Am creating new balanced MP scenarios

[the_iron_duke]

Having looked at the Mythbusters article, my feeling is that Air Defense for tanks should increase. I think a tactical bomber attacking a tank unit like a Panther, now with Air Attack capability, should receive around as much damage as they inflict (or even more, according to the article) and the kill rates should be 10% or below.

Also on Air Attack, I've been looking at the German ToEs and I don't think units like engineers and bridge-engineers deserve having an A.A. value.

It will be interesting with having replacements costing 100% rather than 25%. Small hits of damage inflicted by artillery and aircraft were more a nuisance rather than being effective (unless you were about to engage them in battle) and often hardly worth spending the ammo on. Now, it all counts and so little bits of attrition add up.

Also, to complicate things, I've noticed the Mechanized Regiment of the Panzer Division has more heavy weapons than the Motorized Regiment, so there is some justification for making the half-track Panzergrenadier battalion of the Mechanized Regiment into a HW unit, as I had originally done before I changed it to a regular infantry.

On sizing, the British Sherman, Firefly and Achilles graphics have identical track lengths in pixels in the game. The scale is wrong compared with a Cromwell as the Cromwell is in reality a bit longer than a Sherman. I think the Sherman (and derivative unit) graphics are slightly too big. I feel the Cromwell graphic is the right size, or fractionally too small.

I will slowly work my way through the tank graphics measuring lengths and go through online sources for historical length specifications and create a list. From these, I should be able to calculate a ratio for each tank comparing its in-game and historical sizes and take it from there.

[the_iron_duke]

One outside-the-box suggestion is to give all ground units 1 A.A., give more A.A. to those with 1 A.A. already and then increase aircraft G.D. The chance of a hit could be something like two or three percent for a unit with 1 A.A.

This would be realistic in that even basic German units in the ToEs generally have three or more integrated 20mm AA guns, others more, plus small arms fire/MGs would occasionally hit the target. It would also be beneficial in that it would spread out the anti-aircraft coverage, rather than creating pockets around the anti-aircraft units - also realistic.

In the German ToEs, the A.A. Battalion of the Panzer Division has eighteen 20 mm light A.A. guns and eight heavy 88 mm guns. The Panzer Regiment has six 20 mm light A.A. guns and eight medium 37 mm A.A. guns (which is why it has [1] H.A.). However, there are another fifty light 20 mm A.A. guns spread throughout the other units in the Panzer Division.

I haven't tried it yet so I'm not sure how much G.D. would have to go up, but it sounds as if it might work, on paper...

EDIT: all references to H.A. in this post meant to be A.A. - now corrected!

[the_iron_duke]

I'm experimenting with giving an infantry unit [1] A.A., but I'm not getting it to work completely as hoped. Even if I increase Ground Defense for the aircraft hugely, I can't seem to get the infantry's return fire below a 5% kill rate. I expect it's got something to do with initiative or how the effect of 1 A.A. cannot be reduced.

Any ideas what's going on or whether it can be made so that [1 ] A.A. gives a lower kill rate than 5%? Here's a screenshot:



Even at 5% it might be workable. So ballpark figures, an air unit attacking a divisional tank unit (which had historically more integrated A.A. than other ground units and so with an A.A. value of [2] or above) would inflict/receive 10% vs 10% damage. A regular ground unit (now with [1] A.A.) would inflict 5% but would receive 20+% damage from the aircraft.

The low altitude attack penalty can be modded. Does anyone know how this works exactly?

[the_iron_duke]

Might have found a way around it. I wondered what would happen if I changed the low altitude attack penalty from -5 to a positive number and set it to 55. The kill rate from the infantry has gone down to 1%. So with some testing it should be able to get the right low altitude attack value to get the idea to work.

[ThvN]

First some info about air vs. ground combat:

Initiative plays no role, the ground unit will shoot first (gets +100 ini).

Passive attack vs. strategic bombers: A unit that has it's AA value bracketed [1] does not defend against attacks from strategic bombers.

Cloudy weather: attacker and defender fire with only half their strength points (so a 10-str unit fires with only 5 shots)

Low altitude attack: This penalty is only applied when an airplane is attacking a ground unit; if it is overflying the hex it is ignored. Sometimes, when I fly into unexpectedly heavy AAA, I do not attack to avoid taking an extra beating at -5 defense on top of the next round of AAA fire.

Random weirdness: only tactical bombers can attack submarines, and when they attack they defend against any sub AA fire with their... close defense. I'm still not sure if this is a bug, and I keep forgetting to ask Rudankort during the betas.

