Trying to understand inner logic of battles...

[Spale69]

Hi all,
new to the game, also to the forum. I have quite an interest in this game, so I have setup in editor a small test scenario with combined inf-arty-tank forces, totally equivalent. Some parts of the logic (after experimenting with same setup repeated several times) I do not quite understand, so it would be great if someone can point me into the right way of thinking or supply some explanation.

I have bunch of screenshots here, please excuse me if I mess up something with embedding in the first post;)

This first example is about attacking single anb simple Inf unit in dense urban (non digged, entrc. 30%). I am attacking either with one tank unit, or with 3 Inf units (as said, red and blue units are exactly the same in the force editor). Inf is composed of 3 rifle squad, 3 recon rifle teams and 3 trucks. Tank unit is s3 PzKpfw IIIG and 3 PzKpfw 35t.

I am always attacking from the same, open ground field. 5 times repeated with tanks, 5 times with inf.

My questions come from the average result shown below. Essentially, attacking with tank into dense urban is much more efficient, much less casualties and leave much more rounds afterwards in comparison to 3 Inf units. I repeat, in the town there is 1 non digged-in Inf unit.

Here are the screenshots with combat planner and individual battles results.

I do not understand the military logic to go with tanks into dense urban areas and be better than with 3 x more inf units. Ok, I know the inf squads in the town are having abs. no AT equipment and assaulting with inf from the fully open ground is not really credible and smart strategy, but still.

Maybe I should repeat everything after giving defending Inf unit a bit of AT equipment...

Thanks for clarifications. I think this game offers much more to true lovers of tactics and I consider it so far a simulator. Still, some things are puzzle to me.

Cheers!

Inf battles

Planning - inf.png (63.93 KiB) Viewed 1522 times

Inf 1.png (157.34 KiB) Viewed 1522 times

Inf 2.png (138.96 KiB) Viewed 1522 times

Inf 3.png (137.1 KiB) Viewed 1522 times

[Spale69]

Inf 4.png (149.34 KiB) Viewed 1521 times

Inf 5.png (135.14 KiB) Viewed 1521 times

And now tank battles:

Planing - tank.png (68.26 KiB) Viewed 1521 times

tank 1.png (157.47 KiB) Viewed 1521 times

[Spale69]

tank 2.png (120.49 KiB) Viewed 1520 times

tank 3.png (131.87 KiB) Viewed 1520 times

tank 4.png (94.26 KiB) Viewed 1520 times

tank 5.png (106.4 KiB) Viewed 1520 times

[rhinobones]

This first example is about attacking single anb simple Inf unit in dense urban (non digged, entrc. 30%). I am attacking either with one tank unit, or with 3 Inf units (as said, red and blue units are exactly the same in the force editor). Inf is composed of 3 rifle squad, 3 recon rifle teams and 3 trucks. Tank unit is s3 PzKpfw IIIG and 3 PzKpfw 35t.

I do not understand the military logic to go with tanks into dense urban areas and be better than with 3 x more inf units. Ok, I know the inf squads in the town are having abs. no AT equipment and assaulting with inf from the fully open ground is not really credible and smart strategy, but still.

Think it’s good that you’re experimenting with the game and learning how it works. I have a couple of suggestions which might improve the testing.

The units defending and assaulting have such a small number of active personnel/equipment that only a few casualties have a disproportionate impact on the percent lost. As an example, the loss of one tank out of six in the unit represents a 16% loss rate. Also, it’s important to note that people and equipment are not necessarily destroyed during combat. Vehicles are damaged and people are wounded but they are reported as hard casualties when actually they are routed to the replacement pool.

Suggest that you make the test units at least company size, battalion would be better. Think this will give you a larger base for loss calculations and make the results more reasonable. Take a look at a few existing scenarios to get a feel for the types, and amounts, of equipment assigned.

As for tanks assaulting urban defenders, remember TOAW is just a game that counts shots fired back and forth, counts hits, assesses effects and assigns defensive factors appropriately. TOAW doesn’t question sending unsupported armor into a city. That logic is up to the commander.

