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Comments on Combat Formulas


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I have two suggestions regarding SC2 Combat Formulas:

First Proposal: Accounting for Combat Strength as a contributor to Readiness

Combat Strength currently plays no role whatsover on Combat Resolution. Combat Values depend on tech level, experience and, intrinsic unit type values. Unit size is never a part of the combat formulas. Unfortunately, this leads to David and Goliath effect that some times looks unrealistic.

For some time now I have been looking for a way to factor in Combat Strength into the combat formulas while preserving the existing turn mechanincs. This is my shot at it:

A unit facing much larger enemy units all around its front will have to divide resources to cover its flanks and rear, unless that unit is backed up by equally large supporting units which can cover its flanks and rear. Accordingly, we should compute an Adjacent Odds factor that looks at the Combat Strength of all units in the vicinity. This ratio is supposed to represent how much of the units capabilities have to be diverted to covering the flanks and the rear. When the Adjacent Odds falls beyond the critical value of 1, Readiness should be reduced.

The mechanics for implementing this idea would be as follows:

Inmediately before resolving an attack, the program would calculate for both the defender and the attacker the total adjacent enemy combat strengths. This will include the combined total strength of all units adjacent to the attacking and defending units. And, based on this count, the program would calculate for each attacker and defender an "Adjacent Odds" factor as follows:

Adjacent Odds Factor = Sum of all adjacent friendly combat strength (including the unit involved in combat) / Sum of all enemy combat strength (including the unit involved in combat).

If the Adjacent Odds Factor is less than one, readiness should be reduced as follows:

Readiness = Prior Readiness * Adjacent Odds Factor.

Notice that Readiness would be reduced but never increased by the Adjacent Odds Factor. Once all your flanks and rear are duly covered a unit its free to fully engage the enemy... no need to further adjustment. And also, notice that if you have a greater than one Adjacent Odds Factor, that probably means your opponent has a less than one Adjacent Odds Factor... and the opponnent's readiness is reduced accordingly.

Some questions do arise regarding the computation of the Adjacent Odds Factor:

Should it take into account solely Combat Strength, or (Combat Strength * Combat Value)? ...my inclination is to say no, but, I suggest playtesting.

What do we do with Artillery Bombardments, Naval Combat and Air Combat? My feeling is that the Adjacent Odds Factor should not apply here.

What about Amph. Landings and Paradrops? Again, my feelings is that the Adjacent Odds Factor should not apply here.

How do we define what adjacent means? I would only include units adjacent to the defending unit. I would not include units to the rear of the attacking unit. But, I would include units to the rear of the defending unit. Again, playtesting may be in order.

Second Proposal: Introducing a "Survivability Value" in Combat Formulas

The current "Defense" Combat Value is actually a counter attack value. "Defense" strength determines how much damage the defending unit will cause on the attacking unit. As SC2 stands, you cannot Mod a unit that will have high survivability, but low lethality.

Consider the case of an infantry unit subjected to an air bombardment: An infantry unit may or may not be able to inflict damage on an attacking airplane depending on how good are its anti air guns... but that is a different issue all together from an infantry units ability so survive a bombardment. However, during WWII infantry units were pretty good at surviving bombardments (whether from air or from artillery)... even if they were lacking adequate anti aircraft guns.

When creating a MOD, I would like to increase infantry's ability to survive bombardments (from airflleets and from artillery) without making it more lethal on counter attack.

I think SC2 is missing a "Survivability Value" which should be different from the "Counter Attack Value". This survivability value should be substracted from the opposing combat value to calculate losses. But the surviability value would not be used as the counter attacking value to calculate attackers losses. For that purpose we would use the existing "Defense Value" which could be renamed as "Counterattacking Value".

One advantage to this scheme is that it allows to decrease the level of lethality of the game as whole. As the game currently stands an increase in Defense Combat Value increases the lethality of the counter attack... if you want to decrease the lethality, this is not the way to go about it.

But, more important, my scheme allows a modder to increase the survivability of a particular unit without making it more lethal its attackers. ...and vice versa, a modder could make a particular unit quite lethal while making it less survivable.

WWII infantry units were pretty resilent. They were not as lethal as their armored counterparts, but they could survive quite intensive bombardments. Infantry should have a fairly good survivability value even if they have low Attack and Counter Attack Values.

On the other hand low tech armored units had pretty low survivability values (Panzer I's were known as tin coffins). Only heavy armored units should have good survivability values.

Armored survivability should increase with tech. However, I infantry's survivability should not increase with tech. ...unless you introduce a new tech for personal body armor. (Among land units, only armor's survivability should increase with tech. Artillery and Infantry's survivability value should not increase as tech increases. Not sure about air and naval units.)

I would really appreciate comments on these ideas...

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Combat Strength currently plays no role whatsover on Combat Resolution.
Oh yes it does. Go back and read the manual. ;)

The current "Defense" Combat Value is actually a counter attack value.
True to a point. Both attacker and defender losses are determined by their respective combat values. Defenders take losses based on the attacker's attack value, while attackers take losses based on the defender's defense (counter-attack) value. This is OK for the most part.

An issue I've noticed is that tech level upgrades will increase your opponents losses. This seems intuitive, but there's nothing in the formulas to account for "relative" tech levels. Two L4 tank groups in combat should have comparable losses to two L0 tank groups in combat. What we see though is increasingly heavier losses as the game progresses, and the player with initiative gains an advantage. It becomes easier to get breakthroughs and exploitations of a defense, and this tends to be destabilizing in the long run.

I don't have any good suggestions. Revisions of the combat formulas would be very complicated to get it right, and even then maybe not. It's an interesting puzzle to solve!

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Originally posted by pzgndr:

An issue I've noticed is that tech level upgrades will increase your opponents losses. This seems intuitive, but there's nothing in the formulas to account for "relative" tech levels. Two L4 tank groups in combat should have comparable losses to two L0 tank groups in combat. What we see though is increasingly heavier losses as the game progresses, and the player with initiative gains an advantage. It becomes easier to get breakthroughs and exploitations of a defense, and this tends to be destabilizing in the long run.

My proposal would take care of this... at least with regards to armor. I propose that increases in heavy armor will increase the Survivability Value of a unit. So a high tech armored unit would take lower losses in combat than their low tech counter parts.

As per my revised combat formulas the "Attack Value" would be diminished by the opposing unit's "Survivability Value". A unit with high "Survivability Value" would take lower losses.

Clearly, heavy armor tech should increase the survivability of armored units (and this units would take lower losses). Arguably, advanced aircraft tech should also increase the survivabilty of airfleets. ...samething for subs and heavy bombers. The case is not clear at all for other units and technologies.

Going back to my proposed revision for the formulas, my "Survivability Value" would be and item to be substracted off the Attacker's or Counter-Attacker's value. If "Survivability Value" of all units is set to 0, you would get the current combat formulas. So you could set to 0 this value and leave all existing scenarios as they currently are.

...but if this new field is created, a Modder could set this "Survivability Value" to some value higher than 0... so this type of unit would take lower losses during combat.

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Remember 'Leonadis & the Three Hundred Spartans' who at a highly defensible position held off the entire invading Persian Army for day's.

10's of thousands of Persian's attacked them and failed [including the Prized Elite Immortal's] until much later when a Goat Herder helped the Persians to Outflank the Spartan's [For his 30 pieces of Silver].

So!!!....Numbers alone are not always the deciding factor, Many factors including defence location/positioning as well as readiness of Defence are of paramount importance!.

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