Tracking Unit Efficiency

[braccada]

I have always wonderd if it is worth to invest in overstrength, upgrading to a new model or if my artillery or bomber squadron drops in efficiency, when I add another piece. So I thought up a formula that ideally should give an answer to that.

In order to make it easy to track and to return a single value for efficiency there are some compromizes involved but I considered:

• Damage dealt (halth points)
• Damage taken (prestige cost of health points lost)
• Prestige Costs (including overstrength)

So the formala am thinking of is like this:

average kills per turn (health points) / (prestige costs + prestige cost of damage taken) *1000
(multiplied by 1000 in the end to get nicer numbers)

I am pretty sure that makes sense, however I think there should be some modifiers for units that do more than direct damage. And here it gets tricky and I am asking for some input.

• I think fighter should get a small modifier, because for some turns usually they are on purly defensive missions. Maybe 20 percent bonus to kills.
• Scouting units should be used as scouts and won't engage on fights every turn. So I am thinking of a 50 percent bonus to their kills = used for attacking 3 out of 4 turns
• Artillery and level bombers do supression. My estimation is 4 supressed points per kill. If you rate a supressed unit as 1/3 dead, that would make a bonus of 133 percent.

I have already posted this on steam, but got little feedback there. I hope there is more activity here

I am currently playing the Wehrmacht campaign on Rommel, Guderian and Manstein and I found the efficiency results quite interesting.

For Poland (Rommel) that rates my units like this.
(If there are more units of one type its the average)

1x Panzer IA >> 5,88
1x Panzer IB >> 5,12
3x Wehrmacht Inf >> 7,33
2x Wehrmacht Inf - Truck >> 5,68
1x Gebirgsjäger >> 5,59
1x Panzer IIC >> 9,62
3x 10.5 cm leFH 18 >> 7,41
1x Bf 109E >> 12,61
1x Bf 110C >> 3,32
1x Ju 87B >> 2,58

Panzer I ... well pretty average
Infantry ... good performace, trucked ones are equal but more expensive. So less efficient on small maps.
Panzer II ... on a killing spree. I don't think thats representative.
Artillery ... felt extremly important what is confirmed by the numbers.
Fighter ... used to constantly harass planes. So not representative I guess.
The bombers ... were kind of useless. They felt useful, but it was surprising how little damage they actually did.

Let me know what you think! And if someone is interesting in the numbers from the different campaigns I can post them.

[mdh_slith]

It looks like you decided not to include the suppression effects of artillery in the formula, correct? I would be interested in your numbers across the board as I am getting the feeling that prestige might be better spent on a new unit from time to time than always max overstrengthening.

[braccada]

Ah sorry the formula statet is without the modifieres, because I am not sure how high they should be.
However the values already include the modifier. Just add *modifier to the formula.

And I will share the results, but it might take some time, because they are taken from a current lets play.

However some things I noticed:
+ Unit performance depends highly on the situation and the correct usage (what a surpise )
+ Transport vehicles are a serious factor. Getting the right mixture keeps all infantry units busy. Usually not all have to be trucked and you can use airfields and trains.
+ Air units are not efficient. Too expensive for the damage they acutally do. Still you need them. Fighters, Bombers and Level Bombers. Just not too many and maybe a Bomber can be replaced by a stug? For me that worked out really great.
+ Old models and non overstrenghted units often are more efficient when used correctly. Mixing in an old tank for mopup duty is great!

And by the way max overstrengthening is almost certenly not the most efficient way. It costs massive amounts of prestige and because of soft cap, reduces your prestige income.

[ThvN]

Interesting numbers, but to get reliable data you will need a lot of combat action, the random results can skew the data too easily otherwise. How many turns of play do these numbers represent? I assume unit experience is included? An experienced unit will be more efficient than a 'green' one, so new units might show relatively low efficiency. And terrain and weather will make some units temporarily very efficient, so it would require a lot of play to get reliable long-term data.

Unit efficiency is hard to put in numbers for some categories, lets take your examples of scouts and supressing units. A recon unit might not inflict much damage but it might spot units that would not have been attacked otherwise. Equally, suppressing a target can allow another unit to kill it without taking much casualties.

I could supress a unit with a strategic bomber and some artillery, scoring maybe one or two casualties, and a tank would finish it off without losses and get all the credit (high efficiency). More importantly, it might not be possible to attack without lots of casualties if the enemy is not suppressed beforehand. It is also important to note that some units can passively contribute by preventing losses, best example would be anti-aircraft or like you mentioned, defensive use of fighters. If it can prevent an expensive mobile artillery piece from being killed or even attacked, it has only made the unit it protects more efficient without scoring any points itself. Deterrence is hard to express in numbers, because you would have to judge how the AI reacts ands changes priorities when you deploy these units.

