacking turkey and taking romania as well in that war (removes *all* axis land routes to any useful quantity of oil).

if i'm playing as nations like greece or finland or w/e tanks aren't on the early game menu at all. same for nations i have a soft spot for like philippines or cuba. although cuba does have chromium...so much i'd give it up for or use it as steel if i could haha.

 

[BurningEGO]

giving up soft attack to (maybe) not be pierced seems extremely dubious. soft attack is universally useful, greatly so in single player. it makes you deal more damage and take less damage, both on offense and on defense. it can be resisted, but not toggled off entirely. i can picture scenarios where the armor bonus is worth more than the marginal attack differential if you're only shaving attacks on one battalion. i don't see this holding up reliably across a game, or during the timeframes i would consider it.

however, i have a stronger criticism: nations that can do this are almost always better off simply fielding more infantry divisions sooner and conquering more territory sooner in single player. the window between "we're expanding asap with infantry + support arty + micro" and "it's worth making cast tank chassis" is tiny, if it exists. i would even extend this to many of the majors; you can just immediately attack nations as germany or italy, justifying before taking a focus, and win that war. winning vs axis immediately as soviets is possible, but you can also permanently put the screws on them by attacking turkey and taking romania as well in that war (removes *all* axis land routes to any useful quantity of oil).

if i'm playing as nations like greece or finland or w/e tanks aren't on the early game menu at all. same for nations i have a soft spot for like philippines or cuba. although cuba does have chromium...so much i'd give it up for or use it as steel if i could haha.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3367382881 (and afterwards this https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3367343587)

I remember this game as Hungary where I got involved in early war vs Germany (1938?) because austria got me into her block of balkan nations (danubian fed?) and ussr 1 year or so afterwards attacked romania or something. I managed to do greatly after I started pumping out some early tanks (med tanks for about 5 total cost). 50% less dmg taken is too much. You are too quick to dismiss this big bonus. Early space marines are great, even on relatively weak divs. USSR could never pierce my divs, and Germany could only pierce them with one or another powerful div that she could rarely field. In this case I still used riveted but I didn't even bother at all with soft atk. Main armament was a heavy machinegun and I believe I added 4 armor ticks and a couple of speed too since I was using that tank with cav (6.4km/h). If you want soft atk, you will be adding rocket by 1939-1940 to supplement art, and in very rare cases even add a mot artillery / line artillery. You can rarely go with much more early on as a minor.

More soft attack on top of soft attack used to be great specially for countries running superior firepower doctrine. Been there for years after game launch, but got out. It is good, but you got much better alternatives on single player (usually). You forget that you will receive this massive bonus of unpierceable armor from just 1 battalion. Your width will always be smaller than it would be if running large infantry armies. And if the enemy is actually running large armies, it is getting their stats massively reduced by your tank. Now imagine filling all width (enemy is taking all dmg and dealing only half). And imagine on places where supply is an issue. All those large width divs are useless in many cases, like the mountains of transylvania. You will also be saving manpower as opposed to pure infantry armies. And mind you, for small nations manpower does matter.

As for "majors", for me a major isn't a superpower. USSR, germany or USA are superpowers.

You are also thinking on a strictly historical scenario. On most historical scenarios, you will run wild across europe, and you can always grab southern yugoslavia / southern balkans on europe or jump on some (tasty) turkey. Or import from the owner of those provinces. On ahistorical scenarios (where AI can take any path), everything is different, specially if you are not going fascist or communist. Chromium in this last case (ahistorical scenario) is much more dificulty to acess to in many cases. Cast armor might not be the best option many times, but it has its niche uses. In many cases you can afford the steel, but cannot afford the chromium, or vice versa, or both!

Greece and Finland are terrible examples, because Greece has some delicious turkey next door waiting to get into your dish, and Finland, has 2 swedish provinces with massive mineral potential right on her backyard. And Finland can pratically get all of Scandinavia for free, and with Greece, you will want to obliterate Turkey asap (while their military is weak) in most case scenarios. So you will never have any shortage of chromium with those, and for much of the game, not even of steel.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i dismiss it, because for most countries, space marine setup performs worse than using infantry divisions w/o the tanks and winning even earlier.

i do not "imagine" hypothetical perfect scenarios. i use a combination of evaluating tradeoffs and experience with different builds. generic tree austria can solo ai germany. finland can solo ussr. both can do so at tremendous favorable casualty ratios, without tanks. delaying for tanks hurts you. i suppose you could put tank battalions into infantry divs before you can concentrate them into large tank divs, to get some use out of them. there's an xp cost to that, but i can see it being worthwhile. this is generally after you already have enough infantry divs to cover wide fronts though.

if you want achievements for finland, you do not "get scandinavia for free". as for greece...that's my point. the overwhelming majority of minor nations benefit from just conquering stuff asap and using that tempo to field even more infantry divisions even more quickly until they're able to fight toe to to with and beat majors. tanks will start to work their way into that as you gain ic. i'm not convinced by cast tanks in this tiny window, fishing for armor bonuses before the ai scales it up a bit.

as for screenshots, a lot of factors go into how successful nations are and how quickly. cast tanks aren't carrying as much as you imply though. the difference in losses just isn't that large, and speed more comes down to conquest route you take and micro choices.

 

[BurningEGO]

if you want achievements for finland, you do not "get scandinavia for free". as for greece...that's my point. the overwhelming majority of minor nations benefit from just conquering stuff asap and using that tempo to field even more infantry divisions even more quickly until they're able to fight toe to to with and beat majors. tanks will start to work their way into that as you gain ic. i'm not convinced by cast tanks in this tiny window, fishing for armor bonuses before the ai scales it up a bit.

Been a lot of time since I played greece, but no, we are speaking of different things. Greece barely had industrial capability to fabricate the basic things. You can only stick with basic infantry stuff, if you are aiming to get Megali idea very fast/very early. But this is more than doable since Turkey has a lot of debuffs to their army. And the AI will just blow their war stockpile / manpower by throwing them at you. So all you need is to defend for a while and then go out on a ride (and greece is damn easy to defend, the frontline is small as damn and the ai doing naval invasions is just helping the player). This isn't what usually happens. You also get a straight claim / war on one of the biggest chromium producers in the world early on. In many cases, you don't even get a claim, gotta wait till tension is sky high, or your neighbours just aren't that juicy.

For Finland, yes, you do get cores over all of scandinavia even as a neutral, or get a lot of allies that you can even ban one after another as you eat each one. Fascist Finland can even annex it all in one go. I did all achievements for Finland so yeah, I know. But even if Sweden remains controlled by an AI - you can easily import chromium, or even steel. So finland is also another terrible example - and not just for those cases. On this type of place I usually also go with just infantry. Supply is just insane if you are trying to cover the entire front with troops. In many cases I just aim for leningrad and surrounding areas and little more than that before I am stronger. Or I just wait till USSR gets severly weakened from a war with someone else, which happens a lot on ahistorical scenarios.

