as requested: http://weewar.com/specifications (go easy - it is a start)

YEEHAW! 

Cool.... Is this link somewhere on the Page? (In WeeWar?)

Chrigi: I saw a little yellow triangular sign with an exclamation point at the top bar when I was playing today, when I clicked on it, it went to the spec's page.

Really? I thought that was only to nudge you about games which need your attention...

well, that's where it took me when I clicked on it...

that is very strange .. the triangle should only ever show you games waiting. The stats page is not yet linked up from anywhere. We were hoping to collect input from you guys (here on tangler and via the blog) first to get it right.

well, it's not doing that anymore, now it has a little popup of games that I need to play, which is what it presumably should do

Vis-a-vis, combat results.

If I interpret what you have written correctly:

((AttVal + AttTerr) - (DefVal + DefTerr)) {it appears this will yield a value between minus a couple and plus a bunch} * someArbitraryMultiplier {P(hit) base ProbabilityToHit?  something int the range 10 to 25}

Then you roll a random 1-100 or 0-99 (surely not 0 to 100 that contains 101 points and makes for ugly calculation). you roll this six times for each element in the unit (the little number adjacent the icon).  Each roll of n<= P(hit) is one point of damage.  You do this for both attacker and defender then asses losses.

On the whole, counter-intuitive, overly complex with several unnecessary calculations making it nearly impossible for a player to estimate expected damage (impossible, in fact, without knowing the secret multiplier)**

1)  Why roll six times for each element?  This adds unnecessary complexity that can be eliminated by changing the damage effect value.
 

2)  That you need to trunc at ceiling and floor suggests that the function lacks elegance.  Inelegant functions are prone to error, to say nothing their habit of nurturing  bugs.

There are numerous more elegant methods to calculate combat effects.  Consider the elegance of Sid Meier's original Civ combat result.  (AttVal + AttTerr) -> attackerNumber  (DefVal + DefTerr) -> defenderNumber, If a random integer between 1 and (attackerNumber + defenderNumber)  <= attackerNumber then attacker hits.  Make same calculation for defender.  To account for unit size (the little number adjacent the icon) do this once for each element of unit size for attacker & defender)

Simple, clean and intuitive to the average player.

3) If you are going to make decimal rolls then siimplify.  Give the units decimal values and get rid of the *secret multiplier*

4) Generate your outcome range based upon the unit values instead of hacking them into a decimal scheme that the do not fit.

Perhaps I should rest a bit.

Nevertheless, I enjoy the game.  It is reminiscent of Empire.


 

glad we got these...

Question:

Why does a raider have a better attack  against amphibic units than a tank???

raider = 4 attack vs amphibic

tank = 3 attack vs amphibic

Comment:

Hovercraft  for the cost should have a lower defense.

Tanks should have a 5 attack vs amphibic units (if a Hovercraft has a 5 vs amphibic, so should a Tank).

I agree, especially because it says that tanks are good against hovercraft.

in the inspector that is.

I need some help understanding the 1:1 artillery ratio. Unless the birds cross the air at the same time, the attacker needs to have some percentage of advantage over the defender. Assuming one party initiates, the reacting party cannot have the same strength retaliating. It makes no sense. I welcome some retaliation, but not equal retaliation, all things being equal.

what are the stats for capturing troopers?

Desent: Great question.

TallyHo: I'm a-thinkin' that the projectiles go through the air slow enough that the defender has enough time to see what's happening and retaliate.

ups.. scheduled the capturing trooper for addition to the spec page soon.

Jury is still out on artillery retaliation ...

@Slug:

I agree with your interpretation of the combat system, but am encountering inconsistencies if I apply it to specific cases.

For example, Light Infantry vs. Light Infantry on plains:

3 soft attack - 6 defense = -3.  There's no positive multiplier that will convert -3 to a positive number, so I'm unsure how the chance to hit is generated in this case.  Obviously the infantry land hits on each other, and usually it's a lot of hits (3-5).  Maybe all numbers are scaled up before the 'Secret Multiplier' is applied to avoid negatives?

In any event, I'm eager to take some numerical results and fit it to the system as presented.  It should be possible to tease out the relevant numbers in this way.

What would rock is if we had a little tiny display somewhere of the actual dice (random numbers) rolled/generated.

Pistos: I don't mind retaliation. BUT!

