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Assault mod - Printable Version +- Forums (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards) +-- Forum: The Firing Line (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: Squad Battles (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards/forumdisplay.php?fid=13) +---- Forum: SB 3rd Party Mods (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards/forumdisplay.php?fid=303) +---- Thread: Assault mod (/showthread.php?tid=74587) Pages:
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Assault mod - Xerxes77 - 04-13-2021 IMPORTANT: This mod is a work in progress. While it successfully addresses the issues with infantry, the procedure outlined below will make soft vehicles more vulnerable during combined arms assaults, so with the help of LostLT it's currently being reworked to remove this limitation. This post will be updated with the final version of the mod once it's finalized. *************** Original post follows ******************************** I've been getting a number of requests from folks interested in testing the fixes to the assault system I've described in a few threads on the SB subforum, so I decided to include the procedure I used below in case anyone else wants to replicate them and implement them in their own games. THE SITUATION (A RECAP) ================ After witnessing a particularly nasty outcome of an assault on a Demoralized unit during a game of Spanish Civil War, I decided to check the numbers on the manual and was surprised to find that said outcome was simply not possible as per the stated rules. This led me to do some digging, which resulted in the discovery that the penalties applied to Disrupted, Pinned and Demoralized units during an assault seemed to be considerably less than advertised. After running a series of tests with different unit conditions, I noticed that the numbers I was getting did not correspond to a proportional variation (i.e., it was not just that the numbers on the manual were simply wrong) but instead they seemed to follow a variable pattern depending on the weapons equipped. Eventually it dawned on me that the assault penalties were being applied ONLY TO A SQUAD'S WEAPONS, not to the actual squad (which always uses the unmodified Infantry Assault Value in the Parameter Data). In practice, this means that a disrupted, pinned or demoralized defending squad retains much, and often most, of its fighting capabilities. (Example: a typical rifle in SCW has an assault value of 6. This means a healthy 10-strong infantry unit (assault value=20) armed with 10 rifles has a final assault value of 260 (10 times 20 + 10 times 6). If this unit becomes Demoralized, according to the manual it should defend at 1/8 of the nominal value, which gives an assault value of 33. Instead, the 1/8 penalty applies only to the 60 points contributed by the weapons, so the unit effectively defends with an assault value of 208.) For the attacker, the difference can be quite dramatic. So I ended up devising this mod which I've been using since then and that provides, in my humble opinion, a more rewarding experience, especially considering the heavy attritional nature of the battles in SCW and the importance of following the classic disrupt-pin/demoralize-assault approach effectively. RATIONALE ========= The game penalizes weapon assault values, not infantry assault values. The problem with this is that the Infantry Assault Value usually makes up the largest proportion of the overall assault value for a unit. This means that the penalty on the unit as a whole gets "diluted" and the overall effect is much lower than expected. Therefore, I began looking for a way to increase the preponderance of the weapons' Assault Value in the overall assault figure (which was to remain unchanged), so that the reduction applied would affect the entire final value as -presumably- intended. With that purpose in mind, I reduced the Infantry Assault Value in the Parameter Data to 1, ensuring it had a minimal impact on the final Assault Value, and simultaneously increased the Assault Value of all infantry weapons by the same amount (e.g., if an Infantry Assault Value goes from 20 to 1, all weapon assault values go up by 19). For any given unit, this ensures the final assault value remains unchanged, only this time it's the weapons that make up most of it, and hence it can be penalized uniformly. Vehicles are not affected by morale penalties, so initially I thought there'd be no need to change their values. However, it turns out their assault calculation uses the Infantry Assault Value as a multiplier. In order to compensate for the points subtracted from the latter, I had to increase another factor in the calculation to ensure the final assault value remained the same. The obvious candidate was the Vehicle Infantry Value. I multiplied this by the