The Great M3 Conundrum

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The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/6/2016 10:04:59 PM

Onime No Kyo

Posts: 16842
Joined: 4/28/2004
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Hi all,

So I was puttering around with the Allied device pools and noticed a very interesting thing. Now, I know what you're thinking, but hold on, this gets better.

There is an AFV LCU device called "M3 Grant/Lee". It has a build rate of 1. But it actually turns out that your get quite a lot of them through convoys. So many, in fact, that by the end of 1942 you end up with over 400. Here is the interesting part. As best as I can figure out (manually, so I may have missed something), this device is only used by Australians. Leaving aside that some of their armored units withdraw and none arrive as reinforcements, the maximum number of this device you need to fill out all units whose TO&E even potentially requires it is 180 or so. Since it has no end production date, I can only assume that by the end of the war you end up with about 500 sitting blissfully in the pool.

Here is the truly interesting part. There is another device called the "General Lee", which has a build rate of 6. Its pool is shared by the British, Indians, New Zealand, Dutch (Thread only knows where) and Canada. It turns out you get a few of them as well through convoys but much, much less. By the end of 1943 you would have something like 200. The kicker is that a single Indian Armored brigade can bogart a 100 each, and they have 4 brigades that I know of. Plus I assume the Canadians take some, and at least a few British units. And this device had an end production date of 6/43.

Of course we all know that this the same tank. So it looks a little funny to see the same vehicles arrive through the same port (Cape) but not be usable by the same nations.

So here I sit, scratching my head, trying to answer the following questions:

1) What do you do with all these "M3 Grant/Lee" devices? Has anyone found any means of utilizing those pools?

2) I assume that the decision to have "General Lee" pools shared has to do with a balancing issue of not giving the Indians the ability to fully rebuild their armored units too early. But unless I'm mistaken, it looks like they will never be able to rebuild them, even by the end of the war, because there are simply not enough of these tanks to fill everything, their TO&Es do not update, and after mid 1943 the convoys start bringing the "General Grant" device. Is this accurate?

And finally,

3) Is there an easy way to see a list of units that use a certain device? Searching manually is a bit of a pain.

Thanks in advance.

< Message edited by Onime No Kyo -- 1/6/2016 11:08:46 PM >

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RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/7/2016 3:04:35 AM

BillBrown

Posts: 2335
Joined: 6/15/2002
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First off, you count is wrong, you get 348 General Lee tanks in convoys.

Then there are upgrades. The upgrade for the General Lee is the General Grant and you get 144 of those.
The next upgrade is the Sherman V and I did not check to see how many of those you get.

It should be noted that the stats for these improve very little and there is no great reason to
try and upgrade all units to the latest version. You will most likely be using General Lee tanks
at the end of the war.

As far as the M3 Grant/Lee tanks, you will most likely lose some, some when unloading across the beach and
some in combat, so you have lots of replacements. And again you estimate of how many you need to fill
out all units is a bit low. The 4th Cavalry Brigade upgrades about 1 June, 1942 and then requires 120
tanks to fill out. Five of the Armored Brigades do not withdraw and they need 40 medium tanks each
for 200 total. The other three Armored Brigades to not withdraw until 1944 ( 1 in Feb and 2 in Oct)
That is another 120 needed for much of the war. It looks like you need about 440 M3 Grant/Lee tanks.
I try and fill a number of slots with Matilda II tanks for the first year or two, depending on losses.

< Message edited by BillBrown -- 1/7/2016 4:05:19 AM >

(in reply to Onime No Kyo)

Post #: 2

RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/7/2016 11:54:36 PM

Onime No Kyo

Posts: 16842
Joined: 4/28/2004
Status: offline

Thanks Bill.

So I assume this means that for some time you get both Lees and Grants and I just didnt look far enough into 1943. But thats still not enough to fill out all of the Indians.

Can you tell me about any other major "customers" for these devices?

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RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/8/2016 4:21:01 AM

Reg

Posts: 2787
Joined: 5/26/2000
From: NSW, Australia
Status: offline

Hi, Regards M3 Grant/Lee tanks;

The Australian Army received the following vehicles to equip an Armoured Division for use in North Africa.

