Unit hit points

[rufustfirefly42]

I have put a few good hundred hours into the game and it just hit me: what do the hit points for multiple model units exactly stand for? Single entity is obvious. It’s that units’s life. When it reaches 0 = unit dead. But for multiple model units it is not so. It’s not tied to the number of models, as intuition would suggest. And neither with morale, there’s a different bar for that. Most of the time when a unit gets to 0 health, it’s still got lots of models and it keeps fighting, routing and getting back into the fight cyclically.
So what is the actual role of the health bar?

[ArchAnge1LT]

No one can get health to 0 and have models.

Models are tied to a health pool. Divide their pool by model count to know how much health a model has.

[Fryskar]

Its the same for both.
In theory a 120 model unit can still have 120 models at 120 hp.

If a models hp reaches 0, its dead.

Half your text seems to confuse it with leadership.

[Wh♂♂par]

Showing you the health.

[Elitewrecker PT]

It is so for multiple model units too. Each model has its own individual hit points. If you're seeing units with multiple live models at 0 health, you're very bugged.

[Decomposed]

Originally posted by Fryskar:

Half your text seems to confuse it with leadership.

^this

[rufustfirefly42]

Ok, i think I get it. The number of hit points is tied not to the number of models but to the health of each model. So an almost depleted health bar should not translate as very few models left, but as very few health on each model. And the models themselves can theoretically all be alive.

I would have opted for the more intuitive solution of tieing hp bar to nr of models. The way it is, albeit more realistic, it can be misleading. It doesn’t convey info about a unit’s status that well. And that’s because an almost depleted unit can still take ages to obliterate. Combined with high leadership it’s even more so.

[Wh♂♂par]

You see their model count and their total health, if a single model now has 3 hp or 57 remaining really doesn't matter for tactical play. The overall health of the unit is way more important.

High HP, high model count - everyone is healthy.
High HP, low remaining model count - few models still got a lot of health
Low HP, high remaining model count - they'll die by looking at them.

[Snezak]

Originally posted by rufustfirefly42:

I would have opted for the more intuitive solution of tieing hp bar to nr of models. The way it is, albeit more realistic, it can be misleading. It doesn’t convey info about a unit’s status that well. And that’s because an almost depleted unit can still take ages to obliterate. Combined with high leadership it’s even more so.

In that case you will suddenly see models not actively engaged at combat (guys at the back lines) suddenly drop dead. The way it is now, the frontline guys gonna get damaged and killed and replaced by the guys behind them, it's actually quite intuitive.

[tomasstigjensen]

If you have a unit with 10 models, and full health of 2000 hp, means that each model have 200 hp..

Since units with many models, fight where alot of the models are not engaged, they loose models faster...

In theory a spell deals "even" damage to each model at the same time, meaning it loose health but not models...

[Namhaid]

Originally posted by rufustfirefly42:

I would have opted for the more intuitive solution of tieing hp bar to nr of models. The way it is, albeit more realistic, it can be misleading. It doesn’t convey info about a unit’s status that well. And that’s because an almost depleted unit can still take ages to obliterate. Combined with high leadership it’s even more so.

But then you wouldn't know the real state of the unit. A unit with it's 120 models alive at 1hp would appear as full health, but it would be easily killed by a gentle breeze, while another unit of the same type with 60 models at full health would appear as half dead, while capable of withstanding much more damage. This way is much better as you can know both the overall health and the number of units left.

[rufustfirefly42]

I see. It does make more sense, indeed. It was just my mind trying to get used to the fact that something that i understoond in a certain way and seemed to make sense for the whole time i’ve been playing this game was wrong.

And as tomas mentioned, the confusion came mostly from the way spells work. I hit a multimodel unit with an aoe spell, health gets close to 0 on that unit but my spellcaster’s kill count also shows 0. I never could wrap my mind around that until now :)

[Elitewrecker PT]

That's more of a bug, some spells not increasing kill count.

[rufustfirefly42]

I also thought so until now. But if you damage every single model down to very few hp, without killing any, it does make sense.

[Namhaid]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

That's more of a bug, some spells not increasing kill count.

I've seen it happening a lot without being a bug, mostly with low or moderate aoe spells. I just played a chokepoint battle where my life wizard's first Awakening of the Wood into the enemy blob racked up a meager 5 kills, but did a lot of damage. By the third cast the kill count was 500+