AAR: Wiedrock (reader) vs Manual (text) - on Leader Skills and their (nonexistent) impact on Ground Combat

[Wiedrock]

TLDR:
The Skills of Leaders (Initiative/MECH/INF) do not have any impact on Ground Combat (other than the RNG roll that can double/halve the final CV at the end of a fight - see following quote).

23.8.5. Leadership, Experience and Morale and Combat Value Modifications

There are many factors that go into determining the modified combat values used in deciding the winner and loser in a ground battle. One of the most critical is the leader combat (mech or infantry) rating check.
A successful check can result in the CV of the combat unit being doubled. Several failed checks can result in the CV being halved. As with other leader checks, a failed check by one leader will allow the next leader in the chain of command to attempt a combat rating check, albeit at a reduced chance of success (15.5.3).

I'd appreciate any help that leads me towards seeing how the Leader rolls impact Ground combat as described in the manual!!!

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AAR: Wiedrock (reader) vs Manual (text)
→ on Leader Skills and their (nonexistent) impact on Ground Combat

Let's start from the beginning.

Once there was a player, feeling the urge to find that Air Recon would make his Ground force's Artillery performing better would be the case and so - every few months he found the patience to try again,...and again, to make use of Recon more than just revealing Counters (in regards to Ground Combat). Sadly this time again he did not manage to track any effect besides having 99 Air Recon and multiple "UNIT" recons in the Hex...

...okay now seriously.

But instead I've run into something else. Since I was doing the same battles over and over again, I got used to the numbers Artillery produced (HPE/FPE). At one point I realized, that the HQ I was using was above its Command Capacity, it had 24/18 Units it controlled. Fair enough I thought, "let's remove those 3 unused Divisons", and so did I.
Now my expectation was that it would improve the performance of my Test, change the known numbers to something bigger.
But it didn't.
Mathematically the Chance to pass a Roll for this Leader should have changed from
6/(10+(24-18))=37.5%
to
6/10=60%
...but as said, I saw no difference.

Now, I remembered the Quotes from the manual, first of all these ones referring to Leaders having an Impact on the Ground Combat.

First of all, they should be using their Ground Combat Ratings (Mech/Inf) and Initiative Ratings to determin both, 1.if a Element shoots and 2.if it hits (see following quotes).

23.8. GENERAL GROUND COMBAT RULES
23.8.1. Description of Ground Combat

Ground combat is conducted by an automated tactical combat system consisting of a
variable number of rounds where the various ground elements engage each other.

[...]

The next step is to determine which ground elements will be able to fire. There are multiple factors involved, including the type of attack (hasty or deliberate), enemy unit detection level (DL), defending fortification modifier, attacking unit morale and supply status (especially ammo), individual ground element experience, fatigue, ammo usage and range of their equipped devices, and leader initiative and ground combat rating (mech or infantry) checks (15.5).

Ground elements that have successfully passed their checks will then fire their equipped devices once they are within range of an opposing ground element. The chance to hit, and inflict damage and the number of shots taken, is dependent on
the factors listed above and issues such as ground element speed, size, and the firing devices’ accuracy, rate of fire, and blast radius against soft targets. For AFV and combat vehicles, additional factors apply such as where they are hit.

15.3.3. Initiative Rating
The Initiative leader rating is used for determining the actual number of movement points a unit will have during the turn, the ability of ground elements to fire and to hit during combat, the ability of support units and combat units in reserve status to commit to a battle, and the ability to reduce casualties by turning a low odds hasty attack into
a reconnaissance in force.
Equally leaders with an initiative rating of more than 5 are more likely to halt a poor odds attack at a greater range, thus reducing overall attacker losses.

15.3.5. Combat Ratings
Mechanized (Mech) and Infantry Ratings: These ratings are used to determine the overall combat value of units under a HQ, as well as the ability of the ground elements in the units under their command to be able to fire and to hit opposing ground elements. Successful rating checks will increase combat value and improve the chance of ground elements to both fire and to hit.
Mech ratings apply to motorized units and the infantry ratings to non-motorized.

The Red marked area seems to be from an older title when exchanging a Leader caused the CUs to get different CV?!?!
Secondly, the overall suggestion that going over capacity would impact all leader rolls and also describing exactly how leader rolls work/are impacted by this (adding exceeded capacity to the base value of 10) (see following quotes).
Third, that distance to the HQ matters (see 2nd following quote).

For on-map units, this immediate higher headquarters unit can provide logistical and combat support if within the applicable range. There is no limit to the number of combat units that can be attached to a Headquarters unit, however, ground headquarter units that exceed their normal capacity, termed command capacity (21.11.3), will become less effective.

