Example Military Units

Here at PWP, we realise that not everyone is a rivet-counting military hardware enthusiast who spends their free time discussing the merits of vertical volute spring suspension versus horizontal volute spring suspension, and who starts frothing at the mouth when somebody mentions direct impingement (for the record, torsion-bar suspension and short-stroke piston are where it's at, respectively, just so you know), nor do we expect everyone to be an armchair general who can deliver in-depth criticism of Operation Barbarossa at the drop of a hat (it should have started a few months earlier and shouldn't've moved so fast it outran its own supply lines, fyi), so we fully understand that not everyone will be taking to the Unit Creator and Army Manager like a fish to water. Therefore we present this article with some more information about the Unit Creator, and military technology in general.
This isn't an utterly exhaustive list of every single weapon or vehicle you could feasibly be fielding, but it is going to go into a bit more detail about military hardware and tactics than the main Building a Military Tutorial, so be aware. You don't have to know all the capabilities of your hardware in detail (though the more detail you feel like providing, the better), but the information is there.
=A Note about Technology=
PWP uses 1942 as a technology cutoff date. That means that, unless it was around in operational or at least functional prototype form in 1942 at the latest, you cannot have it. This excludes some things you might be wanting to deploy in your military, such as main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, supersonic aircraft of any kind, automatic grenade launchers, ballistic missiles, and guided missiles. Some of the things you can field, however, as they are actually from this timeframe, include armoured personnel carriers, jet fighters (though only top-of-the-line aircraft will be jets), .50 cal machine guns, man-portable infantry mortars, and rocket artillery. If you're unsure if something is in or out of the timeframe, ask the mods.
=Generic Units=
Now let's get to the meat of this article. This section will contain some generic example units. Feel free to copy them if you wish, though do note that these are merely examples and may not be the best solution for your country. Use them as a guideline, and build a military that makes sense for your nation (and one that you can afford, of course). If you need help or advice, feel free to ask in the Discord.
==Land Army==
 This is probably the simplest solution, though it'll probably bite you in the ass in the long run. Simply take the pre-made default units, apply some realistic manpower numbers to them, and start putting them together in your army manager. However, this means you will be very inflexible. Your units have a hard cap on how effective they can be, because of the selected stats, and their one-size-fits-all nature means that you won't be able to specialise your military in any meaningful way. You'll always have the same light infantry, the same heavy infantry, the same transport vehicles, and the same medium tanks, no matter the situation. You'll have an army, but if you end up in a major war with someone who put more effort into their military, or at least cranked up their stats some more, you're going to be struggling.
 The image on the right is an example of a more varied setup for your basic infantry forces. The reserve units are dirt-cheap, obviously, but they're not going to be worth much in actual combat, other than simply being cannon fodder. Nonetheless, keeping a few thousand armed troops around for petty cash could be useful, especially if you use military police or have activated martial law, or for natural disaster recovery. It'll give you some cheap, disposable units you can use whenever you just need some men in uniform to throw at a problem. Just don't expect them to do anything but crumble and die on the battlefield. The conscripts are a bit better, but their main use is still little more than cheap, disposable cannon fodder. The elite units are what you'll want to use when Shit Gets Real, they may be expensive but they fight well and they're not going to just lay down and die as easily as their cheaper counterparts. The spec-ops guys may be expensive, but when you need some right 'ard and killy motherfuckers to go in real sneaky-beaky like to bust some heads, accept no substitutes. (Also note that, unless you're swimming in money, you'll want to think twice before selecting the top option for your units, as this will cause the unit's cost to go up sharply; the highest level of Resupply, Reserves, will outright double the cost compared to the second-highest choice. Remember that.)
 These are some examples of what you can do with Heavy Troops. This unit type is fairly broad, representing everything from infantry with their own dedicated artillery support, to standalone artillery units, and specialised heavy weaponry. Basically, if it's not self-propelled, and you can't carry it on your back, it's a Heavy Troop. The standard Heavy Infantry here is simply an infantry unit with attached heavy firepower, such as heavy machine guns, infantry guns, light anti-tank guns, or even early recoilless rifles or anti-tank rocket launchers like the M1 Bazooka, while the most that Light Troops have for supporting firepower are light, man-portable machine guns and light mortars. The Assault Infantry have much the same equipment, but better training, as they will be leading the charge straight towards the enemy. The final three are dedicated support units. The standalone Heavy Artillery can be used to give heavy support to cheaper, more numerous light infantry without breaking the bank, and the anti-tank and anti-air units help defend your forces against tanks and aircraft respectively.
