It is all or nothing. It was said to be changing after the barb patch, but it didn't change. That is what was being discussed.
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Exact effect of Armor ?
- Thread starter GeneralisimoAR
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The information I posted in post #6 about scaling the effect of piercing came from a pre-release Dev Diary for NSB. Upthread, Arheo posted that that change didn't make it into the release. So, it's still all or nothing -- though it's perhaps better to say "half damage or full damage". If armor > piercing, that doesn't mean "nothing". Such a division isn't immune to enemy hard attack. It's just taking half the damage rolls of a vehicle that can get pierced. (It'd be even better to say "the number of damage rolls is modified by -50%, which stacks with other modifiers such as tactics". The number would only be reduced by exactly half if there were no other modifiers in that combat.)
Also, an unpierced attacker deals 40% more org damage (on average) from whatever attacks it does apply to the enemy.
See the land combat section of the wiki for details on combat resolution.
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Yep, thanks. So people want it to scale? I would think that would cause a major imbalance that would take many many months to balance that out for no gain. Anyway, my two cents, leave it on the all-or-nothing. Thank you both.
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it used to be binary, devs said they'd buff piercing by making it so you got scaling benefits for armor < piercing (which makes no sense ofc), and now are mentioning that it was a miscommunication.
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Same here ! I remember :
- Hey guys, we eventually found that this black or white armoured aspect of combats was a bit... idiot.
- Yes it is !
- So next build you'll have a much more clever combat system on this very point.
- Nice ! So did it make it into our brand new build ?
- Erh.. No.
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Still not scaled. It appears they intended to scale the piercing/armor thing and added it to the patch notes, but reverted the feature before the patch was released.
edit never mind. I didn’t refresh. There are responses already.
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I think it is revealing to consider the history of all this and how HOI got to where it is today.
Once upon a time, hardness in HOI was all or nothing. Divisions were either hard or soft and I built mechanised divisions because "why build tanks" and so hardness as a percentage was born.
Then we had the supremacy of attack. Barring real bad terrain the optimum tactical choice at all times was to attack with all of your divisions. The operational objective, at all times, was simply to have more divisions engaged in fighting (well, attacking) than the enemy and so breakthrough was born.
There weren't any stacking limits so the easiest way to exploit the supremacy of attack was to rush around with mega-stacks killing enemy units and leave your lines wide open and so combat width was born.
Also, it turned out that because the enemy army always had a lot more soft stuff than hard stuff the optimum strategy was to maximise soft attack and forget about hard attack. The enemy tanks might be a bit of a grind when all those armoured divisions had some softness you could kill. No need for any anti-tank capability at all and so armour and piercing was born.
All those changes made by Paradox have achieved their objectives and the game is far closer to an ideal model than it was prior to HOI4. We have game where defence works, anti-tank capability is necessary, tank divisions are important, creating powerful breakthrough units is a thing.
We are now onto the next thing which is, by comparison, relatively minor. Land combat isn't perfect but the remaining flaws are tiny compared to what it once was.
But, yes, it would be really nice if we could have graded armour penetration for both realism and game playing reasons.
Once upon a time, hardness in HOI was all or nothing. Divisions were either hard or soft and I built mechanised divisions because "why build tanks" and so hardness as a percentage was born.
Then we had the supremacy of attack. Barring real bad terrain the optimum tactical choice at all times was to attack with all of your divisions. The operational objective, at all times, was simply to have more divisions engaged in fighting (well, attacking) than the enemy and so breakthrough was born.
There weren't any stacking limits so the easiest way to exploit the supremacy of attack was to rush around with mega-stacks killing enemy units and leave your lines wide open and so combat width was born.
Also, it turned out that because the enemy army always had a lot more soft stuff than hard stuff the optimum strategy was to maximise soft attack and forget about hard attack. The enemy tanks might be a bit of a grind when all those armoured divisions had some softness you could kill. No need for any anti-tank capability at all and so armour and piercing was born.
