Unreasonable collateral damage to artillery

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    • Unreasonable collateral damage to artillery

      My medium tank and infantry stack were stationary and I had a rocket artillery nearby (see image). Two ACs and 2 infantry attacked my tank/infantry. I didn't think my rocket artillery would take any damage, but it took 12.4 damage which is way more than the enemy stack could have produced. What is going on?


      ps. Disregarding the damage value, are stacks near a melee attack supposed to take some damage? If so what is the distance cutoff?

      Update: I didn't realize it at first, but that artillery is actually locked into melee. I guess it's conceivable that the AC/infantry stack could have done 12.4 defensive melee damage.

      The post was edited 2 times, last by DxC ().

    • Thanks. I'll have to do some tests, but do you know if the two stacks, art + tank/inf, are treated as a single stack in terms of the battle calculation? If so, is this true regardless of which of the 3 stacks are attacking or might it be different depending on what is attacking?
    • The Inf/Tank stack is a seperate stack, or at least they should be seperate stacks.

      Your tank/inf stack does offensive tick -> only your tank/inf stack gets the defensive damage
      Your arty does a offensive tick -> only your arty stack gets defensive damage

      At least that's my understanding of the mechanic ^^
      Haven't really tested this yet :)
      Winterfliege

      :thumbup:
    • Close combat range and splash damage (offensive ticks) range both are 5. It is true for all units.

      DxC wrote:

      Thanks. I'll have to do some tests, but do you know if the two stacks, art + tank/inf, are treated as a single stack in terms of the battle calculation? If so, is this true regardless of which of the 3 stacks are attacking or might it be different depending on what is attacking?
      For the offensive damage the attacker stacks are regarded separately, for defensive damage the defenders stacks are regarded as combined in the calculation (all defending stacks participating share the stack limit of 10). Keep in mind the splash damage for offensive attacks as well.

      Example: 20 Mechanized Infantry fight 2x 10 Mechanized Infantry.
      When the 20 Mechanized Infantry attack, their damage is limited to 10 (stack limit), so 10 of them deal damage. Due to splash damage their damage is distributed to both enemy armies, so both of the 2x10 Mech Inf stack receive 50% of the damage. Therefore, also both the 2x10 Mech Inf stacks fight back with defense damage. But they are regarded as one stack with a limit if 10, so they also only deal back the damage of 10 Mech. Infs.
      Now the 2x10 Mech Infs both attack. Since they are 2 armies they both attack with the strength of 10 Mech Inf. The 20 Mech Inf in turn defend back 2 times because they are attacked twice.

      Result: Both sides take exactly the same amount of damage no matter who attacks or defends.

      You do not get defense advantages by splitting anymore. This is the way since we removed the flowering exploit, which was 1-2 years ago I think.

      Winterfliege wrote:

      The Inf/Tank stack is a seperate stack, or at least they should be seperate stacks.

      Your tank/inf stack does offensive tick -> only your tank/inf stack gets the defensive damage
      Your arty does a offensive tick -> only your arty stack gets defensive damage

      At least that's my understanding of the mechanic ^^
      Haven't really tested this yet :)
      Yes, for offensive ticks this is true. Only the army doing the offensive tick receives the defense damage. But for defense damage stacks in the area are regarded as combined in the calculation, so in the screenshot above both white armies would deal their defense damage back (sharing a unified stack limit), because both armies also receive offensive damage (because of splash damage).

      cycle9 wrote:

      seperate units do not count as a "single stack in the battle mechanics"
      They count as separate stack for offensive ticks and as single stack for determining the defense damage.

      Same is true for overlapping plane patrols btw, if more than 10 plane units in separate armies patrol in the same location, their combined stack limit is still 10 during defense.


      I also recommend the Combat article in the Wiki:
      wiki.callofwar.com/wiki/COMBAT
    • Thanks for the great explanation @freezy. So when, say, 2 targets are in range of offensive damage like the example above, is the damage always distributed 50/50 regardless of the size and composition of the 2 targets, or is the damage distributed as if the two targets are a single stack and calculated as it currently is for a single stack?
    • The distribution is based on the amount of units in the area of the splash damage. So if 80% of units are in army A and 20% in army B, then army A gets 80% of the damage and army B 20% of the damage. So it basically works similar as if it were a single stack. If in a single stack you have 8 Inf and 2 Tanks, then the 8 Inf get 80% of the damage, and the 2 Tanks 20%. It doesnt matter if the 8 Infs or 2 Tanks are in the same army or not.
    • jubjub bird wrote:

      I didn't know this and want to clarify. If I have two stacks, each with 10 planes, and they're patrolling on different spots with different timers but both patrols happen to overlap the same opponent stack:
      jubjub, he is referring to defensive damage given by your plane stacks when they are defending another planes attack. So if you have two stacks of 10 planes and an enemies patrol tics on both of them then only the 10 best planes out of the 20 will deal defensive damage back. Another way to look at it is those two stacks of 10 act exactly like 1 stack of 20 in terms of defense.
    • @freezy One more question related to the above. Do planes in the air that are near each other have the same 5km splash damage as for melee? For example say you have two TAC bombers each in their own solo stacks patrolling within 5km of each other; call them A and B. If 10 full strength interceptors attack A will it distribute the damage to A and B like in melee?