Even if so, the retaliation should degrade over time. I'm not sure why that is, but it makes sense in my head. Someone will explain this for me. 

The concept of "attacker gets first strike" has been proposed [and more or less ignored].

I think it was claimed that ceiling and floor are applied at 100 & Zero respectively, though I suspect floor is at 1 because Zero * (anything) -> zero.

CRTs (combat results tables) should never yield negative values.

Perhaps Alex will provide the stats in tab or comma delimited format then we can produce an outcome table and look for inconsistencies.  If not perhaps someone less lazy than I is willing to make the conversion to TDF.

I'm still not sure how positive numbers are obtained then, or at least a large spread of positive numbers.  Even in very lopsided battles (Heavy tank vs. Light infantry on plains), that's still 5 attack - 6 defense = -1.  I suspect there is some other mechanic in place to scale that result before the multiplier is applied.

As for the numerous dice rolls, they merely serve as a discrete approximation to a continuous probability distribution function.  The whole process seems unnecessary, as one can analytically develop a distribution around the mean number of hits for any combat pairing and resolve combat by randomly sampling the distribution.

@fatmouse

"one can analytically develop a distribution around the mean number of hits for any combat pairing and resolve combat by randomly sampling the distribution"

Roger that!

lol

Oh and from memory I believe the light infantry has 7 attack on vehicles not 5. So it would be 7attack - 6armor = 1damage. 1 damage is the best that a 10 health infantry can ever hope to do on a heavy tank. He must be at 10 health or he has no chance to even do 1 damage haha.

@fatmouse

I think you might be a little confused on the interpretation of unit stats. Also a few patches ago they changed the alg so that attack rolls that yield numbers on the lower end doesn't appear much or at all on same unit attacks making damage much more predictable. It sucked to see a heavy artillery do 0 damage to another heavy artillery, very glad that got fixed.

I'll edit the wiki sometime tonight so it'll be easier to understand what the unit stats represent.

Sorry for the math jargon.  What I was trying to say was that the probability of getting a certain number of hits in any combat is constant (assuming a consistent system).  There might as well be look-up tables for each fight: "Light Infantry in Woods vs. Raider in Swamp: 2% - 1 hit, 21% - 2 hits, 46% - 3 hits, 18% - 4 hits, 13% - 5 hits" and so on.

@moJoe: I'm going by the numbers posted in the link at the top of this discussion (weewar.com/specifications) as well as the description of the combat system found there.  The information is straight from the developers, so I assume it's accurate.

Fatmouse: I understand and agree, re: static probabilities.

The stats are correct but I don't understand how you saw the light infantry capable of only having 5 atk on hard units. Let me help you interpret them better with the following stat translation.

The specs for the light infantry is as follows:
soft: 3
hard: 1
air: 1
speedboat: 1
amphibic: 1
sub: 0
boat: 1

This translates into the following raw dmg values that are unmodified by armor/terrain:
soft: 9
hard: 7
air: 7
speedboat: 7
amphibic: 7
sub: 6 (can't attack subs but if it could it would do 6 dmg to it before armor value is subtracted)
boat: 7

Yeah, I'd also like to know the statistics of combat outcomes but that's probably not going to happen for various reasons. You would have to create a table for essentially every possible combination of health points between every combination of units. With the loss of 1 single point of hp the unit's combat statistics changes greatly. Also, that patch I mentioned did away with low end combat value outcomes so the stats would be slightly skewed.

"This translates into the following raw dmg values that are unmodified by armor/terrain" -  What is the basis for this translation?  It looks like you just added 6 to all of the values.  Is it stated somewhere that this is what should happen?

"You would have to create a table for essentially every possible combination of health points between every combination of units. With the loss of 1 single point of hp the unit's combat statistics changes greatly." - You wouldn't need an actual table, just a formula that translates the attack and defense values (modified by terrain) into a probability distribution.  Assuming the developers want attack value to scale linearly with the number of units, you could include that effect as well.

"Also, that patch I mentioned did away with low end combat value outcomes so the stats would be slightly skewed." - The patch effectively reduced the standard deviation of combat rolls, meaning results were more likely to occur close to the average.  This can also be accounted for using the above method.

Here's a rough explanation.

