Captured units - Use them?

[sn0wball]

Careful, KV-1 A,B,C look identical till you hover over them..

I found this even more embarrassing with T34s, since the very first version is really, really crappy, while the KV-1 A is at least tough.

[nikivdd]

I kept the Polish artillery, upgraded it later. Char B1s were handy for DLC 40 and 41, upgraded to Pz IVs in DLC 42. Matilda tanks i always sold for the already mentioned reasons. I kept most of the Soviet units and rarely sold one if i need some extra prestige.

[Bonesoul]

I just took a quick look back at an old save as at the start of Stonne to get some stats.

One of the reasons I started this thread was I was struggling to see where and why I should use captured units, mainly because in my core I had already planned for a degree of expansion in numbers of units I would need, in the 1940 scenarios I was rotating units to get them experience so not all my units were deployed in each scenario.

At the start of Stonne, I already had 9 panzer units. 3x38t, 4xPzrIVD and 2xPzrIIIF (SE), yes I fiddled the SE units a bit to get 2 panzers rather than infantry, I had 1 SE Gerb as my 3rd SE at this time. At this point I also had a new captured Souma from the previous scenario.

My 9 Panzers, with the exception of one of the SE units were all 2 and a bit stars already, so I was faced with the choice of starting to use the zero experience Souma and slowing down the experience gain of the panzers I already had (playing on FM hitting the exp cap wasn't certain if I did this) or sticking with my existing models and banking the 302 prestige I would get from disbanding the Souma to pay for upgrades/reinforcements. If you upgrade a unit out of type, so a Souma to any version of PzrIV for example, you never get that 302 prestige and I felt it better to use that to possibly fully fund upgrading my 4 PzrIVD to the next variant or one of the 38(t)s to a PzrVI/III keeping the experience they had already gained was a better option.

Part of the problem is when you upgrade out of type you loose all prestige benefits, I agree upgrade in class, PzrIVD to PzrIVF for example should be the cheapest option, but why don't you at least get the disband value, that 302 in the case of a Souma to put towards an upgrade? If I disband and immediately buy a new PzrIV, the net cost takes into account the disband prestige but if I was silly enough to immediately upgrade the Souma to a PzrIV it would cast me the full new unit price. I guess it all comes down to, if tanks have a disband value, why don't you get it when you upgrade that unit out of type?

Cheers
Bone

[ThorHa]

I hope it´s not too unfair - but I simply beleive the devs did not even consider any option here in depth, they just took the proven PG concept, finished. Which is totally acceptable, as it was a minor issue ... before the SoftCap.

Btw your example shows why the simple question of keeping or disbanding captured units is not simple. You decided to build a vast core exceeding deployment slots very early. I did exactly the same, but the captured units already figured into the equation, meaning, I started buying tanks late and in low quantities relying on captured Somuas, Char B 1s etc.

In the end I strongly beleive we might have spent nearly the same in prestige. I spent it for repairs on green units, albeit strong ones, and for sidegrading. You payed for repairs on much more of weaker German tanks to get them all to the experience limit in a dlc.

Regards,
Thorsten