If the command exceeds its command capacity (21.11.3), in other words if it is directly controlling too many combat units, then the base chance to pass a given check will increase by 1 for every command point in excess of command capacity. Thus a HQ with a command capacity of 8 and controlling units costing 11 command points would use 10+3=13 as its base rate for any check. This figure may be further amended according to the rules above and distance to the unit under consideration (15.5.4).
The base chance to pass a test will also be modified according to the range from the combat unit to the headquarters unit for most checks.

If the immediate commander fails a check, then the next commander in the chain will be checked and may allow the unit to pass.

And so I tested. I've added several CUs to the Army, reaching 62/18 Command Capacity but I couldn't see any difference in the performance of my Combat elements. Mathematically this should have reduced the roll chance for the Army Leader to
6/(10+(90-18))=11%
...but I did not see any difference in the Ground Combat statistics, yet again.
Funnily enuff, the Odds in this three singular randomly done tests show reversed results (German side failed the RNG rolls in the third test) and additionally the 18/18 test resulting in the most "directly shown" manpower and AFV casualties for our (Soviet) side.
Regarding the FPE/HPE looking at Artillery it stays all the same. Looking at Rifle Squads there is no trend observable (neither with 3, nor with 15 tests).

Air Recon 99 - varying Command Capacities.png (1.06 MiB) Viewed 610 times

After this I increased the treshold by moving the HQ ~30 Hexes away from the CUs I was attacking with, nothing changed. Similarly to just making the HQ going over capacity.
One other idea there was is that the "penalties" for overstacking/range are just not applied in combat.

I asked in Discord and the guys suggested to make a proper Testing Setup and gave some ideas, and so I went on.
The German side I decided to make all Leaders have Ratings of 9 - simply because of the reduction of RNG for that side.
The Soviets got STAVKA and Front-Leaders to be Rating 1 and the Army Leader was made a clean 9.
Assumption was, that the previous test could have been flawed by German RNG or by the Front/STAVKA Leaders passing rolls, this should have not been the case any longer now with their low ratings and therefore the Range penalties and Overstacking penalties for the Army HQ should have been much more highlighted.
Now with a 90/18 Army HQ I'd expect
6/(10+(90-18))=7% chance to pass a check (+the little the 2 other leaders with ratings of 1 could provide).
But yet again, after testing multiple battles I did not see any real difference.
The Left side is 18/18 and the right side 90/18 Command Capacity.
With activated Observer Bias I can see that 18/18 loses less stuff, this may be caused due to Retreat losses....eventualy those include some leader rolls actually taking place? ...or rather it is simply the worse odds (due to the RNG rolls at the end) which impact RTR losses?
But again no conclusinve results/observable performance differences (for me). Artilley keeps the same FPE and only minimal changes in HPE.

Command Test EDITOR - 18of18 vs 90of18.png (3.56 MiB) Viewed 610 times

The last resort I had up my sleeves was to simply exclude overstacking and range penalties from testing and start with the basics, which was determining if Leader ratings have any effect on Ground Combat in the first place. In the past I had done that in regards to MOT/NONMOT SUs and I felt I had "seen" differences, but this may have just been seeing what I've wanted to see showing the 'miracles of observer bias'?!
So I expanded the previous testing Scenario, creating two versions, one having the Army Leader at 9skills, the other having him at 1skills.
And this is the test I want to present here, the simplest test which should be the easiest to follow.
Important notes:

• Editor Test
• the defending CU's TOE has been made a "Company" so the attack will not be "halted at range X"
• Weather has been edited to have clear terrain/weather in this now modded VtB Scenario

Now Looking at this and knowing the Manual's quotes, I'd expect for the higher Leader Rating tests:

• the FPE/HPE for all elements to be generally higher (at least a general trend should be observable)
• following to the previous point I'd expect more German casualties/Elements being hit
• following the previous 2 points I'd expect a higher final CV - better final Odds

Company_close-combat 1vs9 Leader skills.png (5.24 MiB) Viewed 610 times

What I found is that I still do not see any difference between Leader 1 and Leader 9 Ratings, neither HPE, FPE, German elements hit do show any (for me) observable trend towards Rating 9 being better than Rating 1.
The only outstanding result is the RNG that the Leaders do before making the final CV, that's the only roll I "see" and which matches what's described in the manual (see quote in the initial TLDR section).
But before that there should be a bigger Participation of number of elements, increased HPE/FPE, more Germans getting hit - and then the RNG can freely make what RNG does.


Excourse Cross River DISruption:

23.8.9. Cross River Attacks
Combat units attacking into a hex through a non-frozen (ice level four or less for minor rivers and ice level 7 or less for major rivers) minor or major river hex sides are required to expend additional movement points above the normal attack MP cost (38.7.6). All ground elements that cross the river to attack are subject to a disruption check prior to the initial computation of combat value.
Ground elements with longer range indirect fire devices will normally not check for disruption while infantry and combat engineers most likely will check.