If you decide to go toe to toe vs USSR with infantry based armies as Finland, be prepared for mass losses. Unless they are already severly weakened.

as for screenshots, a lot of factors go into how successful nations are and how quickly. cast tanks aren't carrying as much as you imply though. the difference in losses just isn't that large, and speed more comes down to conquest route you take and micro choices.

I never implied cast tanks are a factor (and you keep insisting on it). Infantry with a tank battalion of some sort, is. I mean space marines have been a thing for years. And not everyone has a ton of factories to do big mechanized or motorized divs. In fact, I don't recall the last time I did a motorized div since I am usually just playing minors. I would never pay top dollar equipment for a div that requires mass production to compensate for the loss rate. Even mecs, I only build after I start getting rubber in decent quantities, and in many cases refineries are a luxury pre-1940 as minors. And in countless cases you don't get to capitulate one or another alliances with rubber because of some oversea major.

What I implied, and said, is that cast armor has its uses. Are you going to say you were never constrained in resources specially late game? As I stated regarding MIOs, the only one that is useful generally speaking is the one that reduces resource consumption. Because in many scenarios you are constrained by resources and need to divert them here, or there. The devs offered the possibility of exchanging chromium for production costs with cast armor, and I don't see the issue. You can also do the same with airplanes (more or less) in order to reduce aluminium consumption (sorry but I don't recall the name of the modification). Are people also going to say its useless? In many cases you don't go past a certain turret level on ships, add extra armor on ships, or go for a bigger turret on tanks, all because of the crazy resource consumption. I am not saying Cast Armor is superior to Welded or Riveted, but it has its uses. To say otherwise either shows that you don't make tanks or don't face the situations where you lack chromium and/or need the extra armor all of a sudden. But just because you don't, doesn't mean others don't.

As for screenshots, allying a big superpower like Germany or making use of military acess of some sort to land troops on UK, capitulate it, and then use Canada as a bridge for an invasion of USA... I don't know what you are trying to show in here. That you started as a big chromium producer and that you ended as an even bigger chromium producer? Or that Turkey truly is a minor, at game start and in that alliance? I don't know.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you decide to go toe to toe vs USSR with infantry based armies as Finland, be prepared for mass losses. Unless they are already severly weakened.

??? what counts as "mass losses"?



or after taking moscow:



they were indeed "severely weakened". by finland.

I never implied cast tanks are a factor (and you keep insisting on it). Infantry with a tank battalion of some sort, is.

you did imply such. not only is this a thread about using them, my posts are also in response to language like below. what does "has its uses" and defining a use case (with which i disagree) mean if they are not a factor?

Sounds good on paper but focusing on prod and adding one extra riveted tank battalion (if this is what you are suggesting) to increase armor stats on infantry/cavalry will also increase supply, costs and fuel usage. With 2 riveted tank battalions you will get the added bonus of extra breakthrough / soft / hardness / hp but you will also be missing extra armor stats that 1 cast armor tank battalion with the exact same armor level gives.

What I implied, and said, is that cast armor has its uses. Are you going to say you were never constrained in resources specially late game?

when i was still new to the game, i had trouble with especially steel in the late game. since years ago, i avoid this problem by conquering into resources. this can be done as any nation in the game. thus resources are only a problem early in the game, not late.

To say otherwise either shows that you don't make tanks or don't face the situations where you lack chromium and/or need the extra armor all of a sudden. But just because you don't, doesn't mean others don't.

what it shows is that i do not chase armor bonus in single player, and find it difficult to imagine many runs where going for armor bonus would have benefited my position instead of slowing it down.

players do all kinds of suboptimal things. there are still players who unironically pick superior firepower and then make big divisions with line artillery battalions. the meaningful question is whether a particular piece of equipment is the best investment in a given situation. i find it hard to believe that cast tanks are anything but a *very* niche option in that context. even more so because the ai likes to face bash your line and will rapidly deplete its piercing due to equipment shortages, so you can get armor bonus with riveted in many cases. or again...win before you even have the means to make this stuff.

As for screenshots, allying a big superpower like Germany or making use of military acess of some sort to land troops on UK, capitulate it, and then use Canada as a bridge for an invasion of USA... I don't know what you are trying to show in here.

the game gives you options. cast tanks are an option. capitulating uk before 1941 is an option. there are lots of options. the choice of what equipment to build does not exist in a vacuum. similarly, as nations like philippines you *can* sit there making cast tanks on limited ic. or...you could pump as many viable infantry divisions as possible as quickly as possible, flip fascist via civil war, ally japan, grab a slice of the pie vs china for some steel, then go occupy india + australia. which is much stronger.

once you have done that, or during it, tanks are an option. cast tanks are not great though, you're probably still just making riveted there.

 

[BurningEGO]

??? what counts as "mass losses"?



or after taking moscow:



they were indeed "severely weakened". by finland.


you did imply such. not only is this a thread about using them, my posts are also in response to language like below. what does "has its uses" and defining a use case (with which i disagree) mean if they are not a factor?



when i was still new to the game, i had trouble with especially steel in the late game. since years ago, i avoid this problem by conquering into resources. this can be done as any nation in the game. thus resources are only a problem early in the game, not late.


what it shows is that i do not chase armor bonus in single player, and find it difficult to imagine many runs where going for armor bonus would have benefited my position instead of slowing it down.

players do all kinds of suboptimal things. there are still players who unironically pick superior firepower and then make big divisions with line artillery battalions. the meaningful question is whether a particular piece of equipment is the best investment in a given situation. i find it hard to believe that cast tanks are anything but a *very* niche option in that context. even more so because the ai likes to face bash your line and will rapidly deplete its piercing due to equipment shortages, so you can get armor bonus with riveted in many cases. or again...win before you even have the means to make this stuff.


the game gives you options. cast tanks are an option. capitulating uk before 1941 is an option. there are lots of options. the choice of what equipment to build does not exist in a vacuum. similarly, as nations like philippines you *can* sit there making cast tanks on limited ic. or...you could pump as many viable infantry divisions as possible as quickly as possible, flip fascist via civil war, ally japan, grab a slice of the pie vs china for some steel, then go occupy india + australia. which is much stronger.

once you have done that, or during it, tanks are an option. cast tanks are not great though, you're probably still just making riveted there.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3427059578 - Capitulating USSR with only 120k losses on a direct man to man fight always on the offensive. With Horses and 1 tank with a lot of armor (yes I know, crap template for Germany but sometimes a man is bored and wants to try something new or to prove a point).

Your screenshots shows 2 things - that you remained on the defensive for most of the game till Axis joined in. In that case, with massive entrenchment bonus and proper division buildup or even forts, anything is easy. In one game I did the same and I had 0k losses while inflicing 3m on the soviets. (yes 0k)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=955243154

Or this one, with 12m soviets killed with only 300k losses. (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2316386931) And this one, while fighting Germany as well.

