Matrix Games Forums

To the WITE Dev team.
What happened to the combat engine along the way?
Please don't claim nothing was changed. Please unchange!!!

Below example, The mighty 7th flieger division, 95 morale, just of trains, move one hex, slight fatigue. Hasty attack against a cav division in light woods, zero. Are you serious? Really?
I can understand some randomness, some freak results. But this has become epidemic. Hasty attacks, even del. attacks are just loteries without 3-1 in pure bodies. Tanks matter little, so does morale and experience.

Is this really what you want?
I can't seem to upload the picture, get file is too large but will post in my AAR: tm.asp?m=3117461&mpage=3

I subscribe to what BigAnorak (or was it Klydon) said:
You can expect 10% of your combats each turn to be completely anomalous.

Outside of that, if you want to ensure your hasty attacks win, then keep track of every division you attack in the game, to understand how many men it has, how many guns, and how many combats it has been in over the last 4 or 5 turns (and how many of those it won).

Never assume a hasty attack against a heretofore unknown enemy unit will succeed. The two types of units that most surprise the German will be cavalry divisions and rifle brigades. Never assume your recon is accurate if you haven't attacked the unit before in prior turns.

When new units appear, use a multi-stack hasty, or a single infantry deliberate.

Hi all,

There were no changes to WitE apart from those listed in ReadMe and updated manual addendum (although the bugfixes are not listed there - there are only in ReadMe to avoid clutter in addendum)!


Leo "Apollo11"

Hi Leo,

Hmmm, how about the reduction of recon, could that be the cause of the much higher held percentage than previous?
see here: tm.asp?m=3127907

Thanks!

Something definitely changed RE hasty attacks some time back. I was not inclined to complain because as soon a one does the Soviet attack gang soon arrive on the scene. But something changed for sure. I have just adapted to it.

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: glvaca

Hmmm, how about the reduction of recon, could that be the cause of the much higher held percentage than previous?
see here: tm.asp?m=3127907

Thanks!

Same answer... all should be documented... nothing was done outside that...


Leo "Apollo11"

The 'butterfly effect'

ORIGINAL: Michael T

The 'butterfly effect'

Quite possible.

Leo, in all honesty, the difference between 3 or 4 patches ago is VERY substantial. If it was unintentional, I recommend you just run the opening move between 10.06.6 and .13. You'll notice the difference for sure.

Every time this has come up, Pavel has claimed that it is some kind of reporting error. The incidence of such errors has definitely increased in recent patches. The recon rules themselves have been changed and possibly the code is bleeding over and causing these reporting errors.

Saw the picture, didn't think it was so egregious. Rauss goes at length on how new units arriving on the Eastern Front frequently had a rough time of it on their first combats as they had not become acclimated to warfare in the East, and this was particularly bad when fighting tanks or fighting in woods and swamps. Mind you that 7th Flieger's performance on the Eastern Front was nothing to write home about, so much so that it was withdrawn fairly quickly since fighting in the east did not suit its specialist training (and the horrible losses it had suffered whilst taking Crete didn't help, specially since the officer corps was devastated).

ORIGINAL: notenome

Saw the picture, didn't think it was so egregious. Rauss goes at length on how new units arriving on the Eastern Front frequently had a rough time of it on their first combats as they had not become acclimated to warfare in the East, and this was particularly bad when fighting tanks or fighting in woods and swamps. Mind you that 7th Flieger's performance on the Eastern Front was nothing to write home about, so much so that it was withdrawn fairly quickly as that fighting in the east did not suit its specialist training (and the horrible losses it had suffered whilst taking Crete didn't help, specially since the officer corps was devastated).

Right [:D]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: glvaca

Leo, in all honesty, the difference between 3 or 4 patches ago is VERY substantial. If it was unintentional, I recommend you just run the opening move between 10.06.6 and .13. You'll notice the difference for sure.

With every new version I also run run AI vs. AI tests (full grand campaigns) as well and check things... I didn't notice anything out of ordinary...


