Land units taking too much damage from shore bombardment

[pjg100]

I have noticed since v1.13 that land units seem to be taking damage from shore bombardment at a much higher rate than 10% per naval weapons level. As I mentioned in an earlier post I had a situation in which a tank unit on a coastal hex in France took five consecutive hits from a 0 naval weapons French BB, dropping it from 10 to 5 strength. I have had similar experiences with corps and armies. It seems that shore bombardment scores a hit on a land unit about 50% of the time, even when the unit has 0 naval weapons. Seems like a bug.

[Sugar]

I can confirm, in a current tourney match I achieved a hit against a full strength good supply unit; never watched anything similar since the changing of the mechanics (beside the morale hit of course).

[crispy131313]

I like the variance, I don’t think it should be extended to naval bombardment however and I don’t think it is intended tbh as I believe the developer touched on this subject a while ago about how naval bombardment was purposely not inflicting much casualty.

[Taxman66]

It might be a (unintended?) result of the correction to the randomization issue.

[Sugar]

I already reported the bug, I had 5 hits in 5 attacks and even 1 hit inflicting 2 damage. That means the attack had to had a prediction of 0:1 at min.

[PvtBenjamin]

I don't think its a bug, there should be some damage. The old version that there was 0 damage caused was the bug in my opinion. If I recall ships did damage to land units in SC2.

Sugars example seems extreme tho.


There seems to be more variability in the battle result in the new version. I've had several 0:0 destroyer attacks do some damage to subs and actually had a French corp damage an Axis tank. Battle results shouldn't be so precise variability adds to the intrigue.

[James Taylor]

Not a bug, just extensive variation. Sometimes I can go 20, 30, perhaps 50 bombardments in a row with no results and then all of a sudden get 5 or 6 out of 10. Never a 2 damage though.

I'm sure naval warfare development helps. If you want to be more successful with shore bombardments then research NW to the max and use those maxed out units. WAD!

[Sugar]

No, it`s not WAD (at least no longer), there were complaints about too much damage from shore bombardements and Bill or Hubert changed it accordingly.

[James Taylor]

Was this for 1.14 as I'm playing 1.13 currently?

[Hubert Cater]

ORIGINAL: pjg100

I have noticed since v1.13 that land units seem to be taking damage from shore bombardment at a much higher rate than 10% per naval weapons level. As I mentioned in an earlier post I had a situation in which a tank unit on a coastal hex in France took five consecutive hits from a 0 naval weapons French BB, dropping it from 10 to 5 strength. I have had similar experiences with corps and armies. It seems that shore bombardment scores a hit on a land unit about 50% of the time, even when the unit has 0 naval weapons. Seems like a bug.

If your opponent has researched and upgraded to Naval Weaponry Level-2, then the shore bombardment rate possibility of hitting a land unit jumps to 30% from 10%.

After that there was a fix where we had the random defender losses portion of the code accidentally commented out for quite some time and this has been corrected since I believe v1.13. All this means is that even if a land unit was shown to likely only have 0 strength losses, there is now a 33% chance it will take a single strength point loss. But of course only if the shore bombardment threshold of 10, 20 or 30% has been achieved, i.e. depending on Naval Weaponry research level.

[pjg100]

The situations I am referring to happened with 0 NW upgrades. It is happening in 1.13 and 1.14. Typically does not occur when the targeted unit is in a town only in open terrain. I know you can get random runs of extreme results but it appears to happening much more frequently than the 10% per NW level would indicate.

[Sugar]

It's 10% + 33%. Even destroyers do, despite being in range of div.- or corps arty themselves. Simply don't place any unit along the shore anymore.

[pjg100]

Thanks for the clarification!

[Sugar]

Hehe, fine if it`s clear for you, could you then tell me how to attack in NA without placing along the shores?

[Hubert Cater]

ORIGINAL: Sugar

It's 10% + 33%.

Correct and to clarify just in case, the 10% chance has to be satisfied first, then after that it will be a 33% chance of a hit. Not 10 + 33 = 43% if that makes sense.

[Taxman66]

So it's:
3.3% at level 0
6.6% at level 1
9.9% at level 2

[Sugar]

Doesn`t fit to my experience, but I didn`t run a series to confirm, I confess.

Anyway, afaik nobody ever complained of how the calculation worked during the time it didn't work as designed, and the calculation +-1 is exactly the reason I don't play Breakthrough anymore. At least destroyers and light cruisers shouldn`t get away completely unharmed; if they were placed in range of a possible shore bombardement, they were also in range of corps- or army sized arty. Historically even 8,8 Flak sunk destroyers.

And while we're in the tech support anyway: ground forces don't gather xp from scattering units, while air forces do.

[pjg100]

Okay so this is how I understand the mechanics in light of Hubert's two posts. At NW0 there is a base 10% chance that the defending land unit will lose 1SP. If the 10% shot misses, there is an independent 33% chance that the defender will lose 1SP due to randomization. If the 10% shot hits, there is a 33% chance that the defender will lose either 2SP or 0SP due to randomization. Adding NW tech moves the base chance of inflicting damage up by 10% per level, but of course does not affect the randomization.

Hubert, is this correct?

[Hubert Cater]

deleted duplicate post

[Hubert Cater]

Thanks again for all the feedback everyone as it did highlight one thing I have overlooked in my responses.

The 10% chance of a hit on a land unit only applies to when a land unit is on a resource such as a city, town etc.

In this case the naval bombardment by default targets the city or town first, and then there is a 10% chance that the unit above may also be targeted for an attack.

If this 10% chance succeeeds, the normal naval unit attack value against that target is applied and from what I remember, this is normally an attack value of 0, so no losses will be applied to the land unit. At that point this is where the +/- 1 variability applies and why the defending land unit now receive a 33% chance of taking a hit (after the 10% check succeeds) because the random +/- is either a 0, 1 or -1 on top of whatever the initial calculated losses would have been.

However, if a land unit is not on a defending city or town, then the normal losses it will now incur since v1.13 is a 0, plus a 0, 1 or -1 random addition. With of course the -1 thrown away as units do not receive 0 + (-1) = -1 points in damage.

Even though it was always supposed to work this way, not having it in game for this many months and now having it suddenly re-appear would explain why it is seemingly higher now than before for any land unit on an open hex.

Let me think about this some more and discuss with Bill and we'll come up with something to hopefully satisfy everyone here.

Hubert