Engineers and fort reduction.

[tyronec]

This is my current game with Leumas.
Sometimes Engineer values don't show up in the combat report.
On those occasions I think there is never a fort level reduction, as happened for this battle.

I wonder is this a display issue OR are the Engineers not being accounted for in the combat and is this why there is no fort reduction ?

Engineers.jpg (50.43 KiB) Viewed 820 times

Also, I don't understand this paragraph: 20.4.3 summary:
'• If the attack was not halted, the full engineer value is applied prior to the
odds calculation and may reduce the fort levels;'

Is it possible that an attack is 'not halted' and the attacker loses the battle ?
I would have thought the fort reduction would be applied first, then the odds calculation and then determine the result - but maybe I am misunderstanding the details of combat resolution.

[Wiedrock]

Also, I don't understand this paragraph: 20.4.3 summary:
'• If the attack was not halted, the full engineer value is applied prior to the
odds calculation and may reduce the fort levels;'

Is it possible that an attack is 'not halted' and the attacker loses the battle ?

I'd say yes, all attacks that are not "Halted at Range 123456". So you simply get into close combat but still fail. Only cases where you will always reach close combat are "high intensity combat"-Hexes (Urban/Heavy Urban/Ports ...maybe more) and battles that are seriously close.

I would have thought the fort reduction would be applied first, then the odds calculation and then determine the result - but maybe I am misunderstanding the details of combat resolution.

Generally I think that your assumption is correct. But the cases for Engineer Values to take effect are needed to be met first (whichever exactly they are).

Sometimes Engineer values don't show up in the combat report.
On those occasions I think there is never a fort level reduction, as happened for this battle.

I wonder is this a display issue OR are the Engineers not being accounted for in the combat and is this why there is no fort reduction ?

TLDR: Regarding your question. My interpretation is that you 1.got "haltet at range" and therfore there never was a chance to apply engineer value (is how I interpret it - correct me if wrong!).


Further I will attach an old test I did. It uses the same untis (just SU commitments is randomized). I have ordered the collumns regarding the "Fort Reduction Logos" shown.
(Collumn 1) From this I may suggest, that Engineers are Clos Combat dudes, and that they will never ever apply their Fort Reduction in an "halted at Range 12356" Attack. Thiswith the "correct" interpratation matches the manual quote: "If the attack was not halted, the full engineer value is applied prior to the odds calculation and may reduce the fort levels" " (Dead Manual, p.231).
(Collumn 2) From this we can see the "Attacker Force Size taking effect". This matches with the manual quote: "For the overall size to have had an impact then the battle must close to 50 yards in order for there to be a chance of a fort reduction" (Dead Manual, p.230).
(Collumn 3) This now gets interesting.
What remains is the same effects seen in Collumn two (Force Ratio Fort Reduction in Close Combat), so that's fine.
Some results are simiar to Collumn 2, but now for some reason the Engineer Values are applied. This I can not explain without saying that there must be some RNG (whatever it may be related to) or that all/almost all engineers got hit in those combats and therefore there was too little Value to be applied to even reduce one Fort Level (would need more testing and looking at "losses" to Engineers)...but I doubt that's it, since 7 Engineer value is not set to 0 just like that with hit elements.
Further interesting is the fact that all reductions were "7". Despite there being a "rolled" Engineering Brigade SU in the last battle, the "44th Army Mot. Pioneer Brigade (2)" - I guess this all would need more testing to exlplain things properly.
→ Like: Are rolled SU's Pioneers working the same as attached ones?
→ and many more questions I could name.

[Joel Billings]

I don't think I can add anything to this other than to say that from the manual it does seem that you should have to close to close range (not be halted) in order to get an engineer benefit at reducing forts.

[tyronec]

Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense now.

There is still the question of the displayed engineer value on combat reports.
Am raising this because it is an important feature of the game, players may have 100s of combats in a game where the engineer value is playing an important role in the combat result.

The manual (37.1.1) states:
'A rough indicator of the number of combat engineer
and infantry elements involved in the attack is shown if
sufficient were present to affect the combat by suppressing
the defender’s fortifications (20.4.3).'

