What to do with the Separate Tank Battalions?

[wieschi]

Hello everyone,
I have no idea what to do with the dozens of separate tank battalions I have in reserve... (I'm asking for the Soviet side)
In my experience they are useless as support units because they suffer horrendous casualties with every attack.
I read on the forum that they act as a replacement for armored units. Can someone explain to me how this works. I can't find anything about this in the manual.
In my current multiplayer game it's January 1942 and all armored divisions have become armored brigades. A few mechanized divisions are still on the map.
Thanks!

[rickwarintheeast]

I'm a complete newbie, so I can only offer what I've seen as the Soviet player (primarily Stalingrad to Berlin so far).

My approach to Support Units - plug-and-play with SU...they don't have a home, but rotate in and out to ground units at need and opportunity

My application when using SUs...(a) use Commander's Report to identify SUs with less than 50% TOE and reassign to STAVKA... (b) Put in REFIT and let them fill back up... (c) When TOE exceeds 90%, assign them to ground units returning to the line or to already deployed units which have slots for more SUs

Separate Tank Battalions...I usually assign battalions to rifle divisions, and reserve the regiments and brigades to Corps... Typical sequence would look like this (a) Assign separate tank battalion with TOE above 90% to a Rifle Division... (b) Monitor TOEs of all SUs with commander's report... (c) If separate tank battalion's TOE drops below 50%, reassign it to STAVKA in refit... or (d) the owning ground formation's TOE drops below 50% and is pulled off the line for refit, then the separate tank battalion goes back to STAVKA in refit

Hoped for result...a set of higher TOE SUs available for attachment to ground formations, with reduced SUs back in STAVKA for refit... a steady reserve of less than perfect SUs needed for a big-push or an emergency.

But that is only my approach.

Regards, Rick

[DeletedUser1769703214]

This is just me, I hit the button that spells out "disband" on Tank battalions ;-P. Now the regiments are a different story

Disband.png (311.07 KiB) Viewed 1050 times

[Stamb]

My Soviet experience playing with open TBs:
any SU smaller than a brigade (except of AA and maybe heavy tank regiments, or it were battalions? those with is-2 tanks) is not worth using as SU
send them to a TBs, since units with tanks provide better CV/man ratio than pure infantry, and get infantry out of TBs