Potential Secure Objectives Bug

[dazkaz15]

Seeing as how the game has about a million lines of code, I think your doing a grand job [:)]

[Phoenix100]

Can someone on the dev team either confirm or deny Davidx's formula, please? It seems very odd to me. Like Daz, I assumed always that you would just aggregate combat power to get the figures. It makes a BIG diff if it's as davidx says.

[jimcarravall]

ORIGINAL: phoenix

Can someone on the dev team either confirm or deny Davidx's formula, please? It seems very odd to me. Like Daz, I assumed always that you would just aggregate combat power to get the figures. It makes a BIG diff if it's as davidx says.

I questioned it too, except I decided to read page 131, which says: "Combat Power ( F4 ) The number indicated (0 – 9) is an approximate measure of how powerful a unit
is compared to other units. It factors in firepower, strength and effectiveness values. A combat power
of 9 is twice as powerful as an 8, which in turn, is twice as powerful as a 7 and so on. . . ."

Based on the description above, if 9 is approximately twice as powerful as 8, it is approximately four times as powerful as 7, approximately eight times as powerful as 6, and approximately 16 times as powerful as 5.

The Richter scale carries the same relationship among the numbers used to define it, except it describes the number of times a measured force is divided by 10 to get "on the scale," while combat power describes the number of times the algorithm using firepower, strength, and effectiveness values to arrive at a unit strength is divided by two to get "on the icon" (after being rounded to a single digit).

It is described as "approximate" because it has to be rounded to a single digit value for icon display purposes.

[BletchleyGeek]

Yes, the 10:1 ratio is there, but I think it would be good to further explain how it is calculated, since it takes into account the "interaction" of the combat power of friendly and enemy forces.

The following quantities are assessed for both enemy and friendly forces:

[*] Total Anti-Personnel Firepower (you can get an idea of this value by adding up the value reported on the unit details box)
[*] Total Anti-Armour Firepower measured at medium range, that is, at ranges over 300 meters (you can't get an exact idea of this, as it depends on the actual equipment of units).
[*] Total Armour value - That is, how many armoured vehicles are in each unit.
[*] Total Personnel Amount.

Note that the firepower values are an estimate of the number of casualties that can be inflicted in one minute, in perfect firing conditions.

For each side, Combat value is calculated as follows:

Total Anti-Personnel Firepower + (Amount of Personnel /10) + ( Friendly Armour Value - Total Enemy Anti-Armour Firepower)

The ratio results from dividing Friendly by the Enemy Combat Value.

In the case Daz brings forward, I reckon that since the German infantry has no Anti-Armour Firepower at medium range, it doesn't counter the armour value of the Recon unit. And the Recon unit probably has significant "theoretical" firepower due to the vehicle mounted machine guns and the HE effect of Greyhound guns. Note that personnel amounts are "normalized" so just "mere numbers" don't matter - what matters is whether one side has or not a clear fire superiority in the area.

You need to bring up armour Daz. Something which is very scarce in Hofen

[Arjuna]

re the combat power. Miquel has given some insight into the calculation of combat power but this needs to be distinguished from the way we display combat power in the Unit Info Box on the unit counters. Because of space constraints we chose to use a simple one digit scheme to represent it. So a CP of 0 is the base amount, a value of 1 is twice as strong as 0. A value of 2 is twice as strong as 1 and a value of 3 is twice as strong as 2 etc. These are just rough order of magnitude indicators. For the purposes of the control of victory locations we do a more in depth assessment.

[dazkaz15]

Thanks for your time looking into this, but are you sure about me not having enough anti armour value within the objective that has over 300m effective range?

[Phoenix100]

Thanks Dave and Bletch (and Jim). Seems Davidx is indeed correct. Thanks Davidx. That's very helpful. Wish I'd gleaned it some time ago....

[navwarcol]

As do I.. this has indeed been educational, thanks guys!

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: dazkaz15

Thanks for your time looking into this, but are you sure about me not having enough anti armour value within the objective that has over 300m effective range?

It obviously needs to checked more closely, Daz. Thank you for pointing into the right direction.

To which saved game does the screenshot refer to?

[dazkaz15]

Its from the Hofen AAR D2 0100, but the same size force has been defending on the objective for all of the saves I sent you, I think.

[davidx]

Hello,

If combat power is that same as combat value, then:

Combat Power=2^(Combat Power Number Indicator in the Icon Counter) is approximately equal to (Total Anti-Personnel Firepower + (Amount of Personnel /10) + ( Friendly Armour Value - Total Enemy Anti-Armour Firepower))

The approximately equal to is because the Combat Power Number Indicator in the Icon Counter is a round version of the exact number. Therefore, if the estimated victory condition is close to 10:1, then the exact and approximated may not be match, but for the example, the victory condition is close to 90:1, clear control should be awarded.

So the prior computation estimating the combat power ratio for control that was presented should be correct. Now if the above relation is not true, then of course all bets are off, but in this case then, "HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT WE NEED TO DO ACHIEVE A VICTORY CONDITION".

Unless I abstract it as "political manipulation" or "in house military in-fighting", this just becomes a guessing game based on hidden formulas that do not match the manual description at the operational level.

