Game mechanics questions

[komninosm]

I'd like to know some things about game mechanics (in addition to my Spain & Turkey thread about surprise).

For exammple, when an AF intercepts, does it use it's attack value or defense value? What about escorts? What about fighting carriers? Does the naval attack get used all the times? Do carriers use air attack or air defense?

The manual is pretty helpful with formulae and all, but how does terrain defense bonus work exactly? From the formula it affects defender losses not attacker losses so the terms SD/TD/AD/ND for it, are a bit misleading. When a tank is in a mountain it has TD+4 and SD+2. So when it is attacked by a tank it gets -4*readiness in losses right? And -2*r when attacked by an army. The terrain bonus category depends on the attacker type not the defender type right? At least that's what my experiences/tests tell me.

Also do these bonuses for resources depend on status? For example if a city or fort is at 50%, does it give half the bonuses?

Finaly (for now), how does the AA bug work exactly? Do people play with no AA tech allowed (other than starting levels)? BTW, isn't the 1:5:30 bid system a bit high? I mean a 200 bid gives 6000 MPPs to USSR right? Or am I getting it wrong?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I meant to say USSR not USA, honest :-p

[ June 29, 2005, 06:19 PM: Message edited by: komninosm ]

[hellraiser]

AA bug (as I know it) - AF placed in a city having AA (i.e. London - 1 lvl of AA by default) is forcing a Luftwaffe unit to intercept, dealing more damage than normal - each lvl of AA counts as a Jet level or something. (applies to intercepts only, to my knowledge, not to direct hits)

1/5/30 ... x/y/z means UK gets x mpps, USA y mpps and russia z mpps => USA gets 5*200 (in your example) and russia 30*200.

The bidding systems were pushed to these values because a veteran player playing axis is very difficult to be stopped otherwise (even in 1/5/20). Axis is too strong in this game. IMHO, bidding systems should be adjusted according to the experience of the players. Veteran vs veteran - 1/5/30; intermediate vs intermediate - 1/5/20; rookie vs rookie - doesn't matter

For the formulae and stuff ask Terif, he's a living SC Enciclopedy

[Terif]

- AFs intercepting:

The AF that attacks an enemy target and gets intercepted is now the defender in the airbattle and uses its defence value (important in carrier-airbattles). That´s also the reason of the AA-Bonus: the AF is now attacked over their airfields and anti-aircraft guns (in cities/ressources) will help them in the battle. Each level AA is equal one level Jets.

- carriers are ships, so an AF battling with a carrier will always use its naval attack/defence value while the carrier uses its air values in airbattles. So AFs can´t increase their combat values vs carriers via tech, but carriers will greatly enhance their capabilities with Jets and LR. That´s why carriers are very weak at the beginning of the war and should better not fight against enemy AFs, but will grow very strong later in the game and often are able to turn the tide after/during D-day. Allies have usually not more mpps than Axis in the long run, but they have the potentially better weapons (carriers/ships) in the later stage of the war so they can overcompensate the axis mpp superiority and beat Axis back.

- terrain does not increase losses for the attacker, but only reduces the damage for the defender. The bonus depends on the attacker type (tank/soft/air/naval unit). So it is e.g. better to attack cities and mountains with infantery and not with tanks since defenders are better protected against tanks. HQs are best placed in mountains since there they are perfectly protected against airstrikes and can be hardly killed by them - cities with entrenchment are also a very good place. The terrain bonus is multiplied with the readiness of the defending unit, the city/fortress level has only indirectly influence since it provides supply and supply increases readiness - but as long as the defender gets enough supply from somewhere else, it doesn´t matter.

- Bidding system:

The size of the bid highly depends on the experience of both players and especially the axis one, since axis only has an advantage when the axis player knows how to play his side and the advantage increases with the experience. Some average values:

new vs new:

no bid necessary (Allies even can be in the advantage here)

intermediate vs intermediate:

bid 200-300 system 1:10 (or 100-150 in 1:5:20)

experienced players:

bid 150-300 in 1:5:20 (standard is around 200-250)

veteran vs veteran:

bid 200-300 in 1:5:30

[komninosm]

So with intercepting you become the attacker, but what if there are escorts? Do they become the attacker then?

