RESEARCH NOBODY DOES! And THIS Is Why 

Fuel silos used to not take up building slots. They were like infrastructure, you could build fixed amount per state but they changed it and now I rarely build them.

So you want to tell, that a WW1-style, 3 turret supertank doesn't worth it? Impossible

Realistically the rockets for tanks shouldn't be the turret, as for example the shermans with rockets had an array on top, so it would make most sense for it to be a module that gives a reliability debuff and some breakthrough and soft attack

I love how much of the "nobody uses it" comes down to "the AI is so bad and ill-equiped to deal with players that they either have already won or already lost by the time you could even think of making these". Kind of like Civ's many renaissance+ techs (if you are slow playing)

Floating Harbours are amazing It means you don't need to take ports on day one. It's great for doing an amphibious landing on Japan or a well-defended UK. That 30-days is usually enough time to build a basic port in captured territory and ferry in reinforcements if for some reason you fail to capture a port on day 1 (this can also be a deliberate tactic as it gives you the ability to invade a place away from the ports where you are not expected super effective against Germany as Germany not only needs to Garrison the ports but defend the entire coastline of Europe which is so much harder). They are the difference between a failed invasion and losing a bunch of divisions and a tough invasion that eventually breaks through. If you come against a Japan or UK player who has a functional home Army then this is a must for any hope of a successful invasion While against Germany now they have to actively defend every coastal tile in Europe regardless of the presence of a port nearby.

In your scenario, of using the floating harbor, you still had supply problems because you had no supply route through the Danish Belts.

The purpose of the floating harbor is to buy time to build a level one harbor. It's very useful when you are in trouble with taking those existing harbors.

Floating harbors are actually useful and I highly recommend to split one or two dockyards to build some if you're planning for future naval invasions.

Object 1: Fuel silos can be handy depending on how easily you can get new oil. Allied nations usually generate enough of their own fuel, or have secured shipping to get more elsewhere. But if your country has issues getting more quickly (average non-cheese runs of Germany Italy or Japan for example) it COULD be worthwhile (but I understand why most don't)

Fuel silos used to be the meta for MP Japan. Build your stockpile of fuel to like 2-3M and when you go to war with the allies you have enough to use your fleet and airforce

Rocket silo constantly pump out rockets out of thin air, like you could build a factory instead of it to make a fighter every... Month or so, or get rocket a day... Something between V2 and V3 with like 1K+ kms range would be nice tho (AND LET US NUKE SHIT WITH IT PARADOX, THE NUKE ICON BEEN HERE FOR AGES)

I sometimes use naval mines when playing minor powers, the 10-13% naval supremecy they give is very helpful for getting naval invasions off against naval powers like britain/japan. They require very minimal investment, simply refit 10-20 submarines that you start with with mine laying tubes(takes like 30 days max for all of them combined). Assign them to an admiral who has the minelayer trait for extra 20% minelaying(concealment expert is also worth taking and it branches off the same trait) and have them mine key regions like the Sea of Japan, Mediterranean, Black sea, etc. On subs they are difficult to detect so they will rarely take losses, they can just do their thing all game for a small amount of fuel and can give that 10% or so supremacy that tends to be what you're lacking when you don't have a real navy, like China, Turkey, Austria Hungary etc.

i build floating harbors when i got extra dockyards and steel and use that floating harbor invasion instead of regular naval invasion to give some leeway at start of invasion

I find mine laying subs are very useful for maintaining naval superiority on your coast lines as Germany and other middling naval powers. The reduced speed (seems) to make naval strikes against ships way better and because subs are so cheap and get as much mine laying as a destroyer with one mine rack (20% more once you get torpedo mines) you can really spam them. Add to the fact that the subs need to be actively targeted, rather than the destoryer escorts able to wait for subs to attack convoys, and I find it a good way to use my subs as I wait to get a critical mass, or make it impossible for enemy navies to reinforce or retreat from a bad naval combat (against AI. A real player will just... avoid naval mine areas or deploy like 3 mine sweepers)

I love how pretty much every "wonder weapon" the Nazis actually proposed/developed during the war is instantly dismissed as either a meme choice, or as only viable when you have already won.