 On the right are some light vehicle examples. The transport truck unit is nothing more than a logistics support unit, a cheap way to ferry troops around. This unit in particular has just enough transport capacity for one standard infantry unit, two elite infantry, or up to five of the previous image's artillery units. However, since it only consists of unarmed, unarmoured trucks being driven by two guys with maybe one rifle between them each, you want to try to keep them out of combat if at all possible. These things are for carrying your troops to and from the battlefield, not for actual fighting. The second one, however, is; lightly-armoured halftracks with a mounted light machine gun that can not only carry troops into battle while protecting them from small-arms fire and shrapnel, but which can also provide covering fire when they're demounted. Just hope it doesn't run into any tanks, anti-tank guns, or heavy artillery. The Mobile AA is simply a truck or halftrack with a light anti-air gun mounted in the bed, like the US M16 MGMC with four .50 cals or this thing from the First World War. They're not particularly elegant, nor are they well-protected, but they'll help keep the planes away, and they're able to move under their own power too!
 Here's one of the more interesting and flexible parts of the land troop options. These are your actual tanks. Well, most of them; tankettes are arguably not full-fledged tanks. They sort of straddle the border between light and heavy vehicles, but since they are not used for transportation, they still fall in the heavy vehicles category. These are small, lightweight vehicles, with very thin armour, carrying only light weaponry, usually one or more light machine guns, an autocannon, or a small-calibre cannon, about 40mm at the largest. Their main virtue is their low cost, allowing you to get at least a somewhat-armoured almost-tank on the battlefield for a reasonable price. This example represents the most common kinds of tankettes, older designs with low cost and very light weaponry. Some later examples, which would have higher equipment quality, performed a bit better, either through having stronger weaponry (sometimes even in an actual turret!) or through having stronger engines, making them much faster. Light tanks are where you get into the first "proper" tanks, with armour that can hold up to more than a stiff breeze, and a main gun mounted in a rotating turret, up to about 50mm in calibre, possibly even up to around 76mm for top-of-the-line models. Light tanks tend to be small and fast, making them good at scouting duties, and their armour can protect them against small-arms, which makes them very dangerous to infantry and the like. They're much less useful when fighting other tanks, however. That's what your medium tanks are for. These things are the sort of universal middle-of-the-road type of tank design, striking a balance between speed, armour, and firepower, with neither too much nor too little of any of these. Their main guns tend to be between 50mm and 76mm calibre. They can do anything, fight anyone, and be pretty good at it, but they don't excel at anything either. If you're going to be involved in a lot of large-scale warfare with other industrial powers, you'll probably want to invest in a lot of medium tanks. Finally, heavy tanks are, well, heavy. They're big, slow, well-armoured, and usually carry powerful weaponry, up to around 90mm during this timeframe, with 100mm+ guns being in the near future. There's nothing that can really go toe-to-toe with a heavy tank short of another heavy tank, though they're so expensive that they can just get swarmed by medium tanks - which is exactly what the Sherman and T-34 were for during WWII. They're not going to do well in particularly rough terrain, so think twice before sending them into the mountains, but if you can afford them, they provide an excellent punch.
 On the right are some of the specialised types of heavy vehicles you could deploy. Tank destroyers are, well, their name gives it away, they're specialised in killing other tanks. What this means exactly can vary, from damaged tank chassis being converted to low-profile self-propelled assault guns, to purpose-built, high-speed models with rotating turrets, to big, slow, heavily-armoured ones with large guns in fixed forward mounts, the big thing that identifies a TD as such is that it is deployed primarily to engage and destroy enemy tanks. That is not to say that they can't attack other targets, or that they're necessarily bad at it, but on the battlefield, they will fight enemy tanks first. They tend to have medium- to large-calibre guns, from about 57mm up to 90mm, and Armoured artillery are tracked armoured chassis, usually modified variants of outdated light or medium tanks, mounting an artillery gun in a fixed position instead of a rotating turret with a regular gun. They provide artillery support in a protected, self-propelled package, and are particularly useful if you use a lot of mechanised infantry or tanks, as they can keep pace with the assault much easier. Finally, armoured AA is exactly what it sounds like, tank chassis with anti-air guns mounted on them. They're just like the mobile AA you can get with light vehicles, just better-protected (and significantly more expensive).
