'Enemy Units Bombed' - What does this mean

[Victory5]

So I picked up the game again after about a 1 year hiatus and i've been enjoying my Sweden campaign through 1940. I've sent some CAS to attack their divisions around Oslo and when I pull up the air interface map mode and click on southern norway, then click on 'details' so all the stats and charts pop up....I still am left with questions.

I've figured out the 'enemy buildings bombed' number is evenly distributed amongst every building in the region and represents how many buildings youve destroyed, but what are the units for 'enemy troops bombed'.

A few weeks into the war it says i've bombed '13.7' enemy troops in southern norway. Is this 13.7 men? 13.7 divisons? 13.7 of their closest friends? The interface doesnt say and its a little frustrating because i have no idea if i'm actually doing any consequential damage thus far.

Does anyone know what the number actually means?

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

If you click on a battle in progress, you should see at the top that Support planes (CAS, naval CAS, and Tactical Bombers) have damaged the enemy's Organization and Strength by a certain amount during the course of the battle. I would hope that the "Enemy Troops Bombed" is a summary of those damage statistics, but I personally have not tested it, nor read of anybody testing it. If it works that way, 13.7 would mean something like "6 Strength and 7.7 Organization lost across all battles in this Strategic Region".

 

[Dalwin]

First, buildings bombed are not spread evenly across the zone, not at all. They are spread randomly with everything having a chance to get hit. That is a far different thing. You might get lucky and all strikes hit airfields and refineries or unlucky and none of them did.

As far as units bombed, I am not sure what puts that one into scale. It could be that 13.7 means enough total in the state to have reduced 13.7 units to zero org (if the damage had not been spread out over many more units than that.) Perhaps it is only strength based instead or a combination of the two. Even though we don't know how to put it into scale and know exactly what it means it is still a decent relative measure of the effectiveness of bombing in a given area.

It could even be that each 0.1 unit bombed represents a given number of aircraft hitting ground units, say 100, and is not a measure of how much damage they did. It might simply be a measure of how many are getting to hit targets instead of being driven off by AA and defending aircraft.

 

[Alex_brunius]

After making a few quick tests I am pretty certain that "enemy troops bombed" is actually the total strength damage done shown in the combat views added together.

I wasn't able to find any situations where "enemy troops bombed" didn't match perfectly with Strength damage ( Although the tooltip in combat view is truncated )

Strength damage in turn isn't actually % of enemy divisions strength, but rather their HP, so units which got mostly tanks will suffer more then units based on infantry. (7+2 infantry having around 180 HP per division and a 20w tank division around 100 HP )

 

[Dalwin]

After making a few quick tests I am pretty certain that "enemy troops bombed" is actually the total strength damage done shown in the combat views added together.

I wasn't able to find any situations where "enemy troops bombed" didn't match perfectly with Strength damage ( Although the tooltip in combat view is truncated )

Strength damage in turn isn't actually % of enemy divisions strength, but rather their HP, so units which got mostly tanks will suffer more then units based on infantry. (7+2 infantry having around 180 HP per division and a 20w tank division around 100 HP )

But what is the scale of the number? Is 13.7 equal to the full strength of 13.7 divisions spread across all in the zone, or is it 13.7% of one division? I doubt it is the latter and the former sounds too high. It is most likely something else altogether even if it is losses in strength based on HP.

 

[Alex_brunius]

But what is the scale of the number? Is 13.7 equal to the full strength of 13.7 divisions spread across all in the zone, or is it 13.7% of one division? I doubt it is the latter and the former sounds too high. It is most likely something else altogether even if it is losses in strength based on HP.

The scale is the divisions HP?

If Infantry units with 180 hp were bombed for 13.7 you did 13.7/180 = 7.6% worth of a division in damage ( to both it's equipment and manpower ).

Only if the units have exactly 100 hp would it translate directly to strength %.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

The scale is the divisions HP?

If Infantry units with 180 hp were bombed for 13.7 you did 13.7/180 = 7.6% worth of a division in damage ( to both it's equipment and manpower ).

Only if the units have exactly 100 hp would it translate directly to strength %.

It sort of makes you wonder why the game still has hitpoints. You wonder whether some combination of Strength and Hardness would achieve the same effects more transparently.

 

[Dalwin]

The scale is the divisions HP?

If Infantry units with 180 hp were bombed for 13.7 you did 13.7/180 = 7.6% worth of a division in damage ( to both it's equipment and manpower ).

Only if the units have exactly 100 hp would it translate directly to strength %.

Are you confident in that answer? It makes good sense but seems like a very small amount of damage considering that the numbers we are seeing are typically for a 30 day period often in a highly contested zone with several hundred planes in action.

Watching an individual land battle play out, it often seems that the planes are doing significant damage, but your explanation of the level of that impact seems at least an order of magnitude lower. I guess I will need to do some testing. Hopefully the value of CAS has not been greatly exaggerated by incorrect community interpretations of a misleading interface.

 

[Dalwin]

It sort of makes you wonder why the game still has hitpoints. You wonder whether some combination of Strength and Hardness would achieve the same effects more transparently.

The hit points serve their own purpose. They measure a units ability to soak up damage. As such the strength and hardness of infantry would both be low but their HP high.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Are you confident in that answer? It makes good sense but seems like a very small amount of damage considering that the numbers we are seeing are typically for a 30 day period often in a highly contested zone with several hundred planes in action.