Regards, RhinoBones

[Spale69]

You were completely right man, thanks!

It is a "game of numbers" behind, I have not thought of that (maybe because just before my experiments with TOAW I played a really immersive round in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy where every single guy counts .

I repeated bunch of tests with inf scaled to roughly what TO&Es for ww2 are stating for company sizes, for tanks on platoon level. Now things are much less variable between repeats of the same battle and yes - everything behave much more to what one would expect by common sense.

Maybe one more question. Regarding flanking attacks, I have read in 13.13. the following:

In units attacked from any two, or more,
non-adjacent hexes in the same Turn, passivelydefending
equipment (such as Artillery) will
be forced to participate directly in combat. The
attacks need not be combined. One unit can “pin”
from one direction, while another executes the
“Flanking” Attack.

I was playing around with this setup, and the very powerfull effect of flanking from non-adjacent hexes I can see only when one of 2 units perform at least weakest limited attack with minimize losses, while the "main" attacking unit is going for normal attack. But I understand from the above paragraph that it should be enough just to have a non-attacking unit for pinning, with the second one doing full attack. In such setup, I do not see much difference to the single units duel 1-on-1 and no flanking.

Thank you very much!

Cheers!

[Spale69]

...or it is meant "with the attacks need not be combined" that they do not have to be synchronized in the same set of combat rounds, but still have to occur in the same turn? For example, pinning unit pushes a little bit in rounds 1-2 and then later the main attacking units in non-adjacent hex performs main thrust where the effects of pinning because of what happened in rounds 1-2 would still be taken into the calculation by the math behind?

I guess I can test that as well

[Spale69]

Seems to work that way.

I have the following setup with 2 blue units attacking 3 stacked reds (all units exactly the same composition in force editor). If I simply order limited attack with one of blue's - it is close to suicide Repeated couple of times. But if first one of blue's "sacrifice" a bit (in this setup 4-10% losses against 0-1% of 3 combined reds) in limited attack with min. losses - that will last most often just 1 round, that will have tremendeous help in the following limited full attack of the second single blue unit against the stack of 3 reds. And they will still have 40-60% of turn free, with at least some of red ones subdivided and retreated.

So, the pinning attack and main attack in flanking battle does not have to be started simultaneously. Ok, one more thing learned

(the picture shows results after the first weak attack)

Screenshot 2023-11-02 230544.png (115.25 KiB) Viewed 1425 times

[Champagne]

This is great stuff! Thanks for sharing.

[StuccoFresco]

Interesting conclusion on the two-phased attack.

[alomoes]

General notes.

Morale, which is the amount of % of your pie charts, readiness, proficiency, and supply, determines how many troops take part in battle. Your proficiency is automatically at .35

Those are platoon/section sized troops, I'm assuming they are accurate to their name. 50% chance to hit in an urban area. If you have 5 squads and only 1-2 are taking place in the battle, you're actually going to get rounds where nobody hits anyone. Hence the high amount of combat rounds.

1st Battle.

It's 4 : 60 DF and vs 12 AP : 252 DF. You're taking far worse losses with the infantry because holy moly, that 3.5x bonus to DP from being in an urban area means they have more troops to shoot back with each round.

I can actually probably explain this using the calculator I created.

Attacker (Infantry):

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/skvi51xksa

Defender (Infantry):

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/3ncbst3bl3

You can see how the attacker does ~11% damage to the enemy. Problem is you get counter attacked, and killed for roughly equal losses because the enemy has a roughly equal ratio of AP to DP.

Battle 2. I don't know what is in the enemy unit, so I don't know exact penetration, but I'm assuming it's AT- or something like that, which has a pen value of like 5. Obviously, you have to pen before you can kill. Extra step. You skip this with infantry.

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/1zspbtzl1n

Means a 1 in 5 chance to kill if engaged in a round. Remember that you only have 1 or 2 tanks engaged at most in 1 round because of morale, so it's likely to be no kills. Make sense?

