[2023] Heavy Tank design for Space Marines?

Morvrann said: Hi, I never really played using Space Marines, wanna try it

Let me provide some guidance.

First, let's make something clear: Space marines are not about having good tanks. They are about having "meh" heavy tank destroyers that you can produce from 1937 until you you drown the enemy in them. So, when thinking about this, I don't want you looking at the tech tree and saying to yourself "Aha! I'll get 1943 heavy tanks soon. Let's swap to that!"

Resist that impulse. Instead think like this:

"I have 137% production efficiency cap on the same TD I've had since 1937. Let's just mount a bigger gun on it and keep building them. Sure, it's 1945, and we are about to take Berlin, but who cares?"

With that in mind, let's talk about Space Marines.

The initial heavy TD you should consider building is this one. Notice I said initial.



The SMK is a pile of garbage. But why am I telling you to build a pile of garbage? Because this tank is possible to build with off the shelf technology in 1936. The Soviets, Germany, France, and Britain can all build this. The only thing you need is the army XP to design it. It also illustrates the general design principles of a basic Space Marine TD. You want a heavy gun because it does both SA and HA. You want to save cost by using the medium fixed mount, not a heavy turret. You don't need fancy things like radios. You want high reliability (too much in this case, but I'll explain why in a moment) so that when you have 14,000 of them spread across 200 divisions on the front, you want to recover as many as possible from attrition and combat. This one is also cheap enough to be spammed. It also saves a module slot for dozer blades when you research it later.

Now, we could have configured it this way:



This way is slightly cheaper, but reliability goes to 95%. Reliability over 100% is wasted, but I'd rather have 100% reliability from diesel than the gasoline engine. It's your call, though.

But if you are not planning to build TDs until 1937, you can scam the 1934 heavy chassis. (Some countries even start with it). This takes us to this version of the SMK:



It costs slightly more than the interwar version, but it has more armor. Notice that in both cases we aren't adding armor, and we are just adding enough engine to reach the minimum 4 kph speed required.

Either TD is one you can start producing before 1938. Depending on your build (CIC versus MIC), you can really get started on these early. And you just let production efficiency build on the production lines that make it. As the Soviets, you can easily have 30 MIC on SMKs well before 1939. And for those paying attention, you will probably be delaying aircraft spam until you have the 1940 air frame and engines. So, the SMK becomes the thing you add MIC to until those techs are done.

How should I upgrade this thing?



When we pick up the tier 2 heavy gun, we add that. It comes from either the 1941 AA gun tech or the 1940 AT gun tech. But we should also add a dozer blade when we acquire 1939 engineers.



Let's make something clear. Changing a production line from one kind of tank to another hurts production efficiency a ton. But if you keep the same chassis and just swap some modules around, it barely hurts anything. So, you are still churning these out at almost full speed.

Churning these out lets us create an infantry division template like this:



Dozer blade SMKs stack with the engineers for even more entrenchment. Now, you are probably saying to yourself "Ach, Secret Master, that armor rating is terrible." And you would be right. (And Scottish, apparently.)

But consider how the AI plays. This is a German division in the field in April of 1941:



Ummm, yeah. That can't fully pierce the space marine I just showed you. And Germany has 120+ of these in the field by 1941.

What about German armor?



Yeah. That's a German panzer division in the freaking field in 1941 that can't pierce your Space Marines. And you can pierce it well. Now, the AI is not always this bad, but consider what you are seeing. By using Space Marines you are effectively rendering the entire inventory and production run of Panzer I's and Panzer II's obsolete.

And how many space marines can I make? I've literally been able to turn 192 Soviet divisions into Space Marines by June of 1941 by having 30 or so MIC on cheap SMKs starting in late 36 or early 37.

Here's a bonus tip:

If you are going to turn most infantry divisions on the front into Space Marines, you don't even need to look at the AT gun techs. Just pretend they aren't there. Instead, just go through the AA gun line like you would normally and pick up the Tier 2 heavy cannon from 1941 AA guns. You have all the piercing you need from the TDs, so building AT guns or researching them doesn't make any sense.

Extra special bonus tip:

You can add armor to the TD and make it fancier with better modules. I don't normally recommend it, but if Dollar Store TDs aren't your style, you can do something like this:



Which gives you divisions like this:



France can have 24 of these by September of 1939. That's enough to cover the Benelux border. The Germans aren't getting through Sedan with these guys sitting there.  

HugsAndSnuggles said: Wouldn't medium be better then?

Depends on whether you have the time and research slots for medium 1938.

For 1936 techs, this is what we see:









The IW Medium TD provides less armor and less hardness for less cost than the 1934 heavy TD. I make this distinction with the 1934 heavy because some countries (Germany) start with that tech outright, and it's easy to pick up before you begin allocating MIC to production lines. 1938 medium isn't too hard to get, but it is ahead of time in 36 and 37.

In terms of division stats, it looks a bit like this:






An armor value of 11.5 can be beaten by lousy German AA guns in 1941.

If you grab the 1938 medium, then you approach the heavy TD armor values for lower cost. But you didn't have that extra time building TDs or grabbing production efficiency. Remember, we are trying to grab the MIC and put it on production lines quickly so that we can build it forever. But if you aren't grabbing those MIC for TDs until mid 37 or 38, then you can go ahead and wait for 1938 medium.  

