Infantry and Armor "Nukes"

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    • Infantry and Armor "Nukes"

      Hey everyone, I did some research into how the damage model works. Its pretty complicated but understanding the basics led me to bring the whole "nuke" idea into my army group tactics. I was wondering if this is effective and if this adaptation into my tactics is worth it or if I should just go back to mixing units. Let me explain quickly what I mean.

      In the past I would think "what would they do in real War"? Well tanks and infantry would be combined. This is how I played the game and I would mix armor with Infantry class to give them more staying power. But the problem I see now is that the damage model doesn't appear to support this. For example, if you mix a infantry and a tank together and you get attacked by lets say a tactical bomber, than because they are mixed that T. Bomber will do its damage to the infantry and the tank. IF for this example you say a T. Bomber does 3 damage to infantry and 3 damage to tanks it is now doing 6 damage total. But if you only have 3 infantry instead of 1 infantry and 1 tank, than the T. Bomber would only do damage to the infantry for 3..instead of 6 total. Add in how the "x-factor" works and because you have 3 damage to a larger infantry group the pair up changes in your favor. IF infantry and tank both have 1 defense to air for our purposes than the ratio was 3 bomber attack against 1 infantry defense and 3 bomber attack against 1 tank defense. The ratio gratly favors the bomber and he will do close to full damage. But if you use the later example and had 3 infantry instead of 1 tank and 1 infantry. Your infantry defense is now 3. So you have cut the bombers tank attack out of the picture and increased the ratio to a equal 3 bomber attack to 3 infantry defense. Now the bomber has lost its tank attack and because of the equal attack and defense ratio it will most likely do below its full 3 attack.

      For one, the nukes factor is common in other online strategy games. Where you build a massive group of one class because it more effectively defends and it more effectively can penetrate certain defenses. IT seems lame but it appears the damage model supports it because the ratio of attack damage to defense has a effect on the damage roll according to how i understand the damage model. Like if you have 3 attack against 10 defense you will not even do 3 damage because the ratio and the "x-factor". Where if you are attacking with 10 and the defender has 3 you will do much closer to full 10 damage because of the higher ratio you have in your favor.

      So i guess im wondering if im on to something here, or if im misunderstanding how the damage works?? IF this is true than it would make more sense to make a big stack of infantry class units without mixing in any armor because it reduces the effectiveness of your opponents mixed stacks.

      This brings a new way of thinking into the game where combining like classes into ultra Infantry, Armor, Air, and Ship nukes is the way to go. I hope im wrong because its more fun to mix.

      Any comments are appreciated. Should be into a new match in the next few weeks and I want to figure this out before I start so I can build my strategy.


      Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this! 8o
    • Prefector wrote:

      say a T. Bomber does 3 damage to infantry and 3 damage to tanks it is now doing 6 damage total. But if you only have 3 infantry instead of 1 infantry and 1 tank, than the T. Bomber would only do damage to the infantry for 3.
      Correct

      However bulkier stacks do survive longer, and you get the air defense value of more types of units when you have a larger stack. So if you have two small stacks the planes can pick off one and then the other. If you have one large stack that can shoot down a bomber on each patrol tick, then it becomes disastrous for the plane owner.

      There is a slight flaw in your proposition. Bombers always do more damage to infantry than armor classes, but armor classes are also weak against planes, so the battles against armor last a very long time. Also until day 16 when you can get SPAA, there is no good armored counter to combat planes, so infantry and infantry class Anti Air are the best you have to protect tanks from bombers, aside from your own interceptors of course.

      Also consider the terrain. In a perfect war you can always put armor on plains and infantry in cities and so on. sadly this doesnt work out usually, so you need several types of units to advance with, or you are likely to have the right unit days behind when you need it. to protect them from the air a single group is better, unless you have 8 AA for each stack you wish to maintain.

      Keep in mind that the defensive fire of the ground stack will affect the planes before the attack is calculated.