I've been tweaking numbers quite a bit, so here are some of my sample GD/kill percentages vs. AA with strength 1.

GD 65 and higher: 1%
GD 50-60: 2%
GD 45: 3%
GD 35: 4%

[ThvN]

About the organic AAA support, aren't those sort of units supposed to be represented by the AA units in PzC?

I've looked up the unit you mentioned, the trio (platoon) of SdKfz 7/1, which was part of Panzer Abteilungen, might game-wise be portrayed by having a single SdKfz 7 or other mobile AAA unit for every X number of tanks and other appropiate units? I saw a similar arrangement where 2 'half-platoons' of SdKfz 10/5 were part of a heavy Panzer Grenadier company (KSTN 1115).

Some of those AAA platoons were a sort of semi-separate detachments, which could be temporarily attached to various units according to the wishes of commanders. I found:

KSTN 1196: armoured & tracked AAA platoon, came in three versions A, B, or C. Each consisted of two 'half-platoons' with 4 armoured AAA tanks. 'B' had 2 x 4 Wirbelwind, 'C' had 2 x 4 Flakpanzer 37mm, and 'A' was a mixed unit with 4 of each. Each version had a little over 50 personnel.

KSTN 1714: light army self-propelled Flak-battery, consists of nine SdKfz 7/1. Personnel: 155 men in total

KSTN 1715: army Flak battery, partly-motorized (towed), 24 guns which could be either 2cm, 2cm FlakVierling or 37mm. In total between 150-200 men personnel, depending on which gun type was used (crew size varied).

[the_iron_duke]

To be clear, I am talking about having the Air Attack defensively only, so it might be possible to use the low altitude attack penalty modifier to partially or wholly solve the issue. Increasing aircraft G.D. may also necessitate increasing the A.A. of anti-aircraft units.

I've currently got the altitude attack penalty modifier at 25 and a tank with a low [A.A.] score is inficting 3% kill rate defensive fire and one with higher [A.A.] inflicting 4%.

The thing is, I don't really understand how its working as I don't understand all the mechanisms involved. Having said that, the basic idea is working in tests and with fine-tuning it could be good. Ideally, it would be good to double-check the maths, if possible. I feel the defensive A.A. fire kill rate may be higher than the 3% (1 in 33) or 4% (1 in 25) it shows.

I think maybe a 4-5% defensive fire kill rate could be good?

[ThvN]

To be clear, I am talking about having the Air Attack defensively only, so it might be possible to use the low altitude attack penalty modifier to partially or wholly solve the issue. Increasing aircraft G.D. may also necessitate increasing the A.A. of anti-aircraft units.

The issue here is when an aircraft attacks a ground target with AAA cover. This AAA unit shoots first, and the Low alitude penalty applies as well. So AAA would do next to no damage during the attack, and the next turn it can fire at the plane using its normal GD. So results will be skewed either way, I think. This will also make AAA guns easy targets for tactical bombers.

I've currently got the altitude attack penalty modifier at 25 and a tank with a low [A.A.] score is inficting 3% kill rate defensive fire and one with higher [A.A.] inflicting 4%.

The thing is, I don't really understand how its working as I don't understand all the mechanisms involved. Having said that, the basic idea is working in tests and with fine-tuning it could be good. Ideally, it would be good to double-check the maths, if possible. I feel the defensive A.A. fire kill rate may be higher than the 3% (1 in 33) or 4% (1 in 25) it shows.

I think maybe a 4-5% defensive fire kill rate could be good?

I am trying to aim for a loss rate of fighters that is roughly equal to the losses of the ground unit it is attacking, to discourage using fighters as ground attack planes all the time. So 5% or slightly lower is a pretty good number to start from, I think (I'm still using 5% myself).

The mechanism is relatively simple: attack value is compared to defense value, and if attack value is much lower than defense the chance of a kill is lower as well, and vice versa. The game simply compares the two values, and reads/calculates the miss/suppress/kill chances that are appropiate for those values.

When a plane attacks ground targets (low-attack), the game makes them more vulnerable during their attack run by temporarily lowering their defense by 5 points. What you are doing by making it positive and very large as well is making it much harder to damage them as they are attacking a unit, and than the next turn they will become much more vulnerable.

If you are only dealing with passive AA, that is not a big problem, like you say. But if there are AAA units involved in the mix the results will be very weird.

