Hit chance % and realism

rodo · Post by **rodo** » Wed May 17, 2000 1:26 am

Hi,
I a newbie at this game.
Can someone tell me why the hit chance % is often so low ? [2,3,4% ....] [at 8 hex for exemple, even if I m not an armor expert, I'd estimate my probaility to hit a target of the size of a tank to be around 30% ... not 2 or 3 % ]
Then with a so low pourcentage, I would never fire a bullet ... [it would be lost in 96, 97, or 98 % of cases ..
So my questions are:
1- why does the computer fire with so low probability occurences ?
2- are such probabilities realistic ???

Ok, I'm not a WW2 expert so excuse me if my questions are simplistics or stupid ...

Thanks for your help

talon · Post by **talon** » Wed May 17, 2000 1:54 am

Since all the units didn´t have any stabiliser and modern fire computers so it is not a good think to move and try to hit something with your tanks afterwards . Only modern day tanks like M1 or Leo 2 it is possible to hit a target while moving at high speed . But it is a good think to take sucht a bad shoot because te hit chance increase with every shoot . The gunner gets more time at the target and so more time to aim so it is also not a good think to change your target with every shoot

Voriax · Post by **Voriax** » Wed May 17, 2000 1:58 am

Originally posted by rodo:

1- why does the computer fire with so low probability occurences ?

This is more in the area of the games coders

but my guess is that the computer is programmed to fire whenever there is a target and whenever it has ammo/shots left and ignore the probabilities.

2- are such probabilities realistic ???

Ok, I'm not a WW2 expert so excuse me if my questions are simplistics or stupid ...

Thanks for your help

In what kind of situations you have those low % and with that weapons? for example, if you were firing with rifles or at-rifles you'd be firing at the extreme ranges, and way past the base range listed in the 'acc' section of the unit data. Search for the forum pages for the 'Encyclopedia stats' thread about the accuracy.

also if the shooter/target/both are moving the odds decrease rapidly as there were no gun stabilizers or fire control computers. So if you fire after moving your tank you have imagine a tank driving several mph bouncing over rough terrain, and your sights are bouncing too. Not an easy task to hit.

Then add smoke effects, crew training, suppression etc.

Voriax

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Wed May 17, 2000 2:36 am

To learn about hit chances, set up a "shooting galery" on a map with no terrain in the editor. You will find hit chances are bes t with no suppression when stationary, as you get even one point of suppression (ie you know the enemy is actively trying to kill you) hit chances go down by 20-50% depending on experience.

The addition of more suppression has a decreasingly drastic effect,but once you get 20 - 40 suppression depending again on expereince and nationality you will have a hard time hitting anything.

As you move, the more you move the increasingly worse your hit chances get. As the target moves, there is a worsening of the hit chances.

SO the keys to victory are to get your forces into a killing zone position waiting for teh enemy and engage only when in effective range. DO not use all your shots every turn to conserve ammo and maximize opfire chances. IF you don't move, you can maintain "lock" on targets form turn to turn, as long as they don't leave your LOS, so if you have 6 shots fire 3 or 4 and save teh other 2 or 3 so you have a better chance to opfire, or so you don't find yourself out of ammo 24 turns into a 30 turn game

Pack Rat · Post by **Pack Rat** » Wed May 17, 2000 3:09 am

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
IF you don't move, you can maintain "lock" on targets form turn to turn, as long as they don't leave your LOS,

If your unit has a target "locked" does this mean it won't fire at any other target, during the AI move? If this is the case how would one "unlock" the target? In some cases this would be nice. I get disgusted seeing my units shooting at retreating trucks only to see alittle later no shots left to take on the AI armor. This ploy has been used by the AI since SP came out, rush you with large numbers of less dangerous units, and then comes the armor. Quite the opposite of what I would think the order of attack would be. What I would give for a priority fire control!

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Peace,
Pack Rat

[This message has been edited by Pack Rat (edited 05-16-2000).]

