Question about Experience and Overstrength

[Volpone]

I think this is how it's supposed to work...please confirm that I'm correct.

1. Experience levels allow Overstrength.

2. Experience levels add bonuses to attack and defense.

3. Overstrength adds "health" to a unit above 10.

4. Overstrength does not add bonuses to attack and defense.

[BJGeary]

1. yes
2. yes
3. yes
4. I think that a 300 experience 13-strength unit does more damage than a 300 experience 10-strength unit, but I may be wrong.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

4. Each unit "rolls" some computer dice to work out how much damage occurs in combat. The amount of dice rolls is determined by both strength and rate of fire (invisible stat that can be modified in equipment.pzeqp)

Specifically, Dice rolled = Strength * (RoF/10)

Say you have a unit with 10 RoF and 10 Strength
10* (10/10) = 10 rolls

If it has been overstrengthed to 12
12 * (10/10) = 12 rolls.

Or the 12 unit only has 8 RoF
12 * 0,8 = 9,6 rolls (rounded to 9)

More rolls obviously means more chance to do damage, and hence more damage overall.

Combined with the +2 (I think) attack and defence bonuses per star, a 500xp unit is going to be far more lethal than a 50xp one.

- BNC

[captainjack]

The general principle is that a more experienced unit has better initiative, hits harder and has better defence than a less experienced one. In earlier versions, you got +1 on initiative attack and defence for each star of experience.

Version 1.20 brought in class specific bonuses, rather than the same benefit for every unit. So, for example, AT gets +2HA per experience star, and Fighters and AAA get +2AA per experience star, but most units get +1/per star and a few get +0.5 (maybe a few get +0).

[Volpone]

Awesome info -- thanks so much for the quick response!

[Maciek]

I don't use overstrength because my units lose it quickly and I can rebuild them only to 10 level in next turn.

[goose_2]

I use Overstrength for cheap units and units that do not typically take damage. For expensive units usually only 1 above normal 10.

I just love dealing major damage and I have prestige to burn.

Over 60000 and I have 3 more missions in 43 Campaign.

Spend it because you cannot take it with ya.

[TSPC37730]

I try to limit my overstrength to units which will not take damage very often. Namely artillery, AA & strategic bombers (escorted). I may add one or two to a recon unit in the early years for a little more punch.

[Pi2repsilon]

Artillery, AA, Strategic bombers all get overstrengthed to the maximum - as well as cheap strong infantry with good initiative or defensive heroes that don't lose much strength in battle (e.g. Oleh Dir and other extremely powerful heroes in the Grand Campaign).

Everything else overstrengthed to 11 on the grounds that since I'm perfectly willing to do elite reinforcements during battle if necessary (though I hope not to) and the price for that per unit is the same as the unit cost for the 11th man, surely it'll on balance be a good investment in fighting harder and delaying the time needed to reinforce.

Currently half-way through GC44 east and have throughout this campaign for the first time been overstrengthening my 7 Tiger II SE tanks to the maximum as well. (The end result of ruthlessly sacking any SE infantry awarded). It truly sucks when Soviet air manages to knock a point or two off an overstrengthed tank when my AA/air cover isn't perfect, but on balance the ability to completely kill or suppress entire enemy units before they fire back due to high initiative is well worth it as I suffer fewer casualties in general. (On Field Marshal, so no boosted enemy unit strength from the supreme difficulty setting.)

I've got a very expensive core and typically get around 30% prestige at the start of a battle due to the soft cap, but it looks like i'll be finishing 44 with around 40k prestige in the bank after having performed all the expensive equipment updates to '44 equipment (10 Tiger IIs, 4 Jadgdtigers, etc. weren't exactly inexpensive), so there should be plenty left for 45.

Looking back it might have made sense also overstrengthening the SE tanks higher than 11 in GC 42 and 43, but I'm not sure... They had fewer heroes, much less experience, and much worse defense overall back when they they were Panzer III/IV and KV1 in 42 and Tiger I in 43, so they'd have been taking more casualties.

[simcc]

Also becareful about too much overstrength if you are playing soft cap rules.

[captainjack]

simcc makes a good point. First overstrength is 10% of the unit cost, second is 15%, third 20%, fourth 25% and fifth 30%, so at 15 strength, not only have you double the cost on that unit (10 + 15+20+ 25 + 30 = 100%) but one hit costs you 30% of the base unit cost. Ouch! Sometimes you are better off running at 11 or 12 strength just for that alone, and any savings mean you can elite reinforce in game when there's an emergency.

I don't use soft cap but it's easy to see that at 15 strength you will be over the 400 limit for almost all late war units - even early war infantry will be over 400 if they have a half track. The last calculator (and since I don't use it I wasn't looking too hard) it looked like looked like the overstrength was counted at more than cost, which would make it an even worse deal.