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mld0806

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After seeing many questions and uncertainties on how combat works, I figured I'd post another long diatribe on it. :)

As with my first long topic/FAQ on Air Power, any corrections are welcome, any discussion is enjoyed, and I encourage the asking of questions.

How Combat Works

Intro

Understanding HOW combat works will help you plan your production and make choices in the makeup of your forces.

This isn't going to be a discussion of strategy and tactics (ie.g. why is it better to go around a river rather than through it if at all possible), but just a run down of the mechanics behind combat.

I. Land Combat

If you've played at all, you've encountered land combat. Every nation in the world will eventually need to engage in land combat. Understanding how it works can mean the difference between a well planned and successful attack on the enemy, or an ill advised thumping on your part.

The first concept we need to get down is "shots". Each hour of combat is made up of a number of "shots". The number of "shots" in an hour is equal to the highest attack value in the combat. For example, if we have an Infantry unit with a 16 Soft Attack, there will be 16 "shots" in an hour.

Ia. The "Shot" Process

Targeting

At the beginning of each "shot", each unit will randomly target an enemy unit. There are no preferences in ground combat like you will find in Air and Naval combat (we'll touch on these later).

Attack Type

Once each unit has targeted their enemy, the unit will check to see if it is attacking the hard or soft portion of the unit. To do this, the unit uses a percentage check (1-100). If this number is equal to or below the Softness of the target unit, then the "shooting" unit will use its Soft Attack value. If this number is higher than the target's Softness rating, then the unit will use it's Hard Attack value for this "shot".

Determining Elligibility

After targeting and checking to see if the unit will be using the soft or hard attack, each unit checks to see if it is able to fire during this "shot". A unit can fire if the current "shot" number is equal to or lower than the Attack value they are using for this "shot". For example, if it is shot 4 and an Infantry '39 unit is using it's Hard Attack value (2) it would not be allowed to shoot. However, if it were using it's soft attack value (12) it would.

Hit or Miss

If a unit is eligible to "shoot" at a unit this "shot", it makes it's attack. The target unit has a defense rating that it uses. This is Defensiveness as the Defender and Toughness as the Attacker. This defence used is a pool that lasts for one hour of combat. Each time a unit is "shot" at during an hour, it expends one of it's defense points. If the unit has a defence point to spend on this "shot" then the shot has an 80% chance of missing the target. If the target unit has no remaining defence points then the shot has a 60% chance of missing.

Damage Allocation

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless, of course you're playing HOI2. A Soft Attack by one unit type is not the same as a Soft Attack by another unit type, and a Hard Attack by one unit type is not the same as a Hard Attack by another unit type.

If a shot hits the target, then damage is allocated. The amount of damage one hit will do to a unit is based upon the types of units and the manpower value of the unit firing. The types of units determine the base damage, and this is modified by the manpower of the firing unit, so if you had a base damage of, say 1 MP and 5 Org, but only had 80% manpower, actual damage would be .8 MP and 4 Org.

Each unit will do different damage to different types of enemy units. An Infantry unit will do more damage on a successful hit against an enemy Infantry unit than it will a enemy Armor, for example. Brigades will affect this. An Inf - AT will do more damage to an enemy armor unit than a pure Inf unit will on a successful hit, but not as much damage as an Armor unit. An Inf - Art will have a telling difference in damage to enemy infantry and a slight improvement against Armor than a pure Inf unit, and so on and so forth.

I don't know the exact values of these, and they are NOT modable in a .txt file. These are hard coded comparissons, and anyone wishing to change these values will have to work into the actual code of the game.

Ib. Efficiency

If you figure that Efficiency affects the damage numbers, you're wrong. It's a common, and understandable, mistake. What efficiency does is alter the base numbers of a unit. There are so many variables that go into efficiency, and a wonderful FAQ about Land Efficiency already written, that I'm not going to go into it here.

Efficiency is given for Attack and Defence.

Attack Efficiency will alter your Hard and Soft Attack ratings. For example, an Inf. '39 fighting at 80% efficiency will have a Soft Attack value of 9.6 and a Hard Attack value of 1.6. Partial attacks don't count, so these are dropped to a 9 and a 1 effective value. In other words, the unit will be able to make Soft Attacks on "shots" 1=9, but only be able to make a Hard Attack on "shot" 1. If the infantry unit ends up targeting an enemy's hard portion on any shot past 1, it will not fire that round.

