Pikemen in Combat?

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 9:29 pm

The % is your chance of wwinning the combat, not epxected casualties. a 5% chance to lose means just that - a 1 in 20 chance there will be a loss for you. It can be big or small depending on the actual % thrown.

Planning around these upsets is the key to a good general!

There are no sure things in FoG!

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 9:43 pm

hidde wrote:
Having been presented with a display showing something like an 80% chance to win a combat, over a 5% chance to loose, and then take losses of 15% or more is very discouraging.
I don't know much of the calculations and inner workings of dice and percentages but I have to agree with the above. I don't have a problem with not having the success that 80% applies but taking heavy losses after an attack with such numbers are as stated above discouraging

The % chance of success indicates the probability of forcing the opposing BG to take a cohesion test as a result of the combat/shooting. So even if you "win", there is not real guarantee that you will see an effect on the losing group other than some manpower losses where the manpower losses appear to merely be a percentage range based on the number of hits scored against the BG without considering if it won or lost.

Chris

deeter · Post by **deeter** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 9:53 pm

There is aslo a persistant bug in the cohesion tests. Just now, I was playing a match of Cynocesphaly as the Romans. No leaders or other extra factors were involved. I routed a pike unit. A nearby pike unit went disrupted. Then my victorious unit went fragged and a nearby unit went disrupted. What is going on here? Why are my troops taking cohesion tests for routing an enemy? I've seen this before when a leader dies and thought that might be the cause, but there were no leaders or other extra factors involved.

Deeter

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:06 pm

deeter wrote:There is aslo a persistant bug in the cohesion tests. Just now, I was playing a match of Cynocesphaly as the Romans. No leaders or other extra factors were involved. I routed a pike unit. A nearby pike unit went disrupted. Then my victorious unit went fragged and a nearby unit went disrupted. What is going on here? Why are my troops taking cohesion tests for routing an enemy? I've seen this before when a leader dies and thought that might be the cause, but there were no leaders or other extra factors involved.

Deeter

One possible explanation here would be that you actually lost the combat. The opposing pike you could have auto-broken if reduced below it's auto-break strength and your unit could have failed a cohesion test due to failing a CT. You would really need to have the summary display window showing (U short cut) and watch the details of the combat results and the CTs. Not saying it isn't a bug but it is a plausible scenario although that still doesn't explain why a second BG of yours went disrupted as well.

It's really unfortunate in terms of tracking down possible bugs in the game that there isn't a way to log the type of information shown in the summary display window to a file rather than having to catch it as it flies by.

Chris

hidde · Post by **hidde** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:42 pm

The % is your chance of wwinning the combat, not epxected casualties. a 5% chance to lose means just that - a 1 in 20 chance there will be a loss for you. It can be big or small depending on the actual % thrown.

Ok, I have 8 in 10 chance to inflict a loss and 1 in 20 to receive one. I'm fine with that, I can lose also with such odds. It's only that even if I lose I find it...lets say odd that my cusalties can be maybe 10 times higher or more than the opposition. I know it's not primarely about casualties but cohesion but they count too when it comes to autorout and POA, right?

deeter · Post by **deeter** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:45 pm

It was a fairly healthy pike unit, so I don't think that's it. Possible though, I suppose.

Deeter

P.S. In the same game, I charged some cav uphill with my lancers. They evaded all the way along the front of a big melee that had just started, routing and disordering his foot with adbandon. This set about a chain route all along the line. We had just really started engaging but now the battle is nearly over.

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:53 am

If you can send a screenshot it might help - i have never seen this happen and auto rout could be to blame.

deeter · Post by **deeter** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 4:31 pm

Sorry. I don't have a screen shot. It was went by too quick and being a tournament game, I chose to continue on rather than hold up the match.

Deeter

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 5:05 pm

iainmcneil wrote:If you can send a screenshot it might help - i have never seen this happen and auto rout could be to blame.

This sort of incident is highly unlikely to be usefully captured with a screen shot unless the display window is up and it contains just the right details. I am rather surprised that there isn't some sort of logging function for information like that displayed in the display window that can be used to capture information for debugging and analysis.