Your other screenshot about capitulating UK before 1941 also shows many things: first - that you joined an alliance - second, that you don't know what a minor is - and third, that you still need to improve that tactic, because you could have capitulated france yourself with paratroopers before Germany even declared war on Poland.

--------

Now these screenshots are also doing one thing - derailing from the main topic at hand. When I posted my screenshots, it was to show that early space marines (with only armor in consideration) are great and that you dont even need armor with soft atk. And this on an alliance with crappy AI minors vs 2 major alliances, Axis and Comintern. You, on the otherhand, came with screenshots that not only aren't you playing as a minor, but also joining or rellying on the big AIs (Germany) to do most of the heavy lifting. If you are a minor and want to do the heavy lifting, these mass infantry armies are just impossible. You won't even have manpower enough for 48 divs of 6 infantry battalions in most cases pre war. And you can't raise recruitment laws because of politics. 1 tank for early space marines works wonders, because you will be reducing the amount of dmg the enemy causes by a big deal. Also these tanks usually cost 1 steel opposed to the 2/3/4 that inf equipment costs.

Playing historical is also all sorts of nice, because in many cases you already know what the AI is going to do, so capitulating UK or france are 2 easy things generally speaking. I even capitulated both as Iceland, before USA joined, so that speaks tales of how easy it can be. I don't know the relevance of such tactics to the topic at hand, though. In many cases you are also playing as a minor AND playing ALONE vs everyone else and in many cases, doing all of that with one or another historical tree, like unaligned. Fascist and Commie is all good for declaring early war, but play as Democratic or Unaligned and you will see the difference. Specially if coupled with some other factors. Most of my games these days are as unaligned or democratic, because Fascist is all just too easy. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2309558095 (i mean, you can easily kill Axis + Comintern + Japanese alliance all by 1944 as tiny greece so that already shows how easy it can be - could even do the same with allies as well, if I power gamed)

If you never ran into resource issues, then you never got to real late game or actually achieved massive industrial output or actually tried to build the costly stuff. If you are aiming for mass strategic bombers for instance (with something like 150 factories), there are many cases where even deep pools like Hungary + All of Guyana plus the rest of europe aren't enough, and this, with max infrastructure in place. This is also true more or less with other resources. If you are doing massive SHBB spam, like, 10 or more lines with full dockyards, you will also run out of resources fast, specially coupled with other production lines. It will depend on a couple of factors, like unit template, or even if you are running limited exports or something else.

This is why Cast Armor (or other mods like Non-Strategic Material Usage) is a good option in many cases. Since you got plenty of factories to throw around, you can throw like 50 extra factories into production line (to compensate for the extra production cost) and get 0 chromium cost while also enjoying that extra armor. I am not saying its a general rule, but to say its useless reveals you were never in a situation where it might actually matter.

It might not be optimal late game to rely on space marines since there are better things out there but sometimes you just can't be bothered to change army template. There are even rare cases where you actually lack the rubber (for mecs for example), because you probably joined war late (1940 for example) and because the stuff you conquered in your area never had that great industrial output, you had to waste a lot of points into railroads and you cannot even import it because you are at war vs the allies or the owners of those rich rubber provinces in east asia. This is true for south america and/or asia, specially if democratic / unaligned. Space marines in this case are a way to limit resource waste (with tanks) to only 1 steel per factory, which is way less than inf III or inf II. In my country we have an old saying "those that cannot hunt with dog hunt with cat" - and this is true in many cases on HOI4 (in english I suppose the closest we have would be something like "there are many ways to skin a cat").

 

[pro.gamer.69]

Hoi4 massively rewards stat concentration. If you don't have enough divisions to mostly fill your lines, don't make tanks yet; but once you do, then it's far better to have 1 actual tank which can run circles around your enemies than 5 "space marine"-type armor-meme divisions, in almost any scenario.

Still, even if you are aiming to have a single battalion for armor value, you are screwing yourself by picking cast armor over welded. With the cheapest possible 1938 max-armor heavy I - so just max armor, light turret 1, light machine gun (and caveat of christie and 14 speed ticks, so speed is a realistic 7.4kmph) - the welded tank costs 17.7, while the cast tank costs 21.2, or ~20% more. This disparity only increases if you make a reasonable tank design and add real turrets/guns/modules to the tanks, since the cast cost is multiplicative.

Given that, as your average minor, you're not going to be putting more than 16 or so factories on armor meme tanks regardless, you'd have to agree that 1-2 civs for 20% more tanks; or, more fairly, 2 civs for (with 16 50% cap, +25% output factories) 35 more heavies a year (effectively an additional battalion) is pretty worthwhile, no? Playing as a minor the "meta" is to conquer, and spending resources to get more/better equipment NOW as opposed to building mils for later is how you achieve that. It's like how buying equipment from the market is often worthwhile as a minor early on too.

Additionally, chromium is even easier than steel or oil to come by. If you're in the Americas you basically always have access to Cuba, if you're in Europe you basically always have access to Turkey or the USSR (or one of the Asian chromium holders), if you're in Asia you likely are neutral/friends with one of the Raj or Japan at any given time. And if you're just using these tanks for single battalion armor boosting, you don't need all that much chromium anyway, relative to the rubber requirements of any airforce or the tungsten requirements of arty/most cannons.

Now these screenshots are also doing one thing - derailing from the main topic at hand. When I posted my screenshots, it was to show that early space marines (with only armor in consideration) are great and that you dont even need armor with soft atk. And this on an alliance with crappy AI minors vs 2 major alliances, Axis and Comintern

Even if putting ICs into space marines as opposed to concentrating them into tanks is strong/"stronger" - which again, I generally would disagree with - that question isn't the main topic at hand. The main topic at hand is if getting that armor from cast armor is better than welded armor. I am certain that you would have had enough chromium from Macedonia - which you either held or could have taken quickly (unclear in screenshot) - to make as many welded armor tanks as your heart desired.

If you never ran into resource issues, then you never got to real late game or actually achieved massive industrial output or actually tried to build the costly stuff. If you are aiming for mass strategic bombers for instance (with something like 150 factories), there are many cases where even deep pools like Hungary + All of Guyana plus the rest of europe aren't enough, and this, with max infrastructure in place. This is also true more or less with other resources. If you are doing massive SHBB spam, like, 10 or more lines with full dockyards, you will also run out of resources fast, specially coupled with other production lines. It will depend on a couple of factors, like unit template, or even if you are running limited exports or something else.

This is why Cast Armor (or other mods like Non-Strategic Material Usage) is a good option in many cases. Since you got plenty of factories to throw around, you can throw like 50 extra factories into production line (to compensate for the extra production cost) and get 0 chromium cost while also enjoying that extra armor. I am not saying its a general rule, but to say its useless reveals you were never in a situation where it might actually matter.