original Infantry Assault Value to get the right result. Finally, all vehicle-mounted weapons retain their original assault value with no modification; like the vehicles, they don't get penalized for morale. IMPLEMENTING THE FIX =============== This mod changes two files: the main parameter data (usually Main.dat) and the Weapons.dat file. Make sure to make backup copies or keep separate versions of these files in case you want to revert back. Keep in mind these instructions look more complicated than they actually are!! Changing the parameters is trivial, and changing the weapon values can be a bit tedious but it's a one-time job. Note that all changes should be implemented in both files for the mod to work. CHANGES TO THE MAIN PARAMETER DATA (.PDT) FILE (via sqparam.exe) Step 1. Take note of the stock/original Infantry Assault Value (typically 20, except for Grenada and possibly others where it's 10). We'll refer to this original value as oIAV for the rest of this instruction. Step 2. Change the Vehicle Infantry Value parameter as per the following formula: new Vehicle Infantry Value = current Vehicle Infantry Value x oIAV (Example: if the Vehicle Infantry Value is 10, and the oIAV is 20, the new Infantry Vehicle Value will be 20 x 10 = 200) Step 3. Set the Infantry Assault Value to 1. CHANGES TO THE WEAPONS.DAT FILE (via the "Weapon" tab in sqdata.exe) Step 1. Select a non-vehicular weapon (i.e., a weapon for which the "Flags" field does not contain a "V"); no change is needed for vehicle-mounted weapons. Step 2. Change the Assault Value for the weapon as per the following formula: new Assault Value = current Assault Value + oIAV − 1. (Example: for an AK-47 with an Assault Value of 18 and an oIAV of 20, the new Assault Value will be 18 + 20 − 1 = 37). Step 3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 until all non-vehicular weapons have been set to their new Assault Value. =================== FINAL THOUGHTS ============== This mod has been tested with Spanish Civil War and Grenada. In my opinion, it enhances the game's experience by making assaults fairer for the attacker. It clearly helps their odds against weakened human- or AI-controlled defenders, but does not remove the danger and uncertainty inherent to assaulting a position. Negative, and even awful results are still possible, and crucially the probability that a defending unit will retreat is not affected, only the amount of casualties they can inflict. I'm not sure just how many games in the series are affected by this "bug"? I wouldn't be surprised if all of them were. I believe the issue may have gone largely unnoticed (except for the occasional attribution to an unusually bad roll) due to the predominance of weapons with higher relative assault values in other titles compared to SCW. A weapon with an assault value that's close to the Infantry Assault Value (e.g., 18) makes for a larger proportion of the final assault figure than a weapon with an assault value of 6. Those cases where the weapons assault values exceed the Infantry Assault Value will still benefit from the mod, but the effect will be less noticeable. I've been made aware that other games in the series (Dien Bien Phu) include scenarios with unarmed units. These guys only use the Infantry Assault Value. Since this mod reduces this value to 1, these unarmed units are rendered basically useless during an assault. My suggestion would be arming them with at least a small weapon, like a knife or a pistol. The assault value of a small firearm is around 6; with my mod it would be increased to 25, more than enough for a decent fight. Finally, all this should not be read as an indictment or prescription on how the game should be played. It just works for me. There's clearly lots of room for improvement with this game, but it remains eminently playable with or without the mod. I just encountered this disagreement with the manual and went about thinking of ways to fix it, with no other intention than having fun and, maybe, helping to make an already great product even better.  As always, looking forward to input, comments, info, etc. RE: Assault mod - Warhorse - 04-13-2021 (04-13-2021, 08:35 AM)Xerxes77 Wrote: I've been getting a number of requests from folks interested in testing the fixes to the assault system I've described in a few threads on the SB subforum, so I decided to include the procedure I used below in case anyone else wants to replicate them and implement them in their own games. Thanks very much!! RE: Assault mod - Jeff Conner - 04-13-2021 Thank your for taking the time to look at this in detail and determine what was actually happening under the hood. As I mentioned previously, this jives with my experiences playing the game but looking at it from a disrupted attacker's perspective. Did you ever come to a conclusion on why the results you were getting were higher than what should be