How do you fail a 104% kill chance?

[VR_Nocturne]

In a skirmish, I had an ambush attack on a truck. The detailed info said I had a 104% final kill chance (the last line at the bottom).

My first attack failed. I had to attack twice.

This was against an AI unit (playing co-op skirmish).

H-How is that possible?

[JosephM]

Hello VR,

When you are attacking an armoured target, there are three variables in the display: Chance to Hit, Chance to Penetrate and Overkill chance. The Chance to Hit is the chance that you will hit the enemy, Chance to Penetrate is the chance to penetrate the armour, and Overkill is like a critical hit chance. Do you know what the other two variables were? If the chance to hit was not 100%, then it is possible that your first attack missed. The chance to penetrate is then the chance to cause damage to the foe, so if this is low, then your attack is unlikely to cause damage - this is what "Deflected" means, i.e. the attack did not pierce the enemy armour. And then the higher the Overkill the higher the chance of killing your enemy.

Joe

[VR_Nocturne]

I see - so hit and kill chances are independent. I had assumed that the "overall kill chance" took ALL factors into account already (including hit rate) to determine kill probability vs deflect and/or simple morale loss.

Let's see if I have it right:

So, the actual kill chance, from a probability theory standpoint, would be Hit_Chance * Kill_Chance?

So if I had a 70% chance to hit and a 104% chance to kill, that's basically a 70% chance to kill overall (since any hit will kill, the chance is the probability to hit)?

If I had a 15% hit chance and a 18% kill chance (only 15% of shots will hit and only 18% of those will kill), then that would be a 2.7% chance to kill?

[JosephM]

Yes, that is correct. If you have a 70% hit, but 100% or greater chance to penetrate and overkill, then you will hit 70% of the time and it will always kill, and then with the figure you have provided (and if both our Maths is correct) then it will be a 2.7% chance to kill.

I'll also expand the second example you used. If the CtH is 15%, CtP is 40% and overkill is 18%, then you'll hit 15% of the time, it will penetrate 40% of the time (which will cause damage either light or heavy), and have an 18% chance to cause a kill.

[IainMcNeil]

HE attacks do not have a % chance to kill - its more complex than that. The value can be 200 or more for very effective attacks. I forget the exact mechanics but it was related to wanting to allow some attacks to kill multiple units against infantry squads needing a different mechanic to allow weaker attacks to kill 1 or 2 men and really powerful to kill all, without a small chance of a weak attack killing all... a bit hard to describe!

AT attacks are % chances so 100 mean certainty. It should not show a % marker on HE attacks for this reason.