For armor meme battalion tanks, even ultra-lategame you'll never have more than ~200 factories on them, which are easily supported by every continent's chromium reserves (besides South America lol). The rest of your tanks should be riveted armor anyway so it doesn't matter. And again, chromium is all around the Hoi4 globe, often in countries which are usually neutral and/or easy to conquer. Non-strategic materials usage is great too, but aluminum is far more scarce comparatively.

It might not be optimal late game to rely on space marines since there are better things out there but sometimes you just can't be bothered to change army template.

If the discussion isn't about "what's optimal," as others in this thread have pointed out, there's no discussion to be had.

There are even rare cases where you actually lack the rubber (for mecs for example), because you probably joined war late (1940 for example) and because the stuff you conquered in your area never had that great industrial output, you had to waste a lot of points into railroads and you cannot even import it because you are at war vs the allies or the owners of those rich rubber provinces in east asia. This is true for south america and/or asia, specially if democratic / unaligned. Space marines in this case are a way to limit resource waste (with tanks) to only 1 steel per factory, which is way less than inf III or inf II. In my country we have an old saying "those that cannot hunt with dog hunt with cat" - and this is true in many cases on HOI4 (in english I suppose the closest we have would be something like "there are many ways to skin a cat").

Lack of rubber has no bearing on using cast vs welded armor. It doesn't even have much bearing on what you're arguing, whether or not to use tanks or single-armor-battalion space marines, as cavalry or even special forces/infantry are totally good substitutes for motorized/mech in a division with any number of tanks - i.e. a 9/9 tank/mountaineer division.


In short:
- The "space marine vs tank" discussion doesn't convincingly impact if cast armor is good
- A few civilian factories paid now to build many more tanks and faster/earlier conquests are doing a lot more than a few civilian factories building military factories that won't have efficiency for a year
- The ideal application for cast AND welded armor is in a single high-armor tank battalion to take advantage of the armor formula, the bulk of a tank division's tanks should be made with riveted armor for cost
- Because of that, you need relatively few factories on the tanks with cast/welded armor, so the impact of the chromium requirement is minimal

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Capitulating USSR with only 120k losses on a direct man to man fight always on the offensive. With Horses and 1 tank with a lot of armor (yes I know, crap template for Germany but sometimes a man is bored and wants to try something new or to prove a point).

so using a much stronger nation, it gets you more casualties taken while playing a much stronger nation? i don't see how this helps make a case for cast armor?

Your screenshots shows 2 things - that you remained on the defensive for most of the game till Axis joined in. In that case, with massive entrenchment bonus and proper division buildup or even forts, anything is easy. In one game I did the same and I had 0k losses while inflicing 3m on the soviets. (yes 0k)

there is a limit to how far you can go with finland w/o taking some stuff out first.

that said, surely you don't believe leningrad begins the game in finnish hands? if not, how does your quoted statement make sense? there's clearly some offensive action there already, before the axis joined in. i also won the race to moscow.

second, that you don't know what a minor is

the nation depicted does not begin the game as a minor

Now these screenshots are also doing one thing - derailing from the main topic at hand. When I posted my screenshots, it was to show that early space marines (with only armor in consideration) are great and that you dont even need armor with soft atk.

for something to be "great", there is an expectation it outperforms alternatives. i posted in doubt of the assertion wrt cast tanks. so far, no evidence supports otherwise. not in conquest rate, not in casualty trades. something can't be great just by saying it. it has to actually do better. it is not derailing to point this out.

If you never ran into resource issues, then you never got to real late game or actually achieved massive industrial output or actually tried to build the costly stuff.

or, as given in an example already, one might take the alternative of conquering nations for resources before "late game", winning the run before 150 factories on bombers is a justifiable investment.

It might not be optimal late game to rely on space marines since there are better things out there but sometimes you just can't be bothered to change army template.

space marines being "optimal" is dubious at any point in the game, although it depends how you define terms. if you can't make a full tank div yet, maybe you use them in something else. maybe you're playing the dread league in the pony mod and tanks you capture from the ai are literally the only thing that can pierce the ai tanks because it deliberately trashes your tech pace while giving you massive equipment capture.

in normal runs, not really. putting even one tank in a few divs as nations that begin with < 10 factories implies delaying initial war and that hurts more than it helps.

Given that, as your average minor, you're not going to be putting more than 16 or so factories on armor meme tanks regardless, you'd have to agree that 1-2 civs for 20% more tanks; or, more fairly, 2 civs for (with 16 50% cap, +25% output factories) 35 more heavies a year (effectively an additional battalion) is pretty worthwhile, no? Playing as a minor the "meta" is to conquer, and spending resources to get more/better equipment NOW as opposed to building mils for later is how you achieve that. It's like how buying equipment from the market is often worthwhile as a minor early on too.

it is very often the superior option to spend those civs on buying equipment! you're getting several more divisions at a point in the game where you can't even put 50-80w on ever province of the line of your first enemy. that is not the time to be investing research and ic into stat concentration.

in sp, you can easily farm up a high level general, stack infantry + special forces expert + adaptable, and reinforce meme the ai practically anywhere using special forces divisions with 0 tank and 0 fuel draw. sure you build tanks later anyway. they're fun and save time/qol. but if you need/want to, you can still attack from 3 directions, drop 10k soft attacks onto the province with mountaineers, and move anything the ai makes in seconds.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Just coming back to the production costs. Cast armour gets you the same armour as welded and costs +20% on production cost. If instead you build welded and have to buy 1 chromium per factory then that costs 1 Civ per 8 Mils which is effectively +12.5% production cost. Also, that value of +12.5% assumes you aren't having to buy other resources for your tank. If you do need to then those purchases further dilute the extra cost and, very quickly, we get into some sort of build+upgrade process being overall cheaper. The point is that the only economic reason to ever go for cast armour would be if you simply did not have any possibility of buying the required chromium. I feel like this is an extremely weak argument in favour of having cast armour as it is in the game.

AND back at my original point, my personal view is that the benefits (or costs) of cast armour should be changed so that there are better reasons to choose it. I don't see any good reason for it to have lower breakthrough and defence than welded and that +2% hardness is so ridiculously small as to be a barely detectable bonus, it is sufficiently small to have no detectable effect except in extreme edge cases where you already have a ridiculously high level of hardness and even then it's kind of pointless.

 

[BurningEGO]

Hoi4 massively rewards stat concentration. If you don't have enough divisions to mostly fill your lines, don't make tanks yet; but once you do, then it's far better to have 1 actual tank which can run circles around your enemies than 5 "space marine"-type armor-meme divisions, in almost any scenario.

