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Having conducted tests for our Grand Poobah Brian Price, I have found out of the following (nothing has been fixed yet) - please corract me if I'm wrong about something.

Whenever someone fires at infantry there are two kinds of damage: from DIRECT fire and from SPLASH.

If the shell/guns hit the infantry while firing directly, there will be calculated damage based upon KILL ratio for the weapon. The infantry will *only* take damage if the HIT probability is satisfied.

Units around the target will be affected by SPLASH damage. The higher the KILL ratio, the more SPLASH damage. Also, the higher the WARHEAD, the greater the area of effect - so MG's with WARHEAD=1 will only kill infantry units in the same hex as the target, while Sturmtigers with 38cm Mörser that have WARHEAD=21 will kill infantry up to two hexes away!! This kind of damage "always" hits no matter hit proability, but does not always cause casualties.

The problem in SPWAW is that ***the directly targetted unit will NOT suffer splash damage***. Therefore a number of well-known "insects" roam around: when two infantry units are in the same hex and well dug-in, the TARGETTED unit will not be likely to take damage because of low hit percentage. But the other one will suffer SPLASH damage and therefore be hit more often!

This is known with small arms fire as well as large Infantry Guns: if you target a squad with the 38cm Mörser and have 20% chance to hit, there will be only 20% chance of causing casualties! But other squads nearby will almost surely suffer at least 1-2 or up to about 10 casualties I have seen - while the targetted unit is still in good health!

Attacking a hex with direct fire (Z key) will apply SPLASH damage to all units in the area but of course no direct damage. For small Hit Percentages it is easier to cause casualties with SPLASH damage than by directly targetting!

If this is to be fixed, all that must be done is to apply SPLASH damage directly to the targetted unit as well as the others.

(It should be added that these figures AFAIK apply to ALL weapons in the game - small arms, guns, bombs etc.)

A solution to this problem will probably require code tweaking which is not quite within our boundaries - but we hope it can be adressed anyway, since the fix itself could hopefully be easy.

I guess it will solve the well-known problems of hitting own troops in a hex rather than enemies, the problem of targetted units not taking so much damage as adjacent ones (this is basically the same bug), and perhaps a few other issues.

It has been proposed to increase KILL value but decrease WARHEAD for certain weapons. That will increase the effectiveness of large guns against targets such as crewed guns/machine gun nests, while other infantry units nearby will not be affected quite so much as before.

Some good thoughts, here.
The best way seems to add the splash damage to the hex containing the directly targeted unit.
In this case the max damage for a targeted unit would be a direct hit and a splash damage, whereas a unit in an adjacent hex can only suffer splash damage.
This should take care of the somewhat unbalanced casualties occuring on large warhead weapons.
If the casualties should go up to high than (but I don't think so), one could still lower the HE kill a bit to bring it down.
If someone wants to change this, go ahead...I believe it's a good idea worth testing...

It seems to me that another way of using these big warhead guns is to target the area and not a specific unit in the hex. That way all the units will suffer from collateral damage with no special protection awarded to the targeted unit.

it' the way it works in ASL and can be tested in spwaw !

A very interesting study!

If correct, a great improvement would be to apply "splash" to the targeted unit, in addition to damage from hits when they occur. Additionally, hit damage might reasonably be increased too. A "hit" by a 150mm thingy to a gun crew f.ex. would be a catastrophic event for the target.

Speaking as a programmer, these changes should be very easy to implement, with minuscule risk of generating bugs.

Originally posted by Penetrator:
A very interesting study!
Additionally, hit damage might reasonably be increased too.

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Add to the above: With strong correlation with warhead size.

Thanks for the input.

If you have comments to discuss you might want to join the #spwaw IRC channel on Wichita Falls server - there is a link in Brian Price's posts.

Yesterday the following was considered, but nothing is sure yet:

Lowering WARHEAD sizes for direct fire weapons while increasing HE KILL values. This increase damage at impact hex and targetted unit, while the splash damage will be lowered (38cm sturmmörser easily cause casualties two hexes away right now!).

This could be applied to direct fire units, while indirect fire units should perhaps retain their old values (simulating area-of-effect from bombardment rather than direct fire targetted at a specific point). (this is just one suggestion)

It was yesterday agreed that we will try to get hold of the code to make targetted unit also take splash damage.

In the tests I made I placed lot of Sturmtigers around the map against Japanese infantry squads with 20 men (inf plt A*). These were placed adjacent to each other.

The results were clear: damage was dealt to targetted unit ONLY if hit occurs, while ALL adjacent units suffered heavy casualties (average about 4 men per squad adjacent!)

When a direct hit occured, *very* heavy damage was dealt to the target squad: once I saw 19 casualties in one shot!

I have queried Tom on how "easy" a fix this might be...IF it is easy it will be fixed, if not, you will just have to keep using the z-key...

IF it will be fixed, I believe Penetrators "fix alternative" above, is an excellent one. This would give units firing directly at an enemy a bonus, and still punish stacking/clumping together.

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Fredde ]</p>

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
I have queried Tom on how "easy" a fix this might be...IF it is easy it will be fixed, if not, you will just have to keep using the z-key...

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Great support as usual. <img src="cool.gif" border="0">