 There are definitely more types of units you could make. The examples above are just a quick overview of what you could do, with a focus on fairly general-purpose units and staying reasonably close to realistic military practices. What your nation's army is like, however, is entirely up to you, and you can make whatever kind of units you like (within the set technological limits, of course). For instance, here's a random assortment of units that you could perhaps take inspiration from. Penal Battalions are comprised of soldiers and criminals who are to work off their sentence on the front line - if they survive. The Royal Guard is the elite of the army. Mountain troops are specialised in fighting in mountainous terrain. Mortar infantry can give supporting fire to other units. Scavengers use salvaged or captured weapons of higher quality than what they can make themselves, and are motivated to fight by their leaders, but they have little or no knowledge of tactics. Combat engineers can build temporary bridges and fortifications, and use demolition explosives and flamethrowers to make the enemy's life hell. Towed rocket artillery can rain a lot of explosives on enemy positions all at once. Amphibious APCs can ferry your troops across rivers and lakes. Motorcycle scouts are fast and nimble, and can keep track of enemy movements before beating a hasty retreat. Veteran Medium Tanks use the same tanks your regulars use, but these are manned by crews with combat experience. Finally, the mighty Land Cruiser is a behemoth on the battlefield, a giant mountain of steel and guns, able to bring death to all that oppose it - but its mere presence makes it a giant target.
==Air Force==
Now we move on to the air force section. If the land army section seemed like it had a lot of different types of units, the air force can easily be much more complicated, since you can have things like interceptors, air superiority fighters, high-altitude fighters, night fighters, rocket interceptors, heavy fighters, bombers of all different descriptors, transport planes with different roles and specialties, and airships can be entirely unique designs from one to the next. However, in the interest of keeping this article brief (for a certain definition of "brief", which most likely differs from your own), there will only be a few types per section, as trying to be as exhaustive as the army was would make the air force section longer than the entire rest of the article.
 These are some example light planes. The scout planes are cheap, unarmed (though the pilots may be carrying pistols) utility planes, whose only role is to, well, scout, ascertaining the number and disposition of enemy troops (finding out how many guys they have and where they're at). They can't actually fight, and if enemy fighters come after them they're beyond fucked, but they can help your army keep tabs on the enemy. The light fighters would be simple monoplanes, with a single pilot and a bunch of wing-mounted machine guns. They're reasonably cheap (y'know, relatively speaking), and they'll shoot up other planes pretty good, but they're not particularly great against large or well-developed air forces. The prototype jet is a small unit of experimental high-speed jet fighters, piloted by veteran aviators, and with access to a large dedicated maintenance crew, as they need to be closely monitored and frequently overhauled because of the stresses on the airframe. They're very powerful and are particularly effective against bombers, but their small unit size means they won't be doing so well against larger swarms of fighters, and any losses they do take are going to hurt a lot. The fighter-bomber, finally, looks a bit like a large fighter, and it can in fact dogfight with other planes, but its primary role is to make bombing attacks and strafing runs on enemy troops. It also has a tail gunner, hence requiring 2 manpower; he's only got a single light machine gun, and he can only shoot backwards and upwards, but it'll help deal with any enemy planes that try to tail-chase the fighter-bomber and shoot it down.
 On the right are some heavy aircraft examples. Heavy fighters are twin-engined planes, larger than normal fighters, usually carrying a heavier weapons load than their smaller counterparts. They are especially powerful against bombers, since those are even larger and tend to fly in straight lines, but their size means they're not as agile as smaller fighters, so while they can basically cut them in half if they catch one in front of their guns, they're going to have a hard time getting the opportunity to do that. Their size and lifting capacity also usually allows heavy fighters to carry a pretty decent bomb load, allowing them to double as light bombers, though the added weight means they're going to have an even harder time dogfighting than they already do. Because of this, the ones displayed here also have a tail gunner. Tactical bombers are usually twin-engined medium bombers, who target both enemy front-line troops and their logistical support. They usually have a small number of machine gunners at various points in the fuselage, shooting at attacking fighters. Because they tend to fly higher and stay level, as opposed to making low-altitude attacks or dive bombing runs, they're a bit less accurate against small targets than fighter-bombers, but they carry more bombs and heavier ones which means they can simply make up for accuracy with enthusiasm. They can also go further over enemy territory and attack their industrial infrastructure and cities directly, which is also what the strategic bomber specialises in, and does even better. These are large four-engined heavy bombers that are usually bristling with machine guns and turrets, and which carry very large bomb loads long distances, which lets them level entire factories and carpet-bomb cities. Here, they appear in large numbers, letting them form up into a box for safety, their many machine guns deterring enemy fighters from coming close even if they don't have any escorts. They can also be used against enemy troops, like the tactical bombers can, but because they're even larger and slower, they'll have a hard time trying to line up on moving front lines, so they're more useful for simple "fuck this area in particular" carpet bombing attacks. The flying boats in this image are naval patrol aircraft, used for scouting, search-and-rescue, anti-submarine warfare, and for attacking isolated enemy ships. They usually have one or a few machine guns on board as well, though they can't cover the bottom angle of the aircraft effectively, for obvious reasons. They can usually carry small bomb loads or even air-dropped torpedoes, which can really ruin an enemy's day.