Still, even if you are aiming to have a single battalion for armor value, you are screwing yourself by picking cast armor over welded. With the cheapest possible 1938 max-armor heavy I - so just max armor, light turret 1, light machine gun (and caveat of christie and 14 speed ticks, so speed is a realistic 7.4kmph) - the welded tank costs 17.7, while the cast tank costs 21.2, or ~20% more. This disparity only increases if you make a reasonable tank design and add real turrets/guns/modules to the tanks, since the cast cost is multiplicative.

Given that, as your average minor, you're not going to be putting more than 16 or so factories on armor meme tanks regardless, you'd have to agree that 1-2 civs for 20% more tanks; or, more fairly, 2 civs for (with 16 50% cap, +25% output factories) 35 more heavies a year (effectively an additional battalion) is pretty worthwhile, no? Playing as a minor the "meta" is to conquer, and spending resources to get more/better equipment NOW as opposed to building mils for later is how you achieve that. It's like how buying equipment from the market is often worthwhile as a minor early on too.

Additionally, chromium is even easier than steel or oil to come by. If you're in the Americas you basically always have access to Cuba, if you're in Europe you basically always have access to Turkey or the USSR (or one of the Asian chromium holders), if you're in Asia you likely are neutral/friends with one of the Raj or Japan at any given time. And if you're just using these tanks for single battalion armor boosting, you don't need all that much chromium anyway, relative to the rubber requirements of any airforce or the tungsten requirements of arty/most cannons.

Chromium is easier than steel or oil depending on the scenario case. What if Turkey is allied to you? What if Turkey is on an alliance you do not want to fight yet? What if you are fighting Turkey but need to go around Crimea / Caucasus to reach it, because the strait is a no-go? What if due to lack of divisions you decided to just place 2 or so divs on Instanbul to shorten your already huge frontline? What if you are democratic and Turkey did not produce any tension? There are many cases to be taken in consideration. In many cases, you are fighitng all alliances at once, or at least 2. You do not want one alliance to get all the provinces you control at the peace table all because they lost a bazillion more men than you, after all. Or you cannot spare the extra men until you take care of other bits of Europe.

On a historical scenario, of course, I can understand what you are saying. On a relatively historical scenario, perhaps as well. On a lot of cases, you won't be touching the Turkey yet.

In most of the cases you have unrestrained acess to Turkey, you already had acess to the french island in the pacific, because you already capitulated france one way or another, after all, pre-1939 paradrop on historical paris and a few other french places is easy as damn. This (french) island is more than enough usually, and so are the southern bits of Yugoslavia. Cuba is irrelevant for most nations. In many cases, unless you are a fan of constant convoy raids and can spare the PP to counter the effects, cuba is a bad choice, specially since in many cases you won't get anything out of it. You are only losing the factories required for the trade.

For early game cast armor is a no-go usually. There is no point on going for it. In my early posts you will note that I used the "Riveted" word. Specially for minors. You want a mass produced tank that still retains a lot of armor. This is only possible with Riveted. You want something that costs 5 or so production. Anything else and it will cost 10 or well over it. If it costs too much, you won't be able to outfit most of your divisions with it. Perhaps not even 24, in order to maximize its early advantage. But my point with @MeinTeam is that he said that a tank with armor and without soft attack is useless. Couldn't be more wrong. You are literally saying that a 50% less dmg is irrelevant, and there are few bonus toe-to-toe that outperform this one. Most of the tanks I produce nowadays just have a crappy machinegun or an early AA turret and never cost over 1 steel. With one or another superpower, of course, I might go with more refined templates, but for minors? PASS.

Hoi4 massively reward stat concentration? Its highly subjective. Your stats can be meaningless in a lot of situations, specially if you are limited by width either due to enemy tactics (guerrila for instance), terrain, or both. Now, imagine if on top of those, the enemy manages to add a -50% dmg buff to your great stats? In many cases, your big divisions full of meat are just that. Divisions full of meat. A smaller div in many cases is stronger than a much bigger one. Also many of those great divisions you speak of usually consume a lot of supply and are not viable for large fronts specially when supply or even manpower is of concern. Which is something to be taken in consideration early game, as you do not want to tie down civs for too long into railroad production. Minors rarely can afford 20 width divisions because the frontline will grow as time passes, and you won't be able to have 1 div per tile if you do it like this. Unless of course, you rely on the big AI buddy to cover for you. I rarely have AI buddies on my alliance, and usually only to farm them for 1 or 2 extra spies, or puppets, to neutralize one front or another while tying a lot of AI divs in the process. Like Italian Ethiopia, or a far eastern Russia (while I grabbed the western part entirely for myself).

As for getting a proper tank that can run circles around the enemy... Unless you can spare the mot, or mecs, you aren't going around anything. Cav + tank template is probably the best you can afford (in terms of speed) or get your hands on. Few countries can afford or make it logically plausible to afford mass mot production in 1938 or something. And with cav + tank template you aren't going to create many encirclements (due to speed at least), and if you are sticking with cav, chances are, you can't spare to go for crazy with tanks either. I suppose you "could" make 3 or 4 divs for offensive roles and with 12 km/h of speed, but at the rate you will be chewing mots its not viable either. Specially not viable if you just form a frontline and tell the AI to handle your invasion plan. Not everyone plays Germany or something like that, you know. And even as Germany, you can abuse the AI in many cases with just cav + 1 tank with a ton of armor. In that screenshot I showed, I did an early rush on netherlands for the rubber so that I could mass produce airplanes without issue and without bothering with refineries. The end result was what I showed. I also produced heavies pratically since game started.

For armor meme battalion tanks, even ultra-lategame you'll never have more than ~200 factories on them, which are easily supported by every continent's chromium reserves (besides South America lol). The rest of your tanks should be riveted armor anyway so it doesn't matter. And again, chromium is all around the Hoi4 globe, often in countries which are usually neutral and/or easy to conquer. Non-strategic materials usage is great too, but aluminum is far more scarce comparatively.

Did I say you would have +200 factories allocated to tank production? I even spoke of SHBBs. You can also be mass producing railway guns, they consume a lot (specially the one unlocked by special project), specially if you are churning them out non stop. On multiple lines at the same time. Late game you have so many factories that you don't even know where to waste them. I have had cases where I just did a crappy lvl 1 or lvl 2 armored car with 150 factories and distributed them across every goddamn territory I held because why not, less manpower losses from garrison duty are always nice and at least they won't go to waste. As I said previous, you can afford the factories but cannot afford the resources. This is why in many cases you will be converting tanks or airplanes, with 1 line being dedicated to produce outdated tanks / planes and another at converting them (this reduces resource comsumption). Or why you are going with Vertical Integration, in order to reduce costs as well. Or going with an industrial concern / political advisor that increase resource gain. LACK OF RESOURCES ARE A REALITY!!!