Of note is, that Russian Empire in game, can get -20% cost reduction on Super Heavies. that I think stacks with the merge plants decision for -3% armor cost reduction, for total of 23% cheaper SH tanks. Viable? Definitely Not. But it is a meme you can do if you rush through the required focuses and cheese the civil war to win as fast as possible and research cycle to get them in time for you to actually start to produce Something.

I always build 2 super heavy battleships when I play Japan, because they did irl. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I also build floating harbors sometimes when I know I’m about to do some big naval invades and have some extra dockyards with nothing better to use them on. The rest of the examples in your video I never build though.

The part that I like is that Rt56 does develop those techs further. It allows to develop ballistic missiles to true ICBMs, it develops superheavy tanks into one of the two ways you can get MBTs with final one being basically a mix of MBT-70 and Chieftain, it adds ability to mix superheavy battleship hull with nuclear powered capital ships propulsion and battleship missile silo projects like "missile Iowa" and so on. Basically it loops into semi-useful territory in the late game IF you can afford it. But such highly expensive equipment truly becomes worth it if you have national spirits that buff it. For example free range for strategic bombers for USA or CAS on steroids for Mexico.

The real problem with super-heavy battleships is that they can't really be upgraded much. 1944 battleship is whole lot cheaper and nearly on the same level.

Super heavy tanks: "if you can aford it, you kinda won the war alread" Germany: "Are you sure about that ?"

I know this is not be relevant to the vanilla meta, but if you use mods that add tech from the 50s and above like Ultimate Tech Tree, researching rockets is important because it often leads to better artillery and rocket artillery templates.

Rockets interceptor use almost no fuel at all, and can be abused on modern plane to get the wonderwaffe of Goering : 1000 kmh / 1000 km range / 90ish attack or 90 ish agility. I always use those when possible to keep my fuel to move my bizilion tanks.

I remember playing as italy and I had to invest heavily into fuel silos due to a lack of fuel to trade with. Then I had to invest in rockets because I was fighting late game US and bombers were expensive. germany always stole my airports so that didn't help me either. I always invest most of my military on fighter planes so silos always made sense to me.

I found super heavies on defensive units to be a viable strat. Also makes it easy cause you don't need to produce an ungodly amount of them, and your divisions can never be pushed. Kinda role playee but making an immovable iron curtain along the Russian border works quite nice.

I agree with almost everything voiced here, except mining. The mined sea not only gives a number of debuffs, but, it seems, quietly drowns the fleet. I have noticed many times that my armada of destroyers evaporates somewhere when operating in mined waters.

Fuel silos help for me, especially on JP. Just spam buy oil with like 16 civ for 2-5 days until full, then stop import.

If you take a tech you can make submarines minelay without needing a dedicated module. Secondly making dedicated minelaying subs isn't all that bad, they're a little less effective at convoy raiding but they're pretty cheap to refit anyhow if you so wish. You can even make cheap minimum cost sub 1 bathtubs. Using it on surface vessels unless they had the module from the start is a waste of a slot. Although from my understanding minelaying slows down the game by causing lag. The Rocket module on tanks confuses me though. Is it supposed to represent the Sturmtiger? Or something like the Sherman Calliope? Because most "rocket tanks" didn't have rockets as their main armament, the more crude ones essentially just being launch rails mounted on the side of the turret, they were more an additional weapon suitable for one of the module slots rather than a main gun, although probably at a cost of a hefty relibility penalty. Although maybe they would be better suited as something similar to flame tanks

2:08 I would never build new minelayers, but many starting navies have a bunch. As UK, if I take Poland's navy, I'll make a minelaying fleet with exile ships and lay mines in Shallow Seas where they are most effective. This allows me to reallocate ships to other theatres in the long run.

