Power of armored divisions

[Jorgen_CAB]

Good point!

For convenience, I put some of the division data on the wiki.
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Support_units

Oh, i forgot.. i read that and it looks nice... perhaps you could also put in the general attack values for each division against 30,50,70,100 percent softness. That is a great help when understanding the combat abilities against other types of divisions.

 

[jju_57]

I have done some more probability tests after modifications...

I have raised the dug-in factor to 5% per level, raised the attack penalty into all terrain by 10% (15% for woods) and increased the penalties for armor in difficult terrain by another 10%. Here are my results...

Example 1

A: 2xInfantry-Divisions (2xInf), 1918, no leader and no experience
Defends in forest against...
B: 1xInfantry (3xInf), 1939, Leader skill 3, offensive trait, 20% experience

A: 50% dug-in bonus
B: -30% forest penalty, 15% leadership bonus, 10% offensive bonus and 20% experience bonus.

A: Will fire 12 shots a round
B: Will fire 13 shots a round

Conclusions: Side A will win since they have 120 total morale while the attacker has 90 moral, though it will be a long slow defense. This seem to work much better than before.



Example 2

A: 1xInfantry Divisions (3xInf), 1939, no leader, no experience
Defends in a forest against...
B: 1xArmored-Divisiosn (3xArm, 1xAC) 1939, Leader skill 3, Ofensive and panzer trait, experience 20%

A: 50% dug-in bonus
B: -65% forest penalty, 15% leadership bonus, 10% offensive bonus and 20% experience bonus, 30% combined arms bonus.

A: Will fire 11 shots per hour
B: Will fire 18 shots per hour

Conclusiosn: The infantry has lower ORG and shoot fewer shots per hour and so will be routed and defeated. The armor will take approximately 2/3 of its ORG in loss.


Example 3

A: 1xInfantry Divisions (3xInf), 1939, no leader, no experience
Defends in a forest against...
B: 1xArmored-Divisiosn (3xArm, 1xAC) 1939, Panzer Leader, no experience

A: 50% dug-in bonus
B: -65% forest penalty, 30% combined arms bonus

A: Will fire 11 shots per hour
B: Will fire 11 shots per hour

Conclusiosn: The infantry has lower ORG but now will fire same number of shots. The armor will still win, but will be almost completely drained of ORG.

Armor are still too efficient in my opinion, any suggestions?!?

Yea build armor. Look at WW2 armor wins even in heavy forest areas. 1940, 1944 and even 1945 battles.

 

[unmerged(157014)]

That is not true, please re-read my above posts... but i give you a short explanation here as well.

Most units already have a defense value greater than attack value. Two equal forces will in almost all circumstances have a greater defense value than attack value. Therefore changing them will not change the outcome of that particular battle. Only changing the terrain penalties for the attacker will do that.
Attack values are way more important in general than defense values. The defense value pretty much tell you how long a battle will last (it's a little more complicated, but not much)

I have read your posts a number of times, but I believe you're ignoring some critical variables purely because in the current version they've been set to some poor values. You're already tweaking variables to make the combat work better so why not fix these rather than ignoring them?

"Two equal forces will in almost all circumstances have a greater defense value than attack value." This indicates ONLY that the toughness values are, in general, too high. Defensiveness & toughness give a chance to avoid taking a hit. Increasing them will have no effect at all in this case because they're already maxed out: i.e. both attacker & defender are always getting a chance to avoid taking a hit from every shot anyhow. However, lowering them WILL have an effect: i.e. in later shots, the unit will NOT get a chance to avoid being hit. Therefore to give the defender an advantage, toughness should be reduced. Attacking units will then start taking some unavoidable hits which means that on average the attacking unit is taking more damage than the defending unit.

"I have omitted the toughness and defense values above because in all cases they have been way higher than the attack values, thus of no interest to us." - Precisely! They need to be reduced so that they WAD!

