Air defense of tanks still too high

[aleader]

Regarding the title of this topic, I don't think that high air defense of the tanks is too high. Performance of fighters against tanks is adequate and inline with tactical and strategic bomber performance. We don't want fighters (and consequently bombers) to inflict more damage to tanks than they already do.

So, the only questionable part is weather [1] air attack of tanks is too powerful against the planes. We might want to increase GD of air units a little bit more. Although frankly, it is unlikely to change anything. If kill chance becomes 5% or 4% instead of 6%, it won't be a dramatic change. A radical solution would be to set AA of all tanks to zero, but I've already explained above why we decided not to do that.

Like I said before, I have no issue with fighters having a weak attack against tanks...that makes common sense. What is NOT common sense is losing half your airforce to Shermans, period. The answer 'just don't attack them then' is wrong on so many levels.

The 6% is either utterly useless, or it has no base in reality, you decide. You don't need to be a mathematician to figure out that that's an over 75% kill rate for tanks against planes. I didn't write it down (but I will), but I got the feeling that they actually have a better kill rate than the 262. If someone can show me accounts of the mighty Sherman's overall 75% aircraft kill-rate in WW2, I'm all ears.

It doesn't impress me when developers explain away issues with their game design. If it's flawed and not possible to change it so that it works more in line with reality, say so. Of note, I do appreciate the attention on forums that war/sim games get from the creators. Try getting that on an EA forum. I love the game, it has so many great elements and is a giant leap over PG...but if it's possible, let's make it better.

[Aloo]

So, the reasoning is that allowing AA and ART to take flags would make the game harder in the harder difficulty settings?

For me it would make the game easier - there were lots of situations where the only unit with movement left after attacking a city was a self-propelled art which fired on the city earlier. If it could occupy the hex it would make it easier for me.

The Breakthrough trait for tanks makes sense and would better show their role in combat than it is now. But you would need to check balancing in scenarios, if it gets included.

[aleader]

So, the reasoning is that allowing AA and ART to take flags would make the game harder in the harder difficulty settings?

For me it would make the game easier - there were lots of situations where the only unit with movement left after attacking a city was a self-propelled art which fired on the city earlier. If it could occupy the hex it would make it easier for me.

The Breakthrough trait for tanks makes sense and would better show their role in combat than it is now. But you would need to check balancing in scenarios, if it gets included.

I also like the idea that AA/Arty should be able to capture cities. Also like the idea to plot movement paths. I think it's been mentioned before, but I'd like to be able to view my units hero traits during deployment so I know which ones I should upgrade/overstrength. Not a huge fan of the overrun ability though. 14 strength King Tigers are powerful enough already. They worked for PG 2, but you'd have to seriously re-balance this game to make it work.

[Rudankort]

Like I said before, I have no issue with fighters having a weak attack against tanks...that makes common sense. What is NOT common sense is losing half your airforce to Shermans, period. The answer 'just don't attack them then' is wrong on so many levels.

The 6% is either utterly useless, or it has no base in reality, you decide. You don't need to be a mathematician to figure out that that's an over 75% kill rate for tanks against planes. I didn't write it down (but I will), but I got the feeling that they actually have a better kill rate than the 262. If someone can show me accounts of the mighty Sherman's overall 75% aircraft kill-rate in WW2, I'm all ears.

We are obviously talking about different things. 6% kill chance is a chance to score a kill for each shooting strength point of a unit. Given a standard 10-strength unit, with 6% kill chance the tank will completely miss in 53% of cases, and inflict some damage (most likely 1 point) in 47% of cases. As I said, this might be too high. What kill chance would you prefer to see exactly?

As for the rest, if in WW2 germans used their fighters to attack tanks at every opportunity, as you did in your test, who knows how many casualties they would take.

It doesn't impress me when developers explain away issues with their game design. If it's flawed and not possible to change it so that it works more in line with reality, say so. Of note, I do appreciate the attention on forums that war/sim games get from the creators. Try getting that on an EA forum. I love the game, it has so many great elements and is a giant leap over PG...but if it's possible, let's make it better.

Don't worry, if we conclude that we have a problem here, we'll say so, and will even try to address the problem. This is exactly what we did in 1.04. But to get there, let us discuss the problem at hand, not evil developers and what impresses you or not. The question has several aspects, for example your complaint about a tank killing 4 Me262s in one go is related to RNG, not to unit balance (Me262 could pull off an equally outrageous result against a tank), and we might need to look for the problem there, not in the stats. I'll give it some thought, and in the meantime, any additional input is welcome.