In these cases (of resource constraints) I will go without a problem with Cast Armor. Who cares about 20% extra costs by this time? You will care about chromium for SHBBs (and other projects) as I pointed out several times. SHBB for instance cost 20 chromium each with only 2 heavy turrets, more if you decide to go nuts with them. And in countless cases you cannot go closed economy, so you are still selling a lot of your chromium to outsiders. We could of course argue on the viability of SHBBs, with 1, 2 or many turrets. Or on the viability of other projects. But that would be a very lenghty conversation you see. And far outside the scope of this thread.

Lack of rubber has no bearing on using cast vs welded armor. It doesn't even have much bearing on what you're arguing, whether or not to use tanks or single-armor-battalion space marines, as cavalry or even special forces/infantry are totally good substitutes for motorized/mech in a division with any number of tanks - i.e. a 9/9 tank/mountaineer division.

9/9 mountaineer+tank division? If you can afford those 9 battalion of tanks why aren't you producing mecs instead? Cheaper, fast, and with 1 strong armor battalion virtually unpierceable. Even mec lvl 1 is. And can be obtained in 1940, probably even before if you use spies or one or another national focus that gives a boost to research.

I also never said that lack of rubber is related to using cast opposed to welded. You either go with tanks for space marine-esk divisions (1 battalion per div), or for fast divisions. If you are going for 1 battalion per army, you want to be on the cheap side and invest on armor - and other stats like soft atk in many cases are therefore irrelevant, but you could go for SP AA if you feel like it. If you are going for full mec + tank, you can afford more refined templates. There is little point on going mountaineer + 9 tanks. If you can afford the 9 tank batallions, you can afford the mec. 8km/h mecs will blow any enemy frontline and with 5 prod levels for being cheaper and 2 or so on reliability cost something like 5.2. And 8 mec battalions + 1 medium/heavy tank already work wonders. You will be obliterating entire enemy frontlines and this on a "create battleplan and press go" automode. The level of hardness of mecs will also spare manpower by a great deal. I suppose there are many possibilities and you can of course reduce mecs and increase tank battalions, specially if you got the org to do it.

Space marines are a good option for when you are starved in terms of resources. As stated, 1 tank will in many cases cost just 1 steel. Mecs will cost 2 steel and 1 rubber, at the very best, and in many cases you cannot afford the rubber. And when you cannot afford the rubber, in many cases you cannot also afford the steel, because all potentially sellers are probably already at war vs you or because you simply want to reduce resource consumption and there is no point in wasting more if this tank that cost 1 steel already does the job. This is true with many countries that can only declare war later on, like unaligned ones poltically speaking.

In short:
- The "space marine vs tank" discussion doesn't convincingly impact if cast armor is good
- A few civilian factories paid now to build many more tanks and faster/earlier conquests are doing a lot more than a few civilian factories building military factories that won't have efficiency for a year
- The ideal application for cast AND welded armor is in a single high-armor tank battalion to take advantage of the armor formula, the bulk of a tank division's tanks should be made with riveted armor for cost
- Because of that, you need relatively few factories on the tanks with cast/welded armor, so the impact of the chromium requirement is minimal

1º You are right.
2º Earlier conquests isn't even possible when you need over 50% tension to declare war or have to face similar restrictions.
3º You are right, but I don't recall saying otherwise. Riveted is possible even for high-armor tanks, but it will depend on how much armor you need and the tank template we are using as the base. And I guess everyone heard about the so called tank meme by now.
4º Will depend on the amount of divs you are fielding with tanks and if you are using them on frontline offensive duty or not. Also on the template itself. Heavy tanks are more costly so you will have to dedicate more factories. For prolongued offensives sometimes 30 factories for heavies isn't enough for 60 space marine divs. Unless you have been producing them for years and have a huge stockpile to last a good while. 30 factories on 1940/1943 heavies will mean 30 chromium and if you are using welded it will mean 60 chromium. And if you are using a heavier turret for SP arty for example, you will be paying even more.

I will also repeat myself one more time and write my:
tldr: Cast has its uses specially when you want more armor and cannot pay the chromium / steel that higher armor levels require or that welded armor needs. The other stats are irrelevant. Its all about the production/resource costs (and/or extra armor) baby.

 

[BurningEGO]

or, as given in an example already, one might take the alternative of conquering nations for resources before "late game", winning the run before 150 factories on bombers is a justifiable investment.

Winning the run before 150 factories on bombers is a justifiable investment? Ancient space theorists would say yes.

Oh sorry, the HISTORICAL part got the best of me.

You know those guys on the HISTORY channel are also good at speaking about aliens. Perhaps 150 strategic bombers is very alien to you, but it breaks enemy frontlines without even needing a man to do it. I mean you will still need a man to hold the tiles and conquer land, but when you march in, the battle is already won.

And this on late game untouched USSR or even late game untouched USA. Which will have bazillion of equipment lying around. I usually even respec my entire air doctrine for strategic bombardment just to beat the crap out of the yankees.

Historical is all good and dandy because you can cap allies pre-japanese declaration of war on USA. France is a joke, and the UK, is also in large part a joke. I already told you I conquered allies as Iceland on historical, right?

And Iceland IS a minor. Ottoman Empire is NOT a minor. You can core half the place and get MILLIONS of manpower. Only better than that is forming Roman Empire. And Ottoman Empire now with Sadabad or with the 5 extra minors in the middle east is even easier than at bosporus dlc launch date.

there is a limit to how far you can go with finland w/o taking some stuff out first

Ah, now we agree on something. This is why infantry only armies are BAD. If you fight 1v1 vs USSR with only MASS infantry you will be having serious trouble as Finland. I am not saying it isn't possible but you will feel the losses. Been there, done it.

1 tank battalion attached is CHEAP and is dozens times better than naked infantry.

for something to be "great", there is an expectation it outperforms alternatives. i posted in doubt of the assertion wrt cast tanks. so far, no evidence supports otherwise. not in conquest rate, not in casualty trades. something can't be great just by saying it. it has to actually do better. it is not derailing to point this out.

Cast tanks, welded tanks, riveted tanks, are irrelevant. What matters is how much armor you get out of those. If the -50% dmg taken and the extra dmg dealt due to more armor isn't enough proof to you then I don't know what is.

Wiki:

"When armored units target a unit that has insufficient piercing, the organization dice size is increased to 6[12], representing the ability of the armored unit to move more freely under fire, obtain better positioning and thus deal more damage. This means an unpierced armored unit on average does 3.5 organization damage per hit instead of 2.5, a +40% increase."

"Armour. Decreases the number of soft and hard attacks made against the division if the attacking division's piercing is less than the defending division's armor, by up to -50% at less than 50% piercing.[3] Higher armor than the enemy's piercing will also increase the number of unit attacks in combat and change the organization damage dice roll per attack from 1d4 to 1d6[4] as the unit can move around the battlefield more freely without getting pinned or damaged. A division's armour is equal to 40% of the highest armor in the division plus 60% of the average armour in the division.[5] Armor is not a property of unit type, only of its equipment."

that said, surely you don't believe leningrad begins the game in finnish hands? if not, how does your quoted statement make sense? there's clearly some offensive action there already, before the axis joined in. i also won the race to moscow.

