I want to love this game...

[jordipg]

...but the numbers. The numbers. Where do all the numbers come from?

How is offensive power calculated?
How is the power value calculated? What is the power value?
What/where is the initiative value?
Why does unmodified offensive power go down sometimes when you add more units to an attack? (assuming no stacking penalties)
What do these "odds" numbers mean? How are they calculated? How can I attack with 28:1 and somehow only score 1 hit?
What does Executing Front xxx mean?
Why are there readiness penalties even when you haven't moved or attacked? How do 6 Sdkfz 222s with a readiness of 100 translate into a -82% readiness modifier on attack?
What does "Favorite Tries" mean?
What is "Free AP" in the cumulative supply counter and why is it always 0?
Why does the number in Unit -> UpKp have a 't' in it? (e.g., 5.3t)

The list goes on and on. I gather plenty of experienced players say not to worry about the details, but a beer and pretzels game this is not.

I'm trying to master this game but frequently hitting brick walls learning the basics. Anyone have any advice?

[Zedronar]

You know how Paradox have tooltips that explain everything? I wish this game had something like that, but it was developed by a much smaller team AFAIK. I'm afraid in the meantime you'll have to recur to reading the manual. Don't try to learn everything at once, though. Remember to have fun. Failing is part of the process.

[jordipg]

Thanks for your thoughts.... and you're right about it being a small team. But it's a team that I think appears to be serious about wargaming, so I'm trying to learn how they intend this game to be played. And of course I agree about having fun! But in this particular case, I have read the manual from cover to cover and am somewhat frustrated with my inability to plan ahead.

For example, "offensive power" is probably the most important number on the combat setup screen (in my opinion, I'd love to hear that I'm wrong here). The modifiers are actually quite well documented in the manual and many of them do have tooltips. However, "offensive power" does not appear in the manual anywhere. It does say "the second-to-last icon shows the unmodified attack points per combat round."

What I really want to know is how much offensive power does my armor battalion bring to bear on this infantry battalion, before modifiers. I want to know if this attack even makes sense before I start worrying about modifiers.

But I have no idea how this number is calculated. It definitely is not attack * number of elements which is what I would expect and what the manual suggests. For example, for 20 tanks with 100 hard attack vs. tanks, I would expect unmodified offensive power equal to 20 * 100. Well it's not that. It's some fraction of that. And then that number is further modified up or down based on the various modifiers.

Also, adding units together does not simply add their offensive power together. For example, you might do a regular attack with an armor unit and see an unmodified offensive power of 500, and then add an infantry unit to the attack and see the unmodified offensive power drop to 75! Maybe there is a good reason for that -- maybe the infantry get in the way of the tanks somehow -- but I would expect that to be in a modifier and I would expect the unmodified offensive power to be some kind of sum of the attack (soft or hard) values of the units involved.

So, to summarize, what I think is the most important number in the game can only be determined through trial and error or otherwise guessing. Maybe I'm wrong about this number being so important? If I am, then I'd like to hear how others estimate their attack strength before moving right next to the enemy to see what the setup screen comes up with. If I'm not, then I'd like to know how that offensive power is calculated!

[DrDiablo]

I'll try and contribute to your thread as best I can. There are a number of anomalies and factors that adjust the AP in a turn, when attacking and defending. First of all a lot of these equations is based on a simulation of what makes sense. Often when I found myself questioning the maths, I think about how it was based on documentaries and real life.

But I will try to address your more specific questions and hopefully this is of some help. The structure of your units is paramount. There is a cohesion factor in divisions beyond just casualties. The chain of command is important. An officer gets a bonus that flows down the hierarchy. His ratio to staff (meaning he is capable of managing that size of staff) affects the effectiveness of the division. The ratio of staff to units also affects the effectiveness of a division/unit/group. The distance of your officers away from their units affect their effectiveness. The % differs depending on the officer. See their percentage and traits. It helps to move your really tired units into higher command (if he has ratio space) and to rest them if you have a good compliment of units. The card bringing in an emergency unit that can come in two can really mess with these ratios if you are not keeping an eye on the ratios.

Readiness is one of the best features I have seen in a war game. It is so realistic, because men were not robots. When they got tired their combat effectiveness deteriorated. So if they are driving across the country and in combat and never being rested their AP will drop. The game designer added a small element of RND too, which I wholeheartedly agree with, because there were instances in the war where elite troops got dominated by superior tactics or where weather or any number of circumstances could change the odds, and these were random sometimes.

Then there is stacking, another very realistic feature in this game. Increasing the size of your attack with numbers hits a threshold where it no longer works in your favour. Also over firing artillery over stacking eventually reduces effectiveness, because the spread is only as big as it is, and dropping x10 the bombs on the same crater won't help. The same applies for AP, sending in more and more tanks in a sq. mile will ultimately reduce effectiveness. Mixing units from different command structures or divisions into one attack can also reduces AP - first of all because you have two chains of command and secondly because there is different rates of readiness. One unit being tired can affect another's performance if they have the same objectives. The same applies to traffic in this game. The more crowded the roads the higher the fuel consumption. Readiness could be recouped while the road is busy, instead of all going at once. This is why in real life outnumbering the enemy just wasn't necessarily going to work for a number of common sense reasons. There were larger battles like Kursk where this wasn't the case, but even then tactics were used that had to consider supplies and the battlefield. Massing your troops has the obvious advantage up to a point. (especially in a heavily wooded area) Look at all the factors including the disadvantages, and this is all reflected in your AP when you give the order to attack. Casualties also affect this, when a unit cohesion drops below a threshold, and these stats show on the units. If a unit took a beating their morale would drop - this also affects their AP. Think of the AP as a scale of moving parts. So elite units have better quality stats, but their AP just starts at a higher point.