Also what about entrenchment (for air units)? I'm guessing it doesn't affect intercetptors or escorts, but what if your AF targets directly an enemy AF with entrenchment 2? Also what if the AF is in a mountain? (for direct attacks) Do terrain defense bonuses work (less losses in cities? I'm guessing the AntiA bonus gets used here too.

Also, units in Cities get the AntiA bonus (+1 to +5), not the City AD value which is 2+AntiA level, right?

BTW, isn't it weird that when you attack an empty city with a ship you get losses (and too many in my opinion), but if there's a land unit you don't? I mean do the city anti-ship artillery suddenly dissapear or something? I know it's only math and an effect of the formulae and the need for land units to have 0 ND for when they are attacked outside, but still...

Carriers need at least Jet 1 to compete with AFs, 1 AirAttack and 3 AD, compared to 4 NA and 2 ND (base). Even then the Carriers cost 700 vs 400 (base and the extra AF costs with jet tech are countered by increased STR points or LR tech increases Carrier costs) so it's gonna need at least Jet 3 to become cost efficient. And Carrier AA catches up quicker than their AD (because +1 bonuses to base 1 are better than to base 3, the AD. Basically at Jet 3 the Carrier Vs AF is 4-2 on attack and 6-4 on defense for 175% cost though which means more STR points as well as more firepower). On second thought I think it takes Jet 4 to become cost efficient. Not to mention that AFs get HQ bonuses and stuff. On the other hand, Carriers can be parked in Ports for more defense bonuses and AntiA bug on top (while AFs don't get any benefit from AntiA against ships and only terrain bonuses when defending) and be repaired there too.

But I guess experience is the big equaliser, because (assuming around 100% readiness) even with 2 stars 4-2 becomes 4-1 and 6-4 becomes 6-3 and so on. With 4 stars Carriers are almost immune when attacking, unless of course the AFs have experience too.

They also get very good readiness because their STR gets multiplied x2 and LR tech makes them even more powerful. The carrier max is 133% while AF can get at most 127% with a 4 star Manstein.

While we're at it, combat morale bonus works on a 1:1 basis of HQ experience right? So a 4 star Billiote rank 4 is equal to a 0 star Rommel rank 8, right? Also does HQ experience affect/decrease its own losses? If a HQ is in a battle it gets 0.1 XP for defending, does it also get the +/-0.1 for battles involving HQed units? I'm guessing it only affects the up to 5 units it commands and not itself.

PS: Aren't 9000 MPPs for Russia a bit too much even for veterans (bid 300 on 1:5:30)?

EDIT: Also as tech goes up, don't carriers become very vulnerable to ships (BB, CA and Sub)? Isn't this counter-historic or something?

[ June 30, 2005, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: komninosm ]

[Terif]

- escorts would change the situation (attacker/defender) again, but in a HvsH game you will nearly never see this since nobody uses bombers .

- entrenchment and terrain bonus only counts if you attack a unit directly and not in interception airbattles. So it is a bad idea to attack an entrenched AF in a mountain directly - you will do only 0-1 damage.

- if you only take Jets into account, then carriers in deed would only be efficient at lv 4+. But since most of their readiness comes from their strength points, LR is also a factor and experience is very important if you can attack enemy AFs diretly with your carriers - then they have expected losses of 0 with 4 stars and will be deadly for any enemy air in range (another reason why LR is important for carriers). Therefore carriers will be deadly weapons later in the war (1942-47) but in the early years without tech and experience should better hide when enemy air appears.

- HQ experience works different than combat unit experience. For combat units it increases the attack/defence values and also decreases the own losses. But HQ experience increases the readiness of the units under its command - each medal is equal 1 HQ rank point (= 1 strength point = 1 supply point). So Billote with 4 medals is equal to Rommel without a medal.