What I'm trying to say is that many units would not be very efficient without help from supporting units, and it is hard to put numbers to that. Personally, I would rate suppression higher than 4 : 1. Maybe it would help to 'split' kills when a unit is supressed and than attacked by another unit. This sort of scoring was actually used during WW2, with people ending up with half kills being awarded, example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_ace#World_War_II

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Will you be able to play a WWI scenario and give the results for that? (Verdun and Michael would be good ones)

- BNC

[braccada]

ThvN you are absolutely right. It would be better to share kills when there is supression or calculate something like spotting damage. However that would be nightmare to keep track of. So I decided to give artillery, scouts and units like those a generell modifier to their kills. That's not exact, but very easy to keep track of.

All I have to do is look up total kills and damage of the unit after the mission as well as active turns and possible overstreanght and add it to a spreadsheat. This will look up its prestige costs and I get an instant result with an effort of 1 or 2 minutes total.

And after all I don't think the modifiers are that important, because I don't want to know, if my artillery was more efficient than my tanks. I am more interested in things like. Am I playing more efficient with 5 tracked artillery or 4 towed and a level bomber. Or is my all Tiger force really superior to a balanced one with Panzer IVs mixed in. Unfortunately often a units just feels great, but when you look at actual numbers it might be a different story. So this is intended to improve details of my (or someones) gameplay.

And yes you are right again. Those example numbers are pretty worthless. You need values from multible (or better many) replays of the same mision or campaign. Thats part of the reason why I posted this. Maybe someone is interested and wants to share or compare data like this. I sounds complicated, but in fact you only have to look up two numbers for each unit after the mission thats it.

And the final point. Yes experience is the main weak point I think. You could add a modifier for each experience level, but that would make thinks more complicated to keep track of.

[braccada]

Will you be able to play a WWI scenario and give the results for that? (Verdun and Michael would be good ones)

- BNC

I have not tried those.
I have played a lot of Panzer General when it came out, but only started the Wehrmacht Campaign so far. Completed it once and now struggle with Rommel/Manstein/Guderian. Pretty interesting how different they play.

So I have Africa Corps, Grand Campaign, Allied Corps untouched. So not very likely that I have time for mods in the near future

[Aloo]

Unit efficiency is hard to put in numbers for some categories, lets take your examples of scouts and supressing units. A recon unit might not inflict much damage but it might spot units that would not have been attacked otherwise. Equally, suppressing a target can allow another unit to kill it without taking much casualties.

I could supress a unit with a strategic bomber and some artillery, scoring maybe one or two casualties, and a tank would finish it off without losses and get all the credit (high efficiency). More importantly, it might not be possible to attack without lots of casualties if the enemy is not suppressed beforehand. It is also important to note that some units can passively contribute by preventing losses, best example would be anti-aircraft or like you mentioned, defensive use of fighters. If it can prevent an expensive mobile artillery piece from being killed or even attacked, it has only made the unit it protects more efficient without scoring any points itself. Deterrence is hard to express in numbers, because you would have to judge how the AI reacts ands changes priorities when you deploy these units.

Add to this the fuel and ammo loss caused by strat bombing, which really does start to matter in the later years. There is no way to count this, but its one of the reasons to buy strategic bombers.

[captainjack]

Add to this the fuel and ammo loss caused by strat bombing,

And the ability to force surrenders (particularly for strat bombers but also artillery). This is particularly useful late game when you may have trouble destroying a heavily armoured unit, but it is also a good way to eliminate KV5s and lend lease Churchills.

Where possible I like to get a Panzer 2 or some other obsolete unit to finish off the suppressed KVs with a point of damage or suppression just to rub it in!

[braccada]

All valid points that unfortunately are hard to track. Thats why they have to go into the modifier. After all an artillery that does the most damage will most likely be most helpful in forcing surrenders. So its not important if a supressed unit is surrendering or destroyed, the performance of the supressing artillery stays the same.

The interesting information is which typ of artillery and which number of pieces are most efficient. Comparision Tank versus Artillery on the other hand not that important, because you will need both anyway.

I will however increase the modifier for strategic bombers to 150 Percent to factor in supply destruction. That has been missing!

[BiteNibbleChomp]

The interesting information is which typ of artillery and which number of pieces are most efficient.

In WWI artillery works like this:

Light Art: 125 cost / 18 soft attack / 2 hard attack
Medium: 200 cost / 25 soft attack / 8 hard attack
Heavy: 275 / 26 / 18
Siege: 500 / 11 / 36

However, I have actually not played the base game for a long time (too busy modding ), but I rate the sig 33 Sturmpanzer and the Nebelwerfs as the best, followed by the 21cm. However, I tend to prefer self-propelled ones anyway, so there is some bias here.