I've also tested cross river DISruptions, they are also not affected by any Leader Ratings, the manual only describes it as general "checks" without mentioning any leader rolls/stats so I guess that's how it is supposed to be. Funnily enuff in this three tests Germans suffered more Casualties under the better Leader (but that's just RNG among this small sample size, I tested another ~6 Battles and losses were averaged about the same).

Leader_52ID crossriver_Modded.png (1.49 MiB) Viewed 610 times

My Conclusion:
The only effect Leaders have on Ground Combat are the RNG rolls at the end of Combat for the final CV calculations. Most likely they are also rolling when it comes to SCOUTing and "halting" attacks at longer distances, but those are just hoping guesses and have not been tested.
The in the manual described impact on Ground Combat can not be seen anywhere, most outstanding is the fact that Artillery stays a exactly the same FPE which seems the most obvious number to prove my point. For sure there are many factors impacting combat but simply increasing the Ammo by 10% already changes numbers (for the bigger - observable general increase/trend), while Leader Ratings 1-9 do not at all.
But similarly to the Artillery one can also look at FPE/HPE of other Ground elements which never ever shows a clear trend towards higher numbers with higher Leader skills (at least not how I interpret the numbers).


Is there anyone out there seeing something different/comming to other conclusions than me looking at this?
If yes, I need hints on how to look at it to see Leader Ratings (Initiative/MECH/INF) matter for Ground Combat.

If any testing setups are required just ask and I can share saves or scenarios.
If there are any other ideas what to mod in which way to eventually see Leaders having an impact, tell me how.
If I am reading the english Manual wrong, translate it to simpler language or German for me.



Further quotes:

GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Command and Control (C2)
The method by which forces are controlled to allow orders and
information to flow up and down the chain of command. In Gary
Grigsby’s War in the East 2, C2 is exercised by the leaders in the
headquarters units that other units are attached to through the
use of leader rating checks.

Command Capacity (21.11.3)
A numerical rating, expressed in command points, which
delineates the number of combat units that can be attached to a
headquarters unit without affecting its performance. If this normal
capacity is exceeded, the leader of the headquarters unit will
suffer penalties when conducting leader checks.

Command Point (21.11.6)
A value assigned to each combat unit based on its size, e.g.
regiment, division, corps. Headquarters units have a command
capacity expressed in command points that determines the
number of combat units that can be attached without affecting the
performance of that headquarters unit leader.

[Joel Billings]

I spoke with Gary about this and found out that as far as we know, when combat was rewritten several years ago, leader values were removed from directly impacting the shots in combat. So you are correct in saying that. We didn't do a complete audit of the code so we can't be 100% sure that it's not somewhere. Also, in looking at this, Gary found that the leader checks that impact CV values for final odds calculations were also reduced (years ago). Each block of elements in a unit (i.e. 500 Rifle Squads, 25 37mm AT guns, 5 T-34 76s) rolls the leader rating and can be multiplied by 1.25 or divided by 1.25. In addition each distinct unit in the combat (i.e. 3rd Rifle Division, 7th Artillery battalion) does a leader roll and can have it's CV value halved. This is probably why you see more reductions of value than increases in value. These checks are using the land/mech values of the leader chain. At one point the impact was greater, but years ago, it was changed to these simpler values (I think before initial release, but not 100% sure of this. There could be other places in the code where the land/mech values are used, but at this point we can't easily identify what is code that is active and what code is inactive. At one time in the Wit... series, leader rolls may (probably were) involved in direct combat (at least in picking which units got to fire, not necessarily in the shooting itself), but Gary decided to remove that. If so, we never documented the change. That's probably why you see the text in the manual. Something we should adjust in a future living manual. We do think the admin leader rating comes into play in resupplying the unit during combat, but we didn't look for that, and I don't know just how likely or what triggers the resupply chance (and there's always a chance that was removed as well). Again, we didn't and can't audit the code for all of the places that leader code might be active in combat.

The leader check functions are standard, and should account for range/command overload issues, so I would expect the CV modifiers would be impacted by this. Also, initiative comes into play with who gets to join combat and I think it is initiative that determines the disengagement decision once the combat starts, but I didn't look into these today, as the focus was on the impact of land/mech ratings in the actual fire combat. A big factor in fire combat is issues with troop density (as to who gets to shoot and who gets targeted), and that's an entirely different issue with it's own complexities. I'll flag this thread in the living manual area so the items learned today gets picked up with the next update. Thanks.