You won the race to moscow after the russians were more than depleted. This doesn't really make your points about not needing tanks for space marine valid either. It works both ways.

The difference is, I have the wiki on my side (and hours upon hours of hands on experience), and you had the AI on your side.

in normal runs, not really. putting even one tank in a few divs as nations that begin with < 10 factories implies delaying initial war and that hurts more than it helps

Will depend on what is Early to you and the nation we are speaking of / path taken. Apparently a lot of people around this forum love fascist / communist paths because they can easily declare war early. Many nations cannot do this before the 50% tension limit has been breached. And this is only possible when a lot of AIs are at war. Usually in 1940 or something.

With some nations you get national focus that allow you to declare war on someone. But in many cases these are accessible only after completing a lot of things. Democrats can rarely declare war on anyone that hasn't generated tension. This is usually the case of Turkey for instance, they rarely generate tension, and if you capped the allies too early then they never joined the allies.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

Just as a background that may be interesting to some and not taking any opinion on how cast / velded armor should be represented via parameters available in the game model. IRL welded armor:

1. Provided MUCH better performance (and still provides but no one does cast armor now ). It's not not welding itself but welded armor is rolled and can be put through WAY better improvement processes. In WWII times happened at the expense of...
2. Requiring experienced welders AND much more strict production culture -- willingness to do operations the way they were planned to be done.
3. Due to p.2
   1. The choice between cast and welded was not a one-size-fits-all decision. Depending on technology / capacity mix it made sense to stay with cast armor for some countries in some cases.
   2. USSR:
      1. Opted for cast armor whenever possible at the start of the war yet gradually transitioned to welded armor.
      2. Had persistent problems with production culure at the every step of welded armor production till the end of the war -- from rolling to welding so quality of armor varied greatly.

 

[Lamartine]

Requiring experienced welders AND much more strict production culture -- willingness to do operations the way they were planned to be done.

This is what kind of irks me about the current implementation. IIRC, Cast was easier to standardise in a production line of low skilled workers like USSR and in some parts of the USA. So more accurately, cast tanks should probably have a higher production efficiency bonus, which translates to a lower production cost.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

1º You are right.
2º Earlier conquests isn't even possible when you need over 50% tension to declare war or have to face similar restrictions.

If you're really holding yourself to democratic runs as countries who can't get into a war by guarantee or just being in someone's way, and have to wait until '39/40, you're right it changes the argument slightly. Still, with the long time to build mils and for those mils to gain efficiency as a minor, it is pretty much always better to spend civs "now" to have more sooner - which welded armor allows and cast doesn't.

3º You are right, but I don't recall saying otherwise. Riveted is possible even for high-armor tanks, but it will depend on how much armor you need and the tank template we are using as the base. And I guess everyone heard about the so called tank meme by now.

Yep, early-midgame pure riveted mediums are enough for armor against ~90% of AI divisions.

4º Will depend on the amount of divs you are fielding with tanks and if you are using them on frontline offensive duty or not. Also on the template itself. Heavy tanks are more costly so you will have to dedicate more factories. For prolongued offensives sometimes 30 factories for heavies isn't enough for 60 space marine divs. Unless you have been producing them for years and have a huge stockpile to last a good while. 30 factories on 1940/1943 heavies will mean 30 chromium and if you are using welded it will mean 60 chromium. And if you are using a heavier turret for SP arty for example, you will be paying even more.

Sure, you don't need to use heavies of course, having a single medium TD/SPAA be max armor and the rest riveted works usually too.

I will also repeat myself one more time and write my:
tldr: Cast has its uses specially when you want more armor and cannot pay the chromium / steel that higher armor levels require or that welded armor needs. The other stats are irrelevant. Its all about the production/resource costs (and/or extra armor) baby.

And I stand by that unless you truly do not have access to chromium (I'm unconvinced steel is relevant - you can use welded to reduce how many +armor ticks you "need" just as much as cast!), the cost of 1 civ/8 factories is absolutely worth minimum 20%+ more production. It is just like buying equipment off the market. A civilian factory takes about 3+ years of military factory construction to pay off, which is why they're worthwhile as majors (assuming you're committed to waiting until '39-40 for big wars); but as minors who struggle to fill the frontlines, they have more value getting you immediate equipment.



Few other less relevant things:

Chromium is easier than steel or oil depending on the scenario case. What if Turkey is allied to you? What if Turkey is on an alliance you do not want to fight yet? What if you are fighting Turkey but need to go around Crimea / Caucasus to reach it, because the strait is a no-go? What if due to lack of divisions you decided to just place 2 or so divs on Instanbul to shorten your already huge frontline? What if you are democratic and Turkey did not produce any tension? There are many cases to be taken in consideration. In many cases, you are fighitng all alliances at once, or at least 2. You do not want one alliance to get all the provinces you control at the peace table all because they lost a bazillion more men than you, after all. Or you cannot spare the extra men until you take care of other bits of Europe.

On a historical scenario, of course, I can understand what you are saying. On a relatively historical scenario, perhaps as well. On a lot of cases, you won't be touching the Turkey yet.

In most of the cases you have unrestrained acess to Turkey, you already had acess to the french island in the pacific, because you already capitulated france one way or another, after all, pre-1939 paradrop on historical paris and a few other french places is easy as damn. This (french) island is more than enough usually, and so are the southern bits of Yugoslavia. Cuba is irrelevant for most nations. In many cases, unless you are a fan of constant convoy raids and can spare the PP to counter the effects, cuba is a bad choice, specially since in many cases you won't get anything out of it. You are only losing the factories required for the trade.

If you're in the Americas/Europe/Africa and you're fighting any combination of the Axis/Comintern/Japan Faction/Allies without the US, and you have a port, you will almost always have access to Cuba. The AI sucks at convoy raiding. Even non-historical Turkey is usually neutral, so if you are a European minor you will typically have access to them too. And if not, like you said, you'll often have France, or South Africa, or someone in Asia connected by land.

And if not, you build welded armor tanks while you're at peace, then use them to fight your way to that land connection once the war starts. There's just so much chromium distributed around the world it doesn't matter much. Turkey and Cuba were single examples out of a large roster.

But my point with @MeinTeam is that he said that a tank with armor and without soft attack is useless. Couldn't be more wrong. You are literally saying that a 50% less dmg is irrelevant, and there are few bonus toe-to-toe that outperform this one. Most of the tanks I produce nowadays just have a crappy machinegun or an early AA turret and never cost over 1 steel. With one or another superpower, of course, I might go with more refined templates, but for minors? PASS.

I see why you were making some of those points now. I sort of agree with you - I think you're "wasting" the chassis cost of a tank to not give it good cannons, but they're definitely worth it just for the armor in many cases.