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Wed May 17, 2000 4:54 am

No its not a "lock" in sense it won't shoot at anything else, its just mor likely to shoot at it since it has a higher hit chance. If you do shoot at something else it will start "building up" aquisition on that targe, so it pays to use the T key and see what your unit is currently locked onto before you fire.

More opfire control is more of the most requested additions, unfortunatelyits a time consuming one, we hope to get to it evenetually... we know its a big problem with the system...

Greg · Post by **Greg** » Wed May 17, 2000 1:14 pm

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
To learn about hit chances, set up a "shooting galery" [...]
as you get even one point of suppression (ie you know the enemy
is actively trying to kill you) hit chances go down by 20-50%
depending on experience.

The addition of more suppression has a decreasingly drastic effect,
but once you get 20 - 40 suppression depending again on expereince
and nationality you will have a hard time hitting anything.

So, that's why we were so surprised yesterday. In a battle
we've had Polish infantry squad, dug-in and masked, which
shooted to German infantry squad moving into ambush...

So Poles (fresh, unshooted) had up to nineteen percent to hit,
moving Germans (when answered with fire) up to 60... In 1939.

Aren't the Germans too good?

Pozdrawiam
Greg

Moonpie · Post by **Moonpie** » Wed May 17, 2000 4:20 pm

So Paul, how exactly does the opportunity fir e work? I mean specifically if I decide to "save" shots from my phase, do they get more shots during the opportunity shots? I have tried to run a few informal experiments firing only two to three shots with one platform, then all the available shots with the another identical platform. They seem to fire the same number of shots during opportunity fire. Is the ONLY benefit to not using all your rounds during your phase, just a conservation of ammo?

Wild Bill · Post by **Wild Bill** » Wed May 17, 2000 6:59 pm

That was the case in SP1. You had to save a shot or two so your units could op-fire when the opponent moved or fired.

I really haven't seen evidence of that lately. I'll ask our chief programmer Michael Wood about this feature (soon as I can find him - G)....WB

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Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

Mark_Ezra · Post by **Mark_Ezra** » Wed May 17, 2000 7:06 pm

Something to keep in mind about % of hit notification: There are two noticfications The first or prefire notification and after you take the shot or postfire notification.
The prefire notification is often low especially w/green or average units, When you take the shot the second notification reveals the actual % of hit. By the way a high prenotification % does not mean the actual hit % will be good. I've seen plenty of 89% chances reduced to 17%. I think this reflects the difficulty in targeting on the WW2 battlefield. I pay little attention to the first % but a lot on the penetration/distance charts.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Wed May 17, 2000 7:27 pm

One thing I've seen is that if I fire with a low probability to hit but do in fact hit, the next shot still has a low probabilty.

I don't know about WWII tank drills in other nations, but from my US M1 tank experience, the gunner lays and fires while the cdr spots the shot and gives corrections. Assuming that the gunner had a low "to-hit" % but was lucky enough to get his lay just right and get a hit, he would maintain that lay and should then have a high probability. Does this seem correct?

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Voriax · Post by **Voriax** » Wed May 17, 2000 8:04 pm

Originally posted by Larry Holt:
One thing I've seen is that if I fire with a low probability to hit but do in fact hit, the next shot still has a low probabilty.

Probably a thing with the numerous random factors. however if either of the opponents is moving then each shot is a separate occasion..with M1 Abrams it is a tad easier to keep a lock on moving target while on the move than in PzIII, I think.

Voriax

Desert Fox · Post by **Desert Fox** » Wed May 17, 2000 9:12 pm

Originally posted by Larry Holt:
One thing I've seen is that if I fire with a low probability to hit but do in fact hit, the next shot still has a low probabilty.

