Return Fire

[MikeBrough]

I've got a funny feeling I've read about this before but...

It seems to me that the defenders get to fire too many return shots. For example, in my current game, I'm playing the Brits and we have a 4 Warrior platoons and 2 Challenger platoons against a single T-80 company. If I count right, that's around 22 Brit tubes against 10-ish WP. My troops take it in turns to fire at their tanks but the WP get to respond to EVERY platoon's attack. So, each of my vehicles get to fire once and, in the same timeframe, he gets to reply 6 times.

Is he replying with all 10 tanks every time? Feels a bit unbalanced.

[CapnDarwin]

Mike,

The short answer is no. The long, complex, make your eyes bleed answer to support the no is as follows. Each round of combat is approximately 5 minutes. Each of the 10 tanks has a basic rate of fire of 4-6 rounds a minute. The basic math yields 10 tanks times 4 rounds times 5 minutes or 200 possible round down range against the 20 odd targets. So 2 rounds per Brit vehicle. The game takes into account a ton of variables to determine how many rounds go against how many targets. If more then one "attacker" shoot, there is the ability to fire on it in the same turn, IE-the British force is just a clump of vehicles not 4 or so "boxes" of them, so the game allows defending units to respond. There are a number of factors involved in the ability to counterfire like cover, posture, experiance, morale, stress, phase of the moon and political affiliation (the last two may not be in there I'm a little fried from work). Also taken into consideration is the fact that a "Defending" unit has had a bit of time to find a nice hull down spot with good cover and good field of fire. So the long and short of it is, yes the defender can fire at them all, do all sub-units fire every time highly unlikely (there is also a small penalty involved for each additional engagement). Is there a bit of luck, good or bad, envolved sometimes. Sure. IF you still thing something is out of wack by all means post a save game showing the combat in question and we can give it a look.

Hope I made some sense. [:D]

[MikeBrough]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin

Mike,

The short answer is no. The long, complex, make your eyes bleed answer to support the no is as follows. Each round of combat is approximately 5 minutes. Each of the 10 tanks has a basic rate of fire of 4-6 rounds a minute. The basic math yields 10 tanks times 4 rounds times 5 minutes or 200 possible round down range against the 20 odd targets. So 2 rounds per Brit vehicle. The game takes into account a ton of variables to determine how many rounds go against how many targets. If more then one "attacker" shoot, there is the ability to fire on it in the same turn, IE-the British force is just a clump of vehicles not 4 or so "boxes" of them, so the game allows defending units to respond. There are a number of factors involved in the ability to counterfire like cover, posture, experiance, morale, stress, phase of the moon and political affiliation (the last two may not be in there I'm a little fried from work). Also taken into consideration is the fact that a "Defending" unit has had a bit of time to find a nice hull down spot with good cover and good field of fire. So the long and short of it is, yes the defender can fire at them all, do all sub-units fire every time highly unlikely (there is also a small penalty involved for each additional engagement). Is there a bit of luck, good or bad, envolved sometimes. Sure. IF you still thing something is out of wack by all means post a save game showing the combat in question and we can give it a look.

Hope I made some sense. [:D]

Thanks for the reply, Capn. Give me a second to wipe the blood from my eyes.

I could live with this answer if I was only seeing this behaviour when the lone unit was on the defensive. But, I've also seen a Soviet tank company attacking dug-in Nato platoons and exchanging fire with each of them. Does the attacker eventually get treated as the defender in these exchanges? I've seen the tanks charging across open ground and fire being exchanged as it moves each hex.

[CapnDarwin]

Mike,

Same basic math applies as above if the unit is on the offensive except accuracy and rate of fire should be degraded for the movement being done and lack of cover. Again a possible max of 200 or so rounds is possible (but not very likely do to all of the modifiers involved). If that unit is moving and killing like 4-6 opposing units as it runs along I might be suspicious of a bug. Again if you are seeing something like that please post it so we can look it over. Anything we learn we help the new games in development and make the update list for FPG. WE are looking at having better round for round reporting in the new game too. That should help one see if this is really an issue.

Thanks for the questions.