Best Tank Designs in Hearts of Iron IV

The No Steps Back DLC completely overhauled the tank meta in Hearts of Iron IV with the introduction of the tank designer. Tanks of each type can now be designed with up to 9 modules, allowing a huge level of customization but making it difficult to determine the new meta. Many of the options in the tank designer will come down to personal preferences or situational differences, so feel free to modify these designs however you see fit.

Medium tanks are considered the best tank to use due to their low supply cost and high potential piercing, but other tank classes have some niche use cases.

Best Light Tank Design

This light tank design has high speed, reliability, and breakthrough. Its speed means it won’t be a bottleneck for any divisions it’s placed in. Reliability is an important stat for keeping tanks operational and not wasting any industrial capacity, but if this isn’t a priority for you feel free to crank up the engine and armor values. To put it simply, this tank excels at speeding past enemies and encircling groups.

By keeping the design extremely cheap at a 7.45 production cost, you should be able to produce a ton of these. Optionally, you can upgrade it with better radio or additional machine guns if you have the industrial capacity to spare.

In single player, you’ll want to prioritize soft attack more than anything else on these designs since the AI isn’t really smart enough to build tank divisions. In multiplayer, you’ll have to keep upgrading your armor value and piercing to be able to fight opponent tanks.

Best Medium Tank Design

This design is great for an all-purpose medium tank that you can insert into your divisions without limiting them to a specific job. It has excellent breakthrough with solid armor, piercing, and attack stats. By prioritizing a reliability close to 100% and keeping production costs around 12, you can mass produce plenty of these.

It’s meant to be an all-around design, so it should fare well against both armor and infantry in single player. In multiplayer you may want to prioritize more piercing and armor.

Best Medium Tank Destroyer Design

The perfect counter to an opponent with a large armored force is the tank destroyer. While this design is expensive at 20.6 production cost, keep in mind that you will not produce as many tank destroyers as you will tanks. If you decide to modify the design, be sure to remember that tank destroyers need to prioritize piercing and hard attack to remain effective.

Best Heavy Tank Design

This heavy tank design is a jack of all trades, master of none. It’s important to note that heavy tanks typically aren’t recommended due to their prohibitive cost, high supply usage, and how easy it is to get high piercing on medium tanks. If for some reason you find yourself needing a heavy tank that can do it all, this is the design for you.

This heavy tank design should shred other tanks due to it’s high piercing. Since the design is already going to be expensive, feel free to add more special features or armor upgrades to maximize each tank.

Best Heavy Tank Destroyer Design

The heavy tank destroyer is the most expensive design on this list, coming in at a whopping 35 production cost. It has high armor, piercing, and hard attack to counter enemy tanks. If you want to add more armor or engine upgrades, I would suggest switching the turret to a heavy fixed superstructure for additional reliability. Keep in mind that this tank destroyer would be worse than the medium one due to its substantially higher cost.

While other types of tanks do exist, these are the most relevant and used tank types in Hearts of Iron IV. Using these designs can serve as a simple plug-and-play for your games, or as a starting point to creating your own tank designs.