Well this has to do with a lot of factors (I am guessing here). First, like Voriax said, is the movement of the firing unit and the target unit. The lack of stabilizers makes it pretty difficult to hold a moving target.
Another possibility is ballistics. At far ranges, the shell spinning slows down due to air friction, and then becomes less stable. It will veer off to one side or the other rather than stay on a straight path. This accuracy is low basically because the target is out of effective range of the weapon.
A third accuracy factor is recoil. The gun fires, and the force will usually move the tank just a little bit. This obviously is a negligable factor for close targets, but at long ranges, just a little bit off and you miss.
Something else that definitely plays a roll is the experience of the gunner. If he is green, he is likely jerking the gun back and forth, barely able to keep the gun on target. If he is really inexperienced, he probably accidentally bumps the gun controls too.
I don't know how much of this was programmed in, and there are likely a few other factors they put in that I can't think of. However, the biggest factor is the ballistic range of the weapon. Beyond this, there is no reason to shoot. I am not sure where this information is in the game, but I am pretty sure it is there.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Wed May 17, 2000 10:54 pm

Please allow me to clairify what I was comenting on. If I fire at low (say 4%) probabliity and hit, then continue to fire, the probability builds up, 8%, 12%, 22%, etc. with each successive shot. That I hit the target seems irrelevent to this and I strongly suspect that it is not factored into the modeling. Agreed that if the target or firing unit is moving getting a hit is not significant to the next shot's probablity to hit as the lay of the gun needs to be adjusted. What I am saying is that if the firing unit and target are stationary and the target is hit, successive shots should be at or near 100% +- the normal variances for wind, randomness, etc.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Dave R · Post by **Dave R** » Thu May 18, 2000 3:59 am

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Larry Holt:
One thing I've seen is that if I fire with a low probability to hit but do in fact hit, the next shot still has a low probabilty.

<Puts his ex tank commanders head on>

Just a thought on this point. As a tank gunner we were taught to break our lay after each shot, so as to take up the slack in the gun laying mechanism. I do remember many of our new gunners would often have trouble with this. The ironic point being that they often secured good first round hits, then missed with the second

StuNZ · Post by **StuNZ** » Thu May 18, 2000 5:08 am

Originally posted by Larry Holt:
Please allow me to clairify what I was comenting on. If I fire at low (say 4%) probabliity and hit, then continue to fire, the probability builds up, 8%, 12%, 22%, etc. with each successive shot. That I hit the target seems irrelevent to this and I strongly suspect that it is not factored into the modeling. Agreed that if the target or firing unit is moving getting a hit is not significant to the next shot's probablity to hit as the lay of the gun needs to be adjusted. What I am saying is that if the firing unit and target are stationary and the target is hit, successive shots should be at or near 100% +- the normal variances for wind, randomness, etc.

Interestingly enough this was brought up over on the Battlefront CM board as well a few days ago about the accuracy of tanks in SP WaW vs CM ... one of the designers of CM mentioned something that might shed some light on the low hit chances there.

Originally posted by Big Time Software:
My guess is that, given the IGOUGO nature of SPWAW, the designers may have had to reduce gun accuracy below real-world levels or else, because a tank often gets 5 or 6 shots per turn, it would be too easy for the side which goes first just to wipe out the entire opposing force before it would even have a chance to return fire. So their accuracy numbers are (probably) unrealistically low, but in the "big picture" , due to the IGOUGO, they probably help balance the game and make it more realistic than using "realistic" to-hit numbers would. I know, it seems like a contradiction but it isn't.

Charles

Makes sense to me

. In real time (ack horrible thought I know

) if your tank was the target (lets say Pz IIIh under fire from a T34/76), if both were stationary and the Pz III took a hit from the T34 that didn't knock it out, wouldn't you do something to get out of harms way - either manuerve or pop smoke? With the IGoUGo of SP though, you don't have that option though. It may be then the dropped percentage is representative of some form of limited manuever within the area? Of course it could also simply be a design oversight of the SP series, but I reckon it's a whole less frustrating if you view it the first way

.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Thu May 18, 2000 5:34 pm

Originally posted by StuNZ:
Makes sense to me . In real time (ack horrible thought I know ) if your tank was the target (lets say Pz IIIh under fire from a T34/76), if both were stationary and the Pz III took a hit from the T34 that didn't knock it out, wouldn't you do something to get out of harms way - either manuerve or pop smoke?
With the IGoUGo of SP though, you don't have that option though. It may be then the dropped percentage is representative of some form of limited manuever within the area? Of course it could also simply be a design oversight of the SP series, but I reckon it's a whole less frustrating if you view it the first way .