- an experienced axis player will kill or cut off all russian front units including both tanks and 1-3 AFs. Russia needs enough mpps to rebuild its entire army and to also invest in research (Germany usually has 10 chits). 9000 mpps is not so much, especially since Axis often has built up forces against Russia consisting of around 15000-20000 mpps.

- carriers ARE vulnerable to enemy ships, therefore Allies should protect them with their fleet. And that´s also why against a prepared allied player it is a very bad idea to build axis carriers - they are toast against the royal navy .

[komninosm]

In the vein of Carrier, AF (and BB/CA/Sub) comparison, how about that anti-tank tech? Doesn't it pretty much make tanks ineffective after a couple of levels?

Does anyone build rockets? I used to have fun with them in Russia before tech was normalised and tech level 5 was quite feasible early on, but now they're just too expensive and too weak and their range is small and damage decreases with range and they are slow on top of it. Lately I'm building more and more armies and corps for the Barbarossa than before.

PS: I noticed in SC2 Carriers no longer are naval, they are their own category. Obviously Hubert saw the discrepancies here...

[Terif]

- If the enemy has AT lv 2+, then you should better not attack his units with tanks any more. But still tanks are very useful for a Blitzkrieg style battle (surounding+cutting of enemy troops) or to make breakthroughs and defend them. In the defence tanks are still very powerful.

- I sometimes use rockets, not so often any more with the 1:5:30 bid system like earlier, but sometimes. Precondition is that France falls not too late so you have enough time for research and you need a bit of luck for them . You can e.g. try to invest 2-3 chits first and if you have luck and get lv 3 rockets you can go for them but still have other options.

[komninosm]

Rockets are very expensive and very slow, slower than armies and you can't even transport them. The only front you can usually use them is the Russian front and because of scorched Earth you can't operate them where you want to most of the time so you have to use the ones you start the war with If you build new ones they take many turns to reach the front near Moscow. Even so a few lucky tech advances make them pretty powerful with army support, replacing AF killing duties with a better soft attack. But it's the range decrease to damage that kills them for me. I wish it was less of a decrease (like 0.5 per hex). At any rate 0 level rockets are the most useless unit and level 1 rockets probably the second most useless one. I think rockets should have at least 1 more hex range to start with and with no penalty for that one. So a level 1 they would have 3 hex range with 2 damage for hex 1 and 2, 1 damage for hex 3.

About tanks, is it logical how they become defense tools later on, from a realism perspective? I hope Hubert changes this as well in SC2, just like Carriers.

[ July 02, 2005, 08:06 AM: Message edited by: komninosm ]

[komninosm]

While we're at it I've got another question. Why does the readiness of a unit sometimes drop when I move it before attacking. Why does this not happen always but only sometimes? I can't figure it out.

[Terif]

If your unit is supported by a HQ, then if you move it the command structure suffers and readiness drops slightly - for unsupported units it makes no difference and so readiness stays the same if you move them.

[komninosm]

Hmm, that's a weird rule. From the manual I got the impression that all units using blitz attack would have to recalculate their supply before attacking. This seems to be a 3% only penalty always and only for HQed units.

In other matters I'd like to know the randomness factor in combat. If the game states losses say 2-2 then it may add +/-1 to each of those numbers, or not. Making it a 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 3-1, 3-2 or 3-3.

My question is what is the chance of each result. Is it 33% for +1, 33% for -1 and 33% for 0? Or does it depend on the exact casualties numbers from the formulae which are stuff like 2.354 and not interger numbers? From ingame experience I have to say it isn't totally random and the latter is true. For example I tried a battle that was very hard for the attacker at 1-0 and it was VERY hard (many reloads) to finally get a 0-1 result. But I tried anoter more close battle that was still 1-0 (but I guess it was like 0.6-0.4, while my first battle was probably 1.2-0.2 or something like that) and I got a 0-1 a lot sooner. I also tried many tests to assure it wasn't a lucky fluke. If it was totally random it would have to be a 1 in 9 deal. So what is the truth?