      Prefector wrote:

      Where you build a massive group of one class because it more effectively defends and it more effectively can penetrate certain defenses
      I assume you are familiar with the concept of SBDE here. There is a limit to how many units of each type are most effective per group, called the State Based Damage Efficiency. >>> Forum thread on SBDE <<<
      War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin keep out of the way til you can. - Winston Churchill



      VorlonFCW
      Retired from Bytro staff as of November 30, 2020.

      >>> Click Here to submit a bug report or support ticket <<<
    • VorlonFCW wrote:

      Prefector wrote:

      say a T. Bomber does 3 damage to infantry and 3 damage to tanks it is now doing 6 damage total. But if you only have 3 infantry instead of 1 infantry and 1 tank, than the T. Bomber would only do damage to the infantry for 3.
      Correct
      Did I completely misunderstand the game for two years?? Because this is not how I have observed the working!

      I have always thought, and observations are consistent with this, that the bomber's damage is split between the available target. So in the case of one tank, it would deliver all damage to that tank; and when bombing one infantry and one tank, it would deliver half it's damage to the tank, and the other half to the infantry (giving different results for both partial attacks of course, because damage against non-armored is higher).

      Now this is only a base proposition, and there are several things involved which I never really figured out... for example, wat happens if the bomber attacks a stack of one tank and THREE infantry? It's not 50-50, and its not 25-75 either, but somewhere in between... another example, AA units have a far lower "hit chance" than others, so they survive longer in battles involving mixed units than other types...

      But I'd say that mixed units are the way to go, still. The biggest problem of those is, of course, that they take the speed of the slowest unit, waisting the "extra" speed part of the more mobile types in the stack.
      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.
    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      I have always thought, and observations are consistent with this, that the bomber's damage is split between the available target. So in the case of one tank, it would deliver all damage to that tank; and when bombing one infantry and one tank, it would deliver half it's damage to the tank, and the other half to the infantry (giving different results for both partial attacks of course, because damage against non-armored is higher).
      This is entirely possible as the actual results are obscured by the x factor and other influences.. I have never collected reams of data on the subject myself. I have always considered that an attack that would do X damage to infantry and Y damage to armor would divide the X damage among all the infantry units present and the Y damage among all the armored units present. If @DxC is listening he would have all the data on the subject. His battle calculator does operate in the manner you describe, but that was a more recent change to the way it worked, and his calculator seems to predict a larger number of combat rounds that experience shows are needed in many cases. We might get Freezy to investigate the issue for us at some point.



      K.Rokossovski wrote:

      another example, AA units have a far lower "hit chance" than others, so they survive longer in battles involving mixed units than other types...
      That I will definitely agree with. In DxC's battle calculator AA evaporates quite quickly, but in the real world it hangs around practically forever. I figure it has to do with their smaller size that they are harder to hit? lol. In reality I wonder if the "strength" of the unit comes into play somewhere, as AA have a fairly high strength which is based entirely on their air defense value, but it works for rebellion prevention as well. DxC and I discussed doing some testing on this, but we never got together on it.





      K.Rokossovski wrote:

      (giving different results for both partial attacks of course, because damage against non-armored is higher).
      Also for anyone following along at home, there is not just one roll of the dice to decide the "x factor" for each battle, but there are multiple dice rolls in each combat operation, which further obscures the results.
      War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin keep out of the way til you can. - Winston Churchill



      VorlonFCW
      Retired from Bytro staff as of November 30, 2020.

      >>> Click Here to submit a bug report or support ticket <<<
    • K.Rokossovski should be right here, incoming damage gets split and is not duplicated for each armor type. So a stack does not take more damage just because it consists of more armor types.

      There are some tricky calculations how the damage is split and which units in the stack are more likely to get damaged, but thats another topic.
    • Thank you all for the information. I did now know that AA fires first on Air vs. Ground attacks. (That would explain my Nuclear Bomber getting shot down b4 dropping its load).