All those changes made by Paradox have achieved their objectives and the game is far closer to an ideal model than it was prior to HOI4. We have game where defence works, anti-tank capability is necessary, tank divisions are important, creating powerful breakthrough units is a thing.
We are now onto the next thing which is, by comparison, relatively minor. Land combat isn't perfect but the remaining flaws are tiny compared to what it once was.
But, yes, it would be really nice if we could have graded armour penetration for both realism and game playing reasons.
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Despite hanging out on this forum for +20 years, I cannot remember that a feature has been advertised by mistake. Ever.
And since I’ve been hanging out on this forum for +20 years, I’m sure I forgot a thing or two.
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Personally, I do hope that graduated armour piercing makes it into the game.
Even though we can now design individual tanks and we have stats in the research window that seems to be for individual AT guns. Still, the game accumulates all the individual pieces within a division's units and through the magic of math produces stats for a division. Since binary piercing would normally matter at the individual item level I do not see how it is appropriate for the level the game plays at.
For example, can the 37mm AT gun at 500 meters, pierce the front armour of the <any tank>? Without getting into ammunition, armour type, etc... that is getting close to a binary decision. This binary situation does not exist in HOI4.
At the level the game operates at we should see what the effect of having a battalion of AT guns has on the battle. This is not binary. AT guns, machine guns, field guns, etc... are routinely placed to provide enfilade fire. Putting direct fire weapons directly in front of possible attack lanes severely restricts their effectiveness and number of targets they can engage. There would rarely be the situation where a division commander puts his entire battalion of AT guns directly in front of an attack. The defender is going to do his best to channel the attacking tanks and set them up for defeat through side and top attacks. By staying outside of the attack lane, rear attacks are possible by allowing the tanks through.
This non-binary reality would better be reflected through graduated armour piercing.
Even though we can now design individual tanks and we have stats in the research window that seems to be for individual AT guns. Still, the game accumulates all the individual pieces within a division's units and through the magic of math produces stats for a division. Since binary piercing would normally matter at the individual item level I do not see how it is appropriate for the level the game plays at.
For example, can the 37mm AT gun at 500 meters, pierce the front armour of the <any tank>? Without getting into ammunition, armour type, etc... that is getting close to a binary decision. This binary situation does not exist in HOI4.
At the level the game operates at we should see what the effect of having a battalion of AT guns has on the battle. This is not binary. AT guns, machine guns, field guns, etc... are routinely placed to provide enfilade fire. Putting direct fire weapons directly in front of possible attack lanes severely restricts their effectiveness and number of targets they can engage. There would rarely be the situation where a division commander puts his entire battalion of AT guns directly in front of an attack. The defender is going to do his best to channel the attacking tanks and set them up for defeat through side and top attacks. By staying outside of the attack lane, rear attacks are possible by allowing the tanks through.
This non-binary reality would better be reflected through graduated armour piercing.
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I feel like there are alternative solutions to several of those 'problems', but they say hindsight is 20/20 and there is practically no chance of PDX going back on any of these decisions to clean it up.
I can think of many occasions where things end up in the patch notes erroneously. I'm not sure what the point being made is, but mistakes do happen. I guess the alternative would be that we decided to mislead everyone for some reason... but I'm not sure what that reason would be
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i guess they technically said they'd be buffing piercing AND armor in a way, but if those changes had been implemented they would have only made armor stronger, and done nothing to make piercing worth anything when it's just less than armor, which (as i bolded) they claimed they meant to change too.
sorry if i'm not making sense, that's what i was referring to in the bit you quoted.
I can think of many occasions where things end up in the patch notes erroneously. I'm not sure what the point being made is, but mistakes do happen. I guess the alternative would be that we decided to mislead everyone for some reason... but I'm not sure what that reason would be
Well, I guess you ever got to an electrical appliances shop and asked for a washing machine ?
Was it 1200rpm as the seller told you ? Nah, was only 1000rpm.
I'm pretty sure indeed that you considered that "mistakes happen" as "shits happen" and moved on... No ? Weird.
