Ground Defense Efficiency?

[bshirt]

Mathematically, how does this work?

Several infantry techs give 1% ground defense efficiency. Does that mean your army's infantry "defense" rating is now times 1.01 or something?

Thanks!!

 

[unmerged(29738)]

Reply

Is it just me (I have been thinking lately that I need new glassess)? But is this thread blank or what?

 

[unmerged(29738)]

Reply to the reply?

Sorry, I do indeed need new glassess, your thread magically appeared, anyway to try and answer your question. I think it means 1% of the defence value of the unit, which means differant units will get increased according to thier defence values.

Maybe someone else will have a more detailed explanation? Have a good one!

 

[unmerged(7734)]

If you open a save file and scroll down to any country you will find a list of statistics for every unit type in the game. I never counted them but there are about 12 to 15 individual statistics for each unit type. These statistics are base line values and are added to values for each model number, the games designation for different units within a unit type type. Taking armor for example a medium tank with 40mm gun would be model 8 (a guess) and an advanced medium tank with a 80mm gun would be a model 15 (another guess). Each model has certain statistics for attack, defense, air defense, speed, etc and to these are added individual modifiers that were modified by techs.

Looking at a save file listing for German inf. for example, there are about 15/20 individual statistics listed for the unit type. These factors include off., def, river crossing, hill attack, desert, night fighting, org., build time, IC cost, speed, etc. These factors are the base line for Germany inf. and will differ from base line for UK inf. based on the level of tech adjustments.

So when you look at the tables underneath each model of tank in the build screen you will see a dozen or so factors that change as you cycle through the different models. This is the sum of the base line factor for armor and the factors for each model.

Scroll through a save file and you will be amazed at the number of individual factors for each country, addressing diplomacy, research times, military options, aggressiveness, etc. This game has a jillion complexities. But underneath it all, it is all based on simple factors that interact.

I hope this helps.

 

[bshirt]

edratman;

Thank you!

I assume you mean the save game file for the current game I'm playing, right?

I'll check that out. So, maybe my infantry's ground efficiency rating is multiplied by 1.01? Inquiring minds need to know. How interesting...

I don't know why my post is so bizarre...it originally comes up with my full post when displayed and then cuts out my edited portion. Very strange... Anyways....

Thanks again!

 

[unmerged(17617)]

It sometimes happens that edited posts are not displayed properly, IIRC there is a fix for this (something to do with the settings in the UserCP) but I don't remember what it was exactly.

As to your original question. Every unit has attack (hard and soft)and defense values. Each unit will fire all of it's attackpoints at an opponent. If there are multiple divisions to fire at it will choose one in the other stack at random. AFAIK, if the opposing stack contains both hard (mech and armor) and soft targets (everything else) it will fire it's hard and softattack at the same time.

The attackpoints, who are subject to the various modifiers, are checked against the defensepoints, also after the various modifiers have been added and subtracted. If the number of attackpoints exceeds the number of defensepoints they will cause a certain amount of damage for each attackpoint (I don't remember the exact values), but if they do not exceed the defensepoints there is a chance that they will not damage the receiving side and this is where the grounddefense efficiency comes into play.

In vanilla HOI, a unit at the start of the game has an 80% chance of blocking the opponents attack, which means that 1 in 5 shots gets through the defense and does a certain amount of damage. If you have researched all the techs in vanilla this chance increases to 95%, ie only 1 in every 20 shots goes through to do damage. I've noticed that the increases in CORE are a lot lower compared to vanilla, but I don't know if the starting value is also higher. Hope this helps.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Here is the definitive definition of how ground defence efficiency works. This was worked out a long time ago and I have statistically verified quite a few times since. I will need to give a complete definition of combat to explain it but here goes

In combat each unit of each side chooses and enemy unit to attack. For land and air combat this appears to be random. It then applies its soft or hard attack strength (depending on the target) modified by combat efficiency as shown in the battle tooltips. Note that your units never use both and the modified strength is rounded down. Each point of attack strength applied against a unit can cause a small amount of damage and org loss. This amount randomly varies slightly but the average is always the same.

