I'm wondering about the "volume" characteristic of equipment. Is "999" a flag used by the program for some purpose? There are items set to "999" that don't match in terms of their real-world displacement (light rifle squad, for example).
Second question is what does "volume" do in terms of game effects? I saw this in a document authored by Bob Cross.
Note the “Volume” value (probably in cubic meters). This is used to form the tank’s RCSB value by the formula RCSB = SQRT(Volume) x 20.4125. Bigger the RCSB, the easier the tank is to hit.
So, that makes me wonder if the "999" setting is a flag of some kind for the software.
I looked at the standard equipment database. There are some odd bits as concerns volume.
Almost any item with armor > 0 has a volume, but there are oddball exceptions like the generic 20mm AA gun, with armor = 1 and no volume.
Infantry, towed field guns, fixed guns, helos, aircraft, and ships mostly have armor = 1 and volume = 999 (but a couple of river boats have volume = 100).
Most of the SP AA guns, SP SAMS, and AA guns tend to have armor and volume set to zero unless it is a vehicle that was armored, in which case a calculated volume is assigned (but the Patriot and Barak SP-SAMs have volume assignments and armor set to zero.)
Some of this may be database errors (like the 20mm AA gun). Might be something I look at with lab scenario to see if these quirks produce lopsided loss rates.
After many tests changing these values I think that for the non-armored equipment, the volume is unuseful, is the same 999 as other value.
Josant, thanks for the comment.
I have also run a few tests involving combat using rifle squads with zero volume. The only odd thing I saw with the zero-volume squads, is that when they were in a unit with other equipment items, is that they didn't seem to engage in anti-personnel combat. The regular rifle squads of the opposing force shot at the zero-volume squads, but the zero-volume squads would not shoot at the regular rifle squads (other than volume, both sets of squads had the same equipment parameters). But ... in another test, with only rifle squads on both sides, the zero-volume rifle squads DID shoot at the other side's squads. No idea what that implies.