Defense Efficiency will alter the applicable defense trait, either Toughness or Defensiveness. The Inf. '39 fighting at 80% Defense Effectiveness would have a Toughness or Defensiveness value of 14.4. Again, partials don't count, so it would have 14 points to spend this hour.

Ic. End of Hour

At the end of the hour/beginning of the next hour, units that are too disorganized to fight break off the attack, and the entire command might retreat if it's average Org falls below 5. After seeing which units are still in the fight, Attack and Defence pools are refilled, based upon any new modifiers such as nightfall, additional units bringing a commander over his command limit, etc. It is entirely possible for the Efficiency to change hour to hour.

II. Air Combat

Air Combat is essentially the same as Land Combat. There are 3 types of combat, Air-to-Air, Air-to-Ground, and Air-to-Sea. All three follow the same process as Land Combat, except for different efficiency modifiers and in "shot" targeting.

The "shot" process is almost identical, however there is a slight alteration to Targeting in that Escort Fighters draw enemy fire. They are a preferred target, and will be attacked before your bombers are.

Damage allocation works the same. Damage from a hit from a Fighter against a Fighter is going to be greater than damage from a hit from a Bomber against a Fighter. Damage from a CAS vs. Armor will be greater than a CAS vs. Infantry. And damage from an Inf - AA vs. a Bomber is going to be higher than a pure Inf vs. Bomber.

In Air-to-Air Combat, Air Attack and Air Defence values are used instead of Hard Attack/Soft Attack values.

In Air-to-Ground Combat, Hard and Soft attack values are used by the airplanes, and Air Attack values by the ground units. Surface Defence is used by the airplanes and Air Defence is used by the Ground Units.

In Air-to-Sea Combat, Naval Attack is used by the Airplanes, and Air Attack is used by the ships. The Aircraft use Surface Defence and the ships use Air Defence.

All the rest is identical to land combat.

III. Sea Combat

Sea Combat operates differently from both Land and Air combat. Once two fleets spot each other and engage, then combat begins. There are two portions of Naval combat: Manuver and Shooting.

IIIa. Manuver

Each fleet will have a optimum combat distance determined by the makeup of the fleet. A BB might lend itself to a 20mi distance while a CV will lend itself to a 120mi distance between fleets.

Each fleet will also have a Positioning number. This represents not only moving closer to an enemy, but also navigating so that you can bring the most guns to bear.

Both distance and positioning will change from hour to hour, with the higher skilled commander improving his positioning faster and being better able to maintain optimum distance. It is entirely possible to be at optimum distance and still have bad positioning.

IIIb. Shooting

After the hour's manuvering, firing begins. It follows the same "shot" process as the other two, meaning there will be a number of "shots" per hour equal to the highest Sea Attack value in the battle.

During each "shot", each ship will check to see if it can get a shot off during that "shot". The chance of this happening is based upon your Positioning value. If your fleet has a Positioning of 60%, then there is a 60% chance of any individual unit getting a shot off.

There is also a chance of friendly fire. The mechanics are hard coded, and I have no definitive answer except that friendly fire is much more likely to occur with bad positioning. What I believe determines this is how much a unit misses it's "shot" check by. It's probably something like if you miss by less than X times your Positioning, then you just don't fire, but if you miss by more than X times your positioning, then you hit a friendly. E.G. You have a 10% positioning. If your ship checks and gets a 25, it just won't fire, but if it gets a 31 (or 41, or 51, or whatever X times is), then it hits a friendly.

If a unit determines that it can fire, it will then target. The type of ship targeted will be determined by your ENEMY'S positioning. If your enemy has a 60% Positioning, then there is a 60% chance that the unit will target a Screening Ship and a 40% chance that the unit will target a Capital Ship.

The are exceptions to this. Submarines will prefer to shoot at Captial Ships. This will mean there will be some times when your Submarines do not fire in an hour of combat. Submarines start a battle hidden, and remain so until either they fire or are detected by enemy screening ships. Once a submarine is uncovered, it becomes a normal part of the battle and targets according to the rules above.

Once a target has been determined, the unit will fire. The target defends with his Sea Defense, which is a pool just like all others.

Damage allocation is the same unit to unit comparisson. A hit from a BB on a DD will do more damage than a hit on a BB from a DD. A hit from a Sub on a BB is going to do more damage than a hit from a Sub on a DD. So on and so forth.

IV. Conclusion

Hopefully this insight into how combat works will help you with your strategy. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them. I am by no means an expert, nor infallible, so I'm sure I got at least one thing wrong somewhere in there.
 