1:30 It's actually worse than that because regular Infrastructure increases your fuel capacity and building up Infrastructure increases your factory construction speed in that state so while you're making a more long term investment in your factory construction speed, you're also increasing your fuel capacity and for much less construction cost.

Naval mine is sort of okay, if you can spare some attention to do it properly, it randomly sunk ships but it’s not noticeable like naval battle results.

Something you may want to review. Signal Companies are usually regarded as ineffective at it's best. Most of the time I see people describing SC I see them just add an SC to a division and demonstrate how it does nothing. I may be wrong, but I think they are meant to be used in conjunction with radars. If you are withing the range of a radar, SC's start making wonders. I've seen regular 7-2s winning against a force that is 2-3 times bigger in multiple games.

About late games, to some countries it will be a new start after WW2, still some alternative history to explore, for example, as Soviet Union, you can experience the Cold War that breaks into WW3; as China, you just defeated Japan and unified the country, on the way to be a new super power; As Japan, you just controlled the whole Asia now you have the power to challenge the Europeans and Americans on their homeland. Late game can still be fun

ngl, all of them are either niche functions, wonder weapon fever dreams, or what only winning side would do with impunity just to add salt to the injury. Those things being bad looks like an intended feature.

I've done some rocket interceptor games when I had 0 fuel because they didn't use fuel. I'm not sure if that has changed. I did it because it was a challenge to see if it would work. :)

I always build at least 4 fuel silos as Germany, cause yes, you do use up a building slot that could be a civ or mil but you're saving fuel that'll help prevent the need to trade for fuel in the future, which will save you multiple civs for other constructions. I usually play road to 56 too so building slots aren't usually an issue

Only time i ever use mines is Italy - you start with like 12 minelayers and having an edge in the medi to naval invade alexandria is worth it. Pushing it on land is painful.

There still a lot of work to do in other parts of the game, but I think a lot of these techs would benefit from Paradox making an update/DLC that adds more post-WW2 content where researching these techs will actually be relevant to the game

I honestly do make Minelaying ships, they're great for making kill-zones and for assisting in coastal protection, just a super cheap Destroyer usually wont hinder you enough for it not to be worth it it also makes Super BB's semi-ish-kinda worthwhile since minefields slow the enemy enough to catch anything. I also use the Floating Harbor a lot, It's fuckin' useful if you're playing a nation or a style that envolves lots of Naval landings, being able to land on gibraltar and have supply for 30 days is totally worth it and lowers the bar for taking it.

When playing Germany I usually make extremely cheap destroyers with mine layers to just mine the shit out of my coasts after taking France to make naval invasions practically impossible

If you play as the USA and you have enough screen ships (100+) and carriers then I found the super heavy battle ships very effective. Also shore bombardment. They are extremely expensive tho. I will add I didn't defeat the rest of the world until 1961. The war lasted very long for me in my last play through.

Turns out I'm nobody.

You don't mine-lay to damage fleets, you mine-lay because the speed reduction to enemy allows you to grind down their fleets a lot more effectively.

One cool thing with super-heavy tanks is that you can build Heavy Tank Destroyers with the super heavy cannon which will pierce everything in the game

You forgot the guided anti-ship missile in the final rocketry research

Rocket engines need some gimmick or buff. Maybe a buff when only on interception. Maybe a buff to agility when only on intercept...? Basically have your rocket interceptors be fast/agile enough to intercept the bombers but not be intercepted or engaged (or have decreased chance to) by any escort fighters - if anything like that is currently possible.