This then becomes an exercise in frustration and not the satisfying kind.

regards,

[jimcarravall]

ORIGINAL: davidx

Hello,

If combat power is that same as combat value, then:

Combat Power=2^(Combat Power Number Indicator in the Icon Counter) is approximately equal to (Total Anti-Personnel Firepower + (Amount of Personnel /10) + ( Friendly Armour Value - Total Enemy Anti-Armour Firepower))

The approximately equal to is because the Combat Power Number Indicator in the Icon Counter is a round version of the exact number. Therefore, if the estimated victory condition is close to 10:1, then the exact and approximated may not be match, but for the example, the victory condition is close to 90:1, clear control should be awarded.

So the prior computation estimating the combat power ratio for control that was presented should be correct. Now if the above relation is not true, then of course all bets are off, but in this case then, "HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT WE NEED TO DO ACHIEVE A VICTORY CONDITION".

Unless I abstract it as "political manipulation" or "in house military in-fighting", this just becomes a guessing game based on hidden formulas that do not match the manual description at the operational level.

This then becomes an exercise in frustration and not the satisfying kind.

regards,

There's no "political manipulation" or "in house military in-fighting."

There's a situation revolving around how to provide a human player with some semblance of a strength evaluation for a unit in a very limited space available while the game is running.

When faced with a situation, and in need of a quick decision, it's pretty obvious that a single "3" unit is more powerful than a single "1" unit, and two single "3" units will probably be better yet against a single "1" unit.

That's a lot more insight into how to achieve battle success than ANY commander in World War II had prior to entering a battle (except maybe while the Soviets approached Hitler's bunker).

Plus, if the unit display isn't as accurate as desired, there's always the opportunity to stop the game and look at the composition of every unit involved (while considering that absolute strengths for enemy units are masked by the fog of war) to come up with a more detailed evaluation of the situation. The human player can count manpower, guns, bullets available, and even the morale and fatigue effects on units from the left hand side of the screen (still significantly more detailed than ANY commander in World War II had at hand) to make a decision on whether it's better to hold, fold, or raise the bet.

Personnally, and like most commanders, if forced to decide whether to take an objective, I'll allocate forces I think are sufficient to accomplish the task (focusing on having more 3s than my enemy as a foundation), and after evaluating the progress, determining whether the attack is worth supporting with more forces, worth stopping satisfied with defending what I've attained with the allocation, or a lost cause and subject to withdrawal of the remaining forces.

[Arjuna]

RL operational level commanders never have precise data on which to plan and exactly calculate the required level of forces to commit to objectives. At best they are reasonable estimates. If you find this frustrating then you will be joining the ranks of many commanders. But it is part of the reality they have to get used to.

[RangerX3X]

The scenario has the Axis Höfen South objective with a radius of 600 m, but the Allies Höfen South objective is only 300 m…could this potentially be causing an issue with how the game is determining who is in control?

[simovitch]

ORIGINAL: RangerX3X

The scenario has the Axis Höfen South objective with a radius of 600 m, but the Allies Höfen South objective is only 300 m…could this potentially be causing an issue with how the game is determining who is in control?

No. It just means the Germans will have a harder time getting the objective because they have a larger perimeter to secure. For the objective to be even be contested (and deny VP to the allies) the Germans need to get within 300m of the Objective location.

[davidx]

Hello,

based on this thread I have monitored victory conditions more closely, and here is another example, in the same likeness, to the thread starter.

[simovitch]

It doesn't look like the twin villages activate until 10AM and it's only 8:41AM. Let me know what happens at 10AM.

[davidx]

Hello,

from the prior post, computing the approximate victory condition ratio is:

approximate friendly cp= 2+8+8+4+8+2+16+8+8+8+2+2+2+4+2+8+8=100
approximate opposing force cp= between 1 and maybe 8

The estimated ratio is (approximate friendly cp)/(approximate opposing force cp) is between 100/1=100 and 100/8=12.5
The estimate victory condition is always greater than 10. From the post, even visually it looks like a victory condition.

Now we calculate is exactly based on the formula kindly provided by panther game's crew:

exact combat value=Total Anti-Personnel Firepower + (Amount of Personnel /10) + ( Friendly Armour Value - Total Enemy Anti-Armour Firepower)

Friendly values (from attach figure):
Total Anti-Personnel Firepower=937
Amount of Personnel=1346
Friendly Armour Value=136
Friendly Anti-Amour Value= 738 (from figure it appears all is greater than 300 yards)

Opposing Forces values using similar method for the one unit:
Total Anti-Personnel Firepower=23
Amount of Personnel=34
Friendly Armour Value=0
Friendly Anti-Armour Value= 4

friendly CV= 937+(1346/10)+(136-4)=1203
opposing CV= 23+ (34/10) + (0-738)= -709

exact VC = 1203/(-709) < 0

So, because of such an overwhelming friendly anti-armor, the ratio goes negative. A negative number is always less than 10. So unless the victory condition considers negative cases for the friendly and opposing force combat values, strange results occurs, as seen here and the original thread starter, I suspect.

The images are from 4.6.270.

regards,

[davidx]

I coincide the early the time but the negative victory condition ratio as computed is a significant possibility. If the possible negative conditions are handled OK, but the initial thread starter appears valid and a similar situation. Just noticing the victory condition issue more, since this thread.

regards,

[Arjuna]

davidx,

Thanks for your input. There is no need to be concerned at the possibility of a negative divide as we max the subtract to zero - eg max( 0, friendly - enemy ).

BTW we also avoid a divide by zero as well.[:)]