      I do have a grasp on SBDE. I guess the main idea behind my question is how the damage is split.

      freezy wrote:

      K.Rokossovski should be right here, incoming damage gets split and is not duplicated for each armor type. So a stack does not take more damage just because it consists of more armor types.

      There are some tricky calculations how the damage is split and which units in the stack are more likely to get damaged, but thats another topic.

      Thank you for input, but could you clarify a bit more?? Ill try to reword my question again to narrow the scope....The nuke tactic ; combing a large infantry class stack and leaving out all armor for example, should be effective to limit "total damage given" of lets say a bomber or even a arty bombardment. IF a bomber does damage to infantry class and armor class by default. ( infantry attack + armor attack....disregard how it is spilt up because that is a seperate question) One bomber for example against a infantry class ONLY group would not do any armor damage ..thus reducing its total damage capacity to infantry attack only because there is no armor in the group for the bomber to fire upon. So any way you look at it if there is no armor to attack in the group but the bomber is indeed designed to attack groups of infantry and armor, taking out the armor has effectively reduced the bombers value.

      So the idea up for question is...economically speaking, is it a feasible idea if you are going up against someone you know has bombers to group up your units into a infantry or armor only group? (commonly referred to as a "nuke" because it is limited to one class). Doing this to limit total damage given by the bombers , thus reducing thier effectiveness....again you would take one of the bombers attack ratings; ethier infantry or armor out of the equation...

      I know im making this complicated haha..but hey when your outgunned, out golded, and up against the world...you gota find those advantages to stay competitive. How can you limit the effectiveness of your enemies choices?
    • I think you don't get it. The bomber attacks three units. So the attack is split in three. First attack is against an armor unit. Bomber uses (one third of) anti-armor value. Second attack is against Infantry. Bomber uses (one third of) anti-inf values. Thirs attack is against a ship. Bomber uses (one third of) anti-ship values.
      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.
    • Prefector wrote:

      IF a bomber does damage to infantry class and armor class by default.
      It does not.




      It sounds to me like you want to make a 'doom stack' or something that is a universal winning combination.

      The beauty of Call of War is that there is no universal strategy. There is no combination that will always win, or any tactic that will always win. Each and every unit has a strength and weakness. If you build an all infantry class stack of 8 infantry, 8 Anti tanks, 8 anti air, and 8 artillery it may deter someone from hitting you with bombers, but if you just send it on a mission randomly into the enemy territory you will likely encounter a player that can lay a trap for you with 6 light tanks in a level 1 fort on plains and demolish your "doom stack"

      You need to study how your opponent plays and what your opponent uses for units in order to craft your stacks to deal with them. The first step to winning any war is winning the intel war.
      War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin keep out of the way til you can. - Winston Churchill



      VorlonFCW
      Retired from Bytro staff as of November 30, 2020.

      >>> Click Here to submit a bug report or support ticket <<<
    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      I think you don't get it. The bomber attacks three units. So the attack is split in three. First attack is against an armor unit. Bomber uses (one third of) anti-armor value. Second attack is against Infantry. Bomber uses (one third of) anti-inf values. Thirs attack is against a ship. Bomber uses (one third of) anti-ship values.
      In my experience, the damage seems to be split based on the undamaged hit points of each unit type at the start of the round compared to the total hit points at the beginning of each round. As you said there are multiple rolls which makes it harder to figure out. So, if armor has a high percentage of the total hit points, it could receive more than half of the damage. Or the reverse if there is a high percentage of infantry hit points. If there are no ships, damage is not wasted on ships. Likewise, if you are attacking only ships, damage is not wasted on armor or infantry classes.
      The ratio of attack points to defenisve points also comes into play. The higher the attack to defense ratio (up to 20:1), the better the chances of getting good rolls. Usually you will get an integer number of points damage against a unit type.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Lawrence Czl: typo ().