Some time relatively soon after release (like my second or third save on the game after release) I did a Communist States of America run where I rushed rocket tech as soon as possible. The beauty of rocket technology is that it gives motorized rocket artillery an incredible boost in its stats on every tier. My divisions were just 3 lines of motorized rocket artillery with a line of mechanized infantry and a full set of support units, and they demolished everything they went up against

Never stop making this videos, Dave. Because, my personal impression is that if you point out the game's flaws long enough, PDX will actually listen and do something about it. I mean, that's probably also why they are now doing monthly patches instead of waiting it out until the next DLC.

floating harbors worked for me recently. I used them to land a bunch of medium tank divisions on Cuba as the USA, where without them I lost a bunch due to immediately running out of supply and failing to take the port

tried playing with V1-3 rockets, even max ones do so little logistical damage it's insanely bad compared to how many building slots and research you're doing. Which is a shame, I'd enjoy a feature to basically bomb someone into submission, cripple them to the point they have to surrender

rocket munitions for tanks should be an extra weapon module like machine guns that still gives you a base gun as well.

Minelaying would be so much better if you could either do it out of war/certain warsupport/world tension

I like doing floating harbors in areas that are rough to invade, and then pushing out. I find that it gives me enough time to build a port in the area I took and bring supply in traditionally, though admittedly it's mostly good against AI that aren't doing full coastline defense and MP games where 1 port per province rules aren't in play. It can be a sneaky way to blindside someone and take resources away from another front.

The floating harbour is really strong if you know an enemy has stacked divisions on a port tile, you can use marines to invade that tile, whilst using non marines with floating harbours on the adjacent tiles (which are lightly defended or empty), you can then encircle the port tile with supply. You can also stagger the floating harbour naval invasions to ensure you always have supply. Granted a bit gimmicky but definitely has potential! I really like the idea of the hot/cold acclimatization, but agree at it's current stats it's not even something you think about. It would be really cool if they made it more impactful and added tech related to it (such as winter uniforms, or desert uniforms). I know they did buff the weather effects of tiles back in No Step Back, but I still feel it's not enough, winter during Barbarossa should really have the effect of grinding any advance to a halt (having the weather impact things like diesel engines freezing as well would be cool). I think Road to 56 did have some tech such as the clothes which was cool, it also had Jungle divisions but I must confess I haven't played it in a while.

I love the aerial minelaying, esspecially if you have some obsolete aircraft doing nothing, just convert them into minelayers and use them for that

typically in bigger nations i like to actually have a couple fuel silos never know when ya gonna spike usage suddenly and change from good to pissing out dry fast

Mine laying has a niche role for nations that have a very small coastline, bordering only one seazone, and want to give an edge to their proportionately small fleet defending that zone. Retrofitting crappy old ships that would only get sunk in an engagement to be mine layers has its boons. Similarly, putting like 3 mine sweepers on a crappy old destroyer and having 8 -10 of those can clear out a sea zone very quickly - useful for axis to invade the American continent, as the AI loves to plant mines around there. As for the rocket engines, they used to have one major advantage: they consumed no fuel at all. Since BBA, they do consume some, but still very little. BBA also made them extremely useless in an actual fight, because you can't stack armor on rocket interceptors, due to the armor's additional range penalty -it can actually reduce range to 0.

I already said that in one of your videos but these explanatory videos are so helpfull, especially because im not a Hoi4 main (i mostly play EU4 and once every month or two Hoi4). so watching your videos always helps me to get better at least a little bit and another thing, you have a really relaxing voice. Strange that the V2 rockets can shoot down, this makes absolutley no sense, the allies couldnt shoot down the V2 irl. Nice video as always, greetings from germany :)

Fuel silos are such a weird investment when synthetics exist.

Super Battleships are honestly fantastic for naval invasion and coastal bombardment. They hit super hard and can have less troops in battle on the coast

Minelaying is amazing, helps with naval supremacy, gets you more favorable engagements due to speed limitations and can send enemy ships straight to the repai dock while they patrol

1:33 Most of the time, AI mexico's opener is: Construct Fuel Silo, Import 8 oil

I got that annoying achievment about sinking the British flagship with a mine- don't diss them xD

To be honest, I find mine layers quite potent. I recall using them as Greece against Turkey and they excelled at that.

it seems like 1100km range was implied for rocket 3, but somebody made a typo.

5:50 This was because, historically, planes would intercept and shoot down rockets!