Fair enough if that's what was intended. I just wonder if this was intentional or overlooked. Paul Vebber, Michael Woods can you give us a definative comment on this? If its an oversight or limitation of IGOUGO, could you put in a hot key so that if a tank takes fire from the AI, a player has a moment to hit a key to fire smoke or shift position?

Fair enough if

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Thu May 18, 2000 8:20 pm

While its not accounting for weakness in "IGO/UGO per se (though OPfire seems to be ignored by the comment...) It is more trying to gauge overall battle results to game results. In human vs human play, it takes a while to kill off the enemy;s tank force.

Games that use 1 minute timeslices are wonderful for small gropups of units that could closely coordinate their movements, but its assumptions about command control don't scale well into the Btn and Regmt sized games. The fact that a force can do something in one minute, doesn't mean you can scale that to all the force doing things in parallel, EVERY minute. It tends to have a more "realistic" feel at the tank on tank engagement level, but breaks down in that game time and real time for largere battles don't correlate well. You can "do to much too quickly" in many cases.

A 30 turn SP:WaW game represents 1-2 hours of real time, thats equivalent to 60-120 turns of CM. So the games are much diffent in scope and scale! A much bigger factor than IGO/UGO vs plotted si move (which essentially relies on the "AI" to do "opfire" for BOTH sides turning resolution (though its cued beforehand by the player) the lack of this cuing is the deficiency in SP:WaW, more than its IGO/UGO nature...

I think its also that SP:WaW emphaises soft factors - like experience, the TC's command rating, and suppression than CM seems to. There is this amazing stress that having someone actually trying to kill you creates, that is difficult to account for with book and even training ground numbers.

For example the "training ground" hit chance of a slowing moving tank at 500m from a stationary one might be 90% (the speed across your LOS is the real variable, but we have a hard time computing that so its "fudged") but lets say the "penalty" for being "shot at" is a 40% reducton (in the game its based on suppression and experience) and the penalty for failing an experience check (correct target acquisition ID, and deconflicting with other shooters correctly)is another 40% (these numbers are illustrative and don't correspnd to what happens in the game which would take several pages to chart out. There are penalties for failing experience checks just like there are bonuses for passing "leader "skill" checks) and lets say the chance of The enmy "anticipating" you shot and "manuvering within the hex" to spoil your shot is 30% (basd on his experience) well consider those all as "conditional probabilities" for hitting and you get .9*.6*.6*.7 =23% chance to hit. Aadd more evasive tager manuever, battlefield confusin, shooter movement, and its not hard to see "common" hit chances in the 10-30% range - especially out at 1000 or 1500 yards.

Try setting up the "shooting gallery" I suggested earlier to see what I mean. I tank that is not spotted with no suppression, firing a a slowly moving ennemy can have VERY hig hit chances. Once he starts getting shot at, the pucker factor goes up and things are much less certain.

We can only do so much with the old girl

As I said on the usenet, that the question of comparison with a brand new game that is YEARS in the making, is flattering to the team

, but not going to be resolvable...its Coke or Pepsi, no matter what, some folks will like one and not the other...its just personal taste...!

You folks will have to explore teh subleties for yourselves and teh bottom line is, if you don;t think the "setpoint" is quite right for hitting...crank it up or down with the hitting preference! Same with tank toughness!

Paul

Mark_Ezra · Post by **Mark_Ezra** » Thu May 18, 2000 9:48 pm

Will Human controlled units that are under heavy attack and reduced moral attempt to move out of harms way? I see the AI units do it. Speaking of the AI... It's the best SP AI yet....Obviously a lot of effort has gone into it. Nice work!

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Thu May 18, 2000 10:18 pm

Wild Bill,

any results to the question:
"Do I have to spare one or two shots in my turn to have my tanks do op fire during the enemys turn?"

Thanks.

Fred