Attacking Fortifications

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    • Attacking Fortifications

      I couldn't find a good thread discussing the strategy of attacking troops inside fortifications. They provide ~40% - 75% defense bonus. L5 even hides troops. Put them in a city and almost makes an attack via tanks worthless with the 50% hit they take. Add some AA and cheap militia in a forested area (+75%)...it makes for great defense. Very expensive to take. I'm up against it now...its early in the game...no rockets. Thinking Artillery.

    • Consider the following, depending on the situation:

      1. tactical bombers, on patrol, for the enemy units within the fortifications;

      2. ranged artillery for the enemy units, and will also damage the fortifications;

      3. strategic bombers for the fortifications;

      4. rockets for the fortifications and units;

      5. nuclear rocket (!) for the units within, fortifications are disregarded; and

      6. don't forget ranged naval gunfire from battleships if the fortifications are on the coast.

      Do NOT attack an L5 fortification which is well defended by a large mixed stack of armor, infantry and anti-tank units. You will lose disproportionately more units than the defender. I have personally witnessed an ally lose virtually all of a mixed stack of 40+ medium tank and motorized infantry units when he attacked an L5 fortification (in a city, too, where tanks have 50% of their strength and hit points) defended by a mixed stack nominally one third as strong in number. It was a massacre.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by MontanaBB ().

    • I ran a few scenarios through the battle calculator. Specifically for beginning/mid game day 12. Lots of L2/L3 units out there but vs a guy putting heavy fortifications in place. I have interceptors and bombers...he has L4/L5 fortifications. Looks like my stack of 6 interceptors and 6 bombers can take out his L3 fortress with 5 INF, AT and 2AA but I'm going to loose a couple interceptors and a couple bombers.

      In another scenario with same defensive units...5 INF, 1AT, 2 AA with L5 fortress, I still win but I loose almost all interceptors and bombers and of course that is leaving a lot to chance. Not a good idea. The key is that bombers and interceptors are about right to attack this sort of defense but not if he has AA. Can't afford the losses.

      Assuming I had artillery. (I don't...been building air instead). Assuming I had 5 L3 Artillery hammering away at 5 INF, AT and 2 AA in L5 fort. Its going to take over 22 rounds to take him down. That's not bad strategy I guess but in my case its more than a week away before I can do anything like that.

      Attacking with Infantry. I'd need 9 L3 Infantry (single stack) would just get it. Using 10 L3 Inf and I'd win with 5 INF left. (2) stacks of (6) L3 Inf against his 5INF, 1AT and 2AA...leaves me dead. (2) stacks of 8 is looking better with just about 6 dead attacking infantry.

      Combining Air attack and Inf is probably the best bet at this stage of the game. No rockets / No Nukes. Two stacks of 6 Inf along with 6 Interceptors and 6 Bombers takes the city with no loses to the bombers while loosing about half the infantry. Bottom line....with minimal resources on the defense (5-6 units) its going to take a lot of resources take these cities.

      Its a great defensive strategy...mostly because I can use those same resources to take much softer targets (i.e. other players). So from a players perspective that is building a lot of fortress....the potential attacking player is going to leave him alone. Basically... He is too much trouble! Not a horrible strategy. The longer I leave him alone....the better he will be able to build up units in these fortresses. Not only that...I'll have no idea how many he will have in these L5 fortresses.

      Thoughts?

    • Well, depending on his ultimate threat to you and what other threats you got it may or not be best to take some losses now to get rid of him earlier than later. The air/ground scenario sounds reasonable. I think you can see what is in lvl5 forts with planes, but don't remember for sure.

    • MontanaBB wrote:

      5. nuclear rocket (!) for the units within, fortifications are disregarded; and
      Level 4 normal Rockets also ignore fortifications.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3

    • jamidan333 wrote:

      I ran a few scenarios through the battle calculator. Specifically for beginning/mid game day 12. Lots of L2/L3 units out there but vs a guy putting heavy fortifications in place. I have interceptors and bombers...he has L4/L5 fortifications. Looks like my stack of 6 interceptors and 6 bombers can take out his L3 fortress with 5 INF, AT and 2AA but I'm going to loose a couple interceptors and a couple bombers.

