Despite reading these forums a lot, I still don't know how tactical combat works when squads are involved.
With single man units it's really straightforward. Roll attack, roll defense. Deduct defense roll from attack roll and reduce leftover from hitpoints.
With squads, what's the calculation? From the 1.07 update notes, I gather that members of a squad attack individually. Well what about defense? Is one of these guesses accurate:
1) Attacking squad rolls attack rolls for each of it's members. Each uses total attack divided by the maximum figures in the unit. Their results are added together. Defending squad rolls a single defend roll. Defense deducted from sum of attacks and reduce leftover from hitpoints.
2) Attacking squad rolls as in option 1. Defending squad rolls defense in a similar way, individually and then calculating together.
3) First member of attacking squad rolls his attack. A defense roll is rolled for total defense of the unit. Defense deducted from attack and hitpoints are reduced. Process repeated for every member of attacking squad.
4) Attacks rolled as per 3. Defense rolls are made according to individual defenses, not total unit defense. If a defender is killed, individual defense for next unit is rolled and reduced from remaining damage. Repeat the damage dealing for each defender as long as there is damage left.
There are countless of more variations, but these seem most likely. MoM of course used option 4, along with a bell curve for rolls.
I don't know if it's a bug with just my game, but in my case, the defense gets calculated backwards and the less units are left in the squad, more defense it gets, making that last unit very tough and making the first few units incredibly easy to take down. This has been observed on AI units, not sure if my units suffer from the same problem as they're all archers with very little armor to test this with.
I think it's issue with both attack and defense.
The less units in group left, the more "hardy" are those that are still fighting.
Probably because attack/defense rating stays same even if soliders are lost.
20 attack or defense:
-with 4 soliders: 4x(0-5)
-2 soliders: 2x(0-10)
-single soilider 1x(0-20)
I feel that X + 1DN vs C .... is stronger than 1DN vs 1DN
This isn't necessarily even a gripe vs 1DN, I just think 1DN is stronger when its rolled vs a static value.
Of course, it would be easier to do this if weapons didn't affect the attack roll (only damage roll) ... of course that would mean separating attack from damage.
Regardless, even if Weapons did infact affect the attack roll, I think X + 1DN vs C would probably be stronger.
this is assuming that things like level, and stats, will effect the X on attack (and possibly the C on defense).
This, I believe, gives some-what of an advantage for skilled, RPG-ish units ... over the unskilled MassProduced units.
Or rather, it makes level and stats almost more important than what weapon you are using (although of course weapons do have their advantages, like damage, etc)
Dead guys don't get rolls, but eveyone who's still alive has a higher cap on their rolls. As you stated, attack rolls are 0-(ATK/UnitSize). The problem is that as UnitSize decreases ATK does not.
If my 8 guys with broadswords (80 total attack) are going after a dragon with 30 defense, there's little chance of them dealing meaningful damage. Each have to overcome a 0-30 defense roll with their piddling 0-10 attack roll. After 7 die, though, the one remaining now finds himself rolling 0-80 with a better chance of dealing significant damage to the dragon. My squad of guys just got more powerful against a heavily armored target as it lost members.
Well, I don't see how else a unit "down to its last man" with a weapon that is supposed to deal 20 damage can deal 60 (against unarmored guys, which is how I run my tests.). As much as when the unit was full. If dead men don't get rolls, then the bug is elsewhere; but I'm positive there's a bug here.
Oh, so that's the bug? Good thinking.
It's even more hilarious: it's the law of inverse ninjas!
I'd rather it just have a solo Attack Value ... and then a unit has X number of attacks, where X is the number of soldiers.
so basically you take the Attack Value of the attacker (not multiplied or stacked), and you take the Defense Value of the Defender (not multiplied or stacked) ...
and then you roll attack vs defense X number of times. And you total up the damage.
// I mean, not that I agree with the current way attack, defense, or damage are dealt with ... but the above outline is basically how squads of any combat scheme should work.**
**the only exception being how many attacks will actually take place. For instance, some methodologies prefer a max attacks of Your X, and a brick ceiling of 3( Target X )
The current system does strike me as needlessly complicated. Why multiply the individual attack rating by the number of unit to then divide it?
Yeah, I made a request to display the individual ATK and DEF on the units here. The individual values should be used for calculations as well, the game is going through an unnecessary loop now. And that loop appears to be buggy as well.
If you want to up the urgency, go make a short comment on that thread. Stardock prioritizes their work according to the amount of people asking for stuff.
What does UnitSize represent? Current? or Max? I think knowing this is key to knowing if the logic is bugged or not...
I guess to be correct either ATK needs to be full value (static, doesn't change with death, what is currently shown by UI) and UnitSize max group count.
Or otherwise UnitSize needs to be current unit state, and ATK needs to decrease for every casualty.
Any other combination needs to weird results. Like Atk20 4 man party with only one member left doing 8 points of damage.
In another thread, the dev LikeTheWhirlwind said:
"ATK goes down as squads lose troops. So 0 - ATK/NumTroops is still correct. I agree with you though that the currently displayed ATK and DEF for squads is misleading and unintuitive."
Yet, the same thing doesn't match out experience in the game.
Here is a save, which can demonstrate current problem with combat system.
There is one group unit of Observers (3 guys with 3atk), with just one alive that hasn't moved.
Attack bandit on adjacent tile.
See how it can do damage above 3?
Thanks for the save p22. I posted a link to your post in the other thread too, so the devs don't miss it.
Could someone please confirm that I've understood this right. Let's say you have a squad of 8 units with ATK 10 attacking a squad with 2 units with def 50. Does this work so that damage is the sum of eight max([0 (1D10 - 1D50)]) rolls? So defense-wise it doesn't matter how many troops you have, there's no defense bonus at all for squads?
By the way, is there some purpose to have the attack roll be 0-ATK/NumTroops? I feel like that it's kind of backwards to have ATK be the combined squad attack value, especially when you already have the NumTroops value available! The attack roll should be 0-ATK of a single troop and for UI purposes you can display the total squad attack value as ATK*NumTroops.
Is this bug going to be fixed in 1.08? Because this is really a huge gamebreaker, and it looks like something that's quite easy to fix.
The problem is this.
While I originally thought Sarudak's theory was dead on I looked a little further into things and I think I found the error. I'll be fixing and testing presently.
Thanks a huge lot for fixing this. More than anything, this was what prevented me from playing (it felt like playing starcraft with marines that can kill battlecruisers).
Will you please, please tell us what the error was? We won't make fun of anyone.
Promised.
I swear, seriously.
To go into slight detail when a unit's base stat (specifically health, attack, and defense) was retrieved it was pre-multiplied by the max of troops that unit might have, but when we did attack/defense rolls we were dividing those stats by the current number. This means you would always get a higher attack or defense than you were meant to. I changed the pre-multiplication for attack and defense to only use the current number of troops. I've made fun of the appropriate parties already.
And thus, a sense of justice to the world again reigns. Kudos.
(Yep, looking forward to new patch.).
I knew it!
I guessed what's the issue right from start.
Finally! With 1.08 I might actually start playing again.
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