I can't get an accurate number exactly, because I don't know what's in either unit respectively, if I did, I would easily be able to plug and chug. Can you post the unit composition of each side? I'm assuming there's like 8 units on the defender, and like 12 on the attacker side respectively for battle 1, and for battle 2, there's probably like 4 tanks, which means 1 tank gets committed per round.

Actually, we can estimate numbers from your casualties. Assuming 16% is 1 tank, then you have 6 tanks, as 100/16 is 6.

Infantry is probably ~10 vs 6, but I'm less confident with that.

Does this help? Small scale battles are interesting to see. Never really experimented with them.

I can do the third scenario, but I'm busy now. Feel free to copy and use my calculator to try it yourself.

[alomoes]

GREAT reference on combat mechanics.

[Spale69]

Hey Alomoes...thank you very much on this in-depth info! Especially on the link to this much valued summary set of (colorful) tables! Great stuff indeed!.

My first post here was made with formations that had units with very low number of squads in them. Always around 3-4. I do not have that original scenario since in my test afterwards I have come to the conclusion that it makes no sense to use TOAW engine for battles involving such low level of units. The variations in the same and repeated battle outcomes are really huge, rendering game useless. So, I have setup for my own experiments formation having units on at least company/platoon level of size with way more (and more varied) squad/groups. With such a setup, I do see variability, but to the level one would actually expect in the battle and that is a good thing!

I am aware of the calculations explained in the chapters 19.1 and 19.2 in the manual, but behind that, there is a probability that really knocks in very much especially with low level of units active. In particular in my case (first 2 battles in the post) where I forgot about that effective strength (basically a number of involved units, if I understand) being a portion of max strength obtained after correction for morale (2xproficiency, supply, readiness math...). So, beside the fact that I initially had very little units to do fight, because their proficiency was default and they were moved around, even that tiny strength was further reduced...

Anyhow, in general, while learning about this fun game, I am trying to get the basic and over the time more advanced concepts but am avoiding big math. That is because in the field, no commander goes to the math Maybe nowdays with all modern stuff and tech...but heh...I am old-fashioned. So I intentionally try to forget math principles after grasping ideas and concepts and try to achieve intuition in the battle

Nevertheless, some of things I saw in the engine I do not really support...or at least in the way I understood. So, maybe something to discuss at some point, or for eventual future version.

a) I understand that almost all of the terrain benefits goes to the defender. So, when I have defender in urban area, he gets all that listed bonuses. The attacker outside - independent of the terrain tile from which the attack occurs - always has the same conditions in calculations. That means, if I attack from clear terrain, if I attack from hills, if I attack from hedgerows...always same. And that is like that for any type of unit (inf, mech inf, armour, arty...). Ok, arty will I think have some bonuses when firing from higher terrain something like that. But in general, this whole concept - I would argue - does not really reflect the battle process in reality. From where the attacker (and that specific type of attacker) attacks - counts too. Counts sometimes very much.

b) In the § 19.2 ("Notes on combat resolution"), it is written that statics, fixed equip. and infantry have always rate of fire 1 - when attacking and rate of fire 2 - when defending. Am I correct in my understanding that this adds another, and very strong, advantage to any defender? Beside that one already and eventually supplied by the terrain. Why would defender in each battle round ALWAYS have twice as much firepower? And that also independent of total ratio attacker:defender and attacker/defender unit types, morale and maybe some other parameters....

These are two things I came up to in my little experiments and readings through the manual.

The last thing has nothing to do with the mechanics. But guys (and girls, sorry...), I really cannot find where can I set Force Supply Radius (default 4). In the editor, when I go to Edit->Forces and then Edit->Modify Current Force...I simply do not see it What am I missing?

Many greetings and...Happy New Year !

[Curtis Lemay]

The last thing has nothing to do with the mechanics. But guys (and girls, sorry...), I really cannot find where can I set Force Supply Radius (default 4). In the editor, when I go to Edit->Forces and then Edit->Modify Current Force...I simply do not see it What am I missing?

Supply Radius is set by event.

[Spale69]

The last thing has nothing to do with the mechanics. But guys (and girls, sorry...), I really cannot find where can I set Force Supply Radius (default 4).

Supply Radius is set by event.

Many thanks!