Watching an individual land battle play out, it often seems that the planes are doing significant damage, but your explanation of the level of that impact seems at least an order of magnitude lower. I guess I will need to do some testing. Hopefully the value of CAS has not been greatly exaggerated by incorrect community interpretations of a misleading interface.

Fairly confident. It correlates pretty well with what the combat log reports about inflicted casualties after battles as well.

Unless you have land units fighting at 10% or less efficiency or they got really bad equipment ( only WW1 infantry eq and no artillery ) the majority of strength damage & casualties inflicted to the enemy always tend to be from fighting on land.

Another situation that is a bit different is when facing tank units that your land units may struggle to damage, but CAS do more damage to due to their lower HP.

Org damage is also a special case... Here CAS also has a bigger impact.

 

[Louella]

Hmm.

The information is not really presented in a coherent way.

The land war report, says X number of planes took part, and they did Y damage to strength and Z damage to organisation of enemy divisions.

The air war report, the summary screen shows "damage done to enemy divisions", and the graph shows "enemy troops bombed".

But how do these pieces of information relate to each other ?


What is a "troop" ? a division ? a component of a division ? Do you get different numbers when attacking 10 divisions that consist of a single tank unit, vs 1 division of 10 tank units ?

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Hmm.

The information is not really presented in a coherent way.

The land war report, says X number of planes took part, and they did Y damage to strength and Z damage to organisation of enemy divisions.

The air war report, the summary screen shows "damage done to enemy divisions", and the graph shows "enemy troops bombed".

But how do these pieces of information relate to each other ?


What is a "troop" ? a division ? a component of a division ? Do you get different numbers when attacking 10 divisions that consist of a single tank unit, vs 1 division of 10 tank units ?

Alex_brunius explained this in his(?) earlier post.

 

[bERt0r]

It would make sense to have bombing damage show up as in quantities of HP and ORG lost since the strength of a division ranges from 0-100 and depends on its composition.

 

[Louella]

Alex_brunius explained this in his(?) earlier post.

Still a bit opaque and doesn't help much in making use of the numbers. Like do you have enough cas assigned ? Too many? You have some tactical bombers that you can put onto cas duty, are these numbers a useful tool to figure where to deploy them?

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Still a bit opaque and doesn't help much in making use of the numbers. Like do you have enough cas assigned ? Too many? You have some tactical bombers that you can put onto cas duty, are these numbers a useful tool to figure where to deploy them?

I see your point, but it seems to be a fairly simple system that avoids micromanagement: put your CAS and TBs into air regions where your troops are fighting and where you have air superiority. That's all there is to it, isn't there?

 

[Dalwin]

Still a bit opaque and doesn't help much in making use of the numbers. Like do you have enough cas assigned ? Too many? You have some tactical bombers that you can put onto cas duty, are these numbers a useful tool to figure where to deploy them?

That is true of much of the reporting. The 30 day aerial combat summary tells you how many bombers were disrupted. It is usually a large and impressive seeming number, but it would make a lot more sense if they put it into scale by converting it into a percentage instead of simply tallying every single time a bomber turned back.

 

[bitmode]

That is true of much of the reporting. The 30 day aerial combat summary tells you how many bombers were disrupted. It is usually a large and impressive seeming number, but it would make a lot more sense if they put it into scale by converting it into a percentage instead of simply tallying every single time a bomber turned back.

Blocking 90% of 10 enemy bombers is worse than blocking 10% of 1000 bombers. Putting the disruption count in relation to the number of own fighters (i.e. enemy bombers disrupted per interceptor per time unit) could make some sense but would be even harder to explain in the UI.

Edit: or damage prevented due to the interceptions would also be reasonable but depends on several factors on the attacker side

 

[princeseth]

i never liked those numbers ... i would prefer to see real numbers like troop casualties equipment destroyed etc ...

 

[Dalwin]

Blocking 90% of 10 enemy bombers is worse than blocking 10% of 1000 bombers. Putting the disruption count in relation to the number of own fighters (i.e. enemy bombers disrupted per interceptor per time unit) could make some sense but would be even harder to explain in the UI.

Edit: or damage prevented due to the interceptions would also be reasonable but depends on several factors on the attacker side

Or like I said, a simple percentage. This is a 30 day total we are talking about. It telling you that you disrupted a total of 27,300 fighters in a 30 day period is not a very useful number. If it instead told you that over the course of 30 days you disrupted 32% of all bombers who raided in the region, that would be both understandable and useful.

Who cares if it is 10% of 1,000 bombers? You have other things that indicate the overall intensity such as losses. The disruption number as a percentage would be useful to tell you how much of a deterrent your defenses were.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Or like I said, a simple percentage. This is a 30% total we are talking about. It telling you that you disrupted a total of 27,300 fighters in a 30 day period is not a very useful number. If it instead told you that over the course of 30 days you disrupted 32% of all bombers who raided in the region, that would be both understandable and useful.

Who cares if it is 10% of 1,000 bombers? You have other things that indicate the overall intensity such as losses. The disruption number as a percentage would be useful to tell you how much of a deterrent your defenses were.

You can see that you disrupted 32% of all the bombers last day though in the main view, but I do agree it would be useful to have monthly statistics for it too.