Thanks - your FAQ is as great as usual.

I have one question though - is it possible to destroy an attached batallion i.e. Mec Div with Hv Armour attacks an armoured division - is it possible that all the Hv Armour is/can be destroyed?
I have not seen this happen (in the Game) but I am just curious.
 
Wulf145 said:
Thanks - your FAQ is as great as usual.

I have one question though - is it possible to destroy an attached batallion i.e. Mec Div with Hv Armour attacks an armoured division - is it possible that all the Hv Armour is/can be destroyed?
I have not seen this happen (in the Game) but I am just curious.

No, attached brigades are considered organic to the unit they are attached to. They are not, in and of themselves, targetable. I would guess that it is assumed that losses to the brigade attachment are proportionate to losses of the main unit, in other words if the main unit loses 5% MP, then the Brigade is considered to have lost 5%.
 
An excellent post. I had been wondering just what the toughness number represented. You seem very certain. I am curious as to your source of documentation for what toughness represents. Mainly I am wondering if it was something obvious that I should have found myself.

One aspect that you did not go into (perhaps for lack of documentation) is combat events. I presume that these modify either the attack values or defense values of the appropriate side much the same way that efficiency does.
 
Dalwin said:
An excellent post. I had been wondering just what the toughness number represented. You seem very certain. I am curious as to your source of documentation for what toughness represents. Mainly I am wondering if it was something obvious that I should have found myself.

One aspect that you did not go into (perhaps for lack of documentation) is combat events. I presume that these modify either the attack values or defense values of the appropriate side much the same way that efficiency does.

A lot of it is just fleshing out what is in the manual and connecting it to the information in the game .txt files. There's a pretty good explanation of the land combat in there, I just added a lot of illustrative explanation and details to it.

As far as combat events go, I'm not certain what the effects are. I'm going to take a look later and see what I can find out about them. I would assume they have effects on either your efficiency, or else direct effects on the enemy org and manpower loss rates. The manual alludes to these, but I don't know specifics on them.
 
Dalwin said:
An excellent post. I had been wondering just what the toughness number represented. You seem very certain. I am curious as to your source of documentation for what toughness represents. Mainly I am wondering if it was something obvious that I should have found myself.

Me too. But if i understand correctly, it's just the higher the thoughness, the harder it is to hit or whatever
;)
 
Tnylr said:
Great info, thanks!

Question- the damage allocation numbers- You said they are hardcoded, I was wondering if they were available for reference.

I'm certain someone with a lot more programming experience and ability to hack in could find them out. Unfortunately, I can't. :)
 
Jannick said:
Me too. But if i understand correctly, it's just the higher the thoughness, the harder it is to hit or whatever
;)

Clear example. An Infantry '39 has a toughness of 18. The first 18 times it is shot at in one hour (which means it's getting more than it's fair share of "random" attention in an even numbers battle), there's an 80% chance that it doesn't get. Any shots past 18 and there's a 60% chance that it won't get hit.

Of course, these numbers are modified by efficiency. Attacking across a river at night will lower these numbers way down.
 
One missing detail is that fire against ships tends to concentrate upon those which are already damaged. I think this is true of both ship-to-ship and air-to-ship combat. This is done so that some ships sink rather than suffering uniform attrition across the fleet. I don't have any hard numbers at my fingertips but this feature was first seen in HoI 1 and I suppose it's the same as was done there.

Andrew
 
That seems to be an improved combat model from HOI.

The question still remains if there is a lower cap on attack/defense values due to efficiency. So if your modified attack value drops below 1, do you have 1 or 0.
 
Are you with Paradox? Or is this your explanation based on the information available to the players? I have the same question regarding your air post. If you're not part of the development team, or getting your information from the development team, then I would be extremely cautious about such certainty. You could be right, but you could also be mistaken, and I think a disclaimer would be called for if you are not connected to Paradox.
 
HerrGeneral said:
Are you with Paradox? Or is this your explanation based on the information available to the players? I have the same question regarding your air post. If you're not part of the development team, or getting your information from the development team, then I would be extremely cautious about such certainty. You could be right, but you could also be mistaken, and I think a disclaimer would be called for if you are not connected to Paradox.

Im quite sure mld can defend himself however I would just like to point out FYI

mld0806 said:
IV. Conclusion

Hopefully this insight into how combat works will help you with your strategy. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them. I am by no means an expert, nor infallible, so I'm sure I got at least one thing wrong somewhere in there.
 
