Elite Replacements: worth it yet?

[AgentTBC]

When the base Order of Battle game was released it turned out that elite replacements were mostly a noob trap and virtually never worth the massive point cost. I didn't keep up with balance patches or the like; was the effect of experience on combat ever smoothed out so that veteran infantry or aircraft performed significantly better than rookies? In the past it only possibly made sense to use elite replacements on a few units with very high base values in attack and defense, like a Yamato.

[Bylandt11]

I'd like to know as well. Because in the Marine Corps expansion resources are very scarce.

[Mojko]

It's definitely worth it on core units. Elite units have slightly better combat performance, but the actual major benefit is the reduced efficiency loss. Remember that in OOB it's all about efficiency. Even if you have a super unit, with 0 efficiency it's worthless.

[Bylandt11]

Mojko, we're asking because we had found out earlier that elite replacements weren't really worth their cost for infantry and even less so for air units (unless you have an abundance of resources from mid-campaign on).

viewtopic.php?t=65075

I'm not sure if any of the patches have changed that situation.

[Mojko]

Yes, I believe elite replacements are worth for both infantry and air units. For infantry the best benefit is the reduced efficiency losses and for air units the little extra combat performance which often decides whether you shoot down enemy plane or not (air units have special mechanic of reduced damage if they are at lower strength).

[Horst]

Experience has no impact on efficiency loss or shock/assault. It only increases attack and defense. 5-stars relate roughly to +30% improvement to the attack/defense stats, but the combat results don't show the same like comparing e.g. a 5-star 100-stat with a 0-star 130-stat unit. No idea how the combat mechanics work exactly. On a tight budget, I would reserve elite replacements for capital ships, artillery/AA, snipers, and tanks maybe that aren't fully experienced yet.

[Mojko]

Experience has no impact on efficiency loss or shock/assault.

I'm pretty sure it does. Try it out by testing the following situation:

-> when unit gets attacked it is much less likely to retreat and suffer great efficiency loss if it is an experienced unit

Therefore experienced units are far better at holding the line. This is very important because the enemy is much less likely to break your formation.

[Horst]

Okay, I let two infantry units without shock value battle each other where the AI unit has 0 and mine has infantry attack 1, so my attacker won’t have the need for reinforcements what the defending AI unit will typically do after each attack and turn. My damage output is that small that the AI unit can always fully reinforce to 10-strength back.

Two inexperienced units battle each turn resulting in following efficiency values:
#1: 9-9
#2: 8-8
#3: 7-7
#4: 6-6
#5: 5-5
#6: 4-4
#7: 3-3
#8: 3-2
#9: 2-1
#10: 1-0
#11: 0-0
…
Two fully experienced units:
#1: 9-9
#2: 9-9
#3: 9-9
#4: 9-8
#5: 8-8
#6: 8-8
#7: 8-7
#8: 8-7
#9: 7-7
#10: 7-6
#11: 7-6
#12: 7-5
#13: 6-5

So it looks like the inexperienced units almost loose one eff-point on each turn of battle, while the fully experienced units loose much slower their efficiency. Although the unit strength on each turn was 10 on both sides, the attacker seems to be slightly on the winning side – as long as the defender doesn’t return any damage. Normally, the defender of about same combat prowess with reinforcements would easily win after few turns when the attacker is too exhausted with less unit strength.
It wasn’t obvious after the first turn of battle what I had previously tested, but on the following turns, yes, there is actually a difference in efficiency loss by experience. Good to know there are more secret decimal modifiers involved in this game.

[Mojko]

Yeah, I love this game, but it has still a lot of hidden mechanics. I wish we could have a proper game documentation on this. Speaking of that, does anybody know how do you determine a unit movement type (wheeled, foot, tracked...) other than guessing? I have failed to find that on the unit description. Some units have the same or similar stats, but have clearly different movement type, which is the main difference. Therefore it's important to know the movement type so you can buy the right unit.

[Horst]

The number of movement points required for which movement type on what terrain type is defined in the chassis.txt file. Other important unit files are units.csv and terrain.txt if someone is interested to look up data or even modify it.
All these files are found in the …\Order of Battle - Pacific_Data\Content\Data folder.

[mhladnik]

Yeah, I love this game, but it has still a lot of hidden mechanics. I wish we could have a proper game documentation on this. Speaking of that, does anybody know how do you determine a unit movement type (wheeled, foot, tracked...) other than guessing? I have failed to find that on the unit description. Some units have the same or similar stats, but have clearly different movement type, which is the main difference. Therefore it's important to know the movement type so you can buy the right unit.

Not sure, but doesn't mouse-over on movement points stats do the trick - by bringing up a tooltip? Or something similar I seem to remember.