Artillery - taking damage in 1.4?

[Modo]

Are you saying that nobody played far enough to get into serious land combat?

Don't put words in my mouth. People have commitments other than testing the game. Obviously some did have enough time for more detailed testing, but most didn't, and the bug forum has evidence of that. You also have to remember that some testing of battle mechanics was done using scenarios, which obscure the issue we're talking about here. (There are very few support brigades in scenario OOBs.)

 

[unmerged(131628)]

Don't put words in my mouth. People have commitments other than testing the game. Obviously some did have enough time for more detailed testing, but most didn't, and the bug forum has evidence of that. You also have to remember that some testing of battle mechanics was done using scenarios, which obscure the issue we're talking about here. (There are very few support brigades in scenario OOBs.)

Also most players either played small minors (Cuba) to see AI perforance or majors like Germany and likely didnt observe anything strange because they were winning.

 

[unmerged(198514)]

hey guys.....

iv just noticed this problem too and had a look in the script under units folder
i went to artillery and changed the strength value from 10 to 30 and went back into the game and every artillery unit i had was reinforcing up to the same strength as infantry.
there was also code you could change for org / toughness / and deffensiveness.
can anyone reccommend which stat this problem is arrising in because i dont 100% understand how the computer calculates this problem were all having.
if i know which stat is the best to modify il just change it for all brigade attachments.

 

[womble]

hey guys.....

iv just noticed this problem too and had a look in the script under units folder
i went to artillery and changed the strength value from 10 to 30 and went back into the game and every artillery unit i had was reinforcing up to the same strength as infantry.
there was also code you could change for org / toughness / and deffensiveness.
can anyone reccommend which stat this problem is arrising in because i dont 100% understand how the computer calculates this problem were all having.
if i know which stat is the best to modify il just change it for all brigade attachments.

While that might solve the problem of support brigades being the weak link, can we be sure that strength/org have no effect on the offensive power of the unit? Does changing the strength have any effect on supply usage?

Edit: just had the chance to observe the problem in a simple situation. Increasing Str might be a solution if it doesn't knacker anything else (but it will at least change Reinforcements some). But doctrines/techs won't help, or at least not enough. My Arty were getting mauled even though their hard techs are up to date (so their Toughness/Defensiveness are as good as they'll get relative to my infantry) and the Assault Concentration doctrine won't add anywhere near enough to stop the artillery being the weakest link by a large factor; the INF still have lots of ORG.

 

[Jonas]

It seems to me it would be best to revert this change as soon as possible (before the expansion). I did not hear a lot of complaints about support brigades before they changed them. To introduce true realism to damage dealt to support brigades would be quite complicated. Letting artillery regiments get smashed on the offensive so that the entire division ceases attacking is not the way to go about it. Nor is it a good idea to let people's and AI's port defence units in very expensive dual type fortifications surrender because their engineers get spooked.

No unit should retreat, surrender or break off the attack until all combat type regiments have broken down. Maybe this was not how it was before, but because the support brigades were relatively protected (as they in many cases should be!) it was never a problem. It worked reasonably well before. It should not be too complicated to go back.

For realism, different type of support regiments should be subject to damage, and indeed be employed at all, depending on the combat situation. All regiments should be subject to damage from air attacks. The damage should be distributed according to the relative size of the regiment. Relative vulnerability to air attack is already simulated in the stats. If you are one of the people arguing targeting support brigades specifically makes sense, you should suggest they alter some of the currently useless air doctrine target selection technologies to reflect this, or add another type of air mission.

Artillery should not take damage from ground combat while attacking. Counter-battery fire was not all that effective and rather than modelling a very limited special damage for this, it would be better to ignore it.

AA and AT regiments should not be employed at all in offensive operations. True, when attacking fortified positions, they could be instrumental in cracking the shell of the enemy. You will be hard pressed to find examples of soldiers charging an enemy tank formation with AT guns though. It is just too cumbersome. All in all the oddity of employing these very defensive units in an attack outweighs the need to simulate they sometimes were used that way.

Artillery and AA regiments should suffer fewer casualties than the true front-line regiments in a defensive combat as well. Commanders and soldiers knew those units were vulnerable and strived to protect them, both through positioning and actual tactical combat decisions. It is true some of these units were sometimes employed right at the front for direct fire against enemy ground forces, but those were desperate decisions or a result of severe failures. Keep in mind artillery and AA regiments are inferior in this role to for example AT regiments. Commaders of this era were aware of this too.

 

[unmerged(152826)]

Still no word from PI on this.....

I agree with Jonas.

 

[Devildread]

As I post in my ICE forum :

Increasing the strength is not a solution I think, it will destroy the manpower balance (even if the manpower cost of a brigade is not related to the strength -you decide it when you create the unit file- the reinforcement cost is messed up).