I don't know how long you've been playing but in a simple translation stats were previously displayed with bullets and shields displaying what each unit was capable of in older versions of weewar. There was a total of a possible 8 bullets and 8 shields. Every unit's atk is directly based on the remaining points left in that unit's life. The less life a unit has the less damage it can inflict. Every unit starts out with a 10 attack roll and stat modifiers are either added or subtracted from this number. It's a 10 attack roll because every unit starts out with 10 health points. A unit possessing 4 bullets meant it had no negative or positive modifier in it's atk so if a unit with 10 hp had 4 bullets it meant it could at most do 10 dmg to a 0 armored unit.

A unit with 6 bullets meant 2 atk is added to it's possible 10 atk roll. Defender's armor is then subtracted from this sum. The remaining number is the number that is then used as the ceiling in a random roll to see how much final dmg is done.

You can test and confirm this by placing heavy artilleries in forests, shoot them at each other and gather up a small pool of data. In this condition heavy artilleries become essentially 0 armored units to each other so you can gather a very accurate data pool of how the combat system works. I suggest testing this on the plainly 6 map, my favorite map to use to test things out.

Here is the simplest formula to determine attack outcome:
Random[( Attacker's health + Attacker's Atk Modifier ) - Defender's Armor ]
Attack modifier is the difference of the unit's attack stat from the number 4.

This more or less explains it in a very simplified way.

The patch changed only the lower end of damage roll and left the top end alone. So attack rolls will generally lean towards higher numbers and never in the lower 50% rolls. You will never see a unit deal 0 damage to the same unit now but you can still see the top end damage happen rather frequently.

Thanks for the explanation.  It makes a little more sense now, except it still doesn't exactly match what is described in the specifications webpage.  Also, I'm not satisfied with this description for cases like Heavy Tank vs. Heavy Tank on plains.  If I understand you correctly, a Heavy Tank has 10 health and an attack modifier of +2 versus Hard targets (difference of 6 minus 4).  A Heavy Tank also has 14 defense.  12-14=-2, so the ceiling for HT vs. HT damage is negative.  Does the algorithm scale the -2 up to 0 and then take the upper half of the damage range?

Also, how do you perform tests?  Do you have multiple accounts join a game?

Divide all armor value in the specification page by 2. The heavy tank's armor is not 14. It originally had 7 shield points which means an armor of 7.

I tested it with several of my weewar friends such as guthlord, solidgoldmind, and xiken to name a few. You too mecha!

Actually I should say the heavy tank's armor is 14 for use in their combat generator but for us it really means 7.

Understood.  Yet another thing not described in the webpage above.  I appreciate the efforts of consolidating the information in one place, but some clarification of these numbers would be helpful.  I've gone through a whole page of discussion trying to understand what should be a very simple system.  Someone reading that page who has not read this conversation is going to end up very confused.

yeah, I'll update the page when I have free time so it's easier to understand. The unit stats made more sense back in the day when they were displayed with bullet and armor points but now for the newer players who have never seen that version of weewar would be very confusing.

I remember the bullets and shields.  The new system is more reminiscent of Advance Wars in that it simply says what a unit is good and bad versus.  I'm fine with that as a final implementation, but while it's still in beta I'd like to have more information about the guts of the combat system to better understand and make recommendations (hence my initial interest in this thread).

I should just post this formula as it's the easiest way to sum it all up.

Random[ ( Attacker's current health + Attacker's Atk Modifier ) - Defender's Armor / 2 ]
Attack modifier is the difference of the unit's attack stat from the number 4.

However this formula does not include the random roll patch to exclude lower end roll values.

I'm interested in the particulars of the random roll patch, but I'll leave that for another day.  Thanks for all the info.

Incidentally, how much of this was gleaned from your own testing versus conversation with the devs?

I pretty much collected all combat in my first few games and figured out this formula myself.

Actually the roll patch is what is listed in the specs page right now.

Firstly, way too complex from what you have described hence the need for hacks and patches. (but I said that earlier)

Secondly, there should be a mapping from a game into the real world to keep it from being too counter-intuitive.

Thirdly, though attack value is dependent upon unit size (health) defense is constant.  That must mean that defensive value represents armor.I  f defensive value represents armor then it should reduce damage not P(hit), i.e. subtract from the number of hits not the probability of hitting. by example, Yer driving along in  yer Abrams whileI plink at you with my AK-47.  I'm hitting a lot you just aren't noticing.

