Officer Ratio
This is simply a restating of the officer rules collected in one place
Unit org is multiplied by the officer ratio
Attack delay is adjusted by ((officer ratio - 100%) x 72)
It is also stated that officer ratio affects whether and when divisions break but currently I have no information on the exact rules for when a division breaks.
It is worth noting that if you use brigades all with the same officer requirement and org then the total org of your army is proportional to the number of officers. That is, your staying power is unaffected by the number of brigades you have built and only determined by the officer count. This is an important result as it clearly shows that if you are trying to hold a line total officers is a critical army feature.
Note that diluting your officer ratio by building more brigades will give you more firepower, the same org but greater attack delays.
Combat Events
Combat events are at first sight a fairly simple thing but some surprise conclusions come from analysing them. First let's start with the rules.
Each side will have doctrines that give them a chance of combat events occurring. The chance of a combat event is equal to the value from the relevant doctrine every hour (
is this correct? does anyone know for sure). Once a combat event starts no other combat events can start until it ends. A combat event lasts 8 hours.
One big unknown here is how the game evaluates the chance of a combat event. If it tests each in turn then the order of testing is important as the ones tested first will be more common. If it aggregates the chance of a friendly event and then chooses which occurred then the chance of a combat event is slightly increased. I have no idea what priority rules might apply between attacker and defender combat events.
The effects of the combat events can be seen in the file "combat_events.txt" and are fairly simple to interpret. The following is an analysis of the temporary impact on battle winning capability of each combat event
Assault
This increases damage inflicted by the attacker by 25% and as such is clearly a temporary +25% for the attacker. If the attacker is going to win this will also shorten the battle as casualties are being inflicted more quickly.
Encirclement
This increases attacker damage inflicted by +25% and defender by +5%. Ignoring other effects this is a 125/105 = +19% for the attacker. There is also an increase of 5 in combat width. If you have units in reserve to take advantage of this and they move forward then this can easily be a greater advantage but in my experience most encirclements do not involve additional units entering combat. Note that the defender can also take advantage of the increased combat width
Shock
This temporarily decreases the damage done by the defender by -25%. This amounts to a 100/75 = +33% for the attacker. Note how subtracting from 100 gives a bigger advantage than an increase. However, the temporary advantage also involves a decrease in combat intensity and hence has a smaller contribution to a lengthy battle than other events might have. This event will not allow an attacker to win sooner.
Breakthrough
This is probably the weakest attack combat event offering +25% for the attacker and +15% for the defender. This gives a 125/115 = +8.7% advantage to the attacker and the only additional advantage is improved advance speed. This improved speed will rarely make much difference since the attack delay rules will almost certainly stall the following exploitation and prevent this movement improvement from impacting the enemy defence. It may be significant in later game if you have more or less eliminated attack delay for your forces. Also it will have some relevance around the retreat rules if you have the enemy unit(s) cut off but not surrounded.
This gives us sufficient events to consider some analysis. If I have researched all 4 and have 12% chance for each then each hour I have a 48% chance of an event and with each event lasting 8 hours an expectation of an event being in progress 8 out of 9 hours for the duration of the battle. This means that combat events can have quite a profound impact on the game. If I evaluate combat events as being on average a +20% advantage then each 3% chance of an event amounts to 8 hours of event out of 33 which is close to +5% combat advantage from each step of each combat event. Now, in truth, because events block other events the advantage only exists for the first step researched followed by significant diminishing returns. However, there is a secondary bonus of competing with enemy events and blocking them so NOT having the doctrine offers a disadvantage.
Having a large number of event doctrines against an enemy with none is likely to offer a maximum benefit equivalent to approximately +20%. Note that this benefit is not the same as a combat efficiency modifier as it is just a damage modifier. Normal combat modifiers multiply both attack and defence strength giving them a slightly enhanced effect as they both increase the damage done to the enemy and reduce friendly casualties (a bit).
delay = inverse of breakthrough
counterattack = inverse of shock
tactical_withdrawal = inverse of encirclement
ambush = inverse of assault
In evaluating these inverses it is worth considering that a +25% effect is not equivalent to a -25% effect (as seen earlier). The ratio of 125/100 (+25%) is different to 100/75 (+33%). Since the defence events have more negative modifiers this means that defensive events are very slightly more effective that attack events. The difference is rather small but not completely irrelevant to the game.
It is also worth noting that the width reduction events for the defence are significantly more effective than the width increase events for the attack. First of all being negative they represent a higher percentage difference and secondly they have instant effect and the reserve advance rates affect how much more than 8 hours the impact lasts whereas on the attacking side the reserve advance rate affects how much less than 8 hours the impact lasts.
Command Structure
The HQ structure is an important part of the game and can yield very significant benefits to the units in that command structure. The basic effects of HQs and their leaders are shown in the following table.
Code:
Level Range (km) Leader Effect
Theatre 2000 Reduces stacking penalty by 1% per skill level
Army Group 600 Reduces supply consumption by 5% per skill level
Army 400 Increases org by +2% of base unit org for each skill level
Corps 200 Multiplies reserve advance rate by skill level
Division Increases combat efficiency by 5% per skill level
On top of the particular benefits from each level of the structure there are benefits from leader traits. A unit will receive the full benefits of the leader commanding it and then additional reduced benefits from all parent HQs in its chain of command. As you move up through the chain of command the benefit is halved at each level but the reduction is from steps up the chain not command level so a division attached directly to an army gets 50% trait benefit from the army commander rather than the 25% it gets if attached via a corps HQ.
