Indispensible and useless support units

[Adam Apples]

Are there any support units you put in all your divisions? or those that you've found a complete waste of time?? or is it a bit more division/task specific for such a broad question?

i add artillary support always, and field hospitals amongst my infantry. What about logistics, signal support etc...?

[Cavaire]

I always add recon and Engineers nomatter what company it is. "except for police garrison units"
Recon adds +10% movement, and engineers adds a whole bunch of benefits crossing difficult terrain, i believe they add attack bonus too.

Depending on the unit i almost always add field hospitals too, as manpower is the most limiting factor.

Logistics i use too so i almost never have to worry about supplies running out.

Mantainence in all divisions with vehicles, tanks mech/motorized inf.

Artillary used in almost all divisions too. "can be changed for anti-tank if enemy got lots of tanks"

thats what i usually go for.

[Yaldabaoth]

Hospital saves your manpower, recon makes you go fast, logistics allows more troops in low infrastructure areas, artillery always good. Once they fix the AI so it actually builds tanks, anti-tank guns will probably also be nice. There is pretty much no reason not to use all support slots.

[Camerons101]

What Dillion said ^
Also things like support art/AA/AT take up less organization to add then adding them to the divison normally, they also don't add to the combat width if I remember correctly

[Kōdo]

I use artillery, recon, engineers, field hospitals and AT guns for my infantry divisions. I don't use AA guns as I typically maintain air superiority anyway. I haven't seen a need to use military police or any of the others.

[Camerons101]

Military police are helpful in their own smaller divisions since they can stop rebels with less manpower than normal divisions. Though the only place I needed them was the UK since even having the country completely garrisoned wasn't enough to stop rebels.

[Sarnen]

I add MP's to minimum strength cavalry divisions (like 3x units and 1x MP) to provide partisan control. As Germany I actually wound up having to mass produce them like crazy

[Phoenix VII]

I use MPs for cavalry divisions to do partisan suppression. With all my other units I go with Engineer, Artillery, Anti-tank, Maintenance, and Field Hospital. Recon and Logistics are good, but IMO, not as good as the other 5.

Also, if your doctrine is Superior Firepower, you have to choose between Dispersed Support which buffs line artillery and Integrated Support which buffs combat support units. If you go for Integrated Support then you'll want Engineers, Rocket Artillery, Artillery, Anti-tank, and one of the others...I guess the Field Hospital.

As the AI is right now, you can probably drop Anti-tank for something else unless you're playing a mod like AI Research and Development Tweaks, but I'm sure Paradox will patch the AI to make more medium and heavy tank divisions eventually.

[Kōdo]

Originally posted by Sarnen:

I add MP's to minimum strength cavalry divisions (like 3x units and 1x MP) to provide partisan control. As Germany I actually wound up having to mass produce them like crazy

Lol German partisan control, I wonder what they got up to

[Sohei]

I don't fill up with everything early in order to maintain high organization and save on some production.

Everybody gets engineers and hospitals and are the highest priority upgrades. The defensive and movement bonuses for engineers are significant for relatively little cost. Hospitals preserve precious manpower which will be my primary restriction later on and is very slow to recover so I think it is best to start protecting it early - long before it becomes an issue.

Support artillery is good and added to many dvisions but if my division includes line artillery already it may bring my organization down a notch below an acceptable level for a relatively modest bump in soft attack that is already good. After organization buffs later on this is less of an issue. I tend to add line artillery or SPG to many divisions so I have less need to use support artillery.

Recon is hit or miss in my opinion. With a big recon advantage I may notice better tactics more often but a small advantage I might not notice. The small movement buff is okay but not essential and perhaps not worth the organization cost for some units. I add recon to elite troops at middle priority but it is a low priority for others.

Logistics and maintenance are nice to have but are lower priority for tech research so get added later to units that need them.

Cavalry of course get MP and are used for suppresion.

[kungfu18]

It depends on your situtation and what you are using different formations
Recon and Engineers are generally going to be the most use support company types used
Hospitals are there to preserve manpower and retain the combat experiece. Useful for manpower nations however those with huge manpower reserves like the Soviet Union are going to have them as lower priority until the late game
Support Artillery are going to be more useful for special forces as line artillery is going to weigh them down too much and making them less combat effective especially on the offensive and mobility formations are usually going to have SPG or motorised-rockets. Paratroopers are defeniely going to want to use Support Artillery as they currently unable to airlift non support heavy equipment.
Logistics are useful for when fighting terrian with poor infastrutcher
Maintenance is a must for any armoured formations especially heavy and medium tanks
Siginal Companies are useless for static infantry formations used to hold the line but are handy for mobility formations allowing them to plan their attack plans in a much shorter time
MP are generally going to be given to Cavalry as supression is the only thing they would be good at in the mid to late game. In the early game cavalry can be used as cheap alternatives to motorised or mechanised.
Support Anti Tank is going to be for nations who are too poor or dont have enough manpower to field dedicated anti tank formations
Support Anti Air i never used these so I dont know much from personal experience though I think it would be nice for nations who are unable to have an effective air force