M3 Medium Grant (Petrol) - 266
M3 Medium Grant (Diesel) - 232
M3 Medium Lee (Petrol) - 239

They were all delivered in 1942 and when Australian forces were withdrawn from the Middle East they were retained for Home Defence duties on the Australian mainland. There were sufficient quantities of these (cruiser) tanks for the role for the rest of the war so no more were delivered (though it might have been different had they been engaged in combat). The use of the convoy system was found to be the best way for a once only injection of the Australian tanks into the force pool without an ahistorical monthly production. These three vehicle types were very similar and were treated interchangeably by the Aust army so they were made one device type.

The use of different devices in game for similar vehicles is to encourage historical deployment of those assets. It is agreed that it is inefficient to have 700 Lee/Grants sitting idle in Australia when British units are desperate for them in India but they were Australian government property and unavailable for transfer (they had other priorities) but that's just the way it was.

I won't bring the Matilda into the discussion as historically it was not an upgrade. The Lee/Grant is a cruiser tank and the Matilda was an Infantry support tank (where being slow is actually an advantage) and they were both in service concurrently. Australian Armoured brigades were equipped for their assigned role and up graded, down graded and sideways graded between the Stuart, Lee/Grant and Matilda as the situation warranted (Nearly drove Andy nuts....). Unfortunately the game engine doesn't reflect the advantages of the different vehicles in these roles and Andy compromised by making the Lee/Grant an upgrade to the Matilda because its game statistics were better (though not really a reflection of reality).

By the way, the Aust Army evaluated the M4 Sherman and M26 Chaffee but deemed them unsuitable for intended usage and were in the process of upgrading the Matildas to Churchills when the war ended.

Please be rest assured that Andy Mac put a lot of effort into this area and this is not an anomaly. It was very difficult to shoehorn the historical situation into the limitations of the game engine and some compromises had to be made but overall I believe he has done a very good job in recreating the environment the actual commanders faced.

Reference: Dust, Sand & Jungle, A history of Australian Armour: 1927-1948, by Paul Handel.

< Message edited by Reg -- 1/11/2016 9:48:18 AM >

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Reg.

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Uh oh, Firefox has a spell checker!! What excuse can I use now!!!

(in reply to Onime No Kyo)

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RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/8/2016 4:44:27 AM

JeffroK

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Joined: 1/26/2005
Status: offline

I just wish we found a way of getting them to New Guinea instead of the Matilda II!

PS Dust, Sand & Jungle is a great book, grab if you can.

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RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/9/2016 6:38:16 AM

Alfred

Posts: 6685
Joined: 9/28/2006
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Reg

...Please be rest assured that Andy Mac put a lot of effort into this area and this is not an anomaly. It was very difficult to shoehorn the historical situation into the limitations of the game engine and some compromises had to be made but overall I believe he has done a very good job in recreating the environment the actual commanders faced.

Just want to reinforce Reg's comments regarding Andy Mac. He was one of the main devs and possibly the most under rated and unfairly judged of them by the many who post unreasonable critiques.

Andy Mac totally wrote and tested all the AI scripts. Many here denigrate the AI performance, usually after they confuse the AI with "gamey", unhistorical play. The AI scripts are quite good and every time someone restarts their AI game, they have been defeated by the AI even though they won't admit it. Writing the AI scripts involved not just a huge time investment by Andy Mac but a good understanding of plausible human moves within historical constraints. The difficulty of doing so is evidenced by the fact that no one else has developed AI scripts for the official scenarios. Symon, one of the key if not THE key dev, did some limited AI scripting for the DaBabes family of small scenarios and freely acknowledged how difficult the task is and often expressed his admiration for Andy Mac's work.

Andy Mac's work on OOBs is summed up well by Reg. What new players are probably unaware of is that the entire British Empire land OOB was handled by Andy Mac. Blackhorse shared the land OOB workload by handling the American side of things. He too had to make compromises.

Alfred

(in reply to Reg)

Post #: 6

RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/11/2016 8:38:36 AM

Reg

Posts: 2787
Joined: 5/26/2000
From: NSW, Australia
Status: offline

Thanks Alfred,

I had the good fortune to be able to do some research and provide some (small) assistance to Andy with the Australian OOBs. I think I still have the unit/equipment time lines I drew up on my hard drive somewhere. It really was enlightening to see the compromise process in work and see how well they all worked out in the end.

