Matrix Games Forums

Sorry if this is explained elsewhere, but I don't see any concerete details:

How useful is entrenchment? If I have 100 rifles defending with 100 entrenchment, how effective are they in comparison to 100 rifles with 0 entrenchment? Is 150 50% more effective, or is it exponential?

How severe is stack? Is 100 the limit? Is 120 twice as bad as 110? Linear or exponential?

Nobody knows? [&:]

Don't know entrenchment rules. Stacking is important in that if you go over it on attacks you suffer additional losses. 100 is the point at which you suffer no extra losses from 2 hexes. each extra hex allows more stack points to attack without additional losses.

Yes... but... how much more do you lose when stack is excessive? 

ORIGINAL: AdamRinkleff

Yes... but... how much more do you lose when stack is excessive? 

My understanding is that the exact numbers are complicated to figure out, but that you can tolerate a bit of overstacking, say up to 20% without too much risk of unpleasantness.Personally I will tolerate 20% only in extreme cases.

Henri

Henri is right, personally I suck at numbers and I draw my conclusions from what I see... sooo, attacking entrenched troops hurts, the more entrenched the more it hurts. Anything above say 100 entrenchment hurts bad and Art and Bombers are needed to lower that entrenchment number. So forests, cities and mountains are great for defense. But don't ask me for exact numbers as the give me a headache. [;)]
Same with the Stacking Penalty, I try to stay at 100, or less, on occasion it may be 10 or 20 more.
The AI has sometimes a huge stack somewhere, I mean hundreds and hundreds of units, now send an attack plane to bomb that hex and see the impressive amount of casualties it makes.

To get detailed info on combat calculations (including effects of each modifier) click on to combat details when inside the combat screen.
(turn FOW off if you want full info on both sides)

best,
Vic

Entrenchment % adds to hit points of your units during battle. So infantry with 100% ent has in fact 200 hit points instead of 100 against other infantry (hope those numbers are correct as I'm taking them off the top of my head).

To calculate whether your unit is hit in an attack, opponent units ATT value against given SFT (see combat statistics) is compared to your units HP (both values modified by lots of different modifiers). Also both numbers are randomized (i think... but I'm not completely sure about that). Anyway more hit points make your unit harder to hit.

I hope that explains a little bit how entrenchment works.

I guess nobody really knows the details. I think I'll create a scenario and experiment. I'll let you know what I come up with.

..and if anybody wants to do a 1v1, please let me know, I'm kind of bored of playing the AI.

Well here is my 2ct:
I think you should differentiate between an individual attack roll and the whole combat.
Individual attack roll:
The unit who is rolling its attack (could be attacker or defender) has an attack value which is highly modified by leadership etc. Lets say this value is "a". The defender has its hit point value which is highly modified by entrenchment, leadership etc. Lets say this value is "b".
Attack rolls a number between 0 and a. Defender rolls a number between 0 and b. If the attacker rolls higher then the defender he will score a "hit".
If a is smaller then b (which is likely) then the chance to score a "hit" is a/2b. (If a is larger then b then the chance is 1-b/2a).
So in the case b>a entrenchment will have the following effect: The chance to hit goes from a/2b to a/2b/entrench with entrench = (100+entrenchment value)/100.
As an example: You have a unit which has an attack value of 100 which attacks a 200 hit point value unit. Without entrenchment the chance to "hit" is 25%. If the defender has 100 entrenchment point the chance goes to 12.5%. Of course after scoring a "hit" it is decided if this is PIN, RETREAT or a KILL result.
For the whole battle the effect is even more important. As the attacker has a smaller chance to hit he will suffer more devastating counterattacks after each hit roll so I think entrenchment is very important.

Overstacking works similar but the penalty is there for both attack and defense rolls. I think suffering overstacking is acceptable for strategic hexes. As you get to bring in more attack rolls the effect is a bit counterbalanced. If the enemy is really low on readiness and cannot counterattack much overstacking is not a big issue.

Reading this through, I'm still not clear on stacking. If I have a unit that says 100 strength, is that about the max a hex can hold before there are penalties. 100 strength, as I understand it, doesn't mean 100 riflemen or whatever, but just the power of the unit based on readiness and the other factors.

or is stacking based on number of subunits inside your unit (e.g. 100 riflemen, or 10 armoured cars, etc)

Each sft has a set stack size. All infantry types are 1 stack point. Arm cars are 5 , All guns except flak are 5 points, Flak is 2 points. All armor ( except arm cars) is 10 stack points.

@jagpike, yes it can be puzzling, but it does make sense because it was implemented to prevent killerstacks. You know, 20 TigerII tanks in one unit, unstoppable and no fun. So there's a limit you can put into one hex, or unit if you will. And that's 100. That's 100 soldiers, or 10 tanks. So you can attack, or defend, from one hex (or two hexes) with 100 points without penalty. Less is no problem, I do sometimes attack with a bit over 100, say 110, without problems. With 150 you already can notice an increased number of casualties if you attack.

And don't confuse "strength" with "stack".  Strength can mean a few things, and I'm assuming you are referring to the abstract strength number you see for each division on the main map.  That is different than a unit's "stack".  I'd tell you where to look for the stack number, but without the game up I can't remember!

thanks phat, that explains it pretty well...i was mistaking the two