Combined arms

[blazingPanzer]

I've been playing the 1943 campaign start as the germans and have noticed 2 turns in that almost all of the motorized inf/panzergrenadiers in some of my mechanized formations have been destroyed, with a sizeable proportion of their tanks remaining functional. Is there any disadvantage to having so few infantry in a division proportional to other unit types (does combat engine account for combined arms effect)?

[sillyflower]

I believe the base combat values of a unit are the sum of the values of its elements. I expect, therefore that those units will have relatively higher attack than defense values than if losses were equally spread. You would see it clearly if you use the ALT CV variant, but you can probably get that with GC'41

[blazingPanzer]

I tried deleting all the infantry from a unit in the editor (with ALT CV) and comparing the ratio of offensive CV:defensive CV before and after this; the resulting ratios were basically the same. Is there a specific characteristic of inf squads that makes them better at defense than armoured ones?

[morvael]

Infantry is harder to replace as there are manpower shortages. Also damaged tanks are easier to repair than damaged infantry squads (a damaged infantry squad is simply a squad where a few men were killed so no "fixing" them), thus after prolonged combat you'll retain more tanks from the starting number than infantry. There may be some emergent combined arms effects in the engine, but nothing specifically giving bonus from having both types of elements (soft and hard) in a unit.

I think CV didn't properly refresh (this happens in the editor) in your test. Infantry is responsible for a lot of unit's CV (think 3 infantry squads = 1 medium tank).

Also, tanks have their CV halved when fighting in dense terrain and infantry have their CV doubled. For such hexes you need infantry units, not tank units.