possible by the description in the manual? Jeff RE: Assault mod - Xerxes77 - 04-13-2021 (04-13-2021, 11:49 AM)Jeff Conner Wrote: Thank your for taking the time to look at this in detail and determine what was actually happening under the hood. As I mentioned previously, this jives with my experiences playing the game but looking at it from a disrupted attacker's perspective. Did you ever come to a conclusion on why the results you were getting were higher than what should be possible by the description in the manual? Thanks for reminding me, Jeff. Yes that's a good point: this issue affects the attacker either, so attacking disrupted units fight at higher efficiency than 50%. I forgot to mention that in my post. As for your question, the value distribution suggests that the game introduces an undocumented random variation in the individual assault results of about ±25%. My mod can't control for this, so you'll still see larger numbers than expected; however the values for Di/P/De units will be adjusted accordingly. The averages should all still match the expected outcomes. RE: Assault mod - LostLT - 07-02-2021 Hi Xerxes, I'm a newcomer to the forum and series but I am loving the game and have found this thread series very interesting. I would not be surprised if every title has the bug you described. I put together the assault mod's modified files for Red Victory and AotR (those are the only two I have). They work with JGSME. Link attached: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dh80ymm0up9yk0o/AAAkpMbKzN-ivIhSWM6-Cezta?dl=0 RE: Assault mod - Xerxes77 - 07-02-2021 (07-02-2021, 07:26 AM)LostLT Wrote: Hi Xerxes, I'm a newcomer to the forum and series but I am loving the game and have found this thread series very interesting. I would not be surprised if every title has the bug you described. Hi Lost, thank you for your interest and for packaging the mod. Have you experienced the issue it's meant to address? Thank you also for including a version number (1.0). In the time since I posted the procedure I've become aware of new information that makes it clear the mod needs a revision to ensure it can handle vehicles properly. You've probably seen a couple of threads about the issue with hard vehicles and assaults. The mod works perfectly with infantry-centered scenarios, which fits games like the one I used as testbed (SCW). However, many of the scenarios in RV and AotR focus on heavy vehicles, whose assaults can be devastating not only because of their invulnerability, but also because the pumped up Vehicle Infantry Value (used in assault losses distribution) turns them into damage sponges when attacking alongside infantry, i.e. they absorb all the fire with no consequences. There's an elegant solution to this, which in my opinion complements the first half of the mod perfectly: transferring the vehicle assault values to the actual weapons would fix the losses distribution problem, reduce the lethality of the "invincible" tanks AND solve another common complaint regarding the use of Armor as a measure of lethality instead of just toughness. It's not as simple as transferring a fixed quantity as it was with infantry, so for now it's a work in progress... RE: Assault mod - LostLT - 07-02-2021 (07-02-2021, 09:58 AM)Xerxes77 Wrote:(07-02-2021, 07:26 AM)LostLT Wrote: Hi Xerxes, I'm a newcomer to the forum and series but I am loving the game and have found this thread series very interesting. I would not be surprised if every title has the bug you described. Yes I had been experiencing what felt like odd assault results, but only that it seemed that even when pinned, assaulting units felt like a risky proposition unless you had a substantial ratio advantage in men. After reading, it seemed pretty clear cut to me that if infantry assault values are not being modified based on disrupted/pinned/demoralized per the manual, that your modifications for assault parameters and weapon data would be the next best thing seeing as that there's a fairly certain chance of this not being patched. Please let me know if you find a good way to adjust the numbers for vehicles and I will update it into the files. I hadn't tested armor assaults yet with the formula specified. If theres a way to export the data into a spreadsheet, a few formulas would probably generate a list to then update the weapons with. I have one other question and that is about modifying the assault values non-combat arms - tools such as radios / wirecutters, skis etc. I understand potentially increasing it to account for the ability to fight in close combat with an inherent value via sidearm - however, I dont know if the assault values for items are cumulative or if only one of the values is used. For now I left obvious 'multi-items' as 0 (smoke grenades, wire cutters, skis, anything that would be accompanied with a normal weapon). RE: Assault mod - Xerxes77 - 07-02-2021 (07-02-2021, 10:20 AM)LostLT Wrote: Please let me know if you find a good way to adjust the numbers for vehicles and I will update it into the files. I hadn't tested armor assaults yet with the formula specified. If theres a way to export the data into a spreadsheet, a few formulas would probably generate a list to then update the weapons with. Currently I'm looking for a good ballpark adjustment that will work for vehicles weapons of similar characteristics. I don't mind abstractions and compromises as the game itself certainly doesn't shy from them, especially around vehicles. My goal is consistency, and I know what must be done-- the main hurdle is that it's more of a design question rather than a simple fix. The stock game lets Armor determine lethality, so it basically ignores the individual weapons' assault value (which is 6 for most, same as a knife). By transferring power to the weapons we suddenly need to come up with meaningful values and there's little in the way of reference. How much better is a 45mm gun than a 7.62 machine gun in the context of a 5-minutes assault into a 40 meters area? So far I've used values based on the nominal lethality of each weapon, but more testing is required. Once I have something more solid I can update the main post in this thread.  As for your question, I haven't tested this specifically but I think the game simply sees items and tools as weapons with different traits (you even have to "fire" a wirecutter to use it) and you can define a strength for each, so their assault values should be cumulative like any regular weapon. RE: Assault mod - LostLT - 07-04-2021 Thanks on the clarification for the cumulative values, I'll re-review and see if I'm doubling down on any 'non-combat' weapons that need to have their assault values adjusted back down to 0. So... I've given some thought to what you've said.. I think that when it comes to vehicular ballpark adjustments, we can look to "that other game" (I am talking about ASL ) that deals with a similar scale (40 meter hexes) and handles similar design problems and abstractions. The ASL rulebook has a great design footnote in its Armor Overrun (OVR) rules: “Ordnance is given little weight in calculating the FP of an OVR attack because it is of little value in the close-quarter fighting reflected by an OVR. The vehicle depends primarily on its movement, imposing presence, and secondary armament firing on targets of opportunity for its lethality. Most OVR situations would not leave the vehicle with time to bring its MA to bear against targets at such close range and probably in full flight, nor might the vehicle commander be willing to stop his vehicle long enough to aim in such close proximity to enemy infantry without escorting infantry of his own. “ Based on reading the rules for ASL the two common times that AFVs enter into and are involved in the same hex with enemy infantry, only the FP of the secondary armaments (MGs) and also manned main armaments that are 15mm or smaller in caliber generally participate (in close combat). This makes me think that more assault value weight should be given to a vehicles mounted MGs, while main guns should not contribute as much. There is still some general representation of the weight and class of a vehicle though - for overruns ASL establishes a 'base' firepower of 1, 2, or 4 based on whether a vehicle is non-armored, an AFV, or an AFV with a manned and functioning MA. That base then gets modified by adding the vehicles FP from MGs. Whats interesting here is that a standard 4-6-7 german rifle squad in ASL (no LMG) has that same matching FP of 4. SO - if we are talking "general effectiveness" of an AFV in an assault, there is now a baseline to measure off of (being a German infantry squad). In Squad Battles (I am looking at AotR numbers) - a German rifle squad with 8 rifles, 1 SMG and 1 LMG total assault value is roughly 270 (Infantry assault value + weapons). If you follow by rule of thumb, for vehicles - soft targets can be given roughly a quarter of that (67), AFVs with no manned MA (135) and then 270 for AFVs with a manned MA + on top of that all the machine guns and possibly a smaller caliber MA that the AFV has. ^This type of abstraction if properly implemented would generalize the varying degrees of AFV lethality in assaults that is currently based on how much armor a tank has. Unfortunately, I don't know how one could do this.. based on the way the game computes Vehicle Assault Values - the closest way I can think of would be to intentionally generate a low vehicle assault value (while still keeping armor and vehicle infantry values intact to determine losses) and then modify it with a *much higher* weapons value to make up the difference for it to be closer to what it should be. Lots of musing on this one. I apologize if I missed a key critical detail somewhere. I appreciate the work