[Rudankort]

To add some hard data to this discussion...

I've run 100000 combats between a Me262 and a Sherman, and total kills scored by the units were:
71612 kills by fighter
60042 kills by tank

The results are similar to what might be suspected from unit stats - the fighter is marginally better.

[aleader]

We are obviously talking about different things. 6% kill chance is a chance to score a kill for each shooting strength point of a unit. Given a standard 10-strength unit, with 6% kill chance the tank will completely miss in 53% of cases, and inflict some damage (most likely 1 point) in 47% of cases. As I said, this might be too high. What kill chance would you prefer to see exactly?

As for the rest, if in WW2 germans used their fighters to attack tanks at every opportunity, as you did in your test, who knows how many casualties they would take.

Didn't realize that, it's probably in the manual, right? Like most of the population at large when I see '6% chance to kill', I assume that means '6% chance to kill.' Apparently it means 47% chance to kill, which translates in the game into losing at least one plane 75% of the time (Stukas and 262's). Makes perfect sense to me. Again, if I choose to attack tanks with fighters because I have gained air superiority, the results should somewhat mirror reality. Now, if the AI was smart enough to preserve it's airforce and defend it's tanks with planes (like I do), I might never get that chance. But it isn't, so I take the opportunity. It helps to wear down the endless onslaught of US tanks in the east coast scenario, but ends up costing a ton to replace my losses.

Don't worry, if we conclude that we have a problem here, we'll say so, and will even try to address the problem. This is exactly what we did in 1.04. But to get there, let us discuss the problem at hand, not evil developers and what impresses you or not. The question has several aspects, for example your complaint about a tank killing 4 Me262s in one go is related to RNG, not to unit balance (Me262 could pull off an equally outrageous result against a tank), and we might need to look for the problem there, not in the stats. I'll give it some thought, and in the meantime, any additional input is welcome.

Not worried at all. I lose sleep over real life issues, not this Also don't recall implying that developers were evil...maybe they are, who knows. Whether the issue is unit balance or RNG, I don't care. The mechanics of the game is your job. And I have yet to see an outrageous result against a tank. The most I was able to kill with a 262 was 2. This is a pretty fundamental issue. The fighters are balanced, why aren't the tanks?

[aleader]

To add some hard data to this discussion...

I've run 100000 combats between a Me262 and a Sherman, and total kills scored by the units were:
71612 kills by fighter
60042 kills by tank

The results are similar to what might be suspected from unit stats - the fighter is marginally better.

I just ran 1,000,000 tests and got about the same... So the actual 'chance to kill' for a tank then should be 60%, not 6%. Still seems quite a bit too high to me, but without some real world WW2 data, I guess we'll never know.

[Rudankort]

To add some hard data to this discussion...

I've run 100000 combats between a Me262 and a Sherman, and total kills scored by the units were:
71612 kills by fighter
60042 kills by tank

The results are similar to what might be suspected from unit stats - the fighter is marginally better.

I just ran 1,000,000 tests and got about the same... So the actual 'chance to kill' for a tank then should be 60%, not 6%. Still seems quite a bit too high to me, but without some real world WW2 data, I guess we'll never know.

From 10x100,000=1,000,000 strength which participated in this test, tanks killed 60,000, which is exactly 6%. BTW, same test proved that the fighter pulls out outstanding results (like killing 3, 4 or even 5 points of strength) more often than the tank. Not that this happens too often, but still.

Now that we've established all this, could you please share your insight into what exactly needs to be changed here?

[impar]

I like impar's suggestion but I would expect an attack to cost the movement points it would take to enter the attacked hex (1 in clear, 2 in rough etc.) so the MPs remaining would be reduced by the attack.

The attack is being battled on the attacked unit hex.

[El_Condoro]

Yes, but it isn't reflected in the movement - currently, a unit moves adjacent to a hex to attack it and the combat is assumed to occur in the defender's hex, hence the combat modifiers. That's fine now - the attacker doesn't get to move any more - but if they get to move on, as in your proposal, the defender's hex movement cost should be deducted.

[Razz1]

That suggestion would destroy game play from a supply perspective especially in MP.

In SP, it would be a great advantage over the AI.