Rats! I now need to micromanage my battles even more now! First it was overlapping HQ ZoC now it's all damage is not equal!

I'll have to start doing things properly, not just attacking with a 72 Inf stack... ;)

Many thanks for that information, well written and comprehensive. Is someone going to gather these gems into a Grognard Manual?
 
There are a couple things in here I would really like to know your source, because I don't remember them being in the manual, and they are crucial points on which I do not wish to rely on bad information:

1) A horse is not a horse. Source?

2) The three types of air combat and the different mechanics of them.

3) Escort fighters drawing fire.

I concede these things might have been in the manual and I simply don't remember. But if not, I'd like to know how you came by them.
 
Something we managed to find out in TRP:
The strenght damage varies between 0.1 and 0.5, while org damage is between 0.8 and 4. Notice however that unit with a strenght of 10% will cause 0.01 to 0.05 damage etc.

The average seems to be 1 strenght for every 8 org. Hasn't been tested whetever unit types effect this.

Also what comes to the randomness of the hits, it seems to be connected to the game clock(combat started at same day at same time with the same units always result in the same outcome), however this has not been verified, it's just speculation.
 
Mediator said:
That seems to be an improved combat model from HOI.

The question still remains if there is a lower cap on attack/defense values due to efficiency. So if your modified attack value drops below 1, do you have 1 or 0.

Not really being able to see the hour to hour calculations, I don't know. If there is, it's hard coded because I've seen nothing in the various .txt files that would indicate such a lower limit cap.

HerrGeneral said:
Are you with Paradox? Or is this your explanation based on the information available to the players? I have the same question regarding your air post. If you're not part of the development team, or getting your information from the development team, then I would be extremely cautious about such certainty. You could be right, but you could also be mistaken, and I think a disclaimer would be called for if you are not connected to Paradox.

If you feel it's necessary...

I am simply a player of the game and one with too much free time on my hands at work. I do not work for or with Paradox Interactive, and have no "special" in track. The above guide is mainly RTFM fleshed out. Much of the information is contained in the manual under the various combat sections in the back of the book. I just not only read it and interpreted it/expanded upon it, but I also made connections between various values in the .txt files of the game. misc.txt, modifiers.csv, etc.

The certainty with which I write is based on my belief in the information and that I've done deep research into it. It may NOT be 100% correct, and if anyone gives proof that it isn't correct, then I'll be the first to say< "Hm, well, what I saw made me think this. Guess you're right, I'll make the change."

As far as my Air Power FAQ goes, there's nothing in there that you would even NEED to be part of Paradox to know. It's simply air strategy.

My certainty here is simply being a student of air warfare and history, and applying it to the game mechanics as presented and available to us.

HerrGeneral said:
There are a couple things in here I would really like to know your source, because I don't remember them being in the manual, and they are crucial points on which I do not wish to rely on bad information:

1) A horse is not a horse. Source?

2) The three types of air combat and the different mechanics of them.

3) Escort fighters drawing fire.

I concede these things might have been in the manual and I simply don't remember. But if not, I'd like to know how you came by them.

1) Manual. Basic Land Combat.

2) Three types of air combat are listed in the Air Combat section of the manual. Individual statistics used in each one is pretty straight forward.

3) Observed effect. Send bombers and escorts together into a fight, see who takes the biggest beating. There is a bonus mentioned in the description of Escorts Fighters saying they get bonuses when escorting bombers, but unlike the Interceptor, there is no modifier in any of the .txt files, so the observed effect is that they take the brunt of damage until such time as they are chased off (0 org), then the Bombers start getting it. Watch an air combat hour by hour to see this effect.

Kalashnikov said:
Something we managed to find out in TRP:
The strenght damage varies between 0.1 and 0.5, while org damage is between 0.8 and 4. Notice however that unit with a strenght of 10% will cause 0.01 to 0.05 damage etc.

The average seems to be 1 strenght for every 8 org. Hasn't been tested whetever unit types effect this.

Also what comes to the randomness of the hits, it seems to be connected to the game clock(combat started at same day at same time with the same units always result in the same outcome), however this has not been verified, it's just speculation.

As far as battle outcome goes overall, I haven't a clue. Now, the individual shots are not observable, so it might be that the laws of averages and random number generation leads to similar results. Then again, there might be a less random thing in effect here than the manual applies.