This is all based on the info from the manual. If some of the information is out of date or there's posts on the forums with errata then please give a link... The manual is a bit ambiguous regarding some aspects of combat resolution: for instance there's no information about what the "avoid being hit" probability is for defensiveness & toughness. There should really be 2 sets of hard & soft attack values, one for attack & one for defence. (but maybe PI thought that was just too many variables to tweak).

Cheers, Jason.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yea build armor. Look at WW2 armor wins even in heavy forest areas. 1940, 1944 and even 1945 battles.

That are not very correct, you should look at the OOB for most of them. They include lots and lots of infantry and artillery. For example, the German attack on through the Adennes Forrest in 1944. Those forces were not divisions of (3xArm, 1xAC) they were a combination of (1xArm,2xMech,1xSpArt),(3xMot),(3xInf,1xArt) divisions.
Most of the initial breakthroughs was done by artillery and infantry. Tanks could not spearhead an attack in heavy forest like that. That is my whole point with my arguing this.

The constellation of (3xArm) should be worthless in difficult terrain, that are what I'm trying to correct with some tinkering of the rules.

I also want to make defense slightly stronger overall, currently attacking and win battles are too easy because of how the combat system works. Basically, if you have a higher attack value you will win the combat, to some extent defense and toughness are important, but not very much. Those stats basically just tell how long the fight will take, especially when multiple units fight on each side. Softness currently plays a much too great an effect on combat, making those units almost untouchable.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have read your posts a number of times, but I believe you're ignoring some critical variables purely because in the current version they've been set to some poor values. You're already tweaking variables to make the combat work better so why not fix these rather than ignoring them?

"Two equal forces will in almost all circumstances have a greater defense value than attack value." This indicates ONLY that the toughness values are, in general, too high. Defensiveness & toughness give a chance to avoid taking a hit. Increasing them will have no effect at all in this case because they're already maxed out: i.e. both attacker & defender are always getting a chance to avoid taking a hit from every shot anyhow. However, lowering them WILL have an effect: i.e. in later shots, the unit will NOT get a chance to avoid being hit. Therefore to give the defender an advantage, toughness should be reduced. Attacking units will then start taking some unavoidable hits which means that on average the attacking unit is taking more damage than the defending unit.

"I have omitted the toughness and defense values above because in all cases they have been way higher than the attack values, thus of no interest to us." - Precisely! They need to be reduced so that they WAD!

This is all based on the info from the manual. If some of the information is out of date or there's posts on the forums with errata then please give a link... The manual is a bit ambiguous regarding some aspects of combat resolution: for instance there's no information about what the "avoid being hit" probability is for defensiveness & toughness. There should really be 2 sets of hard & soft attack values, one for attack & one for defence. (but maybe PI thought that was just too many variables to tweak).

Cheers, Jason.

according to my field tests in the game the defense and toughness do seem to work as it is suggested in the manual. If you fiddle with them you get a nasty problem and that is that combat will be over before it started. The defense and toughness values are actually doing what it is suppose to do. They make, for example infantry able to delay a superior force for quite some time, because they will take less damage.

I have actually tested to lower the defense and toughness, and the result will not be very good. making sure that there are slightly fewer attacks made will have a much more realistic effect on combat. At least from what I have tested so far.

Otherwise I understand exactly what you mean and it would have the effect you say. It's just that the side effects are far worse.

 

[unmerged(157014)]

according to my field tests in the game the defense and toughness do seem to work as it is suggested in the manual. If you fiddle with them you get a nasty problem and that is that combat will be over before it started. The defense and toughness values are actually doing what it is suppose to do. They make, for example infantry able to delay a superior force for quite some time, because they will take less damage.

I have actually tested to lower the defense and toughness, and the result will not be very good. making sure that there are slightly fewer attacks made will have a much more realistic effect on combat. At least from what I have tested so far.

Otherwise I understand exactly what you mean and it would have the effect you say. It's just that the side effects are far worse.