 Light and heavy aircraft have a lot of variety, but with transport planes and airships, a lot of the difference is likely going to be in the fluff details. Still, here's a few things you could do with them. Civilian airliners are simply civilian planes that have been pressed into military service (or simply bought from the manufacturer, who knows). They're cheap, and they get the job done, but they're not exactly that great. Military transports are purpose-built planes, though they may still be based on modified civilian designs, that have been made sturdier and more efficient, and which might even have some self-defence armament. Patrol airships are fairly small craft whose main purpose is to run aerial patrols. They usually have a few machine gun mounts, and in a pinch they could be made to carry a small bomb load, but they are not designed for heavy combat. The zeppelin bombers, on the other hand, have internal bomb bays allowing them to perform long-distance bombing runs, and they can carry enough machine guns to make fighters think twice before engaging them. However, they are still airships, with a thin outer skin, vulnerable to anything that can get thrown at them. As cool as they are, the heyday of the military zeppelin lies far, far in the past, during the First World War, and technology has sadly caught up to them. (Don't let that stop you from using them, though. Zeppelins are crazy cool.)
 And so we come to the end of the aircraft section. As with the land army, feel free to customise your air force however much you'd like and deploy whatever you want. And again, here are some additional unit designs you could consider, or draw inspiration from. Torpedo bombers, like fighter-bombers, are single-engine aircraft, but these carry a single torpedo beneath the fuselage, to attack enemy ships. Biplanes are old, outdated designs, but that doesn't stop them from being a very cheap and easy way to get a lot of fighters into the air quickly. Rocket interceptors are a step below jets, with short range due to their limited fuel, but their powerful rocket engines can let them reach significant speed. Strafing gunships are modified twin-engine medium bombers, mounting a cluster of machine guns or autocannons in the nose to strafe ground targets. Armoured transports are slower than normal ones, but can stand up to heavier enemy fire, and have several machine gun mounts for self-defence. Barrage balloons are cheap balloons tethered to the ground, with a small gondola underneath them, for local air defence, deployed in large numbers to protect an area from low-level attacks. Carrier zeppelins have their own small air wing of fighters that they can launch and recover in the air. Air cruisers, finally, represent heavily overbuilt armoured airships that can stand up to light fighter fire, studded with defensive turret mounts to shoot down enemy planes.
==Navy==
There can be a great variety of ships in the navy. You don't have to design every supply ship and collier your navy uses, as that is what naval logistics DP is for, but you can still have ships like coastal monitors, minesweepers, river gunboats, AA barges, and all sorts of other specialised ships in your fleet.
 Light ships covers basically everything up to around destroyer size and capability. This is where you'll find your lighter warships, with complements of up to around 200 men or so. The first example here, PT Boats, are small, fast attack boats, the "mosquito fleet" or "knights of the sea", carrying a small number of torpedoes that can really fuck up even large enemy warships if they find their mark. However, once their torpedoes are spent, they only have very small guns to fall back on, usually little more than machine guns and anti-air autocannons, and they have to return to port to reload their tubes. Patrol gunboats are fairly small ships, though still bigger than PT boats, with a limited gun armament, which can be anywhere up to around cruiser-level calibre (~150mm), but which generally only come in single or double mounts, and in very limited number, around four guns per ship. Still, they are cheap, which means they can be fielded in larger numbers, and they make good escorts and training ships. They won't destroy any large vessels by themselves, but they can still pack a pretty decent punch for a small ship. Destroyers are fast, high-performance ships, carrying a mixture of guns (up to around 130mm) and torpedoes, which gives them some serious firepower and makes them more dangerous than their size might indicate, but like the PT boats, once their torpedoes are spent, they must return to a naval base to have them reloaded. Some destroyers are designed more with torpedo attacks in mind, carrying more tubes and less guns, which makes them very dangerous to larger warships, while others are more dedicated gunboats, carrying a powerful gun armament which lets them effectively engage targets even without using their torpedoes, but in the end this is mostly detail. Submarines are silent, stealthy attackers, diving below the surface to hide from enemy ships, and carrying powerful torpedoes. They can only stay submerged for a limited time though, and they must get close to the surface to fire, as torpedo guidance was still in its infancy during this time.
