Military Model IV

[Krenske]

Laurent,

It is some impressive whitespace, isn't it. I can't find the problem though all I was after was a properly formatted table and according to the source for the page that is what I should have gotten??? Anyone else have a weird experience with HTML tables on Apolyton, If this is normal I will have to use fixed text tables that don't look as good.

As to unit transport and the splitting of transporting TF's. If a task based approach is used for navies then the transports will not get a chance to split up as their task is transport unit X from A to B. Let me explain in an example. Your ancient Navy is made up of 3 transports, 7 triremes and 2 light transports (actually units not individual ships). You can assign these various units to certain duties for the length of a turn. For example 2 transports are assigned to trade supporting water based trade routes and generating money and moving food and goods. The last transport is assigned to a conveyance pool. This conveyance pool allows land units( not just military units but diplomats and trade ligations etc, as well) to relocate between friendly ports (the limit on moves will be derived from a lovely formula based on total capacity, speed and distance covered).
Four of the triremes are assigned to patrol duties giving them achance of intercepting pirates and hostile forces. The chance of intercept here uses the home port of the trireme as a key factor. The last three triremes are formed into a task force to transport land units a,b,c and d to a point on the enemy coast. The taskforce executes this task (it may be intercepted and aborted or suffer adversely due to wheather etc.) as a group, there would be no opportunity to split the taskforce after it has been sent on its way. After the Taskforce has landed the troops they could be given a different task. One of the light transports is given explore orders and a direction. It will uncover and map a chunk of the world in that direction. The other light transport is being used to transport a settler to a previously discovered tin mining area on a coast.

Is this a good enough explanation. I do not forsee the traditional National leader maneuvering individual ships approach. Rather a setting of goals and tasks for the groups of ships as a whole. During times of peace there would be minimal fleet management with only a small bit of work reassigning some ships between tasks. During times of conflict there will be the ability to control military missions quite closely without necessarily using a huge amount of player time.

All of the ideas for naval and air missions and rules are not worked out yet, as we decided to tackle land combat first and then move on to them later.
[This message has been edited by Krenske (edited February 20, 2001).]

[Mark_Everson]

Krenske: Yeah I've had trouble with HTML tables before... but I can't remember if it Always happens or just sometimes. Last problem I can recall was with a big table.

[F_Smitty]

I have another stupid, out-of-the-blue question:

What about suppression?

Will range units suppress, as well as kill? The idea is common with WWII games, but I think it applies equally here.

And it allows for ranged weapons like archers to be more useful in combined-arms usage, since the suppressed enemy is not dead, and will recover, but if you can close with the enemy while still suppressed, with hand-to-hand units, you will get a far bigger benefit than using either ranged or hand-to-hand seperately!

[Lord God Jinnai]

F_Smith:

I would say that should be left up to a tactical level for the ruler to decide if he wants to take prisoners. If no, even if they were supressed they'd be killed and the end result would be the same. If yes, that would be based on each TFs power vs. the other to see if they could i believe.

[F_Smitty]

Lordy:

I was thinking that since the combat takes place in 'phases', that one phase is 'ranged combat (it is, isn't it?) and that during this phase the archers could do 2 kinds of 'damage' -- kills and suppression.

Kills, of course, are permenant.

Suppression could just last until the next 'round'. So if you have combined hand-to-hand units with the archers, they would not have to suffer return attacks from the suppressed defenders until next phase.

[Mark_Everson]

Yeah, I like the suppression idea too! Lets see what Krenske thinks...

Krenske: I do envision the player being allowed, if they want, to move individual naval TFs. But your idea of a more fluid and general system should be available to the player through giving the AI orders. But I agree with you that we should get the land mil. model further along before working much on sea, air and space.

[LDiCesare]

Two points:
1) What do you mean by suppression? Is it like barrage fire/prevent opponent from moving?

2) Krenske:
In beginning to code the manoeuvre phase, I had a question: You use a square root:

Total Covering strength =
(The square root of the (sum of (friendly cover elements still in the covering force * (1/2 mobility - terrain mod) ) + (total elements * 2)))* scouting bonus * (Generalship factor ^ rounds of maneuvering).