      In another scenario with same defensive units...5 INF, 1AT, 2 AA with L5 fortress, I still win but I loose almost all interceptors and bombers and of course that is leaving a lot to chance. Not a good idea. The key is that bombers and interceptors are about right to attack this sort of defense but not if he has AA. Can't afford the losses.

      Assuming I had artillery. (I don't...been building air instead). Assuming I had 5 L3 Artillery hammering away at 5 INF, AT and 2 AA in L5 fort. Its going to take over 22 rounds to take him down. That's not bad strategy I guess but in my case its more than a week away before I can do anything like that.

      Attacking with Infantry. I'd need 9 L3 Infantry (single stack) would just get it. Using 10 L3 Inf and I'd win with 5 INF left. (2) stacks of (6) L3 Inf against his 5INF, 1AT and 2AA...leaves me dead. (2) stacks of 8 is looking better with just about 6 dead attacking infantry.

      Combining Air attack and Inf is probably the best bet at this stage of the game. No rockets / No Nukes. Two stacks of 6 Inf along with 6 Interceptors and 6 Bombers takes the city with no loses to the bombers while loosing about half the infantry. Bottom line....with minimal resources on the defense (5-6 units) its going to take a lot of resources take these cities.

      Its a great defensive strategy...mostly because I can use those same resources to take much softer targets (i.e. other players). So from a players perspective that is building a lot of fortress....the potential attacking player is going to leave him alone. Basically... He is too much trouble! Not a horrible strategy. The longer I leave him alone....the better he will be able to build up units in these fortresses. Not only that...I'll have no idea how many he will have in these L5 fortresses.

      Thoughts?

      That's a lot of research. Thanks for doing that.

      There's another idea that works....just wait him out. Sure, he's heavily defended, but he's not attacking. If you just go AROUND his cities and take his countryside, you'll get his resources and starve him out. If he lashes out, then you can attack him outside of his fortresses. And if he remains in the cities, then you will win in the long-run as he won't be able to build any new units without the means to generate needed resources for construction and maintenance.

      Eventually, you can do the Artillery strategy to slowly whittle away his cities one by one. But until then, so long as he remains on the defense, you can focus your efforts elsewhere.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3

    • So...game has went on. Going to experiment with railroadguns. Seems like it will do much more damage if I'm rocking 6 of those at the same time. Will take me a little more time to develop a half dozen, meanwhile my 6 cities have produced about 30 rockets.

      Once I have 6 railroad guns... If I'm correct they will do 3 damage every 15 min. That is 6 *3 * 4 = 72 damage to a building every hour. I have that right?

      I could use the 6 bases to continue to build rockets. These do 50 damage each. But...takes about 8 hours to build. In 8 hours the railroadguns will do 576 (72*8) damage! 6 bases all producing L2 rockets will do 300 damage every 8 hours...They will be L3 soon but that's just 60/each * 6 = 360.

      Keep in mind it takes L3 Infrastructure for the Railroadguns. Probably only good for well developed boarders close to the (friend) your about to stab and once your through they aren't going to keep up with any units.

      So how many hit points do fortifications have? I much damage can a L5 fortification take before I turn it to rubble?
      Will the fortification downgrade to L4...L3, etc. or will it always remain an L5 hiding the troops and just be downgraded by a certain percent? Anyone experiment with this before?

    • Fortifications will be demolished L5 >- damaged L5 -> L4 etcetera, like an inverse building process.

      I never calculated how much hit points they have sorry, but using that kind of explosive power on them will take them down real quick.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • jamidan333 wrote:

      Seems like it will do much more damage if I'm rocking 6 of those at the same time. . . . Once I have 6 railroad guns... If I'm correct they will do 3 damage every 15 min. That is 6 *3 * 4 = 72 damage to a building every hour. I have that right?
      SBDE max for railroad gun units is 3. Better to split your six RRGs into two stacks of 3 to inflict maximum potential damage on targets.

