Newbie Questions

[Mowgli]

@ 4: Very good point about the increased oppportunities for enemy opportunity fire (if you don't play in phases, that is). As you say, I was just wondering if the game adds the fire power of several units to perform a single, "stronger" fire action (increased chances to cause casualties and force a morale check) or reports the sum of the casualties caused by several fire actions of the individual units (several "weaker" fire actions). It's not an unimportant question. For example, the way I understand the manual, the larger (1/2/3 component units) a target unit is, the more casualties need to be inflicted within/by a SINGLE fire action in order to force a morale check on it. So in this case, you want to pack maximum fire power into a single fire action. (For the same and other reasons, using units either in a combined or split-up manner seems to be a rather important decision...)

I do not think the answer to this is explicitly given in the manual. I suspect, but cannot be sure, that a combined attack by multiple units is handled as a single calculation. On average the casualties will be the same either way but the decision to attack as a group or separately could impact on the chance of causing a Morale Check.

The User Manual gives the probability of forcing a Morale check as the ratio of losses to losses plus base-value where base-value is;

•  5 for platoon and uncombined company units.
• 10 for combined company units consisting of 2 subunits.
• 15 for battalions and combined company units consisting of 3 or more subunits.

For example assume you had a group in a hex that comprised three identical units, and that the average damage done by one of these units attacking a particular target of Battalion size was 5 men. So if all 3 of these units attacked that same target as a group, the average damage would be 15 men. The chance of a Morale Check for an individual attack would be 5/(5+15) or 25% and the chance for a combined attack would be 15/(15+15) or 50%. So the chance of at least one Morale Check based on three individual attacks would be about 58%, although conceivably you could get three Morale Checks!

A variation to this would be when the chance of causing casualties was small. Say if in the above example the expected loss from a single unit attacking was only 1/3 men (before rounding) and hence 1 man for a combined attack. Then on average there would be only one morale check possibility of around 6% or 1/(1+15) whether attacking as a group or not. So the difference would be minimal but once again, multiple Morale Checks could result when attacking individually, if extremely lucky.

On the other hand, if I am not correct in my assumption that a multiple unit attack is handled by a single calculation then the probability of a single Morale Check would be the same whether attacking as a group or not. But attacking individually would still be preferable as only then do you get multiple Morale Check possibilities. And if not using phased play, attacking individually could result in a unit being broken with your first attack, giving you options to either attempt to break it again, assault it, attack another unit, etc.

So, Ignoring the Defensive Fire issue, as presumably you can when playing phases, individual attacks seem the way to go. Having never played using phases, I am not speaking from experience. But for the normal non-phased method of play Defensive Fire is a big factor. Personally, I tend to use combined attacks quite often. Apart from anything else, it is quicker! Sometimes just playing the game gives a better feel for this sort of thing than trying to analyze the rules, in my opinion.

Thanks a lot. As your "5 casualties on average" example demonstrates, the different methods of firing (if they're actually in use by the engine!) can lead to significant differences (for the chance to force a morale check on the target). In your example, letting units fire individually had a 7.6% greater chance (57.8%) to force a morale check on the target than letting the same units fire in a combined manner (50%). 

Then again, you'd probably also have to consider that if, e.g. 3 units fire individually, there are 3 randomization rolls/processes (random number between cv*low/high threshold), rather than just one? In other words, the result of a 3x "combined fire" would be more random than the result of 3x "individual fire".