If I use this directly in your example it gives out 10%, not 16. I suppose the square root must be applied after you subtracted both armies covering strengths in order to make the total. That would give:
Covering strength = (sum(1/2 mobility - terrain) + 2 * total elements) * scout bonus * generalship ^ rounds,
Manoeuvre output = sqrt(higher covering strength - lower covering strength), being a bonus for the higher strength army.
Am I correct?


[This message has been edited by LDiCesare (edited February 26, 2001).]

[F_Smitty]

'Suppression' is the idea that ranged fire doesn't only just kill people, it also causes them to duck and cover. This makes the target unit less able to shoot back, and less ready to receive/defend against a closing enemy for a short period of time, until the defenders can 'regroup'.

For modern firearms, we will absolutely have to include suppression. That is the biggest use of heavy weapons. An infantry squad carries a heavy machine gun which is mainly used to lay suppression fire down on an enemy so that the foot soldiers can close with the enemy position -- usually to get close enough to use grenades.

But the idea holds for ancient ranged weapons and units also. The Roman legionairre launched his pilum at the enemy just before attacking. The pilum would render shields useless and cause the enemy to fall over themselves to avoid the incoming missles. Then they closed to fight with sword and sheild.

The biggest game benefit is the bonus to 'combined-arms' units. If you only attack with ranged weapons, the suppressed enemy will regroup. Only by attacking the suppressed enemy with a combo of ranged and close assault troops do you maximize the damage you can do.

[F_Smitty]

Hi, Lordy:

It would depend on the ammunition and weapon type, and the experience level of the troops under fire, I think. No 'decisions' to make at combat time. All ranged fire would have 2 types of effects, instead of 1.

When a Pike Square of men sees the sky darkened with arrows coming their way, one of 2 things happens -- either the soldiers stand fast, or they seek cover. The ones who seek cover are the 'suppression' results of that fire -- they are not immediately available to repel the oncoming cavalry charge that was coordinated with the ranged fire.

So the result likely would be determined by first checking to see how many people bolted, then see how many who stayed were killed.

And the suppression effect becomes far more important than the actual deaths caused, when you reach modern artillery. A concerted artillery barrage can shell-shock all but the most veteran soldiers, leaving them unfit for combat for a long time.

[Lord God Jinnai]

My question is how is it decided that 'surpression' is used as opposed to just outright killing? Obviously there will be the choice of some sort by the generals there, but why i'm asking is when using combined arms, we need to define what has priority is the mathamatical results end up being the same, or will it just be random. Some of this can be dealt with as personalities with the char model and also askew certain numbers (for lack of better term). But say the supply of wood is in short supply, should they risk using cover fire with arrows for their army as it advances or hold off and use it to single out opponents with the sharp-shooters?

[Lord God Jinnai]

I hear you F_smith and have no qualms with what you just said. Howeber, your post didn't concern my main point of determining when there is a shortage of ammo whether to use it as cover fire now and not have as much later or save it now and have some for picking out targets later if the opponent seems to have plenty of good soldioers.

[Krenske]

Laurent,
Actually it should be - (The square root of the (sum of (friendly cover elements still in the covering force * (1/2 mobility - terrain mod) ) + (total elements * 2)))* scouting bonus * (Generalship factor ^ rounds of maneuvering) for each side. The bonus being higher - lower to the higher side. I will look at my example tomorrow and fix it up if it is wrong (quite probably is).

Unfortunately I have been very busy and have just made it back on the board after almost a week, sorry I took so long getting back to you.

F_Smitty
Suppression is quite hard to model at operational levels, it is more of a tactical effect and I have decided to treat it as such. High suppression effects give a increase in resulting firepower later on at the tactical level. In the 3hr of operation combat phases that I am modelling suppression is really just additional firepower. In your example of the legionaries and several mixed weapon types as combine arms that is catered for by using higher firepower for the legionarie than either a javelin man or a pure swordsman. The ability of certain weapons to have a major suppressive effect (like MG's) during the tactical advance to contact in modern times is still a firepower effect causing damage and disruption to combat elements.