[Wiedrock]

The leader check functions are standard, and should account for range/command overload issues, so I would expect the CV modifiers would be impacted by this. Also, initiative comes into play with who gets to join combat and I think it is initiative that determines the disengagement decision once the combat starts, but I didn't look into these today, as the focus was on the impact of land/mech ratings in the actual fire combat.

Thanks for replying/confirming. Yes the penalties/Leader Stats for the RNG rolls at the end of combat seem to properly work and be dependant on Leader Ratings and penalties as suggested/guessed.
Moving an HQ out of range (like all HQs in the chain 100 Hexes away and all only having "1" Leader Ratings) makes the Final CV drop down to (from how far I have tested) ~36% while not losing any Elements in Combat (modded all German weapons to have a range of 1yard). While having all at Rating 9 and be withing 5 Hexes gives CV of about ~152% max.

[zebrazwo]

So pretty much just select leaders based on their admin rating and don't bother too much with the combat ratings... or is this too much of a simplification? (what my brain really wants to know is, is this WAD or not?)

[Joel Billings]

Yes, it's WAD (just not as documented). AFAIK, the final odds play a big part in determining retreat attrition (not only who wins the battle, but how much retreat attrition is taken by the loser), and those odds are impacted by the Infantry and Mech ratings of the leaders. So Infantry and Mech ratings are still important, just not as important as they probably were in WitE1 and WitW where I think they had some impact on who got to shoot in combat, in addition to their impact on CV (final odds).

[M60A3TTS]

I had always been led to believe that the initiative rating impacted the HPE number since higher initiative was supposed to mean better accuracy. Better accuracy would mean the same FPE would translate to a higher HPE if the leader combat rating was equal. That doesn't seem to be the case either. Maybe the initiative rating still does bring in more support units to a battle per the manual. Who can say any anymore, but the lack of clarity here is discouraging. This stuff is no small thing.

[Wiedrock]

I had always been led to believe that the initiative rating impacted the HPE number since higher initiative was supposed to mean better accuracy. Better accuracy would mean the same FPE would translate to a higher HPE if the leader combat rating was equal. That doesn't seem to be the case either.

Immersion wise I think it is actually a good thing to make Corps Leaders (and by that due to the Chain of Command) only impact the "bigger things". Altough since they are the only thing we can rly impact by choose/change it is also a little bad for sure.

[chaos45]

I did a quick test set of Manstien vs Zom German leaders with same divisions, no SU vs same soviet units and the results were Manstiens units performed better overall than Zoms units.....

I tested it with 12 battles in total 6 for each.....the average shooting hits from many of the elements commanded by Manstien were higher than Zom in almost all engagements.

As well the maximum hits scored was higher with manstien than Zom...infantry elements maxing out at like 850 hits from Zom while the same stack got almost 1150 hits with manstien.

So something from leadership ratings is still affecting shooting at least in the test i did as the higher skill leaders men overall performed better at shooting attacks overall than the lower skill leader.....most elements did about 10-20% more shooting effects with the higher skill leader.....lowest shooting results for higher skill leader matched best shooting results for lower skilled leader.

CV interestingly varied a great deal even with the higher skill leader with the lower skilled commander scoring higher final CV calculations.......but hits to lower enemy CV goes to higher skill leader for sure which would in the end calc lower the other sides final CV and make it easier for the higher skill commander to win outside just CV rolls at the end.

[Wiedrock]

You've rolled the turn 2 separate times with 2 different leaders.
Both, Soviet and German Divisions were different between your tests - as in actually having varying numbers of elements, Ammo and varied in initial CV.
Attached 2 random examples of your tests highlighting the higher FPE/HPE. And a visualization on the intitial CV.

[Joel Billings]

I had always been led to believe that the initiative rating impacted the HPE number since higher initiative was supposed to mean better accuracy. Better accuracy would mean the same FPE would translate to a higher HPE if the leader combat rating was equal. That doesn't seem to be the case either. Maybe the initiative rating still does bring in more support units to a battle per the manual. Who can say any anymore, but the lack of clarity here is discouraging. This stuff is no small thing.

Initiative does impact the chance of support units and reserve units getting committed to a battle. That was not rewritten, although modifiers like moving support units around, and IIRC motorization do come into play in ways that weren't in WitE1. The firing system was rewritten years ago for WitE2, and it was in that rewrite that Gary thinks he severed any direct connection between leader ratings and firing.

[chaos45]

yes i didnt use the editor, all i did for the test was use 2 1941 starts switched the corps commander T1 put units in place for both sides removed all SUs from both sides then on T2 both commanders attacked.

Not completely sterile test environment but pretty good to see if stat/ maybe initiative was still affecting combat---I think it very decidedly showed that Mansteins infantry fired far more than Zoms.