Fourthly, as per your description my attack of zero is equal to my attack of eight unless you are generating negatives for attack values less than four.   A negative hit value implies that the unit did itself damage.  I won't even touch on that.

Continuing, if the health represents unit size then it should be nearly multiplicative (actually it's asymptotic - like the effects of income on life style) not additive.  By demonstration in the game attacking with a second unit does not add one more damage to the target.  Whereas with regard to unit type (arguing to RW Intuition) one would expect even a single tank to have a very goods chance to cause some damage to light infantry.

In engagement involving two low health units one would intuit that each or both would receive some damage - that does not appear to be the case.

So moJoe...where does the grouping bonus come into play...When I first started playing, the wiki advised to keep your units close together because they gain a bonus for the units around them. In the games I've played, I've noticed this bonus come into play many times. How does this factor in?

The formula posted isn't the actual formula it's just a much simplified version of it as I said when I first posted it.

Random[ 0, ( X - Y ) ]

X = Attacker's current health + Attacker's Atk Modifier

Y = Defender's Armor / 2 + Defender's Def Modifier

Attack modifier is the difference of the unit's attack stat from the number 4.
If Attacker's current health + Attacker's Atk Modifier is below 0 then it is 0.
(thought this was common knowledge as your units don't damage themselves but I'll add this line in anyways )

The final value is the absolute highest damage that unit can inflict. So if you wanted an idea of what your attack will do the range would be something like that number as the top end and 3 numbers down would be the bottom end.

slugthog is right on the money.

My comment about negative effects was sarcasm.

Let me demonstrate a simple and intuitive function that produces what you have described as your expected combat outcome.

----

strength = units remaining
health = damage need to eliminate one strength value
armor = armor - reduces damage
attTer =  terrain modifier from the attack hex
defTer = terrain modifier in the target hex (negative value)
AvDMod = attacker's type versus defender's type modifier.
dmg = damage done per hit
pHit = attacker's base probability to hit.


combatFunction(attacker, defender)

    // calculate hits
     hitChance = sum(attacker.pHit, attacker.AvDMod, attacker.attTer, defender.defTerr)
    a = 1
    while a ≤ attacker.strength
        (
            if someChanceFuncton(0, hitChance) ≤ hitChance
                (
                damageDone = damageDone + attacker.dmg
                )
        inc(a)
        )

    // resolve loses
    d = 1
    while ((d ≤ defender.strength) & (damageDone > (defender.armor + defender.strength)))
        (
        damageDone = damageDone - (defender.armor  + defender.health)
        if damageDone > 0
            (
            defender.strength = defender.strength -1
            )
        inc(d)
    )
EndFunction

----

that's intuitive — for smart people.

A translation for folx who don't read pseudocode.

Add the attackers base chance of hitting, effect against target and terrain modifiers.  Subtrtact the targets terrain modifier.

This yields a chance to hit range.

Roll once for each strength point  and keep a running total of hits  times damage per hit.

Then integer divide the damage by the sum of  defender (armor and health).  That's the number of losses

Resolve losses should actually read:

----------------------

defender.losses = div(damageDone, (defender.armor+defender.health))

------------------

Do the same for the defender's counter strike (swapping attacker and defender in the function)

Apply losses to both.

I was distracted by the floor installers in the next room and didn't simplify  ResolveLosses.

Shucks, after forty years of programming I think in pCode.  Sometimes I forget that most folx don't

After sleeping on it the original resolveLosses is more elegant - it eliminates the need to check if unit.strength has been reduced below zero.

Since this function ignores carry-over (partial) damage, defender.armor & defender.health can be combined into a single value

I like Slugthog's combat system; it's simple and intuitive and solves many of the problems in the current system as he outlined above.  However, I suspect that overhauling the combat system is not high up on the developer's list of priorities.  I'd be more interested in a better, official, explanation of what's currently in place.  There are a number of disconnects between the specifications page and what moJoe has provided.  I trust moJoe's info, as it jibes with observation, but the actual mechanism used to achieve the results is incomplete.  Also, some things are not mentioned at all, like the elusive truncation patch or the effects of surrounding units on attack (and defense?).

Is there anyone around who's good at the number crunching and willing to advise on stuff?

I'd like to find out what the chances of infantry units (heavy and normal trooper) are if they're attacked by a DFA when both units are on sand. Also when the DFA is on sand and the infantry on a mountain - what are the odds of it surviving/taking x amount of damage?

