Curtis Lemay
Posts: 12969
Joined: 9/17/2004
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline
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To recap, the problem is as follows:
First, artillery bombarding alone is significantly less effective than bombarding in support of a ground attacker. The factor has been estimated to be about 4 to 1. Second, defenders attacked by ground units lose 10% supply per attack round whereas defenders bombarded alone lose no supply (slang term: “supply sucking”). Finally, use of an assault unit prevents enemy artillery in the target hex from employing counterbattery fire against attacker supporting artillery.
The problem is that players exploit those facts via ant units. The smallest and least valuable units, usually with nothing but passive equipment, are subdivided and employed alone in attacks repeatedly. The attackers thereby receive the above benefits while risking hardly anything. The impact is that powerful, healthy stacks of defenders can be decimated and redlined at little cost if exposed to attacking units. The fact that this is well known by most players and excessively exploited by them gives the game system a big realism hit.
Note that it is a three-part problem. The artillery boost, the supply drain, and counterbattery issues must each be dealt with to end the incentive to employ ant units.
My previous suggestion:
Some of you may recall a proposal to address this that I made on the GS board about two years ago (so old there’s no link to it anymore). I proposed inserting a recon check before each round of combat. If the attacking units passed that check, they would have gotten all the benefits above, just as they do now. But if they failed it, they wouldn’t have, etc. etc.
After much evaluation, the proposal was discovered to be inadequate, because infantry recon levels in TOAW were much lower than I had understood. I concluded that recon would not work as the correct vector.
New proposal:
Chuck Kotroba had suggested active equipment instead. That will be a more difficult revision than recon, since, unlike unit recon strength, unit active equipment strength is not currently an available parameter. It will have to be calculated. I would propose calling it the unit “Assault Strength”. It would be exactly the same calculation as the current unit combat strength, except that only active equipment would contribute to it.
The results of that calculation will need to be displayed in the Attack Planner. It might also be useful to add it to the unit report and even be displayed on the unit counter. In addition, the Attacker Assault Strength Total and the Assault Ratio values shown below would also need to be displayed in the Attack Planner as well (impacted by fog-of-war, of course). All those additions will add to the overhead for this revision, but from there it will actually be easier to effect than the recon suggestion would have been.
The procedure would be as follows:
1. Prior to each round of combat, the assault strengths of all the ground attackers still remaining in the assault are totaled and divided by the defense strengths of all defenders still remaining in the defense. The ratio is then converted to %. A random check is made against that ratio.
2. If the check is passed combat proceeds just as it does now. Ground defenders drop 10% supply. Defender supporting artillery drops 5% supply. All attacker supporting artillery supports at the x4 factor (modified as per whether it is direct or indirect, as now).
3. If the check is failed, however, a second check is made against the same ratio x 10.
4. If that second check is passed, all attacker supporting artillery supports at the regular x1 factor, just as if they were bombarding alone. Furthermore, ground defenders drop only 1% supply and supporting defending artillery drop only 0.5% supply (effected via a random test).
5. If the second check is failed, however, the attack is treated as if it were a stand-alone bombardment. No attacker indirect support is included. Only directly assigned artillery, supporting at the x1 factor, participates. The assault ends after one round. Directly supporting artillery is subject to counterbattery fire from any defending artillery in the target hex. Defender supply doesn’t drop at all, except for any counterbattery firing units, which drop the normal 5% (as now).
6. In either case all ground attackers and attacker supporting artillery drop supply at the same levels they do now (10% if direct, 5% if indirect). And all combat strengths are unaffected.
7. The combat report would reveal whether the checks passed or failed on each round.
Note that this means that if the assault strength is at least equal to the defense strength, the first check is guaranteed to succeed. There might be a designer editable scale factor for this that could change that up or down. Similarly, note that if the assault strength is at least equal to 1/10th of the defense strength, the second check is guaranteed to succeed. Again, there might be a designer editable scale factor for this as well.
Note that when assault ratios exceed 1, the combat will proceed just as it does now. For assault ratios that fall between 0.1 and 1, the defender supply loss will average about proportionate to the assault ratio. For assault ratios that are less than 0.1, there will be a strong chance that the assault will be treated like a bombardment, making the ant unit useless.
And, before anyone gets concerned about math, note that the PC will handle all of it. Players will only have the added consideration of the Assault Ratio (shown in the Attack Planner) to concern themselves with.
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The Ant Unit Problem - 
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