Maybe one day, game industry would better to consider the fact that we customers started in our early days to buy some video games when there was a price, and, most of the time, features coming with.
Yes that was before Internet popped up and this industry slowly started to tell us 'buy first, you might get what you paid for then, in 1 year, 2 years...' and 'you not happy ? Just move on..'
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Except you already bought the washing machine, and what you were getting was a free upgrade that you weren't promised when you bought it.
We're not in the habit of selling algorithm changes, and we don't intend to start. This instance is no different.
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I convinced my friend to buy the game, and it was purchased within the window between this feature being announced, and your saying its announcement was a mistake. As such, there is at least one person who purchased the game under the promise that it would include a particular feature, that it ultimately does not include.
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I admit to being a bit stumped at this point. I've pointed out it was omitted in error, told you it'll likely make a reappearance at some point - what are you after here?
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I was raised around the motto, never pass a fault. There is an interesting philosophy behind that motto which we could talk about if someone wanted, but this isn't really the thread for that.
I'm not a part of the particular organization that has that motto (bonus points to anyone who can tell me who they are, and I did join a related organization) and I will often pass faults because I am a flawed human being. Sometimes I don't pass them though. One particular thing I regard as a fault and have a strong urge to not pass, is when 'bad information' is being presented. When something is demonstrably false I tend to poke my nose in and make comments, which is more or less what I had done here.
I seen something I could poke holes in, and I proceeded to poke that hole in an effort to point out the flaw to everyone so that we can develop better arguments/analogies and everyone leaves the situation with a better understanding of the truth of the matter.
What I am after is for more care and though to be put into what is being said, to avoid the spread of bad information. I also hope that that is not taken as an invitation to avoid making comments at all. At the very least, even if something could be considered wrong by some, having it be said allows discussion to be had about the thing and more opportunity for those involved and observers to learn and develop.
The largest, most obvious fault is that the dev diary still makes mention of this mechanic, despite it not being included in the patch and there being no confirmation that it will ever be included in the future.
The second, and this is where I start getting really nitpicky and please just ignore this is you take offense, is that you did not say that "'it' was omitted in error", you said that the announcement of the feature was made in error. There is a subtle but important difference between those two statements, which makes their meaning different and so you are claiming you did a thing that you didn't technically do. But that is admittedly getting super technical and I hope you don't take this personally.
The third is that You didn't say "It'll likely make a reappearance at some point", you said "It may make a return at some point." Which again, there is a difference between those statements, which revolves around the likelihood of the event happening. To me, the word 'likely' implies a greater chance than the word 'may'. I am also a bit confused by the words 'reappearance' and 'return'. To the best of my knowledge, the mechanic in question was never actually given to the player, and so suggesting it will 'return' to the players is strange.
The second, and this is where I start getting really nitpicky and please just ignore this is you take offense, is that you did not say that "'it' was omitted in error", you said that the announcement of the feature was made in error. There is a subtle but important difference between those two statements, which makes their meaning different and so you are claiming you did a thing that you didn't technically do. But that is admittedly getting super technical and I hope you don't take this personally.
The third is that You didn't say "It'll likely make a reappearance at some point", you said "It may make a return at some point." Which again, there is a difference between those statements, which revolves around the likelihood of the event happening. To me, the word 'likely' implies a greater chance than the word 'may'. I am also a bit confused by the words 'reappearance' and 'return'. To the best of my knowledge, the mechanic in question was never actually given to the player, and so suggesting it will 'return' to the players is strange.
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The excruciating level of detail you are going into looks quite ridiculous to me.
Should the Devs place an extra charge on your credit card for every feature that was included in the DLC that wasn't in a dev diary?
Such unreasonableness and nit-picking stifles discussion between players and Devs, not the other way around.
Should the Devs place an extra charge on your credit card for every feature that was included in the DLC that wasn't in a dev diary?
Such unreasonableness and nit-picking stifles discussion between players and Devs, not the other way around.
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