If anyone can help it'd be much appreciated

on Sand they die. On mountain I have had then live with 2-3 hp left.

Both types of infantry only have 2 armor. While infantry are on sand they get a -1 to armor. DFA has pretty much a 100% chance of killing it in one shot. It might live with 1 hp if he's lucky enough.

Sand doesn't cause the DFA to be any weaker. Maybe you mean on a swamp tile?

When infantries are on mountains they gain 2 armor so they'll probably live with a 2 or 3 hp like madmike said.

The original spec page showed infantry gaining 4 defense from mountains, and the wiki shows a 3 defense gain.  Does the current spec page show a different value?

I only specified the DFA being on sand in case it had any effect, I was fairly sure it wouldn't change anything but I'm mid-map design and wanted to check out how the 2 units would fare against each other.

just realised I forgot to say thanks to Alex for bumping me up to map editor status, so dek can rest from her valiant efforts at sending invites 

Actually one last combination I'm interested in - a DFA attacking another DFA

Attack DFA has 2 hp left. Defending DFA has 1hp left.

ouch.. reverse fire makes it costly all round

I'm still not convinced that an artillery unit under fire would be able to let off a round of its own, seems even stranger when there's no penalty to its effectiveness based on the fact that its being fired on

maybe if the attacking units losses were calculated based on the number of units left in the defense after the attack had happened.. there might be a reason why that's not a good idea or situations where it doesnt make sense, but it would give the attacking side a definite initiative bonus - some of the time "wait for that guy to kill himself by attacking me" is a better strategy than attacking with your own unit

The entire idea of automatic counter battery fire is questionable, at best.  Not with regard to some nebulous time frame  but in that it makes artillery enormously strong versus attacks by other artillery whereas in truth artillery is extremely vulnerable to attacks by other artillery.  Artillery is already under serious handicap do to it's very low speed and slow rate of fire when moving, making it primarily a defensive weapon.  Soviet style artillery assault is extremely expensive.

While on the subject of artillery - perhaps Mobart should have it's action orders reversed - fire then move ( or perhaps move or fire then half-move) instead of move then fire - to better reflect the real advantage of mobile artillery, its ability to quickly displace after firing.

Not that this is at all relevant, but I've seen Discovery specials on various artillery systems that use radar to identify opposing shells in flight, extrapolate their origin, and initiate counter-fire.  The system is fast enough to get its own shells into the air before the enemy's have hit the ground. o.O

We can argue all day about what is 'realistic', but in the end I don't think it matters so long as the end result is fun and reasonably consistent.  I agree with Super-King though, the current incarnation strongly rewards defensive play.

also, predictable results art v art is not fun. 

I was against the fire back but now I think it's good. I think players will now use light artillery more as they move further, 200c cheaper and can pretty much take down or threaten a heavy artillery effectively. Just something to keep in mind as I don't see anyone use light artillery much.

One slight change I might suggest is make the light artillery repair for 2 to help promote it's use but it's fine as it is now.

Actually on second thought giving the light artillery 2 repair would make it way too powerful. People would only spam light artillery.

Actually a really good change that would help light artillery out is increasing it's armor so it's on equal footing when exchanging shots against another heavy artillery. My thought on artillery has always been the stronger atk the artillery has the less armor it should have. So light artillery should have like 3 armor, heavy artillery 2 armor, and DFA 1 armor. Just a small suggestion that might help balance out the artillery dilemma.

for the effect of light art, i'd rather have a raider. light art gets smashola v heavy art (range), has less moves and less d and is useless against heavy tanks and upward. at least raiders can get it and do what they have to do while also resisting defensive infantry, as opposed to being swallowed by it.

Well, the thing with the light artillery is they can effectively move into range of the heavy artillery and threaten it. A single raider would probably not have a chance against a properly guarded heavy artillery but a light artillery can threaten and attack the HA even when it's well guarded. All you have to do is escort the light artillery with a few durable expendable units like light infantry or raiders and you can either force the defending heavy artillery to move back or shoot at the light artillery causing it to take back fire.

@tallyho:

Light Artillery have 3 moves and 2-3 range. Heavy Artillery have 2 moves and 3-4 range. Players usually guard their heavy artillery with 1 line of defenders so it is possible to sneak in with a light artillery and cause your opponent to panic. ZoC would also help the success of this light artillery escort attack.

