How To Use Tanks?

[T5NN]

Title Says All, I Just have no idea how to do tanks properly or even at all

I Always find myself rathering infantry and artillery en massé so like, basically i want a fairly elaborate telling of when to use them and why to use them and how to use them and which ones to use?

[Citizen X]

Generally speaking, the role of a Tank is to "Breakthrough" defending enemies. If the enemy is in your way, Tanks are what you need to destroy them and get them to move.

The most important thing to understand, is that Tanks are mobile. Throw them at the Infantry, destroy the enemy infantry, AND THEN use your speed to drive behind the enemy. Either encircle them, OR drive your forces to occupy the enemy Supply Hubs, Ports, Airbases, or Victory Points

Not all enemies you face will be strong, and not all enemies you face will be organized and entrenched. Light Tanks are good enough to get the job done against weak enemies, maybe enemy colonial divisions, or divisions on secondary fronts. They can move much more quickly than your enemy who is on foot and this allows them to seize objectives fast. They also move better in rough terrain, and they are cheap.

Medium and Heavy tanks are needed for stronger enemy defenses. Mediums offer the best balance of Strength and Speed, while a Heavy Tank will Breakthrough the strongest of enemies, but can only watch as the enemy walks and entrenches in the next tile

[The Real Private Kowalski]

"How To Use Tanks?"

Tanks are meant for breakthroughs and getting encirclement's. If you use them right 4 tank divs can whip out the whole soviet army.

"Why to use them" As i said above tanks are good for encirclement's, destroying large amounts of units. As well as making a breakthrough then rushing Mot or light tanks in to exploit it.

"Which ones to use?"

Depends if your the USA that can afford to make anything then Heavy Tanks can work for Europe and Amphibious tanks for the Pacific.

Or if your playing Germany then you want to make Medium tanks as those are cheaper then Heavy's while only being slightly worse.

But a general rule if outside of RP Medium tanks are the best tanks.


"When to use them?"

When you can afford them. It's best to start making tanks as soon as you can to have as many tanks out as you can get when WW2 starts.

[Mack]

You can start with 5 Medium Tanks + 5 Motor Inf + Support Artillery, Engineers, Motorised Recon (or Armoured Recon, using light tanks but that's up to you). Later you can expand that to 30 to 35 width with extra stuff (1 or 2 SPGs, logistics support & flame tank support), but early game that's enough.

Put them in a single army with a panzer specified Marshall and general.

Just stick to medium tanks in singleplayer, you'll never need heavies, and lights will eventually be not quite enough.

Tank design for mediums you want christie suspension, a regular cannon, a radio, easy maintenance (get mainteance support tier 2 for this), fuel drum, dozer blade. Singleplayer you want max engine, but I never bother with armour beyond level 4.

Tactically, you use tanks to break through a defender and then push forward. Where you push, well there's two main things you want to get to:
* Supply depots, cutting off supply to your opposition.
* Encirclement, where you can completely surround the enemy, then when you attack they have nowhere to go and die.

If the enemy is near a border with a neutral country, or the ocean, you can encircle them by getting to the border/ocean. Or you attack two points at the line (ie, half the units attack one end, the other attack the other side) then meet further inside, then once you have surrounded them you turn inside and kill the units trapped in the pocket.

[HappySack]

Tanks have the highest armour and breakthrough values you can ever get on top of high speed so they can keep an offensive going far longer and easier than regular infantry can.

Light tanks are the cheapest and weakest, while the opposite holds true for heavy tanks, so mediums are the most practical for general usage especially if you have the production to afford them, both light and mediums are good in various ways for different strategies but heavies are much more situational given their slow speed and high cost.

Assuming you have the tank designer you also have the option design any tank as an infantry tank meaning you can give up on speed completely and only prioritizing armour and soft attack, so a battalion of those added to your regular infantry would make an overpowered division type called Space Marines.

[Blind]

Originally posted by T4TTB:

Title Says All, I Just have no idea how to do tanks properly or even at all

I Always find myself rathering infantry and artillery en massé so like, basically i want a fairly elaborate telling of when to use them and why to use them and how to use them and which ones to use?

Some tips for when you design divisions. Tanks make the organization plummet, which means you need to add infantry to increase org. If you have fast tanks, use trucks or machanized infantry so that they can move fast together. If your tanks are slow, use normal infantry. Reliability is kinda important. You want as close to 100% as possible. Some easy ways to accomplish this are by sacrificing speed (switching to a diesel engine) or adding modules that increase it themselves.

[trooperrob]

Once you are near to breakthrough, hit the flanks to stop those enemy units blocking the gap.
Send in your mobile units.
Cav, light armour, med armour, or mot / mech / cav.
anything that can move faster than inf will work, but lighter units should penetrate and exploit but not get into combat if they can help it.
You may wish to modify your armour templates to stop them from gaining captured poor tanks that slow the unit down.