Leo "Apollo11"

glvaca,

Just doing a little estimating on the combat values from the combat result displayed in your AAR:

7th FJ starts with a value of 53 and ends up with a modified value of 37. This does not seem to unreasonable given that it made a hasty attack. It is in the X corp. Assuming that you haven't changed the leader, he has a morale value of 6 and an infantry value of 6 - nothing really special.

(At least in my patch) 35th Cavalry arrives on turn 7 as a shell. So it probably was in refit for 2 turns, rode the train to the hex next to the combat hex, then crossed the river & moved into the light woods - not that many factors of ground movement, so it also probably had little fatigue. Morale is likely about 45 and experience is likely about 35 judging from comparible units that I looked at in one of my games. It starts with a combat value of 12, which would be doubled to 24 because of the light woods. Don't know who the leader of 24th army is. But, he could be better than the X corp commander.

I see two questionable items on the combat result display. 1) How can the modified combat value of 35th Cav get from my approximation of 24 up to the displayed value of 61? If there are good reasons for that, then this combat result is reasonable. 2) Why does the combat result display in your AAR say it's turn 16?

KFosso, this is where the reporting errors come in. Hasty attacks on units with sketchy recon can yield unpleasant surprises, and recon has been made harder to do generally.

This is happening a lot more often than it used to. Frankly, I'm totally ok with this, as recon in the game is already much too good and players have a great deal more intelligence than they probably should.

Also, Glvaca is on total cruise control in this particular game and heading for a 1941 Axis win, so I'm a little bemused by this complaint.

Was looking into the rules a bit more & saw that a leader check can double the modified CV.

Also, a modified combat value of 37 to 24 is less than a 2 to 1, so it wasn't a guaranteed win anyway.

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: glvaca

Leo, in all honesty, the difference between 3 or 4 patches ago is VERY substantial. If it was unintentional, I recommend you just run the opening move between 10.06.6 and .13. You'll notice the difference for sure.

With every new version I also run run AI vs. AI tests (full grand campaigns) as well and check things... I didn't notice anything out of ordinary...


Leo "Apollo11"

With all due respect Leo, playing yourself and on a knife's edge or letting the AI run against itself is a serious difference...

@ Kfosso, it displays turn 16 because it is turn 16! [;)]
The AAR was bit behind but is now current.

Anyway, the cav division had been in the front lines for quite a while and had only just been beaten back in a previous attempt to infiltrate. It was low on manpower.

My point is that the 7th Flieger is a 97 morale/95 experience unit. It has a 3 to 1 advantage in numbers. 3-1 in arty. Is supported by nebelwherphers and other arty.

IF you can't be certain that such a division succeeds in beating back a worn out low morale/experience unit with a hasty, then what?

Flav, my raising this issue has nothing to do with my game against Tarhannus.
Tarhannus has done nothing that I find in violation to what was agreed before the match started. I have not raised any of the points I posted about to him or asked him to do something different. He is perfectly within his right to do what he has been doing.
My winning/loosing the match does not matter.

These sort of results should not happen. Leader's influencing combats is fine, recon having an influence is fine. But there should be sure wins, this should have been one of them. Those elite para's would have cut those misserable cav to pieces in short order in RL. There is no question about that and I dare you to play any kind of tactical game with these odds.

This did not happen in previous versions. Or if it did in way, way less frequency then currently.

I'm not sure I agree with the sure wins philosophy. Especially in WWII, pretty much anything that could happen did happen at some point or another. Like an entire panzercorps being isolated by a single stubborn tank for 2 days. Eastern Front is full of examples of Axis infantry divisions having a rough time of it in woods, Rauss and Halder both wrote that the Russians were superior fighters in woods than the Germans.

I think what glvaca is saying has merit. There is no such thing as a "sure win"..while many here always want the historic results to be a "sure thing" also..Setting that aside, he is saying that an already mauled division, low on everything, hard and "soft" factors such as morale, included, should not be able to beat a freshly arrived division on turn 16, for certain, as there were few examples even in history of the Soviets fighting well until winter that year, and most of their successes came from capable strong units, not from divisions that, as noted, had already been hit and knocked backwards immediately before, and thus, as well, recon should not play a factor, as the cavalry division in question, was already known, and defeated once, so would not likely become stronger, than it was when it had just lost a fight a few days before.