Actually, raiders can be very effective against HvyArty.   A raider can move from out of range to within the HvyArty's dead zone in one impulse.  For HvyArty to keep raiders inside its fire zone it must be at least on hex behind its line of defense hence outside the range of LtArty.   Properly deployed HvyArty should almost always get a free shot at LtArty before the LtArty gets within range.

It's generally foolish to waste HvyArty attacks against the infantry escorting a LtArty.  It is much more effective to target the LtArty as soon as it comes within range.  Under the current combat rules the if the LtArty moves within range to attack it will be destroyed and its strike-back will do minimal damage to the HvyArty.  Cost 400 bucks.

the other angle is that protected artillery, when attacked by artillery, gets that free second strike.

moe: i guess it's situational. i seem to bias more toward open-space movements than the army group pulling/calculation aspects, but then again, my score is plummeting.

The idea of giving the attacker or initiative-taker some sort of advantage or bonus has been brought up.  Who knows what the devs are cooking up at this time.  IMO, it would probably be a step in the right direction to give attackers first-strike advantage.  i.e. attacker does damage first, and the defender can only fight back with surviving subunits.  This would encourage offense and not defense, and ergo would make games run faster.  Offense vs. defense is like high-scoring vs. low-scoring, more punches vs. fewer punches, more action vs. less action.  I think most players would agree we prefer the former over the latter in each of these.  There is a time for defense in strategy, but too much turtling hurts most games.

Wesnoth has strike turns, with first strike given to the attacker.  It's a whole new world of strategy over there.

Advance Wars also features attacker-first-strike.  Defensive fronts don't hold up long there either unless there's a strong choke point.

Under a sustained attack I wouldn't expect a defence to hold up long if it wasn't attacking back and didn't have a geographic advantage (a choke point to defend)

I can think of some times when you would expect defense to have an advantage, like if the attack is using a large number of weak/unarmoured units to take on a fortified position, but considering how weak troopers are now that would probably be how it went if you sent them in against a wall of tanks.

I'm interested by the idea of defensive emplacements (i.e. 0 mobility units with high stats) but that would tip the balance substantially in favour of the defenders unless it was balanced out by other changes.

Giving attacker advantage would certainly make games faster - and less thoughtful, significantly increase first player advantage and simplify the strategy of last player in multi-player games (surrender turn two)

Neophytes always want attacker advantage  because they always believe their *idea* deserves to succede & and because it's so much *fun* to eliminate opponent 's units.

Attacker does not necessarily support balanced, well considered tactics.  In order to keep the game balanced with attacker advantage defensive values need to be made larger.  Bringing in that horrible map to the real world that folx so abhor, with technically equal forces the attacker must have a numerical advantage in order to expect success.  Which is another way of saying, there is a natural defender advantage.

I can agree that "with technically equal forces the attacker must have a numerical advantage in order to expect success".  I'll give this all some more thought.

I think I remember reading somewhere that in an old book on warfare (possibly even "The Art of War") that to expect success in either attacking or defending you should have a numerical advantage of something like 10 or 20 to 1.

If everyone was following those rules then no-one would ever fight...

Actually, traditional war games simulate the *real world* reasonably accurately.  Generally, you need three times the strength to have parity against a fortified position and equal strength for parity against a defended position.  Parity, of course, does not suggest you will win.

Unless you're Rambo.

"Neophytes always want attacker advantage because they always believe their *idea* deserves to succede & and because it's so much *fun* to eliminate opponent 's units."

It's a game right?  People are supposed to have fun.  For some, that involves meticulously establishing an effective front and slowly wearing down an enemy through superior tactics.Other folks just like to smash face.  While a certain amount of both is possible, the developers have to eventually determine where the balance lies.  It's been my observation that Weewar is not trying to be a realistic combat simulator and has in fact avoided mechanics such as fuel and ammo to keep the game simple and streamlined.  Given that, I would expect anti-turtling incentives to keep the game fast-paced.

fun, but clearly there's enough complexity to the stats that paying attention to the numbers should have its rewards. 

One man's fun is another's FWT ( ... waste of time).  Broad front line?  Slowly wear down opponents?  You really should read more.

Since WeeWar is a turn based game there is no reason it should target itself toward the *twitch* crowd.  OTOH, a strong argument can be made that it can reward a broad range of tactics.