More senior officers orders (cards) when timed right can also affects this AP factor. So its not just the immediate officers, but senior officers that can affect that number. Their ratios matter too. The most important part I learned was to use your forces to co-ordinate the balanced quantity with the best quality for attack/defence and resting. The timing of the order cards is important too, and when transferring units from one division to another watch the ratios and be careful not to break divisions down, but rather build them up if the officer ratio allows for it. Marching troops really batters their readiness - if there are trucks pick them up and drop them off. Use nights to rest and recoup.

Slow your roll so traffic is kept down and supplies can keep up. Someone should always be resting to regain readiness. And don't be too eager to bring on all those emergency units and additional divisions via the cards, because all those men want to eat and use up road space and supplies. Some of this differs when playing the allies, and that comes down to tactics and strategy.

So there is no chess move magic number that you can calculate the exact outcome. That in my opinion is what makes this game such a great game. You have to consider all these factors to determine your next move - kinda like it was in real life for generals.

Hey, sorry if I went off the beaten path and perhaps did not address every point/question. Hope I managed to be of some assistance. I haven't played for a while now as BG3 got my attention, but I do love this game, one of my all time favourite war games.

[jordipg]

@DrDiablo, I take your points and I agree that the thought that has gone into these stats is extraordinary. But unfortunately, the numbers also need to make sense.

As an example, here's a question I've posted on the Matrix forums which is unanswered as yet. It's about the readiness stat, which I agree is a cool measure, but I give a trivial example in which there are huge readiness penalties applied in a situation where it makes no sense: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10185&t=397122

So while readiness is interesting and important, surely it must be possible to at least understand in broad strokes why the number is fluctuating. I'm not sure what the point of a wargame that applies a 78% (!) attack penalty for no apparent reason is.

With all due humility, I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but no one has pointed it out yet.

[Citrus]

Isn't readiness indicator part of the unit integrity bar?

I have not yet looked into the details, but my understanding is that green represents 100% readiness and the height of the bar on the counter represents unit integrity. Looking at your examples in the forum I notice they do not have full readiness/integrity bars.

I have assume the lower integrity affects unit strength and consequently attack value. For example, I had a couple of divisional artillery units with 1/3 green bar and unit strength of 9 at start of battle. I decided not to use them and the unit strength increased to 11 a few turns later. In retrospect, I wish I had checked their attack values over time. Instead I assumed they had been receiving auto-assigned replacements over the previous turns, which contribute to unit strength. The bar didn't go up significantly (or even noticeably). Yet if you look at stronger level units their readiness/integrity bars are higher.

Does integrity contribute to combat readiness? I don't know. Intuitively it makes sense that a unit ready for combat with low integrity (e.g. missing combat roles and equipment) would be penalised going into combat.

I haven't explored this part of the system enough to validate my hypothesis. Perhaps morale is a factor too?

[jordipg]

Well, they do have green readiness, which corresponds to their readiness values of 100. My question is then why is there a -78% readiness penalty?

If morale and/or integrity contribute to a readiness penalty, it isn't documented anywhere that I'm aware of. To my knowledge, the only things morale does are related to retreat and panic during battle. The manual honestly doesn't say much about it.

As far as integrity goes, again the manual doesn't say much about it, but I would expect a lower integrity to be reflected in the unmodified offensive power number, not a modifier to some other stat. Why have a separate integrity value in the first place, if it's just going to modify another modifier? But I agree it's plausible.

Undocumented rules in a wargame are tough for me to see past and this game has lots of them.

[Citrus]

If you click on a unit and hover over the integrity icon (looks like a yellow org icon right bottom of screen) it states the level of unit integrity and the percentage threshold at which it has a chance to break and panic. So morale isn't the only factor contributing to units breaking. It also shows ideal and current personnel and equipment levels. I tried looking at whether integrity percentage correlates with modifiers on attack value but could not see anything definitive. If integrity does contribute to readiness modifiers, it's not the only factor.

I just had a look at a Panzer regiment (Panthers) with 100% readiness against an adjacent artillery unit and then against an adjacent infantry regiment. The readiness modifiers on the attack value differed in each case, while the HQ/Staff/Officer modifiers on attack value stayed the same in both cases. Possibly terrain, equipment type and opposing unit type all factor into the readiness modifiers?

Of course this doesn't answer your question.

It seems like you're playing by numbers instead of accepting unit and command dynamics have a level uncertainty. The best part of this game is that it emulates battlefield and unit uncertainty through a dynamic system of modifiers. Not even a real life battle commander could know the exact numerical value of effects that are going to contribute to the outcome of an engagement. I'm bewildered by your idea of accountants leading tactical units in battle.

[jordipg]

I'm fine with battlefield uncertainty, but I'm saying the numbers don't make sense. That's different. That's just a software bug until proven otherwise. And it's not just this one thing. See my original post in this thread for a partial list of numbers that don't make sense to me.

And honestly, this readiness thing I could live with. But one I can't live with is this one: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10185&t=397321

Call it accounting if you like, but if I can't even approximately estimate my unmodified offensive power, then I don't know what the point is.

[vic]

The offensive power in the odds calculator is an abstract value that has no direct relation to troop type attack power. In fact in the odds calc the off power and def power are abstractions based on a multiplication of rounded down values of (sqrt(att power) * hp) / 100. That being said re-examining that piece of code and formula I think it is open for improvement actually. So thanks for getting this thread started. Will be addressed in the next open beta after the current one moves to release version. Best wishes, Vic

[tombo]

any update to the next beta release?