If you keep the normal GD/AA values, and just keep the big bonus, AAA will not be able to really damage low-attack aircraft, but the turn after the attack they will suddenly do a lot more damage. If you increase the AA values of AAA ( ) , they will do normal damage vs. low-attack planes, and tear them apart because they now have high AA values shooting at mediocre GD values.

So I think the best thing to do is leave the [1] values intact, but keep the low-attack penalty negative, and increase both airplance GD a lot and also match the AAA AA values to those higher GD values, to restore the balance.

[the_iron_duke]

I am admitting defeat on the grounds that in the German infantry division only the anti-tank battalion has integrated A.A. It would probably get a bit complicated if the infantry of the Panzer Divisions had A.A. and those of the infantry divisions didn't. It was a nice idea while it lasted...

Still, it asks the question, who should get A.A.? I don't think the engineers deserve it. So it means no A.A. for infantry except perhaps HW units. So that would leave only the divisional tanks, I think, with A.A (apart from the A.A.A.).

EDIT: Unless...(gulp) anti-heroes....?

[ThvN]

This is not defeat, you are just adjusting your strategy based on new intel becoming available! That is my story and I'm sticking to it.

But it still is a difficult problem to solve; I tried reasoning that the [1] only represents organic machineguns opening fire, but like you, I found the loss ratios a bit high for that. I also encountered a nasty problem that with the old experience rules, attack values increased, and experienced HW infantry could inflict a fairly decent number of kills, but even experienced fighters would also be able to destroy hard targets with ridiculous ease. This problem has been sorted because now I can separate different attack experience bonuses, which has made my start all over re-thinking some stats. But I also have to re-balance them between classes.

So, I have gathered a lot of info and tweaked a lot of stats over time, but now I'm almost back at square one and decided to start with a fresh file, because trying to remember why I changed a lot of things and how they should be different is difficult. Unfortunately, I've become mired in some work assignments, each with deadlines, so modding and testing has come to a virtual stop for now. But I can spend enough time to spread some of my observations here, so others may benefit from them.

My plan now is to give [1] AA to a lot of units. I'm thinking (late-war) tanks, recon and most infantry types (maybe all) should get it. and I'm trying to forget about which tanks were equiped with AA MG's, because those weren't always mounted or even used against aircraft (apparently almost exclusively vs. ground targets), although the potential was still there, of course. So maybe I just give all tanks [1] AA. I'm undecided about AT, because that class has a very diverse lineup of units.

[the_iron_duke]

Maybe it would be possible to implement the plan. You think it could be a good idea to add to the game?

It might be possible to use heroes/anti-heroes to work it or at least make the stats appear more normal, instead of aircraft having huge G.D. values and A.A.A. huge A.A. values.

Also, on tanks, their A.D. could perhaps go up to around the 18-24 range.

[ThvN]

I am sorry, I don't really follow? Wouldn't it be easier to change the eqp file a bit more and take out those [1] figures? Because lowering attack with an anti-hero will lower all their attack values, so you'd have to adjust the rest again. Or maybe I misunderstood your reasoning?

[the_iron_duke]

I've checked the heroes options since posting and I see one can't specify which attack values are modified - it's all attack categories or none. So it's no use, really.

I'm testing with the regular figures again. Might be able to get it to work, but it would be accepting that all units with A.A. capability would have 5-6% chance of a kill in return.

It's possible to increase the chance of a return kill by adjusting the A.A.. So divisional tanks could have more A.A. than other units.

Could try to adjust it so that attacking a divisional tank would result in pretty equal loses of 10% vs 10%.

Other units, including attached/independent heavy tanks would have the standard 5-6% return fire kill rate. Heavy tanks could lose 5-10% damage. Other less armoured targets 20% or more.

More testing required...

[ThvN]

Aha, I see, thanks for explaining. You can think about compensating increases in [AA] of certain units by slightly reducing the AA of dedicated AAA units, like the FlaK 88mm. Maybe this will help maintain the overall balance? Just throwing out an idea.

[the_iron_duke]

I think what this game really needs is a tool-tip which appears when one's pointer hovers over an enemy unit. It could be set to appear after the pointer is over a unit for over half a second or a second.

It would then give the effective kill rate percentage odds of attacking it with the unit one has selected.

Currently, one has to hold control then click on the unit where it brings up the odds table and then one has to do some maths in one's head with suppression and rate of fire modifiers and then one finally gets the effective percentage odds. The standard -x/-x combat predictions that one get are very crude and lacking accuracy, hiding a lot - 6% vs 15% odds would be displayed as -1,-1.

So while I seem to have got the plan to give A.A. to everyone to work, or at least I am close to doing so, testing has revealed this weakness.