From what you say, it seems the defense values are correct and shouldn't be interfered with, but that toughness and attack are too high? Lowering toughness on it's own wouldn't affect the ability of infantry to delay a superior force but it would cause the attacker to receive more damage. The primary reason I suggest a reduction in toughness is that it's a per-unit-type modifer, whereas the terrain modifier affects all units. For example, infantry attacking (especially with heavy integrated support units such as HMG's & IG's) are at much more of a disadvantage than attacking armour which can still fire on the move. I still reckon that we need both attack & defense variants of the hard & soft attack values but we'll probably have to wait for HOI4 for that .

 

[jju_57]

I think this whole argument is abstract at best. Doesn't matter if there are 10 infantry divisions. If they are all Zulu spear throwers then no damage will be done to the tanks. Later on a small force with AT weapons can get tons of hits. And really not all of these so called wooded provices are like the tree only stuff found in Siberia. Very few of the provices in the game, especially central Europe, are that heavly wooded and most had a decent road network through or around them.

This whole thread really has the feel that you want to build infantry only armies and rule the world. After all the AI won't build these 3 armor one AC divisions so what is the real issue here?

 

[Rambo]

Hmm after reading through this whole thread I must admit a little bit of it is over my head, but I think I understand your basic arguements. However I have to agree, that Armor was king of the battlefield in WWII. Especially with the advent of the advanced Tanks later in the war. Heavy tanks could easily traverse through a forest, running over trees with ease. I think the only place they would have a big disadvantage would be swamps and urban areas.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Good point!

For convenience, I put some of the division data on the wiki.
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Support_units

Minor nitpick:

I think those IC days are wrong. From what I've seen each unit upgrade adds to the cost of the unit so those in 1947 should be much more expensive.

 

[FrEDa]

Hmm, this reminds me of an old HoI2 thread in regards to similar things and especially ground_def_efficiency.

If you want to dig into this you will have to construct statistical data and tweak the numbers to match what you consider a likely outcome.

/F

 

[pnt]

For convenience, I put some of the division data on the wiki.
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Support_units

Minor nitpick:

I think those IC days are wrong. From what I've seen each unit upgrade adds to the cost of the unit so those in 1947 should be much more expensive.

Oh, you could be right. I just took the numbers from

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Land_units

At least the wiki is self-consistent.

 

[pnt]

Oh, i forgot.. i read that and it looks nice... perhaps you could also put in the general attack values for each division against 30,50,70,100 percent softness. That is a great help when understanding the combat abilities against other types of divisions.

That will be a lot of extra columns!

The attacks that are there are against 100% and 0% soft (100% hard) targets. What if I add 33% and 67%?

EDIT: OK, added 33% and 67%.

 

[unmerged(59367)]

Basically, defending and attacking in the same terrain is absolutely the same for both sides: guys firing against other guys.

So what makes the difference between attacking and defending? Generally speaking the main things are the entrenched bonus (dug in bonus) for the defender and the possibility to move fast for the attacker: is the possibility for the defender to hide and shoot safely and the possibility for the attacker to move fast towars the defender location to eliminate him.

In a plane terrain, the defender and the attacker have the same conditions, so I don't agree with a penalty for attacking. If the defender is entrenched, there should be a bonus for him then, but if the attacker can move quickly without any forest, mountain to climb, jungle or river to cross, etc they shouldn't have any penalty. Remember that after all, there're a lot of bonus and penalties that conditionates even more the battle (leader, weather, events, organization, etc), but I don't see any need to infringe any additional penalty for the attacker in a plain terrain, that's basically the same for both sides.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Hmm after reading through this whole thread I must admit a little bit of it is over my head, but I think I understand your basic arguements. However I have to agree, that Armor was king of the battlefield in WWII. Especially with the advent of the advanced Tanks later in the war. Heavy tanks could easily traverse through a forest, running over trees with ease. I think the only place they would have a big disadvantage would be swamps and urban areas.