- BNC

[mdh_slith]

Just finished GC 39 on a replay and the sig33 Sturmpanzer artillery is making the game. Got one to hero up with +1 range and it outranges the Turret Fortresses now...

[alkafluence]

The interesting information is which typ of artillery and which number of pieces are most efficient. Comparision Tank versus Artillery on the other hand not that important, because you will need both anyway.

Someone has helpfully already done this research:
viewtopic.php?f=121&t=26663

Particularly this post:
viewtopic.php?f=121&t=26663&p=287107&hi ... s.#p287107

This is also a good discussion:
viewtopic.php?f=121&t=46916&p=442929&hi ... on#p442929

I will however increase the modifier for strategic bombers to 150 Percent to factor in supply destruction. That has been missing!

I'm not sure about "sharing kills", etc. In the grand scheme of things, if the units are being used most effectively (should always be the goal) it could be thought of in the sense that "efficiency just assumes that sort of thing". Basically, the results are to be expected as they are, given that suppression, etc. are already factored in.

The modifiers might be appropriate to try to balance out the worth/effectiveness of units that don't perform direct kills (like artillery), but what the exact modifiers should be for each unit (all artillery, strategic bombers, etc.) are different. It might be more helpful to simply look at the raw data first.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Just finished GC 39 on a replay and the sig33 Sturmpanzer artillery is making the game. Got one to hero up with +1 range and it outranges the Turret Fortresses now...

Don't you mean ?

- BNC

[dumbttt]

Just finished GC 39 on a replay and the sig33 Sturmpanzer artillery is making the game. Got one to hero up with +1 range and it outranges the Turret Fortresses now...

A range of 4 is overkill since fighting usually happen with 2-3 tiles of your artillery, except to suppress those AA guns which are usually deployed further back in the enemy formation. A strat bomber is more useful in this role. When I get +1 range, I usually convert to a Brombar.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Just finished GC 39 on a replay and the sig33 Sturmpanzer artillery is making the game. Got one to hero up with +1 range and it outranges the Turret Fortresses now...

A range of 4 is overkill since fighting usually happen with 2-3 tiles of your artillery, except to suppress those AA guns which are usually deployed further back in the enemy formation. A strat bomber is more useful in this role. When I get +1 range, I usually convert to a Brombar.

Heard of the WWI mod? Range 6, everytime!

- BNC

[braccada]

Someone has helpfully already done this research:
viewtopic.php?f=121&t=26663

Particularly this post:
viewtopic.php?f=121&t=26663&p=287107&hi ... s.#p287107

This is also a good discussion:
viewtopic.php?f=121&t=46916&p=442929&hi ... on#p442929

Hey thanks really interesting!

I never heard there is a rate of fire in Panzer Coprs. Now I know why the bigger guns never felt quite as good as they should However this comparison is static. I want to compare performance in the actual dynamic of the campaign. Ammo count, movement speed and core composition become very relevant, when you do not look at a single fight. There is a point where bombers run out of targets or you simply can not bring all artillery pieces into meaningful firing position. For maximum efficiency you have to know the performance characteristics of your units (the post you mentioned covers this perfectly!) and the dynamic of the units playing togehter. If the composition is not right, the efficiency values should be unbalanced.

That means if some units have very high or low values (according to my system) there is something wrong. Sometimes there are reasons like the special task of the fighter in my example, that constantly kept an inferior plane down, but most of the time that would indicate a flaw.

And concerning the modifiers. I think they are not that important. I am using this system to compare similiar unit types and more important changes in efficiency over time. So the modifier is completely unimportant for that. I consider it more of a cosmetic thing, to make the values of different unit types more comparable at the first glance.

[mdh_slith]

Just finished GC 39 on a replay and the sig33 Sturmpanzer artillery is making the game. Got one to hero up with +1 range and it outranges the Turret Fortresses now...

A range of 4 is overkill since fighting usually happen with 2-3 tiles of your artillery, except to suppress those AA guns which are usually deployed further back in the enemy formation. A strat bomber is more useful in this role. When I get +1 range, I usually convert to a Brombar.

Nah, that unit will going the way of the short range rocket launcher to give that extra shooting range. I am working through the GC's a second time from 39 on to develop my bench. Instead of upgrading my existing units to the next model, I am getting them to max exp. then parking them while I buy new units and get their experience up.

[captainjack]

Converting range hero artillery to rocket launchers works really well for me, though a 5-range Italian 149mm was handy for suppressing AA to allow Rudy to have a go at them, and for counter battery fire.

Rockets do good damage and excellent suppression - add a Flammpanzer at 12 or 13 strength with its 140% RoF, and you stand a chance of eliminating any soft target in one attack, no matter what the entrenchment.

[braccada]

The first results are comming in. I will post them in the AAR to my Let's Play at viewtopic.php?f=145&t=53035