It would mean every time one wanted to attack a ground unit with a fighter or tactical bomber one would have to go through the combat log and do some calculations to see whether the attack is worthwhile.

I feel it would be an improvement to the game to give A.A. to all units, as it would spread out the A.A. coverage meaning it's not concentrated in little hotspots.

Unfortunately, I feel it would really need a better combat odds prediction display system to work because of the inconvenience in getting the accurate combat odds with the current game. It's certainly simpler with the way it is now where one knows when attacking a ground unit with an aircraft (discounting the divisional tanks with 1 A.A.) that one will only inflict damage and not receive it, and so no need to look at the pre-combat log each time.

[the_iron_duke]

The key for working out bombing percentages, I feel, has to be what damage a fighter - a unit with 1 H.A, 1 S.A. - is capable of doing.

So I've run some tests on the kill rates of a full-strength Bf 109G attacking a full-strength Churchill tank with various different Air Defense values for the tank.

Here is a list showing the Air Defense value of the tank and the damage done by the fighter:

8: Sup. 10%/Kill: 17%

10: Sup. 6%/Kill: 14%

12 Sup. 5%/Kill: 11%
13: Sup. 5%/Kill: 9%
14: Sup. 4%/Kill: 8%
15: Sup. 4%/Kill: 6%
16: Sup. 4%/Kill: 6%

18: Sup. 4%/Kill: 6%

20: Sup. 4%/Kill: 6%
21: Sup. 4%/Kill: 6%
22: Sup. 5%/Kill: 5%

24: Sup. 5%/Kill: 5%

26: Sup. 5%/Kill: 5%

28: Sup. 5%/Kill: 5%

30: Sup. 5%/Kill: 5%

This can be portrayed in graph form:



It is clear how the benefit from increased Air Defense plateaus after the 15 mark. It means it won't be possible for a fighter to do less than 5 or 6% damage without increasing tank air defence to huge values.

[the_iron_duke]

[EDIT: Post on anti-aircraft hex-range deleted as the information was plain, god diggity dang incorrect. ]

[the_iron_duke]

I've been doing some reading and looking at aircraft specifications info (this page is quite an interesting overview: http://acepilots.com/planes/specs.html ) and, after testing, have come up with some fighter values. How do they look?

Fighter . . . In / AA / AD
--------------------------
Spitfire XIV: 12 - 17 - 20
Yak-3: . . . . 12 - 16 - 21
Spitfire IX:. 10 - 17 - 20
La-5FN: . . . 11 - 16 - 20
Fw 190A: . . 11 - 17 - 19
Bf 109: . . . . 10 - 16 - 20
Yak 9-D: . . . 10 - 16 - 19

At dogfighting, they basically rank in the order you suggested, Thomas. Every aircraft is different from each other.

The Spitfires are unchanged. The Yak-3 I've given lower AA as it's armament is not so impressive in reality but it has top initiative and the highest AD. The La-5N is similar to an Fw 190A, but inflicts and receives less casualties - like a Bf 109 but with better initiative.

The Fw 190A and Bf 109G are closer in performance than the standard and GCUR EQ files. They also have different qualities - the Fw 190A inflicts more casualties but also receives more than a Bf 109 (and does have better initiative). It means the debate about which is best is not so straightforward as they have different qualities - some might argue the greater survivability of the Bf 109G would make it a better aircraft!

The Yak-9D is at the bottom of the ladder, but it has the great asset of its long-range fuel capability.

[ThvN]

Nice job, it's always difficult to make airplanes different from each other with just three stats. I like the higher AD for the 'dogfighters', since I use that as well. AA is always tricky, since it is some sort of mixture of gun power, accuracy, good sights and performance (some planes were poor gun platforms).

A lot will depend on good dice rolls, of course. Thinking out loud, if you still don't like the results of fighter-vs.-fighter combat, you can try shifting a few points here and there, trading INI for AA or AD, just accentuating the existing differences. But I think you'd need a lot of battles to notice much difference, so I would try these values first for a while, since they look OK to me.

Oh, and if you are bored:

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/

[the_iron_duke]

As I say, I've got them performing in the right order per your suggested list and I think the kill rates are about right. I don't think any aircraft should have A.A. higher than 17 as kill rates would be getting too high. I want the damage around 20 or 30 a turn.

But if anyone's got any specific minor tweaks that would make it more authentic then suggest away, as I am an amateur when it comes to aircraft.

When these stats are tied up that should mean the fighters are finished - slow progress!