The AI can not move recon correctly or artillery, so there is no way the AI would even use that ability.

[El_Condoro]

Yes, the AI would need to be made more Intelligent and less Artificial. But we know that.

That suggestion would destroy game play from a supply perspective especially in MP.

You made that point back int he overrun debate but in PzC, which has no supply rules beyond the adjacent unit restriction, what do you mean? How would it "destroy game play"?

[aleader]

To add some hard data to this discussion...

I've run 100000 combats between a Me262 and a Sherman, and total kills scored by the units were:
71612 kills by fighter
60042 kills by tank

The results are similar to what might be suspected from unit stats - the fighter is marginally better.

I just ran 1,000,000 tests and got about the same... So the actual 'chance to kill' for a tank then should be 60%, not 6%. Still seems quite a bit too high to me, but without some real world WW2 data, I guess we'll never know.

From 10x100,000=1,000,000 strength which participated in this test, tanks killed 60,000, which is exactly 6%. BTW, same test proved that the fighter pulls out outstanding results (like killing 3, 4 or even 5 points of strength) more often than the tank. Not that this happens too often, but still.

Now that we've established all this, could you please share your insight into what exactly needs to be changed here?

Yes, 6% of the strength on every attack, I get it. That's not what 6% 'chance of a kill' implies. Am I the only one that gets this? When I attack a tank I would expect that 6% of the time I would lose a fighter, i.e. if I attacked 100 times in a scenario, I would lose 6 fighters, not 60 (yes I know that it's an abstracted number, etc). That's 6% of your force strength, not 6% 'chance of a kill.' You might know what that means as you made the game, but the average person takes it at face value (I showed my wife this - who hates all things games - and this is how she interpreted it too).

I think there should be about a 10-20% 'chance of a kill' every time I attack a tank, not 60%, which would make the 'chance to kill' in the game about 1 - 2% I guess, not 6%. Again, that's for you to figure out how to get there, not me.

I guess for comparison we could use fighters attacking tanks vs fighters attacking warships. I generally tend to lose 1 fighter (or more) every time I attack a warship in the game. This makes sense to me as warships had incredible amounts of AA at their disposal when attacked, yet still managed to be hit quite frequently, esp. by kamikaze. There is no way in hell that a tank, or even 10 tanks, possess the kind of AA firepower that a warship does, yet they are equally adept at taking down my fighters. Is the point I'm attempting to make clear to you now?

[Razz1]

Think of 6% kill as:

6% chance that the die roll is a kill but the damage for each die roll is different.

You roll two dice. One represents a kill, the other the damage.

For the missle; best to do a search as that is a different topic than this thread.. It is explained how to do it.

[Linai]

why dont u stop trying to play the game wrong then u wont have this problem!
fighters to attack tanks? lols wtf is that

[Rudankort]

aleader

OK, thanks for input.

[El_Condoro]

@Linai: What is that? - It's called an 'option' - apparently players like them.

[impar]

That suggestion would destroy game play from a supply perspective especially in MP.

I would say that if a tank breaks through the front line it would cause havok in the rear, disrupting communications and logistics.
Working as intended.

[aleader]

Think of 6% kill as:

6% chance that the die roll is a kill but the damage for each die roll is different.

You roll two dice. One represents a kill, the other the damage.

For the missle; best to do a search as that is a different topic than this thread.. It is explained how to do it.

I don't want to think about 'abstracted dice rolls' as I have never played any dice games other than Yahtzee and Monopoly I would be happy if on every 8-10th attack of a tank, I lose one fighter (strength point, whatever). Could live with losing two once in a while. That's all I want to think about when I'm playing, other than the strategy end. For me, 'chance of a kill' is a poor choice of wording.

I assume the missle part is for someone else...

Linai, grow up.

Rudankort, thanks for taking my input.

[Kerensky]

@Linai: What is that? - It's called an 'option' - apparently players like them.

The thing I don't understand is... how is this any different from other bad decisions or options?
For example, driving transport vehicles directly up to the enemy. That's also an option, but generally a bad one to choose.
How is that any different from expecting a fighter to perform admirably/be invulnerable when used against a tank with a [1] AA value?

So in the same way people and the AI 'can' drive transports right up to the enemy, it's generally not a good idea. Just like people and the AI 'can' attack tanks with fighter aircraft, but again it's generally not a good idea either.

Linai might not have said it very well, or politely, but it's a sound point.