Matrix Games Forums

I have played quite a few WII scenarios now, and each time I get a strange feeling that something feels completely wrong about combat results in TOAW, especially when attacking with armour against infantry.

It feels that the attack and defence numbers are determining the results and casualties. That sounds OK but infact an Infantry division has a completely different defence capability [before panzerfaust or bazooka in 1943-44] against tanks than against ememy infantry.

Why is this, well IMHO its because you can suppress an anti-tank gun crew with artillery far easier than an enemy armoured unit. Air attack can suppress an armoured unit, but if you have local air superiority, it comes down to the infantry's anti-tank guns to stop your armour.

A game called War in Russia (WiR) copes with this by calculating odds by counting squads, but applies a multiplicative factor for armour. OK TOAW is a scenario design tool, but if the game engine is just using A/D numbers to calculate odds then it can't be right, can it??

This is not a minor problem, because the game feels like WWI not WW2, or have I just got this totally wrong?

Well, you may just not be noticing the difference, try a modern scenario and you will see your tanks slaughtered by infantry AT weapons.

ORIGINAL: Veers

Well, you may just not be noticing the difference, try a modern scenario and you will see your tanks slaughtered by infantry AT weapons.

I am aware of the difference, thats why I excluded 43 and 44 with panzerfaust and Bazooka, which both rely on the same shape charge technology as ITOW, Milan, Sagger or RPG-7 to make the weapons man [or two man teams] portable.

But in flat terrain in 41 or 42, non-dug in vanilla infantry does not get that same number defence ability in real combat. If they are flanked or moving its not a battle its pure slaughter. Urban/Bocage/hills/forrests are totally different, but TOAW is still giving me a strange feeling.

I have lost confidence that whats in the combat odds calculation black box is outputting results making sense for the case mentioned.

edited for more clarity

ORIGINAL: KoenigMKII

ORIGINAL: Veers

Well, you may just not be noticing the difference, try a modern scenario and you will see your tanks slaughtered by infantry AT weapons.

I am aware of the difference, thats why I excluded 43 and 44 with panzerfaust and Bazooka, which both rely on the same shape charge technology as ITOW, Milan, Sagger or RPG-7 to make the weapons man [or two man teams] portable.

But in flat terrain in 41 or 42, non-dug in vanilla infantry does not get that same number defence ability in real combat. If they are flanked or moving its not a battle its pure slaughter. Urban/Bocage/hills/forrests are totally different, but TOAW is still giving me a strange feeling.

I have lost confidence that whats in the combat odds calculation black box is outputting results making sense for the case mentioned.

edited for more clarity

The anti armor combat system still needs some tweaking. However, contrary to your assumption, there is not really any "combat odds calculation" going on with TOAW III's combat model. It is based on equipment per side taken shots at each other. The number of shots fired are dependent upon several factors, such at attrition divider, number of pieces in units, unit strengths (supply, prof, readiness), deployment, terrain, entrenchment, and suppressive HA fire. Some factors affect the attackers. Some affect the defenders. Some affect both. After determining how many shots will be fired, the results are determined in a series of sub-rounds and tactical rounds. Some possibility of evading lethal hits scored is possible due to equipment agility. Some lethal hits result in equipment being permanently lost. Others are temporarily disabled. All AP hits are assumed to be lethal, with the previously noted exceptions.

Anti-armor fire has a couple more hoops to jump through, to make it to that stage where lethal hits are checked for evasion, and simple disabling results. They must first hit the target. This is the first of Norm's assumptions which need to be redressed. If you look at the matrix on page 69 of the manual, you'll see the "Anti-Armor Chance to Hit, per shot" for various combinations of vision conditions versus equipment targeting characteristics. Here you'll see that for Open Vision / Everything Else the chance for each fired shot to hit the target in the first place is only 11%. This is the condition in which most early to mid WWII open field battles take place. Then, a modifier based on the RCSB of the equipment being fired upon is multiplied by this percentage, further increasing, or dropping the chance by a percentage proportional to the relative sizes of the equipment. T-34's are the base size, so larger pieces are slightly easier to hit, while smaller pieces are harder. This usually ranges from about 7% for armored cars to about 14% for larger WWII tanks.

After the determination of whether a shot has even hit a target, the chance to defeat armor is checked, going through the algorithm on the bottom of page 69 to determine whether the shot penetrated or not, as well as a further modification in TOAW III, for armor facing. Much of the early WWII AT weaponry was relatively underpowered, compared to the armor protection of the day, and so, many shots are not going to penetrate. As you can see, there are several steps along the way that the potential for destroying an enemy tank is lost, until progressively, the overall chance to destroy one is severely reduced in these cases.

Now, it is actually possible to get direct AP induced losses to hard targets. These bypass the checks for to hit percentages and penetrations and are automatically assumed to be lethal. However, it is based on overall AP strength, and the percentage of that AP strength applied is IMO a bit too low, and should be raised. There are several other changes I want to make to the whole anti-armor routine, so that relative numbers of attackers/defenders will factor into the amount of AP strength being directed toward hard targets, as well as for improving the probablility of side shots being resolved in the armor facing routing. These are above and beyond the already existing parameters used, and they will need to be integrated into a system that is not simply slapped together on the fly, or tweaked without regard for the total performance of the engine.