The defenders ground defence is modified by combat efficiency in the same way. For each attack on a unit it can use 1 point of ground defence to try and block it. The chance of blocking it is 80% + the tech bonuses to ground defence efficiency. If you have so far accumulated 15% bonus then ground defence will block 95% of attacks rather than 80%. Any attacks beyond the units ground defence capacity automatically get through. You should note that in large combats there will often be many many-to-one attacks taking place which lead to enhanced losses. In many case the majority of casualties are due to random many-to-one attacks within the combat with resulting unblocked attacks accounting for many losses.

There is a lot of analysis, explanation and examples in my two latest AAR (russian infantry and german mechanised - see sig).

I believe the same rules apply to air and naval combat but with fixed defence efficiency. My combat modelling program seems to be quite good at predicting what actually happens.

 

[bshirt]

Oh Boy...you guys are simply....great!

THANK YOU!

I've been dying a horrible death trying to figure out what in the heck this implies. I was so desperate I even tried reading again the glorious ho1 manual.

Gee, what a shocking surprise, there was nothing about it in the manual.

So, if I understand this concept correctly, an infantry unit attacked has an 80% chance of blocking the attack (per round), correct? So, each point one gets for ground defense efficiency research bonus adds up one at a time from 80% correct?

So then obviously the game wouldn't have these GDE bonus's above 19, right? Otherwise a unit couldn't be hit. I think.

I'll check out those aar's...

Once again, all of you....thank you!!

 

[Kanitatlan]

So, if I understand this concept correctly, an infantry unit attacked has an 80% chance of blocking the attack (per round), correct? So, each point one gets for ground defense efficiency research bonus adds up one at a time from 80% correct?

So then obviously the game wouldn't have these GDE bonus's above 19, right? Otherwise a unit couldn't be hit. I think.

You've got the idea there. In vanilla HOI you have three +5% technologies. All the 1% bonuses are from CORE (also in other Mods). The important issue to remember is that the Ground Defence value for a unit puts an upper limit on the number of attacks a unit can try to block and it gets exceeded casualties can ramp up rather rapidly.

 

[bshirt]

Howdy Kanitatlan!

Thank you, so very much, for your extremely informative replies. Also, I checked your Russian infantry aar and was simply stunned at the superb detail yet fluent strategy discourse.

Excellent! A true pleasure to read. I'll need to re-read it several times to fully absorb it, to be sure.

As you know, hoi is a endlessly deep game and with no manual to explain the details your help is simply invaluable. In fact, it puzzles me greatly why Paradox doesn't hire someone like yourself for documentation and other things. While hoi2's manual is much better than hoi's, it still completely lacks any mathematical details. I hate that.

So, of course, I have a couple more questions to bother you with. Just think of the positive karma you're developing helping us out!

1. Your post yesterday....

"The important issue to remember is that the Ground Defence value for a unit puts an upper limit on the number of attacks a unit can try to block and it gets exceeded casualties can ramp up rather rapidly."

I think you're saying that a high defense value (not ground defense efficiency) also inclines a unit to "stand and die" rather than retreat more than a lower defense number unit would. Is that right?

If so, how does that work?

2. I opened my latest save game file and it's bloody huge. Is there to your knowledge any detailed explaination of this file that's posted somewhere I could check on?

3. As number two, is there anywhere posted a breakdown of equipment that states if it applies to infantry, mech, mot, armor or so on. I play SR mod and they usually are stated but quite frequently they're not. Especially various artillary upgrades. For what units they apply to is just a guess. Or maybe it's dependent on the mod?

4. You knew I had to ask this. How in the world did you find this stuff out? Your aar's are loaded to the gills with this inside knowledge. I'm jealous. haha...no, really I just need all the help I can get with most challenging, but great fun SR hsr mod.

5. I downloaded your Colossus untility! Is there a text on how to use somewhere? My intuition didn't work with it very well.

Thank you, mighty Kanitatlan!

bshirt

 

[Zebedee]

Also try the FAQ section. There is an excellent downloadable manual there as well as very concise and well-written descriptions of the game mechanics.

 

[bshirt]

Great idea Zebedee!

I'll try that immediately.

 

[Zebedee]

I actually misposted here instead of in EQ forum, was wondering why it hadn't come up. But looking back... I'll leave this one for posterity and as a reminder not to have so many windows open at once and if you ever need to know how healing over time works (per tick) I'm your man :rofl:

 

[HJ Tulp]

About your question 1 I'm quite certain that's not the case
Your unit(s) retreat when their org is zero or close to zero

 

[bshirt]

Well, maybe because the org is so high, the unit substains more casualties before it's org gets that low?