    • Rockets vs Fortifications:
      I sent 6 L2 Rockets at a L5 bunker. No other buildings existed...just fortifications.
      L2 Rockets hit buildings with 50/each. So total of 6 * 50 or 300.
      I reduced the L5 bunker to an L4 bunker at 50%.
      Just guessing at the strength of a bunker based on this since I've never seen it published

      L1: 25
      L2 50
      L3 100
      L4 150
      L5 225

      Its not linear for sure. I hit another fortification that started at L5 at 60%. After 20 rockets. (Group of 8 then 4 then 8) it was reduced to L1 at 60%. 20*50 = 1000. That's a lot of power to only reduce the fort down to L1. So the above isn't right. Not sure how to reconcile how the math / formula for fortification defense adds up.

    • MontanaBB wrote:

      jamidan333 wrote:

      I sent 6 L2 Rockets at a L5 bunker. . . .
      I am curious: did you fire the 6 L2 rockets individually, or as a single stack/cluster?
      I have almost no experience with L2 rockets, other than shooting a few of them down with fighter tactics when I saw they were incoming.
      Um, you realize that L2 Rockets can't be shot down, right?


      DxC wrote:

      jamidan333 wrote:

      No other buildings existed
      But units were in there right? Not all 50 of the HP go to buildings. The different damages are spread around to various targets. How this is proportioned etc isn't really known.
      There's also the random number factor that determines the percentage of the attacking points that actually hit. Was it 50 points or was it 45....or 38? The damage shown is the maximum possible but it's also possible for the actual damage to be very low...and I suspect even zero.

      However, what DxC wrote is also true, that the damage is spread across all recipients...but at which percentages is determined by a formula that I don't know precisely. Neither do I know whether the damage percentage (of maximum) has the same ratio for each sub-group within the target (i.e., Armor AND Infantry, Infrastructure AND Fortress, etc.) Those would be important to know if one wants to better anticipate the outcome of a missile strike or some other kind of attack.

      My best guess for determining damage apportionment (at least by average) would be to take the total number of each sub-group type and weigh them against the total hit-points of the entire group. Then divide the ratio of each sub-group by the attacking maximum possible damage and then subtracting that from that sub-group's (that the ratio is based on) total hit-points.

      I'll bet the actual math is something like that. I worked out this educated guess more precisely in another post but I've long forgotten that post or the exact formula I came up with. I'd have to do a search but it's just not that important here.
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3

    • jamidan333 wrote:

      Once I have 6 railroad guns... If I'm correct they will do 3 damage every 15 min. That is 6 *3 * 4 = 72 damage to a building every hour. I have that right?
      Damage is only dealt once every hour by ground troops, meaning 6 railroad guns do 18 damage (3*6).

      jamidan333 wrote:

      Rockets vs Fortifications:
      I sent 6 L2 Rockets at a L5 bunker. No other buildings existed...just fortifications.
      L2 Rockets hit buildings with 50/each. So total of 6 * 50 or 300.
      I reduced the L5 bunker to an L4 bunker at 50%.
      Just guessing at the strength of a bunker based on this since I've never seen it published
      A level 5 bunker has 100 hitpoints. If it gets below 80 hitpoints, it becomes a lvl4 bunker. Below 60 a level 3 bunker etc.

      As the other posters mentioned above, the damage is also distributed to other units in the area, so not all goes to the buildings.

      Also there are several factors that can lower the total damage output of a unit, for example terrain, SBDE, varience factor and overkill factor.

    • I forgot about the overkill factor...a fairly new thing.

      So, um, just what is the formula for calculating overkill?
      It seemed like such a waste to destroy an entire battle station just to eliminate one man. But Charlie knew that it was the only way to ensure the absolute and total destruction of Quasi-duck, once and for all.

      The saying, "beating them into submission until payday", is just golden...pun intended.

      R.I.P. Snickers <3

    • Lol, now of course we want to know what the "varience factor" and "overkill factor" are, and how they work)))
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.