Weapon and Target DP and PoH. Making sense of numbers

[wyskass]

TD;DR
Why am I able to destroy a target with weapon hits which DP adds up to less than the target DP?

When trying to allocate weapons to targets I was looking at the DP on the weapon and targets.
Specifically I needed to destroy a Hardened Submarine Pen (#109) with some AGM-158B JASSM (#11).
After running the strike a couple times I noticed both missing often as well as destroying with fewer than expected missiles.

First, I was noticing lots of misses, so decided to run the strike 20 times in a row to get statistics.
The pen is 20m long and 2m wide.
Ok, so as an aside observations, that is pretty obviously too small, without asking if this is internal or external dimensions. I'm not aware of any 6ft wide military submarines.

The AGM has a CEP of 2m (6.56ft)
I ran 20 strikes of 4 missiles each (75 total missiles) with results: Malfunction 8.0%, Miss 50.7%.
Looking at the target dimensions and doing some geometry, the CEP was actually confirmed to make sense. Since it was long and narrow, we could estimate that the misses are only on one axis, and with target radius 1m and CEP radius 2 meters, 1/4 should hit, but with only one axis, double that so.. we get 50% which is confirmed by the statistics. (Not exactly accurate due to circle distribution applied over a rectangle, but close enough for the purposes)

Additionally, at the same time, I was able to strike a radar installation with the same missile, which had a 12 x 12 meter dimension and it was hit 100 percent of the 20 strikes, with 1 malfunction (95% reliability), again confirming stats.

On to ""Land PoH / Reliability" which for the AGM is 95%. I can only conclude that it is really just reliability, meaning it will malfunction 5% of the time, which at 8% seems close enough.
But it made me wonder if it really is just that, and how this figure applies to other weapons and how it compares to PoK for say, Air to Air missiles?

Damage Points.
Out of 4 missile salvos I usually got 2 to hit. When 3 managed to hit, the target was destroyed.
The target has DP of 1200, and the missiles 207. The logs under Damage just state Armor Penetrated without the DP math. This is obviously relevant to assigning correct weapons as salvos to other land targets .

Why is the target being destroyed with only a combined 621 DP strike? Half of it's DP.

Nightmares_Scenario.zip

(543.32 KiB) Downloaded 32 times

[hrfepo1]

Hanging on. I have experienced the same issue.

[wirthlin]

TD;DR
Why am I able to destroy a target with weapon hits which DP adds up to less than the target DP?

When trying to allocate weapons to targets I was looking at the DP on the weapon and targets.
Specifically I needed to destroy a Hardened Submarine Pen (#109) with some AGM-158B JASSM (#11).
After running the strike a couple times I noticed both missing often as well as destroying with fewer than expected missiles.

First, I was noticing lots of misses, so decided to run the strike 20 times in a row to get statistics.
The pen is 20m long and 2m wide.
Ok, so as an aside observations, that is pretty obviously too small, without asking if this is internal or external dimensions. I'm not aware of any 6ft wide military submarines.

The AGM has a CEP of 2m (6.56ft)
I ran 20 strikes of 4 missiles each (75 total missiles) with results: Malfunction 8.0%, Miss 50.7%.
Looking at the target dimensions and doing some geometry, the CEP was actually confirmed to make sense. Since it was long and narrow, we could estimate that the misses are only on one axis, and with target radius 1m and CEP radius 2 meters, 1/4 should hit, but with only one axis, double that so.. we get 50% which is confirmed by the statistics. (Not exactly accurate due to circle distribution applied over a rectangle, but close enough for the purposes)

Additionally, at the same time, I was able to strike a radar installation with the same missile, which had a 12 x 12 meter dimension and it was hit 100 percent of the 20 strikes, with 1 malfunction (95% reliability), again confirming stats.

On to ""Land PoH / Reliability" which for the AGM is 95%. I can only conclude that it is really just reliability, meaning it will malfunction 5% of the time, which at 8% seems close enough.
But it made me wonder if it really is just that, and how this figure applies to other weapons and how it compares to PoK for say, Air to Air missiles?

Damage Points.
Out of 4 missile salvos I usually got 2 to hit. When 3 managed to hit, the target was destroyed.
The target has DP of 1200, and the missiles 207. The logs under Damage just state Armor Penetrated without the DP math. This is obviously relevant to assigning correct weapons as salvos to other land targets .

