Experience question

[PoorOldSpike]

Every time a unit is in combat it gets experience points, and gets stars as its points build up, but does the combat result affect how many exp points it gets?
For examp if it hurts the enemy real bad does it get more exp points than if it only hurt the enemy a little bit?

[Scrapulous]

Every time a unit is in combat it gets experience points, and gets stars as its points build up, but does the combat result affect how many exp points it gets?
For examp if it hurts the enemy real bad does it get more exp points than if it only hurt the enemy a little bit?

Experience granted does vary based on combat results. An easy way to see for yourself is to start a campaign with the number of "Undo" actions set to unlimited and some amount of variability in the combat results (i.e. not "chess mode"). Choose a unit, note its experience, make an attack, note the combat result and the resulting experience, then hit ctrl-z to Undo the attack. Do the attack again. Note how different combat outcomes generate different xp results.

Some things I have noticed from watching this:

• xp granted isn't linear. I.e. it's not one more xp per point of extra damage done. It appears that better combat results generate more xp per point of damage done. I haven't recorded or tried to map it closely, because I was mostly doing this out of idle curiosity, but it was noticeable and repeatable.
• Xp granted does seem to be deterministic, in the sense that the xp outcome is always the same for a given combat result.
• Actual damage and suppression damage seem to count equally when calculating xp granted.

Somebody studying it carefully could probably tell you more. I'm sure there are nuances I haven't noticed.

[Panzer73]

The experience gain isn't normalized to current unit strength but to design unit strength.

So an over-strength 15-strength tank will gain more than an additional 50% experience compared to a 10-strength tank, even though it did only 50% more damage than a 10-strength tank.

Rapid fire 1.5x is another way to gain more experience, same principle as above applies.

This makes the AO training scenarios crazy. An OS unit will reach maximum experience in 3-4 turns max.

[PoorOldSpike]

Thanks guys, I just ran a series of tests in the editor between two infantry units which have the same same combat stats (Wehr inf 43 and Russian Regular 43) for a level playing field.

A- The projected results are 4-4 as we'd expect.
B- The actual combat results (default 50% random variation) sees the German inflicting 5 losses on the Russian, with 4 losses to itself.
C- The German experience jumps from zero to 775
D- The Russian exp jumps from 0 to 750

I replayed the combat multiple times, (sometimes one side had more strength point losses than the other) and logged the results, and found that the victor in each combat usually (but not always) had a bigger exp jump than the loser, so it answers the question I posed in my opening post, namely that if you inflict more losses on the enemy than he inflicts on you, you'll usually get more exp points than him.
Incidentally, 500 exp points equates to half an exp star, so in the combat above both units get about three-quarters of a star.
Later stars require progressively more exp to gain them.