I have built super heavies before, albiet in more fantasy-esque games that drag on until 44/45 and involve me fighting the entire world. They're pretty good at dislodging large stacks of infantry in plains provinces that can build up insane defense bonuses.

Honestly the bigger problem with module equipment is that its largely hidden in the tech interface. The research buttons need to be expanded to show what you get for each research button instead of searching through them to find what you are looking for. The research could be greatly improved by making the details more front and center.

with fuel silo, i honestly might just built 1 or 2 of them and its more than enough for almost everything i needed. i sometimes build them, but only like 3 of them max, its more than enough for most purposes

thanks for teaching me the mine laying gives naval supremacy percantage bonus thing

When I'm playing for the first time, I remember build super heavy tank division only and send them to the Himalayan mountain for lols and giggles.

If hoi4 was more playable past 8 years ig then I could definitely see the floating harbors being used more.

In single player when I play as an allied nation I will build mine laying subs and mine sweeping destroyers just because I’m bored, and there really isn’t much of a threat at sea

Super heavy battleships can be incredibly good if you invest research into anti air, get the anti air light cannons and have a good screening portion of the navy and they won't get damaged easily

I agree with everything but floating harbors. Though, I do like to refit tier 1 and 2 subs as minelayers when playing the US. They get found so quickly as raiders that its a better use imho.

the funny thing is the US Marines Actually did the thing with the super heavy tanks. in 1957 the M103 Heavy tank entered service with the US Army and Marine Corps. the Army quickly replaced it with the M60 Tank as the benifits of incresed fuel range and relibility outweighed the firepower of it's 120mm gun. the US marines on the other hand wanted a heavy tank to land with the troops to provide fire support, bunker busting and defense from enemy armored counter attacks. Eventually though it was replaced in Marine Service by M60s as well as by 1974 there were plenty of M60s to spare and the M103s relibility issues and age were causing more problems then they were worth

The recent patch that made it possible to have super heavies as a support company has made them worth the cost.

super heavy battleships as naval invasion vessals are where they shine for me, but pretty much outside of stupid grind downs, cant build them fast enough to matter , but if they wind up needed, they great

Glad to see we can still intercept ICBMs like in Hoi2

9:12 This is the thing, 90% of every game comes down to either trying to overcomme mountains or short-supply..

The floating harbours are good for marine minors like aus/nzl and rom

Looking good with that natural burst of gray coming through.

Gas Turbine engine is today used on exactly of 2 serving tanks. M1 Abrams - and the AbramsX demonstrator replaces it with diesel-electric for fuel efficiency T-80 - If it hadn't been for arctic divisions, Russia would have stepped away from gas turbine-powered T-80 to T-80UD style tank with diesel. However GT engine is solid for extreme cold enviroment. Third tank that is no longer in service and the first tank to use GT engine was Strv103. One thing that I would find interesting is alternative fuel possibility. T-80 can in crisis "run on anything that burns" - out of diesel? Slap barrel of "samohonka" into it and it will go.

One very niche edge case for minefields? Is that it slows down the enemy trying to flee, allowing them to be chased and destroyed. So. If the enemy fleet keeps fleeing and you can't pin them down. Then bait them into attacking a small force, then send massive reinforcements, and you can kill a bunch of ships while they're trying to flee. But that basically only works if you already have naval supremacy and outnumber/overpower the enemy fleet anyway. So yeah. Most of the time it's not worth it.

Rocket tech applies to the Rocket artillery so if you want rocket arties those bonuses are really helpful

Rockets 3 does nukes, but to drop nukes you still need air superiority, so if there’s one fighter there you can’t drop and it’s also bugged so you can’t do it anyway🤣

The only times I’ve ever used rockets is in my first couple of games. I wasn’t good enough to cap the allies as Germany before the US joined and so rocket 3s just bombarded the east coast lol.