This is clearly incorrect.
It is not showing the number of combat engineer elements (which would be a much higher number if relevant) and further it seems that only combat engineers in SUs are applied, not those in on map units.
The display number seems to be some kind of calculated 'effect' value for the combat engineers present, though how that is calculated is not clear to me and I can't find an explanation in the manual.
In practice in a game I am looking to count up the number of SUs present which is more helpful.

IMO it would be better if the display value was the unadulterated engineer value, then at least over time players could understand where it is coming from.
A few questions are:
Does the number of pioneer elements in an SU matter ?
Does quality matter ?
Does supply/fatigue... matter ?
Does equipment matter ?
We don't necessarily need the answers to these questions but if the unadulterated pre-combat value was displayed then after a few combats it would be possible to get a feel for them.

[Wiedrock]

[...] and further it seems that only combat engineers in SUs are applied, not those in on map units.[..]

IIRC, if you give an unit 1000engineers in the editor you will see them.
I assume it is as usual an all or nothing RNG as in some other cases.

The display number seems to be some kind of calculated 'effect' value for the combat engineers present, though how that is calculated is not clear to me and I can't find an explanation in the manual.

No idea how it is calculated, but if it is showing a 10, then it reduces the fortification by 10, since a fort level has 50HP, this means a reduction of 20% of a fort level (if that helps a bit).

[tyronec]

No idea how it is calculated, but if it is showing a 10, then it reduces the fortification by 10, since a fort level has 50HP, this means a reduction of 20% of a fort level (if that helps a bit).

So there are two calculations for fort reduction.
The first is the percentage reduction, which seems to be 2% per engineer number as you describe above.
The second is the 'one full level' reduction which may happen if the combat odds are between 2:1 and 1:1, with engineers present effect the chances of this happening.

The second of these is I think much more significant in the game. Having a few percentage points knocked off by a failed attack would often not be enough to take a well defended hex over a few turns in many situations. The attacker needs to be able to knock down the fort levels faster than the defender can rebuild them when it is their turn.

For me this is another argument for the combat screen to display the unadulterated engineer value rather than what we have at present, though maybe there is a case for it to show both.

[tyronec]

Have been looking at some combat results and am really not understanding how this is working at all.

A1.jpg (51.36 KiB) Viewed 715 times

This is an attack where there were many pioneers and heavy arty, but no fort reduction at all. There is a 'halt' range so that might explain the engineers. Why is the arty not doing anything ?

A2.jpg (62.9 KiB) Viewed 715 times

This one there is fort reduction. But why is the engineer value 9 ? Generally you get 10 per German pioneer SU, so 9 pioneers would be 90 divided by 3 for the fort level = 30.

A3.jpg (53.28 KiB) Viewed 715 times

Engineer value is 10 but there are no pioneer SUs. Does than mean integral pioneer element count ? I thought you don't get engineer values without SUs so am really confused.

A4.jpg (54.88 KiB) Viewed 715 times

This time there are 3 SUs and 3 infantry divisions and the value is 20, how can that be consistent with the previous combat ?


I am totally lost about what these display values are and how fort reduction is calculated.
All I can say for sure is that at least some of what is in the manual is not right.

[Wiedrock]

A1.jpg
This is an attack where there were many pioneers and heavy arty, but no fort reduction at all. There is a 'halt' range so that might explain the engineers. Why is the arty not doing anything ?

See this Thread. Artillery Fort Reduction in WITE2 was bugged and got fixed with game version 01.04.03.

EDIT:

• Made changes to fort reduction by artillery fire. Now, a hex’s fort level will never fall below 75 fort points due to artillery fire (level 1 plus 50% toward level 2). Reduced the ability of all rocket types to reduce forts (heavy artillery types have a higher chance to destroy forts, and super heavy artillery types have an even higher chance). The higher the fort level, the more difficult it has always been to reduce them by artillery fire. Along with the fort reduction by artillery bug fixed in this version, the system should now be WAD with the changes as noted here. The battle details csv file now lists the reduction of forts done by artillery.