If an HQ unit is committed to combat then it does not count as attached to itself. In other words a corps HQ is treated like a division attached directly to the army HQ above it and the corps commander acts only as a division commander for that unit. The HQ will gain no corps commander special benefits (reserve advance improvement) but will get one step closer to the higher commanders for benefiting from their traits.
The combat efficiency modifier for leaders is pooled additively into a single bonus including the divisional commander skill bonus and benefits from direct combat efficiency traits (offensive doctrine, defensive doctrine) at all levels. Note that the panzer leader trait benefit is added to the separate combined arms bonus, engineer trait is added directly to the river-crossing penalty and fortress buster trait adds directly to the fortress penalty.
If the command hierarchy of a unit isn't connected up to a theatre HQ then the levels that do exist operate exactly as normal. When there is an out of range link in the line of command this has exactly the same effect as not being attached to the superior HQ, all the connected levels apply as normal and the out of range higher HQs are ignored.
The command net for HQs is based on each HQ/unit in the chain being within the command radius of the next higher HQ. (Note that prior to SF 2.01 beta the unit itself had to be within the command radius of each HQ in its chain of command, it is now sufficient that the parent HQ is connected into the chain). This means that a unit can be up to 3,200km from its theatre HQ (used to be 2,000km) although a linear chain like this is in practice impossible to achieve. If a unit has an out of range problem anywhere in its command chain then its HQ icon will show red and the tooltip will explain where the broken link is. Any out of range links are also clearly shown in the command links display when you zoom out.
Needs rules for experience gain at different command levels.
Setting up a command hierarchy
I have this as a separate section as there is quite a lot of discussion to be had about setting up a command hierarchy. The first issue is to look at the downside of HQs. Each HQ brigade you create will add 100 to your officer requirements. How many officers this actually costs you depends on your officer ratio (or target officer ratio). Also the brigade is going to take 1.67 manpower and 6 IC days (yes, that's all under the current reinforcement rules) to bring up to full strength although there is an argument for blocking reinforcements to HQs as their strength does not affect their command capabilities.
The manpower and officer demands of HQs are a good reason for wanting to have as few as possible and use maximal command packing. The rules for ground units are that an HQ can have up to 5 subordinate units attached. This means a corps HQ can command 5 divisions, an army can command 5 corps (or divisions) and so on. If you really want to minimise the number of HQs used then you can use the following set up criteria.
A little aside to start with, when you create HQs you can only create the next level up of command (ie from a division you can only create a corps HQ) or you can create a new theatre HQ. This isn't a real restriction as there is no penalty for creating a corps HQ then creating an army HQ and then deleting the corps HQ.
For optimal packing you create an HQ for the first unit, then attach units to this HQ until it is full. Then create an HQ of a level up and attach our first HQ. Continue creating new subordinate HQs and additional HQs at higher level as long as you need to for a continuous command structure
except you stop a little bit early when the total divisions left will fit into the empty slots in the higher HQs you already have. When you finish this you have an optimal command structure.
To absolutely minimise HQs you need to make sure that all your divisions have the maximum brigades allowed and your corps HQs (at least) have troops attached to them to make them into divisions. Assuming you are allowed 5 brigade divisions this allows 29 brigades plus an HQ in a corps, 149 brigades plus 6 HQs in an army and so on. This sort of density of command is going to be relatively rare and there will tend to be under population at the higher levels to allow your command structure to stretch across the theatre assigned to it.
Note that the above is not strictly true as you can attach an unlimited number of divisions directly to a theatre HQ. This is sometimes a reasonable way to operate but does lose you some of the important lower level benefits. Also lower level HQs will extend the theatre command radius.
My preferred command hierarchy tends to be very densely packed with divisions and my divisions tend to be big but the cost of relaxing this a little is fairly limited. It is also often a good idea to allow a bit of slack at various levels for convenience in reorganise commands during a campaign and to allow for large divisions to split for exploitation manoeuvres.
Reorganising your command structure during a campaign can be quite important and does require that a plenty of empty command slots are left. It is quite common for troops to drift away from the correct HQ as fighting progresses and it is much more convenient to be able to detach and then reattach without having to create empty slots as the user interface will conveniently offer the closest empty command slot. The new command hierarchy display is critical for monitoring these command range breaches and corrections.
When operating with limited forces spread out over a large theatre it can be beneficial to only put in the higher level command elements as these offer the longest command ranges. If you have 5 port defence divisions spread out over a large area then commanding with an army HQ or even an army group HQ can mean they can all be covered by one HQ and still benefit from more than one command level. The only major loss from this is the specific corps HQ bonus (reserve advance rates) which is not particularly useful in this context anyway. It can be appropriate to create multiple army group HQs directly commanding divisions should the spread justify it. Just remember that a flattened command hierarchy amplifies the effects from high level HQ leader traits but reduces the total number that can apply. Just remember a command layer with no traits is reducing the effect of traits from higher up and is only providing the special benefits of that command layer.