Just a guess.

 

[Kanitatlan]

1. Your post yesterday....

"The important issue to remember is that the Ground Defence value for a unit puts an upper limit on the number of attacks a unit can try to block and it gets exceeded casualties can ramp up rather rapidly."

I think you're saying that a high defense value (not ground defense efficiency) also inclines a unit to "stand and die" rather than retreat more than a lower defense number unit would. Is that right?

If so, how does that work?

It has exactly the same effect of org and strength so has no influence on "stand and die". What it does do is have a "stand and don't die" effect. If you fight an enemy whilst have zero ground defence and take 100 instrength loss then if you had sufficient ground defence to block every attack you would take between 0 and 20 loss (depending on your ground defence efficiency between +20% and +0%). The key issue is that in big battles you will get some of your divisions attacked by several enemy divisions. If your ground defence is twice their attack value then only attacks by 3 or more divisions get any unopposed attacks. I wrote a statistical analyser for my German mechanised AAR to do a proper analysis of expected combat loss ratios as this "ganging up" is a key influence on combat.

2. I opened my latest save game file and it's bloody huge. Is there to your knowledge any detailed explaination of this file that's posted somewhere I could check on?

I don't know of any explanation but I have been able to more or less work out most of the things in it. Everything is spelled out with its in game name so its best to just read bits and guess what it means. Over the years I have developed some additional knowledge as have many others. If you post specific questions one of the experts will answer sooner or later.

3. As number two, is there anywhere posted a breakdown of equipment that states if it applies to infantry, mech, mot, armor or so on. I play SR mod and they usually are stated but quite frequently they're not. Especially various artillary upgrades. For what units they apply to is just a guess. Or maybe it's dependent on the mod?

See below

4. You knew I had to ask this. How in the world did you find this stuff out? Your aar's are loaded to the gills with this inside knowledge. I'm jealous. haha...no, really I just need all the help I can get with most challenging, but great fun SR hsr mod.

Reading the forums for long enough, reading between the lines and then model it to check if its true. The team who used to do all the investigating and provided most of this information moved onto HOI2 at the beta test stage so its left to the few that are left to pass it on.

5. I downloaded your Colossus untility! Is there a text on how to use somewhere? My intuition didn't work with it very well.

I'm afraid there aren't any instructions but here is a brief hint

Load the program
In the file selection boxes across the top select your main HOI folder, MOD folder (if using one - else main HOI folder again), the folder containing the 'country'.inc files for the scenario you are playing and the last one you select the actual scenario file. All these settings will be remebered between runs so you won't have to repeat it. Click the load button.

After that you can go around the tabs looking at different things. The only editing functuion is for leaders. On the leaders tab select a country and you will see their leaders. I always use the trait names button on any country I am going to play so that I can sort on traits and see what a leader can do.

For your earlier question, go to the techs tab, sub-tab unit review and select a unit type in the drop down combo box. This will show you a complete list of technologies that make changes to the unit types stats.

 

[bshirt]

WooHOO!!

That Colossus utulity is pure 100% dynamite!

"Now" I know what applies to motorized and what goes to mechanized and so on without having to endlessly search each type every time after a research completion and then do it all over again with a newer mod. "Now" I know what and why I'm researching things.

Holy Moly....just bloody wonderful. Your "hint" was very specific. I had the country file wrong before. This baby is a keeper. Bigtime.

Thanks!!

Okey Doke, last thing to do is check out your German mechanized aar.

Lastly, while I too have hoi2, until "someone" mods the game to have some national unit differentation, I'm staying with hoi. Everybody's different, right? Just my take. Plus I'm a thousand country miles away from mastering it. I've always been a wwII buff and Paradox has me in the vast addiction mode.

Well, that's it! I promise to quit bothering you with questions for awhile. We're talking boy scouts honor here. I've found what I was looking for and so much more.

Kanitatlan, and all the other kind and knowledgeable folks who took the time to help me I'm deeply in your debt and definately owe you all fifty or more ice cold beers!

THANK YOU!!