      Actually, one more question about the offensive strength of melee units vs sea and air units and the corresponding defensive strength of air/sea units for unarmored etc. For air, does this only apply when you attack a plane on an airbase at a province center with other troops protecting it? By the same token, I suppose that's where the air defense vs unarmored etc comes in?

      For sea units, I guess a melee unit can attack when it's docked right on the shore?

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

    • DxC wrote:

      jubjub bird wrote:

      I didn't know this and want to clarify. If I have two stacks, each with 10 planes, and they're patrolling on different spots with different timers but both patrols happen to overlap the same opponent stack:
      jubjub, he is referring to defensive damage given by your plane stacks when they are defending another planes attack. So if you have two stacks of 10 planes and an enemies patrol tics on both of them then only the 10 best planes out of the 20 will deal defensive damage back. Another way to look at it is those two stacks of 10 act exactly like 1 stack of 20 in terms of defense.
      Duh, it even says "during defense", lol woops

      I'm going to edit my post so that it doesn't contain wrong information
    • DxC wrote:

      @freezy One more question related to the above. Do planes in the air that are near each other have the same 5km splash damage as for melee? For example say you have two TAC bombers each in their own solo stacks patrolling within 5km of each other; call them A and B. If 10 full strength interceptors attack A will it distribute the damage to A and B like in melee?
      I'm pretty sure the answer to this is no based on what just happened to me a couple days ago--I had a stack of tacs that got caught out in the open by an enemy interceptor stack. The int stack would have done 2 or 3 tacs worth of damage. I gambled and split my tacs into all singles at the last minute, which resulted in severe overkill of one tac but my other tacs were unharmed despite being in the exact same location as the attacked tac.

      Edit: "attacked a stack of tacs" is fun to say
    • jubjub bird wrote:

      DxC wrote:

      jubjub bird wrote:

      I didn't know this and want to clarify. If I have two stacks, each with 10 planes, and they're patrolling on different spots with different timers but both patrols happen to overlap the same opponent stack:
      jubjub, he is referring to defensive damage given by your plane stacks when they are defending another planes attack. So if you have two stacks of 10 planes and an enemies patrol tics on both of them then only the 10 best planes out of the 20 will deal defensive damage back. Another way to look at it is those two stacks of 10 act exactly like 1 stack of 20 in terms of defense.
      Duh, it even says "during defense", lol woops
      I'm going to edit my post so that it doesn't contain wrong information
      Okay

      And also, you don't want a 20-stack as that will decrease dmg efficiency, best to split them up into 2 stacks of 10
    • DxC wrote:

      @freezy One more question related to the above. Do planes in the air that are near each other have the same 5km splash damage as for melee? For example say you have two TAC bombers each in their own solo stacks patrolling within 5km of each other; call them A and B. If 10 full strength interceptors attack A will it distribute the damage to A and B like in melee?

      Actually, one more question about the offensive strength of melee units vs sea and air units and the corresponding defensive strength of air/sea units for unarmored etc. For air, does this only apply when you attack a plane on an airbase at a province center with other troops protecting it? By the same token, I suppose that's where the air defense vs unarmored etc comes in?

      For sea units, I guess a melee unit can attack when it's docked right on the shore?
      Normally the attack splash damage radius of 5 and thus the shared defense limit of the attacked units is true for all units, including air units. So I would say that both Tac squads would still count as 1 stack during defense.
      But the recent experience of jubjub posted after your question seems to contradict that. I would say if you have clear evidence from ingame that it is different, then trust your test result from ingame (if you are certain that there were no other factors involved). It could very well even be a bug or unintentional but it would be the status quo. Although I cannot verify jubjubs experiment of course and if it really had the reported parameters. Someone could repeat the test of course, best with 2 stacks exactly in the same position to have no doubts about the result.
    • @freezy Is the 5km melee range relative to the attacker or relative to the stack that is being specifically targeted? For example, sometimes a melee battle can be initiated when attacker and defender aren't on the exact same spot. Say they are 2 km apart. Then another defender (call it B) comes in behind the target and stays 4 km away so it's 4 km from the target and 6 km from the attacker. Will the attacker still do dmg to B on attack?

      I assume it's relative to the target since artillery can do splash damage also, but maybe that's different than melee?