For the rest I also have no idea. Either it is WAD RNG or it is bugged, I don't know. If it is RNG (yes/no) then that (I think) is missing in the Fortification chapter afaik. For the varying amounts there is a section describing that values can double (and so on).

[tyronec]

Thanks for this.

It still looks to me like there is something in fort reduction that is bugged.
However it is difficult to say what, I find what is in the manual difficult to understand. There is certainly discrepancy between 20.4.3 and 37.1.1 and the summary of 20.4.3 is not a summary because it adds further parameters for fort reduction.
The manual talks about engineer elements, engineer squads (the same as elements ?) and engineer values without explaining how the engineer values are calculated.

What doesn't help is that the values on combat report seem to be the applied fort reduction. All the calculations are under the hood, what the players see is how much the fort level is reduced. When we can't see what the calculation is based on and with the manual being contradictory we can't tell what is going on. To de-bug it, if there is a bug, we need the calculation data.

My request is that:
The combat report displays the pre combat engineer and arty values.
The manual is corrected.

A5.jpg (60.53 KiB) Viewed 658 times

And another one. I think there were about 9 pioneer SU and 10 or so divisions but no engineer value.

[Joel Billings]

I will look at this and try to ask some questions next week when I next speak with Pavel.

[Joel Billings]

It does appear that the engineer value shown on the display is the fort points destroyed by the engineer type ground elements, as opposed to some "engineer" value being used to determine what if any fort points are destroyed. I don't know exactly how the engineer value is calculated, but I'll ask if Pavel can find it in the code to look for. I did see some variation in the amount reduced when I repeated an attack where both attacks had 2 combat units with 2 attached pioneer support units, and in one attack I got 2 fort points reduced and in another 3 fort points reduced. No easy way to know without Pavel getting eyes on the code and even then it might be hard to determine. I would hope that support units committing to battle would help, and I would expect pioneer ground elements in the combat units would help as well, but don't know. Pretty sure you have to be "engineer" type of ground element to gain a bonus (so some Soviet elements that are engineer in the name are labor type so don't help). My recollection of this from times/games past is that Gary looked at ground elements of engineer type and calculated a engineer value which then was used to determine how much if any fort points were destroyed. Don't know how many games ago this was, nor whether it is still like that.

The arty value shown at the top of the 3 different icons is clearly now how many fort points were destroyed by the artillery. The bottom icon which is also artillery, has to do with the size of the attacker force reducing fort points (which if big enough and odds are high enough and there are enough engineers, reduces an entire fort level, rules 20.4.3). I think Wiedrock pointed out we should have another symbol instead of arty at the bottom for this force size reduction, and I agree. The arty reduces forts by taking shots and scoring special hits, and you can now see this in the detailed CSV battle details you can export. Exactly how the engineer value is calculated, and how it also interacts with the force size reduction is unknown to me. I just had a battle that I ran multiple times that once had a result that showed an arty 6, an engineer 6, a lower stack of arty 18, odds of 1 to 1 (actually 52 to 51), and a fort reduction of 12 fort points (24%). Arty reduced it by 6 fort points, the attached engineers reduced it by 6 fort points, and while size qualified to do damage it appears it didn't as maybe engineer value failed a die roll (in an earlier run I got a 3/3/no size value shown result, and another run got 1/0/no size value shown). I am curious how the size value comes into play and what if anything the engineer value does to impact it's ability to reduce forts. I know at one point we did a lot of testing of this to make sure that larger forces could reduce forts during failed attacks, but to twist the words of Bob Dylan, "things can change" (or maybe the real words are correct, "things have changed" - look it up, one of my all time favorite songs).