Why is the target being destroyed with only a combined 621 DP strike? Half of it's DP.

Nightmares_Scenario.zip

Weapons with penetrator warheads seem to get an extra boost in damage points *if* it is a direct hit and penetrates 100% whatever armor is in place. In your example, the boost is a factor of 2.1564 for a total of 446.6 damage points per strike. You will get the same damage points even if your target is #3166 Bombing Target Marker (no armor) and it scores a direct hit.

Just something else to factor in when allocating specific weapons and weapon quantities to specific missions.

R

[hrfepo1]

Thank you. Makes sense.

[Dimitris]

TD;DR
Why am I able to destroy a target with weapon hits which DP adds up to less than the target DP?

TL;DR response:
Because the warhead & damage mechanics are far more elaborate than simply accumulating warhead DPs and comparing them against target DPs.

Sometimes you get an armor penetration and the resulting internal detonation does far more damage than the nominal.

Sometimes you don't get a penetration so the detonation is external (and may damage others nearby) and may or may not cause some damage on the target depending on the yield, armor, component density etc.

Sometimes you have a near miss (or a deliberate no-contact airburst or proximity burst), in which case blast and frag effects need to be considered.

Stop running spreadsheets and just play the game.

[wyskass]

I can agree that results are more real when not deterministic, and it's more enjoyable to just play the game as you say. When you can find the exact algorithm to "win" it does pretty much end the game. I've also played lots of Hearts Of Iron.

But it's also not a crap shoot where result are random. We consider CEP from empirical testing and factor in other environmental possibilities to at least be able to determine how many weapons to allocate to a target. When we don't expect 100% reliability we decide how much extra we need. This is certainly done in the real world, and is a major part of the game. The planning.

So the simple answer is the penetration factor. Good enough for me.

[thewood1]

It might help to search or read through some of the available resources on this site. Its the old warfaresims.com site moved to Matrix. I still search through it a lot for some perspective.

https://command.matrixgames.com/?page_id=2920

For example, a section on warheads and damage:

"In Command, one Damage Point (DP) equals 1kg of TNT. This is different from earlier simulators like Harpoon where 1DP = 5kg of TNT.

Command also automatically converts various explosives types to TNT equivalents. I.e. the Mk84 2000lb GPB [429kg/945lb Tritonal] has 429kg of HE [kg] Tritonal explosives, which automatically becomes 643.5 DP in the simulator since 1kg Tritonal = 1.5kg of TNT."

In fact, the "Effectively asking for help" thread, that everyone should look through after buying the game, has the links to it.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=358998

[wyskass]

I did read both and have them bookmarked.
But thanks for the reminder to look through that FAQ first. Looks like I forgot about it.

[boogabooga]

Stop running spreadsheets and just play the game.

With all due respect, that's inevitable when you design the game around spreadsheets (or databases, to be more precise).

[Dimitris]

Stop running spreadsheets and just play the game.

With all due respect, that's inevitable when you design the game around spreadsheets (or databases, to be more precise).

I was typing "I don't see players in other gaming communities fret over stats to this degree" but then I remembered that someone recently literally divulged classified tank-design details just to win an online argument on the War Thunder (?) forums.

[thewood1]

You see a little bit of it in Combat Mission and a lot of it in War in Pacific. Every now and then, in Steel Beasts, someone will come in and want to know the absolute deterministic model and numbers. The devs are pretty good about shutting it down.

[Tcao]

Sometimes you get an armor penetration and the resulting internal detonation does far more damage than the nominal.

Sometimes you don't get a penetration so the detonation is external (and may damage others nearby) and may or may not cause some damage on the target depending on the yield, armor, component density etc.

Sometimes you have a near miss (or a deliberate no-contact airburst or proximity burst), in which case blast and frag effects need to be considered.

Thanks, does the speed of the projectiles contribute to additional DP?
I had a similar question before
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=381388

[stww2]

Spreadsheets can be fun, though

spreadsheet.JPG (256.8 KiB) Viewed 833 times

[thewood1]

Spreadsheets as a planning tool for any complex game are great if you have the patience and need. I think D is referring to people spending more time building causal spreadsheets than playing the game.