'Fix' the combat engine its damage distribution

[rasputini]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

But how many battles in any real combat situation involve no wasted shots?

Imagine two armies charging at each other across a battlefield, firing as they go. Will every shot hit an enemy? Will the bullets somehow avoid hitting people who have already been hit? It's highly unlikely.

I know it is highly unlikely. that's why I've said that I can understand there being a certain randomness factor or percentage of wasted shots. The problem I have is that if you only have 1 ship type of incoming, your pilots are just that perfect.

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

To refer back to my above examples, example 1 would be a situation in which one side is armed with machineguns, and the other side has swords and is wearing no armour. The side with machineguns can simply keep on firing, knowing that they can unleash so much firepower that, eventually, all of the enemies will be dead. After all, they have no armour so if they're hit there's a good chance that they'll die.

As for the above mentioned lack of wasted shots if you are only facing one ship type of enemy, do your enemies line up in a tidy row and your pilots take turns firing in precise order (or in your example, the men with swords), so that you do not waste shots?

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

But in the second example, while most of the enemy remain unarmoured, there is a small group of heavily-armed individuals with full body armour and assault rifles, who have a 79% chance of avoiding death for each shot fired at them. Do you imagine that the machinegunners can kill all of these enemies before they get a chance to fire, whilst also killing all of the unarmoured enemies?

I'm not disputing this claim. I'm merely saying that if there are 20k enemies that fall with 1 shot, and 1k enemies that take 3 shots to kill, that it shouldn't take 70k shots to kill them all. I do agree that perfect targeting is unrealistic, but rather than drilling 5 shots into the guys that only take 1 to kill, I expect a more rational response would be to actually kill the guys that are still alive.

I suppose that a random factor (or something similar) to determine a percentage of "wasted" shots would make bcalcs and such a bit hit or miss.

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

No real war has ever been fought this way. You might think that this is how it should work, but that's no more logical than the current solution.

So, if I send 30000 toddlers with sticks and 500 tanks at you, I'm glad to know that <2% of your defenses will focus on the tanks, because clearly, no military genius in your region could figure out that you may want to hit them a bit more often. No war ever involved actually focusing more fire on an enemy you know is stronger or stopping firing at someone after they were dead? I'm really failing to see the logic there.

[Gio2k]

This is not about wasted shots, it's about how you distribute your firepower.
You would expect your defenses to distribute their firepower according to some criteria for how 'dangerous' a ship is. Imo, plain numbers are a very poor measure.
It is also one of the most unfair features. If i team up with another planet on an attack, and we both send roughly the same value in ships (same class, ofc), then i would expect to lose roughly the same value in ships as my teaming partner in the battle.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by rasputini

So, if I send 30000 toddlers with sticks and 500 tanks at you, I'm glad to know that <2% of your defenses will focus on the tanks, because clearly, no military genius in your region could figure out that you may want to hit them a bit more often. No war ever involved actually focusing more fire on an enemy you know is stronger or stopping firing at someone after they were dead? I'm really failing to see the logic there.

Tanks and toddlers would not belong to the same ship class

[The Real Arfy]

Replace 'toddlers' with 'walls' and 'tanks' with 'walls with guns on them'.

[rasputini]

how about toddlers holding up pictures of tanks?

[rop1964]

the point is. with multiple targets of same class, there s a loss of shot that should not be happening, whether you re cath, zik or terran dont matter..
when you do a bcalc, and it says you need 1000 ship to stop 1 attack, you re not suppose to send 5000 to make it happen, as we assume the bcalc to be accurate.

the things is at the moment, when facing a mix fleet, shots are waste on neutralised targets, instead of being use to stop active ships. i can understand a not perfect fight happening, shot missing, but no battle ever see 50% waste shots. no one shot at dead ppls on battle fields, planes dont fire missiles on a pilot after his plane blow up. we expect the same of a bcalc and actual battle.

agreed, maybe some ships may target the same target, just like 2-3 tank may have chosen the same target, but you wont see 500 tank shooting up 1 tank , then move to the next? you expect your 500 tanks to fire to 500 ennnemys.. or as near to 500 as possible..

granted too, it may not appeal to everyone, though it puzzle me as to why.
as far as i m concern, if i face 500 thief, anf those thief can steal 400 of my ships, i expect to lose 400 of them., just as i expect my ships to freeze what they re suppose to freeze.

[mathematician]

what I expect from "stats used" combat is (for each initiative/target_class):
compute total_damage_attacker (D) and total_armor_defender (A)
kill_ratio := D/A
if kill_ratio is above 1, all ships of target_class are killed
if kill_ratio is below 1, then for each ship_type of target_class:
ships_killed(ship_type) := #ships(ship_type) * kill_ratio

i.e. the same percentage of each ship type is being killed