If we are lucky, Paradox simply put this modification to the width = 0 brigades and then making a width = 0.1 will fix it (and raising the province width by 0.5 for instance to balance the change).

If we are not lucky, such modification will destroy the status of support brigade and cripple down the game mechanics.

 

[Forgiven]

I don't see how reinforcement cost would be different from build cost, are you sure about this?

 

[Devildread]

I don't see how reinforcement cost would be different from build cost, are you sure about this?

Build cost is something you decide when you create the unit file :

	#Size Definitions
	max_strength = 10
	default_organisation = 30
	default_morale = 0.30
	officers = 100

	#Building Costs
	build_cost_ic = 3.00
	build_cost_manpower = 1.33[COLOR="Lime"][B] #here[/B][/COLOR]
	build_time = 100

I can decide to put 0.00 to the build_cost_manpower variable.

While reinforcement cost is based - I believe (I may be wrong I don't know) - on the max_strength. I think this is based on the max_strength because of the draft law (they change the strength and not the MP cost).

My point is : you will pay for 1.33 manpower (or whatever you put on the MP cost variable) but :
- you will be able to disband it and gain [max_strength/10] manpower (3 manpower for a strength 30 brigade)
- you will reinforce the unit from current strength to the max

Again, I may be wrong, but I don't think I am.

This is why I think the solution of raising the strengh of the support brigade is not viable.

 

[Forgiven]

So you are saying if you spam build militia (mp cost 2) and then disband it, you can build up your manpower infinitely?
I should probably test it somehow (but since mp is gained daily now this has gotten rather hard, when it was montly you could experiment for a month what reinforce costs would be...) but I think it's more sensible (and hopefully more likely) that it uses relation between mpcost and strenght for reinforcing aswell.

 

[Devildread]

I didn't think about that, I actually may be wrong after all. ^^

Perhaps there is an advanced calculus with MP cost and strength with parameters instead of only strength.

 

[Zzrow Graff]

Perhaps only units with non-zero frontage should be used in retreat calculations.

 

[AlanC9]

Don't put words in my mouth.

I didn't. You said:

The RCs changed before you could get a real game going

I suppose you actually meant "some testers" instead of the more general "you." But how was I to know that?

 

[Mithel]

I've just run four tests trying to duplicate this problem and I'm not seeing a clear cut problem. So I'm wondering in exactly what circumstances are support brigades taking an unbalanced amount of losses.

 

[AlanC9]

Also most players either played small minors (Cuba) to see AI perforance or majors like Germany and likely didnt observe anything strange because they were winning.

Now that's a good point. I generally tested as the USA or UK (since a lot of the big stuff happens without you, you can observe the game while still playing). But even doing a lot of land fighting with plenty of support brigades, I didn't notice the issue.

 

[Modo]

I meant: Most testers didn't have enough time for an in-depth look at the game. That includes people who only did hands-off games as minors, and those who managed just one or two real games as majors.

 

[Gormadoc]

I've just run four tests trying to duplicate this problem and I'm not seeing a clear cut problem. So I'm wondering in exactly what circumstances are support brigades taking an unbalanced amount of losses.

Well they are not.

Support brigades takes on average same amount of org. and strenght damage as normal brigades.

Since support brigades has less org than normal brigades they seem to be taking more damage when looking on org. bar. However looking on the actual numbers the org. loss are the same rate as other brigades. (not including armor)

The strenght loss seems to be the same rate in men and not in percentage. So when a normal brigade looses 500 men, so will on average the attached support brigade, however 500 men out of 1000 will have a bigger impact than 500 out of 3000.

Thats what my testing of this has shown atleast.

If someone dont like that, its possible to change the softness value of support brigades, that should decrease their org. and strenght loss

 

[Mithel]

In one of my tests the support brigade did take significantly more strength loss than the infantry brigades in the same division. But I'm seeing enough random variability that this isn't a clear cut problem and as Gormadoc stated the support brigades tend to have a little less base organization and thus will break a little sooner than infantry brigades, but this isn't a huge problem and it doesn't make support brigades useless. Sure it looks like it could use a little refining but it's not a disaster like it sounded like in some of the initial posts.

 

[Modo]

[...]this isn't a huge problem and it doesn't make support brigades useless. Sure it looks like it could use a little refining but it's not a disaster like it sounded like in some of the initial posts.

Except that the problem increases over time. After prolonged fighting you get divisions that have almost intact line brigades, but can't fight because their support brigades are disorganized. This might be one of the reasons for apparent AI inactivity, since the AI doesn't rest broken divisions nearly long enough.

 

[unmerged(131628)]

I am testing some changes to minimize this problem - i will post updates tomorrow if I find any working solution.