Fire HE Effectiveness, what does it mean?

[robc04_1]

I am trying the demo and when I fire on the first column of infantry my airbourne has a fire HE effectiveness number of 210. What does it mean? How many casualties would you expect it to cause? Is there anyway to see how range decreases potential damage other then trying to find the info in the data files?

I have been playing Unity of Command and am used to the UI showing the relevent data to make decisions. I don't believe games like this should leave the players in the dark about the mechanics.

Edit: I do understand that the HE rating is used for attacks on soft targets and AP is used on hard targets. I just don't undersatnd how the number translates to expected casualties or how range effects the firepower.

Edit 2: What would a unit have an APAttack[0] and APAttack[1] value > 0, but have all APEffectiveness[] values = 0? Wouldn't this mean it never penetrates any armor?
Thanks

[Merr]

Edit: I do understand that the HE rating is used for attacks on soft targets and AP is used on hard targets. I just don't undersatnd how the number translates to expected casualties or how range effects the firepower.

The HE rating is more like a comparison rating between two units, I suppose to give you a ballpark idea.

The HE effectiveness you see on the 'tooltip' (e.g. 210) is the average effectiveness (not to exceed 250). Basically, it works like this (glancing at the code) ;
- The value is the damage against every man. This damage is reduced by half for each subsequent attack against the next man.
- For example, lets assume the 210 value was the 'actual' damage value. If it's over 100, you kill one man. So, a value of 210 means you kill one man, then the value is halved (105). Again, the value is over 100, so you kill another man, then half the value (53). Now, at 53, you have a 53% chance to kill a third man. Etc, etc.

Edit 2: What would a unit have an APAttack[0] and APAttack[1] value > 0, but have all APEffectiveness[] values = 0? Wouldn't this mean it never penetrates any armor?
Thanks

True, but you'll note that the value is 0 for infantry units. This uses different logic when an infantry attacks the adjacent tile ( AP charges). The effectiveness of 0 isn't used because it checks to see if the unit has the following ;
- Has Grenade
- target adjacent (range bracket=0)
- AP charges > 0

If all that is true, then the effectiveness is changed to a value of 100 (using the full APAttack value).

I can't tell you why they did it this way, however, it's possible to give an infantry unit a rocket launcher by changing the APEffectiveness[1] to a value of greater than 0 and change the APRange to a value of 2. This change would keep the APCharge attack for adjacent tiles, but give the infantry an attack out to 2 tiles to simulate a rocket attack.

Hope that explains it.

- Merr

[robc04_1]

Thanks for the explanations, they were good ones. When I modded in the AP effectiveness into the unit details window, I noticed there is a debug window in the scripts. Would that display all of the different die rolls and checks? If so how do we display that? If the debug window doesn't show the die rolls, is there any other way to see that info? I feel like there is a good game in here, but I don't like the lack of transparency. If this info can be displayed I will probably buy the game as I am just playing with the demo now.

[alex0809]

Merr, if I understand this right the chance is halved even if the first man isn't killed right? So for example an effectiveness of 50 % =
50 %, 25 %, 12,5 %, 6,25 %, 3,125 %, so all in all a roughly 70 % chance to kill one man if I calculated right?

Also, I guess this applies to soft vehicles like trucks too? So a 100 HE rating would mean the truck always gets killed.

[pipfromslitherine]

Thanks for the explanations, they were good ones. When I modded in the AP effectiveness into the unit details window, I noticed there is a debug window in the scripts. Would that display all of the different die rolls and checks? If so how do we display that? If the debug window doesn't show the die rolls, is there any other way to see that info? I feel like there is a good game in here, but I don't like the lack of transparency. If this info can be displayed I will probably buy the game as I am just playing with the demo now.

The debug window doesn't show all the combat rolls etc - it's used for showing script warnings and log output. A log of the combat results is something that is on the todo list, but some of the abstraction is deliberate, to make the game more approachable even though there is a complex combat model underneath. I appreciate that his might make it a little opaque if you are more used to slightly hardercore wargames.

The % in the first few fights in the demo are a little unusual because we tweaked some of the stats on the initial units to ensure the flow of the first minute or 2. Once you get into the larger fights, the units are more evenly matched and the numbers make more sense. The DDay mission uses the real ingame stats for units too.

Cheers

Pip

[robc04_1]

Thanks for the explanations, they were good ones. When I modded in the AP effectiveness into the unit details window, I noticed there is a debug window in the scripts. Would that display all of the different die rolls and checks? If so how do we display that? If the debug window doesn't show the die rolls, is there any other way to see that info? I feel like there is a good game in here, but I don't like the lack of transparency. If this info can be displayed I will probably buy the game as I am just playing with the demo now.

The debug window doesn't show all the combat rolls etc - it's used for showing script warnings and log output. A log of the combat results is something that is on the todo list, but some of the abstraction is deliberate, to make the game more approachable even though there is a complex combat model underneath. I appreciate that his might make it a little opaque if you are more used to slightly hardercore wargames.

The % in the first few fights in the demo are a little unusual because we tweaked some of the stats on the initial units to ensure the flow of the first minute or 2. Once you get into the larger fights, the units are more evenly matched and the numbers make more sense. The DDay mission uses the real ingame stats for units too.

Cheers

Pip

Thanks for the reply. Bummer, I was hoping there was some way to display the combat details, even if it took a little work. Is there a main script that if I read through it would show the main flow of combat? It looks like things are broken down into many smaller scripts which makes it harder to determine when certain things are checked. Thanks again.

[pipfromslitherine]

For (e.g.) HE fire, you will be looking at Fire_HE and Firelogic_HE mainly. There are a few utility functions elsewhere in the code. The best way to look through is to use Notepad++ which has a find in files ability that makes it very simple.

Cheers

Pip

[robc04_1]

For (e.g.) HE fire, you will be looking at Fire_HE and Firelogic_HE mainly. There are a few utility functions elsewhere in the code. The best way to look through is to use Notepad++ which has a find in files ability that makes it very simple.

Cheers

Pip

Thank you again.

[Merr]

Merr, if I understand this right the chance is halved even if the first man isn't killed right? So for example an effectiveness of 50 % =
50 %, 25 %, 12,5 %, 6,25 %, 3,125 %, so all in all a roughly 70 % chance to kill one man if I calculated right?

Also, I guess this applies to soft vehicles like trucks too? So a 100 HE rating would mean the truck always gets killed.

hi alex,

At first glance of the code, it checks every man left in the unit. So, if you attacked 5 men with an final effectiveness of 80, then it would flow like this;

- 80 % chance to kill the first guy.
- 40 % for the 2nd.
- 20 % for the 3rd.
- 10 % for the 4th.
- 5 % for the 5th.

You don't need to kill anybody to keep rolling for the rest of the men. Technically, you have a chance to kill all 5 men, and you have a chance not to kill anybody!

I'll need to read the full script in detail to figure out if there's anything else towards the men killed. Also, I'll look to see if soft vehicles are handled the same way since one vehicle is just 1 man, but I'm not too sure.

- Merr