you've put into testing this with the infantry and would love to hear more of your thoughts. RE: Assault mod - Xerxes77 - 07-04-2021 That's awesome. It didn't occur to me to go to grandpa (ASL) for help. It does seem to provide a useful baseline, and confirms what I suspected-- rate of fire and maneuverability tend to weigh more in an assault than big guns at this scale. I do understand however how armor also plays a part in terms of the "imposing presence", although that's already kinda modeled by the extra penalties to morale (the probability of which scales with armor) incurred by soldiers facing an assaulting Hard Vehicle. I also like your base numbers. (07-04-2021, 01:35 PM)LostLT Wrote: ^This type of abstraction if properly implemented would generalize the varying degrees of AFV lethality in assaults that is currently based on how much armor a tank has. Unfortunately, I don't know how one could do this.. based on the way the game computes Vehicle Assault Values - the closest way I can think of would be to intentionally generate a low vehicle assault value (while still keeping armor and vehicle infantry values intact to determine losses) and then modify it with a *much higher* weapons value to make up the difference for it to be closer to what it should be. Ah, but that we already have! In its current state, the Assault Mod works by lowering the Infantry Assault Value to 1. Since this value is also part of the vehicle assault value calculation, by setting it to 1 we've effectively lowered the Vehicle Assault Value by an order of magnitude. That's what I tried to compensate by raising the Vehicle Infantry Value to 200 (the goal being keeping the stock end values untouched), before further testing showed this results in "soft" vehicles getting assigned most of the losses in combined arms assaults (making them even more brittle) and conversely turns hard vehicles into bullet-absorbing behemoths thanks to their invulnerability. So the solution I came up with ties neatly with the first part of the mod in that the assault value *needs* to be transferred to the vehicle weapons for all the pieces to fall neatly into place. This can be achieved by increasing the weapons' AV by, as you noticed, a considerable amount. On to the implementation woes... The problem is that, unlike infantry, vehicles have variable armor and, consequently, very varied final Assault Values. So when you remove Armor from the assault value calculation (it isn't really removed, but reduced to a negligible amount) and transfer that FP to the weapons, the challenge suddenly becomes how to make a heavy tank more lethal than an armored car armed with the same weapons. I had created a number of Excel tables and ran numbers looking for middle-ground values based on weighted averages, but a couple of days ago it hit me... we can simply define new weapons and give them the assault value we need to arrive at the target final values. From a design philosophy standpoint, I'm perfectly OK with this. The stock game not always recognizes differences in weapons-- a 37mm gun is the same no matter whether it's a Hotchkiss model or the supposedly much more advanced PS-1 (had to look in Wikipedia to find some examples ). This approach would actually add more control and granularity over the modelling of AFVs, and would actually address concerns about the (in some folks' opinion) inordinately high lethality of assaulting heavy tanks. Consider the example offered by the manual on page 57: "For example, given a tank with an armor value of 36, a Vehicle Infantry Value of 20, an Infantry Assault Value of 20, and a Hard Vehicle Value of 24, the assault value of the vehicle would be: (36 – 4) * 20 * 20 / 24 = 533.3" Suppose we use the mod and want to ensure this tank with 24 armor has a final assault value of 533. We'd simply take the modded base AV value of (36-4) * 20 * 1 / 24 = 26 (!) and increase the weapons AV to arrive at the final value of 533. If the tank uses weapons not shared with any other vehicle, then all that remains is splitting the difference between the different weapons (possibly using factors for different classes) and on to the next vehicle. If, however, the weapons are shared with other vehicles, we can use the editor to create new weapon instances specific to this tank with the AV needed to reach the final value of 533. Unless I'm missing something obvious, the result of all this would be that assaults would yield the same results as the stock game (thus not affecting existing scenarios), BUT disrupted/pinned/demoralized infantry would get penalized correctly, AND the assaulting power of AFVs would be decoupled from their armor in a meaningful way, with the possibility of further adjustments/modding if needed. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you very much for your suggestions! Charles |
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