[Joel Billings]

After speaking with Pavel, we’ve figured out the following:

The engineer value is based on the number of ground elements of a certain ground type (Engineer, Mech-Eng, Airborne-Eng, Engineer Tank, and IIRC MSW Tank). It looks at the damage, fatigue and disruption of the engineer squads after the firing, and it also randomizes the value when calculating the engineer value in any given battle. The engineer icon will be shown when the engineers are causing any damage to the fort (and as stated before, the number shown is the fort points/2% increments, destroyed). The size indicator (stack of arty, which we all agree should be a stack of infantry) will show up, if the size of the attacking force is greater than 30, or if it is >15 and there is enough engineer value (after it was randomized and divided by 4) to reduce at least one fort point. If it is >15 and there isn’t enough engineer value after dividing by 4 to reduce a fort point, then the size will not show up. I confirmed this all seems to be working as expected (yes it is confusing). The one thing Pavel identified that is wrong in the rules is the following from section 20.4.3 in the last bullet point (the OR below is AND in the manual, but it should be OR):
ii. Odds are >=1 and <1.5 OR combat intensity is higher than 15 then1/4 of engineer value attempts to reduce forts as above.

This extra chance at fort reduction due to attacker force size/odds and engineer value is a bonus that happens after the final odds have been calculated. It just takes out some additional forts but doesn’t impact the battle results. The artillery fort reduction and initial engineer fort reduction happen before the final odds are determined, so they can help drive down the final odds if they reduce the fort level. Since forts are often 10% over their fort level, in these cases it takes 6 reductions from artillery and engineers to have an impact on the battle odds. In a battle where I had 120 engineer type squads that closed the range but had bad odds and took a lot of damage/disruption (maybe 35%), I was seeing between 0 and 7 engineer driven fort reduction, with 3 being a common value. When the engineers got a good value (4 or more), then the size/odds could kick in and give it an additional point reduction (because it divides the value by 4 in this case for the bonus reduction). So, it can take a lot of Engineers to cause some/minor damage to the forts, and even if you have a lot, you can get a bad randomization “roll” and get nothing.

[tyronec]

Thanks for this.

I just want to repeat my request that the combat report should show the engineer values before the random factor is applied. Seeing as it has been recognised that the display for fort reduction is not quite right and is hopefully going to be corrected then this could be done at the same time.
Also to update the manual with what you have written.

What we have at present is it is showing the applied engineer value after randomisation. This is not very helpful for the player and in any case you can see how much the fort has been reduced by checking it before and after the battle if you want to. What we don't know is how engineer elements convert into engineer value and since it is all under the hood at present the player is not going to know or get any feel for it.
If the pre combat engineer value (and arty value and the stack force value) then at least the player would have some idea of what is happening.

[Joel Billings]

There is no artillery value. Artillery has a chance of destroying a fort point each time they fire, and they can fire often during a combat. So there is no total artillery value to display, just the total reduction caused by artillery fire. Even the chance of a hit on each fire is not static for any particular gun as it also depends on the fort level fired at (higher fort levels are harder to reduce). If you want to see what artillery is doing the damage, you need to export the detailed combat CSV report and search for "fort reduced", IIRC. All agree, in the ideal world we'd show the engineer values before randomization.

[tyronec]

Can you say what the 'arty' values are in these two combats( 3 and 99), I understood that this was 'force size' value however the numbers are very different and they are displayed in different places ?
The combats are sequential attacks against the same hex.

a.jpg (57.31 KiB) Viewed 525 times

b.jpg (52 KiB) Viewed 525 times

[Wiedrock]

There are 3 "slots" for 3 different Fort reduction ways.
1. Artillery (Artillery Logo) happens after the Artillery/Bombarding Phase. This changes final CV (at least), not sure if it also impacts the following ground combat (since it is logged before the actual ground combat).
The Log message looks like:

7,3,Fort was reduced by bombard attrition to 2 (80%)

It has some limits to it as pointed out in some of the latest Patch Notes.
2. Engineer (Engineer Logo) happens after combat - changes final CV
3. Intensity/Force-Size-reduction (Artillery Logo), this is applied at the end of/after combat (It hink it does not change final CV(?))

Don't get confused by the 3. being a "Artillery Logo", just ignore its logo.

[tyronec]

Thanks.