 On the right are some examples of heavy ships. These are your larger, heavier ships, including cruisers and their variants. Cruisers are ships which, according to their definition, can outrun any ship they can't defeat. They tend to have a gun armament that lets them easily take on smaller ships and other cruisers, they sometimes carry torpedoes, and they tend to be fast enough to easily outrun battleships and other capital warships. Often, they also carry a sizeable anti-air armament, sometimes including even large-calibre anti-air guns up to 130mm. Light cruisers are a cheaper variant, with guns of around 6" or below (140, 150, 152, and 155mm are common), usually in double or triple turrets in more modern designs, or in single mounts for older ships. Heavy cruisers have larger guns, usually gravitating to around 8" (200, 203mm), also in double or triple turrets. They tend to have three or four turrets per ship. While they are fairly expensive, being heavy ships, cruisers are what you're going to want to use if you intend to become a serious naval power, since, like medium tanks, they strike that balance between speed, armour, and firepower. The AA cruiser is a more specialised variant, which carries less main armament in favour of more anti-air weapons, or which might even have a dual-purpose main battery, with numerous heavy anti-air guns serving as its anti-surface firepower as well. Escort carriers are smaller than normal carriers, sometimes converted from civilian cargo ships, which carry a smaller air group, with the intent of cheaply deploying naval aviation anywhere it is needed, and in particular allowing carrier-borne aircraft to be used for escorting cargo convoys and transport ships without having to dedicate a full-size carrier to this role. Their anti-surface firepower is negligible, being on the level of a patrol gunboat at best, but they do often carry a fairly large assortment of light anti-air guns, letting it defend itself against smaller air attacks even if its fighters are not available.
 Transport ships are probably not something you'll be making a whole lot of, given that they mostly end up the same, and even a handful of them can already carry a large army. Nonetheless, there's a few things you could do with them. The tramp steamer here is, like the civilian airliner, a civilian ship impressed into military service. It is cheap, unarmed, and unexceptional. The military freighter represents purpose-built military cargo ships, like the Liberty and Victory ships, with a military crew. Armed merchantmen are cargo ships with a respectable self-defence armament, which lets them attempt to fight off lone surface attackers.
 Capital ships are the queens of the ocean, huge ships with large crews, carrying massive firepower or a sizeable air wing. They are also incredibly expensive. Building even one of these is going to be a massive accomplishment, and should give the builder's enemies pause. Even if the ship never actually leaves port, the mere threat of it being around, ready to fight, will have to be a major factor in the enemy's naval deployment plans; this is known as fleet-in-being. During WWII, the German battleship Tirpitz spent most of the war anchored in a Norwegian fjord, but the mere threat of it breaking out and wreaking havoc in the North Atlantic was a huge factor in Allied naval plans, and the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force sent numerous large-scale raids intended solely to sink her, ultimately achieving this objective with an attack involving numerous heavy bombers dropping a total of 29 superheavy Tallboy bombs, two of which hit the ship and sank her. Capital ships are that valuable. The example here lists the three most common types of capital ship; battlecruisers, as they were originally intended, were the size of battleships, with similar armament to a battleship, but with speed more comparable to a cruiser and lighter armour. The idea was that these "cruiser-killers" would hunt down and sink enemy cruisers with their heavy firepower, while staying away from enemy battleships and battlecruisers as they would not be able to stand up to their heavy guns. This was never really borne out in practice, and they were usually kept in the line of battle with battleships, and in the interwar period many were modified with heavier armour, effectively turning them into battleships. Nonetheless, the battlecruiser here represents the concept as it was initially intended, a high-speed ship with firepower just slightly below that of a battleship, intended to hunt down and destroy cruisers. Actual battleships would be carrying larger, heavier guns, 14" to 16", and are more heavily protected by thick armour. Their main role is to engage enemy battleships and drive them off or destroy them, after which they can attack other enemy warships or bombard shore targets. They are large, heavy, and powerful, and the only ship that can go toe-to-toe with a battleship is another battleship. However, their rule of the seas is no longer absolute; aircraft carriers are a thing, large, expensive ships carrying dozens of aircraft, able to perform any kind of mission and bringing the air force anywhere the navy can reach.
By this point, you should know the drill. Do whatever you feel is right, and build the navy you want to have. There is going to be a random ships section soon, as with the other two branches of the military, but right now it's 4 AM and I want to finally get this thing published so I'll get to it, idk, tomorrow or so.
=Real-World Military Hardware in PWP=
This section will contain some examples of specific real-world units translated to the PWP Unit Creator, in case you want to build a specific real-life thing. However, right now it's still 4 in the morning so I'll do it soon-ish.