Hoi4 massively reward stat concentration? Its highly subjective. Your stats can be meaningless in a lot of situations, specially if you are limited by width either due to enemy tactics (guerrila for instance), terrain, or both. Now, imagine if on top of those, the enemy manages to add a -50% dmg buff to your great stats? In many cases, your big divisions full of meat are just that. Divisions full of meat. A smaller div in many cases is stronger than a much bigger one. Also many of those great divisions you speak of usually consume a lot of supply and are not viable for large fronts specially when supply or even manpower is of concern.

I'm talking about stat concentration within battles, not divisions. You can concentrate stats with a 3/2 tank/mot division, or a 9/8, the principle holds either way. Nothing you're describing in this quoted segment really hurts smaller divisions or bigger divisions more or less.

While it doesn't detract or add to my point about concentration, to be honest, the "big divisions bad for supply" line is something you see a lot on places like reddit, but it really isn't true. In 99% of cases a supplied province has 3ish supply which is plenty for a 20-36w tank. Only on the fringes of your supply front do you run into issues, but there supply is typically effectively zero and can't really support divisions of any size.

Minors rarely can afford 20 width divisions because the frontline will grow as time passes, and you won't be able to have 1 div per tile if you do it like this.

True, again, I'm not talking about width. However your argument applies to mine anyway - I say "10 mid inf and 1 decent tank > 11 space marine inf." And I stand by that, it's much better to have one division which can push easily with no losses than a bunch of space marines which will rarely crit and only really "suck less" at pushing than infantry thanks to their armor. Breaking the enemy fast with more attack is "better" than armor bonus in many cases, especially when you do space marines, which the AI can partial pierce midgame.

As for getting a proper tank that can run circles around the enemy... Unless you can spare the mot, or mecs, you aren't going around anything. Cav + tank template is probably the best you can afford (in terms of speed) or get your hands on. Few countries can afford or make it logically plausible to afford mass mot production in 1938 or something. And with cav + tank template you aren't going to create many encirclements (due to speed at least), and if you are sticking with cav, chances are, you can't spare to go for crazy with tanks either. I suppose you "could" make 3 or 4 divs for offensive roles and with 12 km/h of speed, but at the rate you will be chewing mots its not viable either. Specially not viable if you just form a frontline and tell the AI to handle your invasion plan.

You can run circles around the AI with 4kpmh divisions, I should've been more clear - it's not about movement speed, it's about "battle" speed and winning battles quickly. One med/cav tank volunteer to the AI is enough to win nearly any war simply because they don't stop you from just walking through them, encircling, killing, repeating until you win.

Did I say you would have +200 factories allocated to tank production? I even spoke of SHBBs. You can also be mass producing railway guns, they consume a lot (specially the one unlocked by special project), specially if you are churning them out non stop. On multiple lines at the same time. Late game you have so many factories that you don't even know where to waste them. I have had cases where I just did a crappy lvl 1 or lvl 2 armored car with 150 factories and distributed them across every goddamn territory I held because why not, less manpower losses from garrison duty are always nice and at least they won't go to waste. As I said previous, you can afford the factories but cannot afford the resources. This is why in many cases you will be converting tanks or airplanes, with 1 line being dedicated to produce outdated tanks / planes and another at converting them (this reduces resource comsumption). Or why you are going with Vertical Integration, in order to reduce costs as well. Or going with an industrial concern / political advisor that increase resource gain. LACK OF RESOURCES ARE A REALITY!!!

In these cases (of resource constraints) I will go without a problem with Cast Armor. Who cares about 20% extra costs by this time? You will care about chromium for SHBBs (and other projects) as I pointed out several times. SHBB for instance cost 20 chromium each with only 2 heavy turrets, more if you decide to go nuts with them. And in countless cases you cannot go closed economy, so you are still selling a lot of your chromium to outsiders. We could of course argue on the viability of SHBBs, with 1, 2 or many turrets. Or on the viability of other projects. But that would be a very lenghty conversation you see. And far outside the scope of this thread.

I'm sorry but this is indicative of either a major skill issue, or a forgivable lack of DLC. If you are that lategame you have little excuse to have not capitulated at least one of the naval powers, and stealing their navy, which will in turn allow you to wipe out the rest of the naval powers, as the AI doesn't deathstack. If you are making SHBB mid-lategame it's pure roleplay, as they'll take years to finish - even if you couldn't capitulate and peace conference any naval powers, you still are better off doing sub spam, and it will get you the superiority necessary to kill any surviving opponents much faster than SHBB.

Lack of resources is a reality, but not chromium - and once you're in the 200+ factory lategame where steel starts to become an issue, what you produce should barely matter (beyond navy), as your army is already almost certainly big enough to world conquest/limited by manpower.

Finally, again, if you're building armored cars instead of light tanks for garrison you're losing a lot of credibility.

9/9 mountaineer+tank division? If you can afford those 9 battalion of tanks why aren't you producing mecs instead? Cheaper, fast, and with 1 strong armor battalion virtually unpierceable. Even mec lvl 1 is. And can be obtained in 1940, probably even before if you use spies or one or another national focus that gives a boost to research.

I also never said that lack of rubber is related to using cast opposed to welded. You either go with tanks for space marine-esk divisions (1 battalion per div), or for fast divisions. If you are going for 1 battalion per army, you want to be on the cheap side and invest on armor - and other stats like soft atk in many cases are therefore irrelevant, but you could go for SP AA if you feel like it. If you are going for full mec + tank, you can afford more refined templates. There is little point on going mountaineer + 9 tanks. If you can afford the 9 tank batallions, you can afford the mec. 8km/h mecs will blow any enemy frontline and with 5 prod levels for being cheaper and 2 or so on reliability cost something like 5.2. And 8 mec battalions + 1 medium/heavy tank already work wonders. You will be obliterating entire enemy frontlines and this on a "create battleplan and press go" automode. The level of hardness of mecs will also spare manpower by a great deal. I suppose there are many possibilities and you can of course reduce mecs and increase tank battalions, specially if you got the org to do it.

Look at the quote of yours I was replying to to see why I said what I said:

There are even rare cases where you actually lack the rubber (for mecs for example), because you probably joined war late (1940 for example) and because the stuff you conquered in your area never had that great industrial output, you had to waste a lot of points into railroads and you cannot even import it because you are at war vs the allies or the owners of those rich rubber provinces in east asia. This is true for south america and/or asia, specially if democratic / unaligned. Space marines in this case are a way to limit resource waste (with tanks) to only 1 steel per factory, which is way less than inf III or inf II.

You brought up lack of rubber as a reason to make space marines. I'm saying if you don't have rubber, you still can get the benefits of stat concentration with tank/inf, tank/special forces or tank/cavalry divisions. That's why I'm not "producing mecs instead."

Tank/special forces are also quite strong for their terrain benefits + the fact that special forces are OP right now. Obviously amtanks are even better but still.