Also we need to keep in mind for fuel silos and rocket sites m, while the costs are similar to the one of a mil, in your usual game you'll often end up getting a significant construction boost for mills making them an even better option

Coming back to this after a few months, played a game with Japan recently and even late game superheavy battleships are working out nicely. Look at it this way: your superheavy takes about 10% damage and takes like 6 months in dockyard (just throwing out numbers, focus on the principle). It faces either two solid, nonsuperheavy battleships on the enemy side or 3 crap ones. Of the three crap ones, chances are at least one gets sunk, and the other two will be competing for repair as they are both repairing for about the same amount of time (each) for being almost sunk. Meanwhile your ship takes no damage at all and doesn't end up in dockyard. vs two solid battleships you might take like 15% damage or so, maybe a little more if unlucky or they have carriers or something. However their battleships might take like 60%-80% damage, if they don't get sunk. They will spend about the same amount of time in dockyard as you recovering from more damage than you took. Of course, this is with the new companies system, so with naval refit and Kure set to really up the armor, you just go from battle to battle not taking damage in the first place.

As Germany, I convert my old subs into minelayers and convert a few older DD’s into minesweepers.

Aerial minesweeping is so much easier than designing a whole ass ship. Tbf it was even easier before you had to put modules on planes.

I swear I have made a fleet of subs as Australia here recently outfitted just for mine laying. I had 4 groups of 15 subs each. I managed to cripple japans navy with submarine mine layers and it took out a large portion, somewhere between 1/4 to a 1/3 of japans ships over 2 or 3 in game years. it is because of said game that I now only use submarines in a mine laying role. while im talking bout ships, legit question. Is it really worth it to build anything heavier than a heavy cruiser? It kinda seems that as long as you have naval bombers to support your fleet and enough cheap destroyers to screen them then having massed heavy cruisers with 3-5 heavy batteries on them is just as effective as using battleships. mix in a couple handfuls of light cruisers with a similar amount of light batteries to the heavy cruiser if your really worried about countering enemy screens.

Five shipyards is no big deal if you're pumping out subs and destroyers as your main fleet, especially as a major power. When I unlock them I run one line of them just to make invasions a little less of a hassle. I'm terrible at planning naval invasions, so any edge I can get is welcome. Here's how bad I am. Down the War Powers tree for the United States, you get a war goal on Cuba. Aside from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is only one province thick, so there are no encirclements to be had, only pushing to Havana. I lost an entire fully-equipped Space Marine army to a single cavalry brigade because it counterattacked at just the right time and overran them because they were too slow to retreat. I learned my lesson. Now I'll only invade with disposable expeditionary troops from the Philippines.

Me who used to built Silos, Rocket Sites, Fleets just for Minelaying and created 1 Superheavy Battleships for each fleet.. but I do havent played since some years

floating harbor is very useful to invade El Alamain. I am surprised you didn't mention rockets for CAS planes as you did put it on with rocket engine but did not mention

Fuel supply should be moved to the same building type as supply hubs. Then the price can remain. Otherwise nobody is going to use it.

I used floating harbors in my last play through as USA and I used them on every naval invasion I did and really didn't notice a difference.

Floating harbors are great for invading Australia since they have hardly any naval bases on the northern coast. Just pick a spot where your marines can defend one tile away and it gives you 15 days of 30 required for a level 1 naval base. You can also plan a second naval invasion with a floating harbor and fire it off to land and finish out the last 15 days needed.

The super heavy battleship is an amazing damage sponge and fly swatter. Max out the AA on it, chance of naval targeting is proportional to total HP so the super heavy is > 2x more likely than the other capitals to be targeted by plane attacks. I always like to build at least 1 for the main fleet

Fuel silos you wanna use if you want your offesnsive to go longer, after extensive use of air and navy you gonna need refuel so fuel silos can make combat go longer before refuel-ing

with minelaying i was fighting japan as UK or about too, and i had a while until the justify justifies and since i had minelayers equiped and lot of spare fuel i did minelay the japanese coast and surrounding areas to 100%, when i eventually went to war alot of there ships were damaged and later destroyed by the fleet. its not practical but can be handy if you have spare time