Support Companies

[101Titan101]

What do each of them do and which are best for which templates?

[Zippo]

This guide is very good IMO:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/beginners-guide-to-unit-types-division-design.942449/

[Mikey]

AA, arty, rocket and AT are self explanatory

Maintenance - increased the durability of your equipment meaning you lose less when suffering attrition and you also get to pick up equipment dropped by the enemy

Hospital - decreases manpower and exp losses in combat. You still lose the same ammount of people but some of them get sent back into the manpower pool

Recon - Increases your reconaisance value, this means your general is more likely to pick the correct countertactic to what the enemy does

Radio - Increases initiative, this means your units have a higher chance of joining a battle when they are in the reserve pool of an action

Logistics - Decreases supply usage of your division

[Justin]

Support Artillery/AA/AT/Rockets - provides extra soft, air, hard, and soft attack/breakthrough respectively. Costs less than normal versions, but provides less of a benefit, and does not slow down fast divisions (can freely use on fast breakthrough divisions and with paratroopers)

Engineer - increases entrenchment statistic and helps in attacking forts and river crossings, works well with both offence and defence

Recon - increases speed in difficult terrain, and increases the chance your tactic will counter the enemy's in battle - mostly effective on offence (or left off entirely)

Military police - increases suppression stat, and provides no combat benefits. Use on garrison nuits and cavalry

Maintenance Company - increases reliability, reducing equipment loss from attrition (breakdowns and the like) - helpful with high cost divisions containing things like super heavy tanks

Field Hospital - returns a percentage of lost manpower into your manpower pool, and decreases experience loss in combat. Helpful for countries lacking in manpower

Logistics Company - reduces supply usage of entire division. Useful in areas of low supply, or with divisions that have a high supply usage (reduction is percentage based, so a larger cost results in more supply saved)

Signal company - increases initiative stat, speeding up battle planning. Also useful when entering battles as a reserve. If you order multiple divisions to engage an enemy simultaneously, they all join the battle at the same time; however, divisions which join the battle after it's started are sent to a Reinforcement pool and must roll dice to join the fray. By default, this is a meager 2% per hour (or an average time of 34 hours of not shooting the enemy). The Radio tech increases this to 7% (about 9.5 hrs on average). A top-tier signal company grants 56 Initiative, which the game divides by 4 and adds to the reinforce rate. The bare rate of 2% plus the Radio technology's 5% for a total of a 21% reinforce rate per hour, or an average reinforce rate of just under 3 hours.

[Ryan]

@Justin: Military police - increases suppression stat, and provides no combat benefits. Use on garrison nuits and cavalry

The tooltip says otherwise. Why do you say it provides no combat benefits?

[Justin]

Because it doesn't provide any combat benefits when you're actually fighting.

What tooltip are you reading?

[glythe]

And when do you actually use them?

Maintenance- Arty breakthrough infantry units and tanks.
Logistics- tanks and africa squads
Field hospital- Everything
MP- garbage cav units holding occupied areas
Recon- Everything except MP
Engineer- tanks/infantry

Signal companies? Never.

[Franstastic]

Signal companies are amazing

[Ryan]

If you play as a major nation, I think the Logistics company is the least useful. You should have enough production to cover attrition anyway, so it serves no purpose.

[Ryan]

Originally posted by Justin:

Because it doesn't provide any combat benefits when you're actually fighting.

What tooltip are you reading?

This tooltip:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1364424850

[seashell]

Originally posted by Mikey:

AA, arty, rocket and AT are self explanatory

Maintenance - increased the durability of your equipment meaning you lose less when suffering attrition and you also get to pick up equipment dropped by the enemy

Hospital - decreases manpower and exp losses in combat. You still lose the same ammount of people but some of them get sent back into the manpower pool

Recon - Increases your reconaisance value, this means your general is more likely to pick the correct countertactic to what the enemy does

Radio - Increases initiative, this means your units have a higher chance of joining a battle when they are in the reserve pool of an action

Logistics - Decreases supply usage of your division

that aside i read something about filling all support slots hits your organization hard
like how should you take this into account
and then if i want to put down support guns i won't have space for these pure support companies

oh and is that paradox guide up to date with the 1.5 patch

[spike2071]

Originally posted by Ryan:

If you play as a major nation, I think the Logistics company is the least useful. You should have enough production to cover attrition anyway, so it serves no purpose.

I disagree with this, but am willing to be educated. :)

I like the Logistics brigade for the decrease in supply consumption. A division out of supply takes a pretty severe hit to attack and defense. The Logistics brigade (especially upgraded) allows you to cram many more divisions in a single zone to punch through the enemy line.

I agree that the attrition is minor, but fighting in level 5 infra in the USSR is painful without that brigade.

[Justin]

Originally posted by Ryan:

Originally posted by Justin:

Because it doesn't provide any combat benefits when you're actually fighting.

What tooltip are you reading?

This tooltip:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1364424850

I think those particular stats are calculated based on the number of battalions that are in the division. Most stats are not strictly additive - speed, for example, is the speed of the slowest battalion in the division. Organization I believe is a weighted average or something.

Dunno where the Hard Attack is coming from though. I'll have to ask the main forums.

Regardless, equipping MPs solely for that extra 1 HP and 9 Soft Attack still sounds like a bad idea.

Originally posted by Ryan:

If you play as a major nation, I think the Logistics company is the least useful. You should have enough production to cover attrition anyway, so it serves no purpose.

I think you confused maintenance battalions with logistics battalions. Maintenance battalions reduce attrition, logistics reduce supply cost.

I think it still depends on your general production, though if you're playing as, for example, the USA, you're mostly right. I think.

Originally posted by 32Cbottle:

Originally posted by Mikey:

AA, arty, rocket and AT are self explanatory

Maintenance - increased the durability of your equipment meaning you lose less when suffering attrition and you also get to pick up equipment dropped by the enemy

Hospital - decreases manpower and exp losses in combat. You still lose the same ammount of people but some of them get sent back into the manpower pool

Recon - Increases your reconaisance value, this means your general is more likely to pick the correct countertactic to what the enemy does

Radio - Increases initiative, this means your units have a higher chance of joining a battle when they are in the reserve pool of an action

Logistics - Decreases supply usage of your division

that aside i read something about filling all support slots hits your organization hard
like how should you take this into account
and then if i want to put down support guns i won't have space for these pure support companies

oh and is that paradox guide up to date with the 1.5 patch

I can't remember how organization is calculated, but I think it's based on a weighted average of battalions in the division.

I just tested the division designer and created a blank division with 2 INF and got 70 org (with upgrades). Adding a support artillery cut that down to around 30 or so, but adding a third INF brought it back up by 10 to around 40.

So equipping support companies DOES affect organization, but if it's a particularly large division then you can probably mitigate those penalties at the cost of manpower and production.