Armour attack / armour defense

[joe98]

Which symbol represents armour attack and which symbol represents armour defense?



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[IainMcNeil]

It doesn't really work that. You have an attack (SMG - 8 ) & defence (helmet - 5) rating for a unit that is used depending on whether it is attacking of defending, same for armour & other ground units. Then if you are attacking armour you have an AT bonus (tank - 5). Tanks have high survirability (+ symbol - 10), which make them tough to damage so the AT bonus makes up for it or even makes the tanks vulnerable if it gets high enough.

[firepowerjohan]

The Anti-Tank bonus (-5) actually is used to reduce the survivability of enemy armour, so the armour in the screenshot (surv 10) would be as surv 5 if you use AT=5 against it. In this case AT 5 means surv 10-5=5 i.e. halving the surv of enemies which means DOUBLING damage vs them.

So, if your tanks are getting anormous damage vs enemies it is that you have much lower armour tech than they have AT tech.

[joe98]

Then if you are attacking armour you have an AT bonus (tank - 5).

So the anti-tank bonus is an attack value only used when attacking armoured units. It doesn’t help in defence ?????


If I am defending and armour is attacking my position, I need a high anti tank value. But on the defence, a high anti tank value is of no use to me, because the “5” is an attack value. Instead I need the survivability variable to be increased and this is done via research

Is that correct?

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[firepowerjohan]

No, AT reduce enemy surv and is used by both attacker and defender. Surv is used in any battle and is the ability to avoid being damaged

[joe98]

Surv is used in any battle and is the ability to avoid being damaged

So, if infantry is fighting infantry, what happens to the survivability rating of eitther side?



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[vypuero]

neither would be affected in infantry vs. infantry, which is why it does not change that much

[joe98]

neither would be affected in infantry vs. infantry, which is why it does not change that much

Fantastic answer! So, to summarise.


If armour is doing the attacking, the Anti Tank value is only used when attacking armour.

To defend against an armoured attack, you need a combination of high anti tank and high survivability.

Have I summarised correctly?

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[firepowerjohan]

AT bonus is only used for the unit that faces a armour unit, in armour vs armour that means both units will use AT bonus vs each other but in inf vs arm, air vs arm it means the inf or the air unit (not the arm unit) will use AT bonus vs the enemy.


Example

German Armour attacking USSR Armour

German Armour
*Ground Attack 8
*(Ground Defence 4)
AT 1
Surv 10

USSR Armour
*(Ground Attack 6)
*Ground Defence 4
AT 7
Surv 7


In combat you both fire and get fired on. The attacker will fire using GA, defender will use surv to reduce the incoming damage. That surv value is affected by the attackers AT Bonus

So attacker fires with GA=8 value, and use AT=1 to bring down defenders surv from 7-1=6
So you get a rough 8/6 damage quote where this is not a real damage value but we can use it as comparison to the other case
here ->

Defender fires at attacker means it uses its GD=4, and use its AT=7 to bring down attackers surv frmo 10-7=3.
This give a damage quote of 4/3 which conincidently in this case is the same as the attacker got. Thanks to the excellent AT value of the defender it managed to even out the expected damage.

Also, this example is not complete and as can be seen with the * next to GA and GD those 2 values will be affected by terrain, trenches and other bonuses so depending on where these units battle the ratios might differ to the advantage of the defender.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Aha. This explains why my German tech level 4 (blitzkrieg, armor and antitank) did so much better against the Russian armor than the Russian infantry. I guess I had and AT value of about 6. So when my armor is attacking enemy infantry I can't use the AT value to reduce the enemy survivability and it means I can expect normal combat results. But when I attack enemy armor units with not so high armor values it means the survivability of the enemy may drop even to 0.

I remember I attacked those Russian armor units with my Panther tanks and expected combat results were 55:1 with an attacking unit with Manstein. I never saw such results, but I got 14:0 and that the enemy armor was killed even if it was at 10 steps.

I think that AT values are mainly used in the defense and not in the offensive. Antitank capability means you can inflict higher losses upon the attacker. It seems weird that high AT values for the attacker can annihilate enemy armor defenders like my above example shows. I guess the Russian armor got an effective survivability of 0 or less since I had 6 AT value as the attacker.

Since you can use the AT factors in attack it means it's really dangerous for armor units after 1943 to be attacked. Quite often attacking armor units can destroy one defending armor, but the armor becomes exposed to counter attack and will be easily killed if the enemy units have good AT values.

Will AT values also work for infantry units attacking enemy armor units. I've noticed later in the game it was easier to inflict hits upon enemy armor units than enemy infantry units if my AT values were great.

I think the combat should be like this:

Garrison, infantry or motorized attacking garrison, infantry or motorized: AT values have no effect upon combat

Armor attacking garrison, infantry or motorized: AT values are used by the defender to lower the attacker's survivability, but not lower than to survivability 2 (or a similar value to avoid extreme combat results). Attacker AT value has no effect.

Armor attacking armor. AT values are used by the defender to lower the attacker's survivability, but not lower than to survivability 2 (or a similar value). Attacker AT value are used to lower the defenders survivability, but not lower than to survivability 3 (or a similar value to avoid extreme results).

Air units attacking armor. AT values are used to lower the defending armor's survivability, but not lower than survivability 2.
Armor attacking air units. No effect from AT values.

[firepowerjohan]

but why not AT on both offence and defence?
If you attack a 1939 enemy tank with a 88mm gun or a Bazooka it will be ripped apart despite who is attacker and who is defender, so the AT Bonus is how large armour penetration your unit has. We have separated that compared to anti personnel fire, for example a Stug III tank had good AT but poor anti personnel since it had no machine guns and this can be reflected in game with the GA, GD, AT values

Also, the surv will never go below 1.