I envision that the losses of hitpoints will result in only a portion being considered actual deaths and the remainder being repatriated in later strategic ticks of the clock. I am presently thinking along the lines of 10% per month equivalent returned as replacements up to 50%, with 20% in the first month (as stragglers).

[LDiCesare]

I am busy coding the assault part of the model (currently, scouting and manoeuver are done, but combat still uses the simple version I first coded -it works fine, but the current figures give a bonus to attack that's quite unfair-).
Anyway, I have a few questions about the assault phase and the unit stats:

Are the units or elements put in front line/reserve/support?
If it is the units, it means an archer element in a light infantry unit is quite useless because its ranged power is not useful (it will close to hand to hand with the others). I'd find it better if it were the elements. I'd just have to make sure that support elements support their own unit rather than others. I could do it the following way: have little battles inside the big ones; i.e. put units in front line, and then once they are matched to another unit, match the elements in front/support/reserve there too. What do you think?

Dispersion and frontage:
I can use dispersion to compute frontage, but how do I compute dispersion? Is it based on what kind of elements make up the unit? Why don't elements have dispersion too?
If 2 units, frontage 10 and 2, face 4 units of frontage 3, should we match them 10 vs 3 +3 +3 and 1 vs 3 (outnumbered) or 10 + 1 vs 4*3 (no outnumbered, but bo real matching either)? I am afraid there will be strange groupings sometimes.
For the moment (no units in reserve), the code output looks like this:
Civ1 : 5 units
Civ2 : 10 units
Army 1 front line
4 armies: elements = 1: elements = 2: elements = 1: elements = 1
Army 2 front line
4 armies: elements = 2: elements = 2: elements = 1: elements = 1
Army 1 support
1 armies: elements = 1
Army 2 support
4 armies: elements = 1: elements = 1: elements = 1: elements = 1
I have to tweak the code in order to get the supporting elements go help the outnumbered front line.

I'll just make it simple for the moment since archaic units would all have more or less the same dispersion, but when I have the whole matching/support fire/range/resolution stuff done, I'll get back to it.
[This message has been edited by LDiCesare (edited March 09, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by LDiCesare (edited March 11, 2001).]

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Laurent:

It looks like Krenske has forgotten about us . Probably you should just e-mail him and let him know you have questions...

I think your suggestion on putting elements in the frontline/reserve/support is quite reasonable, and don't see how it could work any other way!

On the frontage thing, you've got an interesting point there... I have to go with your suggestion that doesn't produce arbitrary outnumbering just because of unit sizes. I suppose that will leave you with "packets" of facing units on the battlefield. Another option would be just to string everyone on each side in a line, keeping track of the length of frontage each unit (or even element) covers, and letting each unit/element, attack anyone along their piece of frontage. But let's see what Krenske has to say. If you get to the point where things are being slowed out by having not heard from him, let me know, and we will just figure out something at least fairly sensible by ourselves.

[Krenske]

I still exist,
but have just had a loss of staff at work and seem to lack any spare time to do anything but work. I only get about 1 hour of personal access a day and for the last week that has been more like 2 minutes.

As to dispersion, I have indeed left out a dispersion value at the element level.

As to matching up the units, we could work it this way:- We could break the units up into the various elements and match them. The elements can be defined as combat and support in the unit description. So we could have 2 units with a pool of 12 combat elements and 4 support elements.

These are matched element to element with the oposition. Some elements will be left over from a side and they start to double up on the opposition elements. If they get to the point of getting to more than double then support elements are forced into combat.(this example assumes identical element dispersion) Dispersion complicates it by expanding the potential number of oposition elements before the elements are overmatched. EG. 5 combat element with a dispersion of 7 could each take on 7 dispersion 1 elements before they are matched and could take on 14 by being overmatched. I see some modifiers being applied to a element that still has remaining dispersion vs the opposition due to having some troops effecting the flanks of the opposition, while a element that is overmatched is stretched extra thin and will suffer -ve modifiers to its firepower.

The other alternative is to match up the units based on dispersion and if the dispersions are not equal, force support elements into combat or apply modifiers.

Anyway I have to go to a meeting, read you later.