HmJ_JP said: I'd say push soft attack and armor as high as you can, while keeping speed as low as needed (4 kph). Isn't it all we need for tanks supporting infantry battalions?

The Colonel said: I'm not sure the reason for using tank destroyers here btw? Like, you hardly need hard attack at all in SP, whereas breakthrough is something infantry divisions really lack and tanks are good at giving. Especially if you're gonna do armor clicks anyway, as those are a great source of base breakthrough, I'd just use an actual tank.

Going this route guarantees piercing against anything the AI even dreams up.

I know the AI isn't the best at bringing armor to Barbarossa, but I have seen it throw medium tanks at me. Having plenty of piercing ensures that any attempt to bring that to bear won't matter.

For the record, I tend to be biased against armor first. If I see divisions failing to pierce, I get irritated and assume they are performing badly even if they could probably do okay by just blasting away with soft attack.

Having said that, I would be much more inclined to focus on SA in infantry divisions if I could get SPART to work the way I want. Every time I look at the ART tree, I say to myself "Let's go Superior Firepower, grab those techs, and put SPART in every division." But then I see the supply footprint and width, and I become sad. So, I focus on a tank that can kind of do it all with off the shelf technology.

On yet another hand, I have been looking back into something I used to do a long time ago: close support gun LARM in infantry divisions. But I haven't really been that excited about it.

So, in the context of this discussion, I've been advocating something kind of basic and easy to implement. You really can't go wrong with this setup.  

Herennius said: I would like to add here that reliability beyond 100% (aside from acting as buffer if other temporary things like weather increase attrition) currently triggers the "extra-equipment-out-of-thin-air"-bug, if you go out with maintenance companies:

HoI 4 - Recovered Equipment after battle greater than total equipment lost. v1.11.5.5b4f checksum 7e1e

Description of issue Recovered Equipment after battle greater than total equipment lost. v1.11.5.5b4f checksum 7e1e Game Version Steam (windows 10) v1.11.5.5b4f checksum 7e1e Enabled DLC Together for Victory, Death or Dishonor, Waking the... forum.paradoxplaza.com

Damn it, I keep forgetting about that bug. You are 100% right.

Gort11 said: How about putting enough armour onto the medium TD to let it equal the armour of the heavy TD?

Well, we run into some problems doing that.

With off the shelf technology, I can't get the same armor value on IW medium.



I can research medium 1938:



That works, but I have to grab the 1938 medium tank tech.

On the IW medium, I can grab more armor tech:



But now reliability is 82%.

I guess I should test how many medium TDs I lose at this level of reliability versus heavy TDs at 100+ reliability and measure costs.

If the answer is that I lose less production cost in medium TDs versus the heavy TDs (factoring in the different costs, of course), then I guess I should swap to IW medium.

STABBY5 said: When putting armored vehicles into your infantry for the sake of the armor value, they should be in no case tank destroyers.

I want both the piercing and armor value. Those IW heavy TDs render the entire production run of Panzer Is and II's obsolete.

STABBY5 said: When you start saving on industry by not making them so needlessly expensive you can afford to upgrade to newer models.

Why would I waste time upgrading to better chassis? I want, say, 30 MIC on those TDs and once I set it, I want to forget it. Let that production efficiency sit at maximum.

Maybe I've been pampered by the Soviet focus tree too much lately, but I can't emphasize how much mileage I get out of letting production lines sit at 137% production efficiency cap for years on end.

STABBY5 said: If you don't care about breakthrough then you need to use SPAA. It's the only battalion that uses less than the standard tank numbers of 60/50/40. They are all 36. For your most cost effective vehicle for armor you can take a page from cold war America with the infantry support SPAA the M42 duster.

I don't like the width and supply draw of those battalions. And I do want the piercing of the TDs. The TD battalions with heavy guns let me completely ignore the AT tree (which is ironic since TDs get bonuses from that tree, but I don't need them).



Is this really what I want? In some situations, maybe. But note that this unit has lower hardness than the comparable TD and a much higher supply draw. What do those battalions look like?



Versus medium TD:



The TD has better recovery, supply draw, piercing, fuel consumption, and better combat width while the SPART is cheaper and has more soft attack. But that soft attack advantage is mitigated by the increased width, so let's do some math. (1939 artillery techs)

SPART: 14.5 SA per width
TD: 11.5 per width

Am I really coming out ahead here? I mean, yeah, kind of. But I'm not sure the disadvantages are worth the trade off.

At higher tech levels, the SPART does enjoy some additional advantages from ART techs that the TD does not. And you can just add a new gun to the SPART just like I do with the TDs.

Note that I'm not 100% sure why the game is balanced for SPART to have such high supply draw. For the record, a medium tank battalion looks something like this in terms of supply:



To be perfectly honest, I think I'd put regular IW medium tanks with howitzers on them in infantry divisions before SPART. But maybe you think the trade offs are worth it. :shrug:

Pro-tip:

Rocket tanks are even worse:



It still costs tungsten, but it's worse than a howitzer.