a suppression fire tweak: remove suppression bonus to bombardment

[WanderingHead]

OK, I've been proposing a few little tweaks for the next patch, and I've got one more. I am not really sure that any of these will get past Joel, it will depend on how strong the community support is.

IMO, suppression should not provide a bonus to subsequent suppression fire. I would like to remove that.

For example, assuming that each die roll is 16, and an evasion roll of 2 happens each time, and the suppression is always half of the prior cumulative suppression. Then

suppression = 0+16/2 = 8
suppression = 8+ (16(rolled)+2(doubleup)*8(priorsuppression)/2(divbytwo))/2 = 8+12 = 20
suppression = 20+ (16 +2*20/2)/2 = 20+18 = 38
suppression = 38 + (16+2*38/2)/2 = 38+27 = 65

Now, for that last result, the die roll could have been ZERO and the cumulative suppression would still have increased by NINETEEN. It pretty soon becomes unimportant how good of an attack is being made, all that is important is that prior suppression compounds on itself exponentially. Hence, firing twice causes MORE than twice as much suppression.

What does this mean in game terms? Everywhere that you can get in multiple bombardment attacks (e.g. if you have over whelming quantities of artillery, each firing twice, or concentrated air/naval attacks on artillery) you have a great exponentiated suppression effect, and everywhere that you can only get a single bombardment atrtack (e.g. flak against air) you get very little. That is, this very mechanic makes artillery more powerful and flak less powerful, and makes it impossible to do a good job of balancing them.

My simple proposal is to NOT include the prior suppression bonus for bombardment fire. This has no effect whatsoever on flak (air only gets fired on once) but weakens artillery. But it only weakens artillery if you have more than 0.5*opposing_force_size artillery, since that is the only case where artillery actually fires twice on the SAME target.

Now, it was noted here that reducing the evasion would make amphibious assaults easier. This change makes amphibious assaults a little harder, since multiple phase air/naval attacks won't have that exponential growth of suppression. It balances out. If more help with amphib is needed, then the naval bombardment penalty for "no land units present" can be reduced, from the current -5 to either -2 or even 0. I support zero that for simplicity, I think this penalty was added because naval bombardment was too powerful and it was too powerful because of this exponential effect.


Now, this is a kind of esoteric issue, but I hope that I can get your support. Because I really think it would be a big improvement. Most importantly it reins in artillery but only for OVERLOADED artillery deployments. It has absolutely no effect if less than about 1/2 of your units are artillery.

Again, please chime in!

[WanderingHead]

PS - I believe that this will be my last proposed rule tweak before the next patch.

[WanderingHead]

One more thing, to distill this to a simple point: it encourages a "balance of forces", by weakening hordes of artillery while NOT weakening smaller quantities of artillery.

[christian brown]

OK, fine riposte to my concern, god knows; none of us wants to see a reversion to the WaW phenomenon of easy WA landings everywhere.........I could live with this.....it does indeed seem balanced and not just in a pedantic way, it adds realism to the game (yum, yum, my favorite!) Balanced forces are definitley the way to go.........unfortunately for me, I've been KO'd from PBEMs for the last 5 months (due to circumstances beyond my control, e.g.: a jealous and vengeful latin ex-wife) and have not had to contend with this type of gaming......that said, I can see, if only by the mathematical implications so clearly revealed above, that art can and is (Dr. Livingstone 105, I presume) abused. Artillery should never be more than a helpful adjunct to the queen of battle and indeed, should not be a casualty maker all on it's own. I am quite certain that the designers intended the suppression rules (as distinct from WaW) to be supportive factors, rather then decisive movers in battle. Let's face it, if we are devoting 2+ (OMG 6+ in my worst days) hours to this simulation per day, it behooves everyone to warmly embrace the few changes that we, the gaming community can get behind and bring about improving.)

[GKar]

ORIGINAL: WanderingHead

My simple proposal is to NOT include the prior suppression bonus for bombardment fire.

Sounds like the way it should be, you've got my support.

(Just make sure you don't overtweak artillery and especially invasion protection by artillery in the end, taking the other propositions into account.)

[a511]

Agree the suppression fire tweak.
 
Also agree to GKar's pt on dont overweaken the ART EV. imo, the present ART EV is just right.
 
a511

[BoerWar]

I support this, however not if it means the Art isn't somehow made more vulnerable. I have played several PBEM games lately and don't find it very interesting to have to build 30% fighters and 55% artillery no matter which country I play. Don't believe me? Read the AAR's where folks post shots of the force mix, you'll see 30-40 Russian Art by mid to late 42 every time. Even as the Japanese I now build 10-15 Artillery. In my opinion, the force mix is out of balance in a way that needs more than a minor tweak. If you don't reduce the evasion then you need to give air (maybe just TAC air) units and perhaps artillery an advantage when attacking artillery that isn't dug in.

If you want to make landings harder (or at least more costly) reduce the ev for units participating in an amphibious assault. This would be sensible since attacking units in an amphibious assualt are placed in a more vulnerable position, including the bombarding naval units.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: BoerWar
I support this, however not if it means the Art isn't somehow made more vulnerable.

I'm pretty convinced that the artillery evasion reduction PLUS this suppression rule change work very well together for artillery. Not that it necessarily solves everything, but it is a big step in the right direction. The two together will not make amphib easier, I think it would end up a little more difficult because this suppression mechanic far outweighs the evasion.

Another tweak that could be done just to Russia: reduce artillery evasion 1 level FURTHER, and increase infantry evasion by 1. Then you are not in such a deep hole with infantry tech and you might be more inclined to buy them.

Personally, the reason I buy all artillery as Russia is that researching bombardment attack is not very useful (since the stats are dominated by the evasion divisor anyway), so I can buy hordes of artillery while researching other things. My hordes of artillery won't slow my research, since I don't bother to research artillery ...

[MrQuiet]

I agree with the tweak to remove compounded suppression from bombardment attacks.

But it only weakens artillery if you have more than 0.5*opposing_force_size artillery, since that is the only case where artillery actually fires twice on the SAME target.

Artillary almost always fires twice at the same target via Art vs Art and the compounded suppression can be quite brutal, so again I am for removing the compunding suppression effect.

MrQuiet

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: MrQuiet
Artillary almost always fires twice at the same target via Art vs Art and the compounded suppression can be quite brutal, so again I am for removing the compunding suppression effect.

Hmm, I'll have to check that. I thought that it targeted artillery first, but it would target non-artillery units before targeting artillery a second time.

Shouldn't it do the latter? That way you get suppression against the full opposing force instead of just heavily suppressing artillery.

I think that 5 artillery firing on a force of 10 units, say 5 artillery plus 5 inf, should fire on all the opposing units once (against artillery at range 3, against infantry at range 2), instead of firing on the opposing artillery twice. That is how I thought it worked.

[christian brown]

I sincerely hope I'm not putting the cart before the horse here but I think the manual might need to be updated, don't forget to update the PDF when/if these changes go through.

[MrQuiet]

In my exp, a force of (5 arty and 5 inf) vs (5 arty and X units) will allways see art vs art 2 times and no other units targeted by art.
You currently need to have more art than the enemy to supress other units.

Hence the great race to outbuild artillary which Germany usually can not win, and if they could even stay even with Rus they still have to split it up to protect the coast.

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: christian brown
I sincerely hope I'm not putting the cart before the horse here but I think the manual might need to be updated, don't forget to update the PDF when/if these changes go through.

Maybe, thinking about it.