If you don't want your massive frontal assault blunted against another's solid defense perhaps you can learn the advantages of the shifting flank attack, the feint, the envelopment and double envelopment.

With respect, I said nothing about how I prefer to play or made any attempt to imply that one style of gameplay was superior to another.  I merely stated that it's difficult to please everyone at once and that the developers would have to decide where they want the offense/defense balance to be.

Oh didn't mean to offend.  That was a collective you not specific.

Heh, none taken.  Honestly, I'm not looking for an Advance Wars clone.  If I want to play that, I'll go play Advance Wars.  I'm interested in what Weewar is going to do differently.  At the same time, we can use lessons learned from other games to influence overall gameplay (based on whatever the developers are looking to achieve).

Speaking of, I would like is to see is WeeWars as a closer approximation to Perfect General,

That would mean reducing the effective scale to give all units range ≥ 1 and area effects for Art, etc.

It's just that I always enjoyed the straight-forward simplicity of that game and I feel it deserves translation to the web.

Wish I weren't so old ... and lazy.

Area affect for artillery, or even chances of missing would be sort of neat.

heh, if you "missed" in a crowded part of the map it would be pretty odd - take a shot at one unit and hit the guy next to him

Yeah, exactly.  Or even a cluster of shots that each have some probability distribution of hitting on or around your intended hex.

That would pretty much require a change in scale for the game, though.

In Perfect General HvyArty did full damage in target & half damage adjacent, as I remember.  I believe there was a chance of scatter if the target hex was not in LoS of a friendly unit.  Something like that.

Actually, was quite a nice little game.  Never released for Macintosh so I stopped playing it.

It would be an excellent internet port though.  I wonder who owns the rights?

I was only just now looking over the combat formula for the first time.  I think there is some sleight of hand going on here that we the players are not being made privy to.   If, as has been discussed in this thread, we are simply subtracting defender's defense + terrain bonus from attacker's attack + terrain bonus, then arriving at some value which is scaled to a domain of 0-100 (or 0.0 to 1.0) then there are a LOT of unit-terrain combinations that yield 0 (after flooring).

Consider, for example, the simple case of light infantry vs. a raider, both units on plains.  This yields inf attack of 3 against raider defense of 8.  In practice, we definitely see raider subunit losses.  What gives?

If I remember correctly, an earlier incarnation of the inspector showed infantry on plains to have something like 5 and 5 for attack and defense.  The "bullet meter" was half full (5 out of 10).  This gives some sort of tiny clue as to what is really going on, but truly, a lot is remaining a mystery.

Shall we ever get full disclosure? 

Perhaps it is

bp - (attack - defense)*m

where m is the secret multiplier and bp is the base probability (say, 50%).  So equal attack and defense would yield the base probability alone, but having superior attack would increase P, and having superior defense would decrease P.

The most annoy aspect of Combat Results is that they are both arcane and counter-intuitive.  Not good that.

It is my considered opinion that the DEVs come from an D&D environment not an Avalon Hill environment.  Nothing else seems to explain the unusual combat outcomes.

Just putting this out there, but there's nothing wrong with the D&D combat system.

Just saying!

At this point, I'm not even going to pick nits about how complex the system is or is not.  My primary beef is that it is not 100% published and transparent.  Nevertheless, I am working on a little something to allow us to gather raw data from games played and then we can assemble histograms of damage for all combinations of unit and terrain.  These at least will have some practical usage -- better than shooting in the dark about the algorithms.

Stay tuned.

@darth...  Well, perhaps WizCoast has cleaned the D&D combat system up since I last played back in the Seventies.

@Pistos:

I doubt we will be able to gain much insight into the combat function via results analysis.  Though we might learn something about the RANDOM function.  Truncating values top & bottom conceals an enormous amount of information.

It would be nice to look at a unit data record.  If I could see a data record then I could tell just how difficult it would be to implement a cleaner method - such as the one I outlined earlier.
 

slugthog: Yes.  I hope to accumulate a sizable body of data, which could then be eyeballed in the form of histograms, but could also be used to determine some closest-fit functions.

sluggy is out of control. i have sat next to the man. belee' dat.

You are just jealous of how well I sing Paradise by the Dashboard LIght, Ho!!

You should be so cool --= should you manage to survive as long.