You are right in that there are those who believe if something doesn't immediately line up with their preconceptions, it must be wrong but the truth is that all aspects in the design of this game have been carefully considered. There may still be some small errors but if something looks strange it is probably the result of a compromise designed to aid game play on a clunky engine rather than a lapse of judgement by the designers. The closer you look at it the more you have admire their skill.

_____________________________

Cheers,
Reg.

(One day I will learn to spell - or check before posting....)
Uh oh, Firefox has a spell checker!! What excuse can I use now!!!

(in reply to Alfred)

Post #: 7

RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/26/2016 2:31:36 PM

Alpha77

Posts: 2116
Joined: 9/24/2010
Status: offline

I supose a lot of these tanks were send to the Pac theatre from Africa ? When the AK was defeated in Tunisia I mean. The British would upgrade to Sherman and Cromwell in Europe. Lee/Grant were obsolete vs. the Germans but would give good service vs. Japan with their lacking AT weapons. You can find a lot of pics of these "older" tanks making their ways through small jungle paths. As well the Mathilda but with the howitzer (the 2pdr was not of so much use anymore even against Japan and it had no HE shell)

(in reply to Reg)

Post #: 8

RE: The Great M3 Conundrum - 1/26/2016 4:41:33 PM

crsutton

Posts: 9590
Joined: 12/6/2002
From: Maryland
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: BillBrown

First off, you count is wrong, you get 348 General Lee tanks in convoys.

Then there are upgrades. The upgrade for the General Lee is the General Grant and you get 144 of those.
The next upgrade is the Sherman V and I did not check to see how many of those you get.

It should be noted that the stats for these improve very little and there is no great reason to
try and upgrade all units to the latest version. You will most likely be using General Lee tanks
at the end of the war.

As far as the M3 Grant/Lee tanks, you will most likely lose some, some when unloading across the beach and
some in combat, so you have lots of replacements. And again you estimate of how many you need to fill
out all units is a bit low. The 4th Cavalry Brigade upgrades about 1 June, 1942 and then requires 120
tanks to fill out. Five of the Armored Brigades do not withdraw and they need 40 medium tanks each
for 200 total. The other three Armored Brigades to not withdraw until 1944 ( 1 in Feb and 2 in Oct)
That is another 120 needed for much of the war. It looks like you need about 440 M3 Grant/Lee tanks.
I try and fill a number of slots with Matilda II tanks for the first year or two, depending on losses.

In the stock game there are two Australian units that upgrade to full armor brigades. One is slated to withdraw and I do not recommend wasting the tanks as they all go away and do not come back when it withdraws. You also get "six" armored regiments of which three will eventually withdraw. Considering that all of these units upgrade to the Matilda and then can upgrade to the Grant/Lee, the Australians never have to worry about tanks. Vs the Japanese any Allied medium tank is pretty much the same as a Tiger tank. I use the hell out of the Australian tank units for this reason. You should never run out of tanks. The OP is right in that you really get a lot of the Grant/Lees.

As for the other Commonwealth units tanks are in short supply until about mid 1943. Careful planning and upgrading is required but it will all work out if you watch what you are doing. There are no Canadian armor units to worry about. Most important is do "not" upgrade units that are due to be withdrawn. You will lose the tanks for good. If they have Vickers tanks and provisional vehicles, then leave them that way and use them up. As for the units that don't leave, be selective about how you upgrade. In 5/43 of my campaign, I have one Indian tank brigade with Valentine tanks, one with lees and the third with Grants. There are only three tank brigades in the Indian army that do not withdraw. These should be the only ones you should fool around with. Once they get their mediums, you will have three of the most powerful and useful units in the game. I do not upgrade any New Zealand tank or recon units unless I feel like I have a decent surplus of tanks. You don't need them to win the war anyways. You get some useful British tank regiments-one or two that can take medium tanks. If needed I won't hesitate to disband these to fill my pools for the larger tank brigades. The big tank brigades are much more durable than a regiment. You can buy back the regiment and fill it up later in the game.

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Post #: 9