Chris (a software engineer in real life)

deeter · Post by **deeter** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 5:35 pm

It would also be helpfull to be able to scroll through info in the display window to better understand what's happening and why.

Now I'm wondering how exactly the auto-break system works. On the TT, the unit is removed when it breaks. On the PC, it runs instead? Is this related to strenght loss in a combat without regard to who won or lost? If so, maybe this is what I've been seeing.

Deeter

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 5:49 pm

Once a unit drops below X% it will auto break and never rally. The % is determined by Quality - I forget the exact numbers.

deeter · Post by **deeter** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 6:44 pm

They're in help. I've seen them but never thought I saw them implemented. Now I know and also know not to try to rally or pursue autobroken units!

Deeter

Scottbot · Post by **Scottbot** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:15 pm

Now I'm wondering how exactly the auto-break system works. On the TT, the unit is removed when it breaks. On the PC, it runs instead?

In the TT game, any unit reduced below it's break point in meele flees from the combat, then flees again in the Joint Action Phase and THEN is removed from the table. So, the PC game isn't too far off in mimicking this...just in the PC game the unit is never removed until it runs off the table.

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:51 pm

There is logging but we dont log this type of info as its not really useful unless you can see what is happening on screen to match it up.

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:01 pm

iainmcneil wrote:There is logging but we dont log this type of info as its not really useful unless you can see what is happening on screen to match it up.

It seems to me that the display window does show why units are taking a cohesion test along with the result and also when they auto-break. It would seem in this case that once someone noted an ananomaly happening on screen it would be fairly easy to then correlate that with the info from the display window if that was some how captured and not lost by scrolling out of sight. The type of problem occurring here doesn't seem to be something that always happens incorrectly, only occasionally, so there isn't a good way to re-create the bug or too know when to be ready to capture it in a screenshot as it happens. while I agree it would take a human observer to note the incorrect behaviour, right now there isn't any way to capture the context where it happened since it is normally too late to get a screenshot or to capture the info from the display window by the time the issue has occurred.

Chris

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:07 pm

It might be useful in some situations but the log file would be massive and could cause issues of its own. Then there are the issues of analysing log files. It will encourage people to just send them in to us saying things are broken when in fact they are working as intended. We've spent a lot of time on things like this with saved games so are reluactant to spend more time on it!

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:30 pm

iainmcneil wrote:It might be useful in some situations but the log file would be massive and could cause issues of its own. Then there are the issues of analysing log files. It will encourage people to just send them in to us saying things are broken when in fact they are working as intended. We've spent a lot of time on things like this with saved games so are reluactant to spend more time on it!

If there was logging like this, I would expect it would be something that was off be default and that the user would have to turn on. So normally it wouldn't be on unless a user expected to encounter an issue or alternatively if the user wanted to be able to review the course of a battle after the game is finished.

Barring some way to log this sort of stuff, is there any chance that the current display window could be modified to be scrollable (probably with some maximum number of lines it saves) so at least it would be possible to scroll back to check something that seemed anomalous (or just that you want to better understand such as a run of good/bad die rolls) which would now be lost due to the very small number of lines that are visible in the display window.

Chris

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:39 pm

Not sure - I doubt it keeps the log in memory so there is nothing to scroll back through. We'll see what can be done.

petergarnett · Post by **petergarnett** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 6:36 pm

Something which has not been mentioned so far is support. Any hits on your BG are reduced by having supporting units (hits taken can be reduced down to a min of 1 hit). The lower the number of hits the lower the casualties taken.

Also for the cohesion tests there is a positive modifier for having a BG in one of your rear hexes (but lights don't count).

Understanding these points in addition to the previous posts helps.

batesmotel · Post by **batesmotel** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 6:51 pm

petergarnett wrote:Something which has not been mentioned so far is support. Any hits on your BG are reduced by having supporting units (hits taken can be reduced down to a min of 1 hit). The lower the number of hits the lower the casualties taken.

Also for the cohesion tests there is a positive modifier for having a BG in one of your rear hexes (but lights don't count).

Understanding these points in addition to the previous posts helps.

Hits that your BG receives are not reduced by having supporting units. The number of attacks that the opposing BG gets against you is reduced by 1 per supporting unit which is not the same thing.

Chris