An Update to HT Stack Composition

This is a thread updating the values that are present in the HT composition thread @jubjub bird made a few months ago, which was before the balancing changes rolled up. This thread is the first of many that I plan to make updating older threads on the forums about 1.5 mechanics, and since HTs haven't changed much and jubjub has does over 90% of the work already, I'll just be expanding on this thread as a trial run and move from there

Original thread (definitely check it out! https://forum.callofwar.com/index.php?thread/46214-stack-composition-the-best-unit-to-pair-with-heavy-tanks/

In all of these situations, no doctrine or terrain boosts are used, and these are the researched levels:

• Heavy Tank L2 - avail. D10
• Infantry L5 - avail. D8
• Anti-Air L4 - avail. D10
• Motorized Infantry L4 - avail. D10
• Mechanized Infantry L2 - avail. D8

All are available at about the same time

Analysis

Comparing the Small Stacks:

• Stack 1: 5 HTs (control)
• Stack 2: 5 HTs + 5 Inf
• Stack 3: 5 HTs + 5 AA
• Stack 4: 5 HTs + 4 Mot Inf
• Stack 5: 5 HTs + 4 Mech Inf

(latter two stacks reduced to four to make MP costs nearly equivalent)

Costs:

Stack	Units	HP	Food	Goods	Metal	Oil	RMs	Total RSS	MP	$
1	5	550	0	0	11,000	11,000	5,500	27,500	9,850	13,750
2	10	750	6,650	3,150	11,000	11,000	5,500	37,300	16,050	18,500
3	10	750	2,900	6,350	11,850	11,000	5,500	37,600	14,700	18,900
4	9	710	7,680	1,840	11,000	12,840	5,500	37,940	16,090	21,110
5	9	730	7,240	0	13,640	12,720	5,500	39,100	15,850	21,550

Performance:

Soft - Unarmored

L.A. - Light Armor

H.A. - Heavy Armor

Comments:

• S1, being the control, fares the worst. No further comment necessary, and it will not be referred to in the below analysis.
• S2, with 5 Inf, does the best defensively against soft (what I call unarmored), outperforming the second-best (S5) by ~20 and ~10 respectively. S2 has the second best AA damage and second best defensive dmg against H.A. It is only slightly worse than S5 against attack vs. soft, L.A. and H.A.
• S3, with 5 AA, outperforms all the other stack only in regards to defensive dmg vs. air and (un)surprisingly defensive vs. H.A. In all other areas it is in between extremely bad (any dmg vs. soft) or about the same (attack vs H.A. and defensive vs. L.A.)
• S4, with 4 mot inf, does the best attacking dmg for all categories, but has the worst defensive dmg (only barely tho, in practice comparable to S5, with ±10 at most).
• S5, with 4 mech inf, is the most average of the stacks, not performing extraordinarily but also not performing badly across all categories. This is most probably due to the differences in research leves (Inf L5, Mot Inf L4, and Mech Inf L2).

Now factoring in cost, it seems that S5 is the most expensive, costing 39.1K total rss (resources). In retrospect, both the Inf and AA (S1 and S2) cost ~2,000 less rss than Stack 5 (which isn't that much tbh), but have more HP (+20, not much again). S3 (mot inf) is marginally better than Stack 1 (inf) at attacking, but worse in terms of defense.

To artificially get a quantitative result, let's measure the efficiency of each stack by dividing the total damage against all 7 datapoints and divide by either rss or MP:

(I'm multiplying the final result by 100 and simplifying to 2dp since the real value isn't practical for analysis)

Stack	Total Dmg / Total Rss	Total Dmg / MP
1 (control)	1.22	3.40
2 (inf)	1.58	3.68
3 (AA)	1.41	3.60
4 (mot inf)	1.41	3.32
5 (mech inf)	1.37	3.39

Inf stack (S2) seems to be the most efficient, with the AA stack (S3) as a close second. The mot inf stack (S4) has worse damage per MP than just using the control (base) stack of 5 HTs, which is interesting. S5 (mech inf) also does slightly less damage per MP than 5HTs, altho is close enough to be negligible.

A key point to factor in is that inf does not use any of the rss that are needed by HTs, so are much more balanced out. Same goes for AA, only a small amount of overlap (steel). For other stacks, like mech, no goods are needed, but more total rss necessary.

Up to this point, we've limited ourselves to less than 10 units. Let's now consider overstacking:

Comparing the Larger Stacks:

• Stack 1: 10 HTs (control)
• Stack 2: 10 HTs, 10 Inf
• Stack 3: 10 HTs, 10 AA
• Stack 4: 10 HTs, 8 Mot Inf
• Stack 5: 10 HTs, 8 Mech Inf

(latter two stacks reduced to four to make MP costs nearly equivalent)

Stack	Units	HP	Food	Goods	Metal	Oil	RMs	Total RSS	MP	$
1	10	1100	0	0	22,000	22,000	11,000	44,000	19,700	27,500
2	20	1500	13,300	6,300	22,000	22,000	11,000	74,600	32,100	37,000
3	20	1500	5,800	12,700	23,700	22,000	11,000	75,200	29,400	37,800
4	18	1420	15,360	3,680	22,000	24,960	11,000	75,880	32,180	42,220
5	18	1460	14,480	0	27,280	25,440	11,000	78,200	31,700	43,100

Interestingly, since the max damage dealt is by the 10 most powerful units in a stack, the control stack (S1) does all the damage for some categories, like attack and defensive damage for both L.A. and H.A. Defensive vs soft is topped by infantry (S2), but only by 20 to mech inf. Mot inf (S4) does a whopping 154 attack damage against soft, 25 more than mech inf and a little more than double the damage done by the control stack. But the biggest takeaway is the AA (S3 5x the defense dmg vs air than the control stack, and 2.5x more than the next best alternative, inf stack (only 60 dmg compared to 150 dmg).

Looking at efficiency...

Stack	Total Dmg / Total Rss	Total Dmg / MP
1 (control)	1.52	3.40
2 (inf)	1.05	2.45
3 (AA)	1.05	2.69
4 (mot inf)	1.06	2.51
5 (mech inf)	1.02	2.52

In the original guide, jubjub goes over how inefficient these big stacks are and how just a 10/2 stack of HT/AA is almost equivalent to a 10/10 stack of HT/inf. Go check it out! (link above). Reason I'm not just putting it here is since that thread deserves some love, and this thread is just an update to the original. Over 90% of the work was put in by jubjub, I'm just updating the numbers because the original numbers were before the balancing changes ooccured (which buffed ability to research inf and mot inf earlier, and mech inf later, with HTs getting more HP, and I think some changes to the damage dealt by mech inf).

All in all? Best stack is definitely the HT/AA stack (S3), since per MP you get much more damage dealt and other stacks only add minor upgrades to other forms of dealt damage whilst not having enough AA damage to dissuade bombers. If you know you're not going to face air, then honestly, any of the other 5 stacks would do.

I'll be updating more of these threads in the Guides section of the forum soon, this was essentially a trial run to see how it goes and too generate feedback (and to show some love to these older thread some forum members know nothing about!) If you people have any specific thread you want me to update or rewrite, or just have a topic you want be to write a guide for, send a message on my wall. I'll be focused on content regarding data collection and advanced tactics, not beginner level stuff.