First of all. I never said anything about armor not being the king of the battlefield, none of my tweaks will make armor worthless in the slightest.

The armor constellation that I used was a (3xArm, 1xAC) which is totally unhistorical and would be utterly rubbish in Forest, Jungle, Mountains and Urban terrain (even if they contain some infantry it will not be much). Currently they are THE best brigade to combat in those areas, despite all the penalties that they receive. That is what I'm trying to correct.

If you read my example above you can see how it easily managed to rout the Mountaineers defending in the mountains. This constellation will easily rout two infantry divisions entrenched in an Urban area as well, despite all penalties.

A properly supported Armour-Division say (1xArm,2xMech,1xSpArt) should be able to rout a comparable infantry division, and with my tweaks it can. I just want stupid constellations such as 3xArm to not be effective in those areas.
Anyone who claim that armor was king in WWII and not bring up the support infantry and artillery they needed don't know what they are talking about.

I want to do the following...

* Make defense easier. It is my opinion that it is too easy to win combats in general. This is not a boost of infantry, it is a general boost of all divisions and all combination of divisions.

* Reduce low softness brigades attack (and to some degree defense) abilities in very difficult ground. Such as Forest, Mountain, Jungle and Urban terrain. This is also becasue currently low soft brigades beat everything in the game in any terrain despite penalties.

Anyone who thinks that an equal force of unsupported armor would run over an equally advanced infantry force who are dug-in inside a thick forested area don't know what they talk about. Mines alone will probably blow up half of those tanks.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

In a plane terrain, the defender and the attacker have the same conditions, so I don't agree with a penalty for attacking. If the defender is entrenched, there should be a bonus for him then, but if the attacker can move quickly without any forest, mountain to climb, jungle or river to cross, etc they shouldn't have any penalty. Remember that after all, there're a lot of bonus and penalties that conditionates even more the battle (leader, weather, events, organization, etc), but I don't see any need to infringe any additional penalty for the attacker in a plain terrain, that's basically the same for both sides.

Yes I agree with this. I currently have removed the 10% penalty that I had previously on plains and made the Dug-In bonus greater. You can now get a 50% bonus when dug in. This means that on a plain you usually will need about 70-80% more forces to overcome the defenders. And I still think that is easy when you look how it was historically when you fought entrenched forces.

I will run some more test with this later and see what results that I get.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

That will be a lot of extra columns!

The attacks that are there are against 100% and 0% soft (100% hard) targets. What if I add 33% and 67%?

EDIT: OK, added 33% and 67%.

Nice, I think that are good enough.

 

[GLENN]

Leaving out any parmeters makes your test invalid.

You need to consider Defense value x Defense effectivity = Avoid being hit


Generals and experience count too.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Leaving out any parmeters makes your test invalid.

You need to consider Defense value x Defense effectivity = Avoid being hit


Generals and experience count too.

I have... though, in all of the examples here defensiveness has not been an issue since all combat have had defensive (toughness) values well above the attack value. This means that all hits have been made with an 80% chance of not taking damage.

So, no I have not left out defense as a factor so far.

 

[pnt]

The problem with Toughness and Defensiveness is that their numerical values only enter when you are fighting a superior force, but then can only affect how quick your defeat is. This global feature does not depend on any modifiers. For practical purposes both these parameters can thus be ignored. What really matters for division design is softness and the combined arms bonus.

Nice, I think that are good enough.

I updated the wiki page slightly. The new link, with a more relevant path, is

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Divisions

The overview is now given on the parent page:

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Division_building

 

[icon41gimp]

Currently they are THE best brigade to combat in those areas, despite all the penalties that they receive. That is what I'm trying to correct.

The problem is that you're not normalizing their huge costs at all. You can't simply compare brigade to brigade or division to division, it's like comparing a battleship to a destroyer.

You need to hold a constant, like IC-days...manpower...supply drain...and balance the two sides using that as the fulcrum. What you're trying to do is going to generate 3 more leaks in the pipe every time you patch one.