Bombardment

[Strategist83]

I'm wondering why my bombardment units seem to deal almost no damage at all. So, I was wondering if there are any special rules for bombardment I don't know about.

Yes, I do understand you can't damage units to below 50% health. But I'm firing at full health units and they take one or two points of damage, tops. This is regardless of whether they're in some sort of cover (such as rocky terrain) or out in the open.

What's going on - why are my bombardment units so useless? I would think bombardment would is supposed to be how you deal with heavily fortified bases and such that would be too costly to assault directly (basically, an equivalent of catapults in Civ) but it just doesn't seem to be the case. Help!

 

[civac]

Artillery in Smac is very weak, in general. You can change that by editing the alphax.txt. There is an artillery modifier in the rules section. It is set to 3,2 (nominator, denominater). By increasing it to 2,1 or 3,1, you can make artillery far more powerful. As it is, artillery is only useful against lightly armored troops and for tactical tricks. Uses include bombarding stacks of native units (always armor 1), softening probe defenders before probe combat (armor 0.01), keeping units from healing, destroying roads or sensors from afar in a combat situation, destroying terraforming (boreholes).

It is possible to use self destruct damage in place of artillery (damaging multiple units at once). Once, you get fusion and/or missiles, this tactic gets very powerful (too powerful in fact). However, self destruct damage will not effect units in cities.

If you want to know how artillery works exactly read the spoiler below. To my knowledge, this is orgininal work never published before. Warning: contains math.

Spoiler :

Take the attack strength of the artillery unit. Multiply it by the experience modifier (6/8 for Very Green, 7/8 for Green, 8/8 for disciplined and so on) and by 3/2 (artillery modifier). Let n be the result.

The defender gets its armor value, multiplied by its experience modifier and some terrain modifier (3/2 for open, forest, rocky, 5/4 for bases, 2 for bunkers,..). Let m be the result.

The maximum damage artillery can inflict is rougly the quotient of the modified attackers strength and the modified defense. Specifically,

d=round_down(n/m).​

The actual damage is a random integer number between 0 and d (evenly distributed).


Example 1: An elite missile artillery fires on a disciplined plasma defender in open terrain.

n = 6*12/8*3/2=27/2
m = 3*8/8*3/2=9/2
d=3​

Hence, the artillery will inflict 1.5 damage on average with a maximum of 3.

Example 2: A disciplined particle artillery fires on a hardened plasma defender in a base with perimeter defense.

n = 4*8/8*3/2 = 6
m = 3*9/8*2 = 27/4
d = 0​

The artillery will never inflict damage.

 

[Strategist83]

So, you're verifying that artillery is indeed that weak and useless. Mind-boggling. That seems like a major flaw in an otherwise brilliant game.

Artillery that can never inflict damage upon hard targets - which is traditionally what artillery is for - who would have thought.

 

[civac]

Not useless. But yes, you can't wear down heavily defended bases with it.

Regarding fortified cities, don't forget that in Smac weapon strength is usually twice as high as available armor at a given point. So even a base with perimeter defense just breaks even against the strongest attackers. If you have better morale you are ahead. Against sensors, destroy them with scout artillery . If this isnt possible or your morale is subpar use nerve gas pods for an additional 50% bonus. No defender can withstand best weapon/nerve gas attackers.

Other ways to take out fortified bases include air units, destroying his defenses with probe teams, missiles, planet busters.

 

[Petek]

@civac,

Interesting analysis, which explains why artillery has no effect in some situations. However, does your formula need to take into account artillery's elevation bonus? From alphax.txt:

25, ; Combat % -> Artillery bonus per level of altitude

 

[civac]

You are correct, Petek. I forgot about the elevation bonus. Sorry about that.

The number n above (attacker strength) has to be multiplied with 1, 5/4 or 6/4 depending on the difference in elevation.

 

[Strategist83]

Heh, I haven't resorted to nerve gas atrocities yet. Next Yang game maybe

No, not 'useless' per se, but apparently not exactly the centerpiece in taking enemy cities, either - quite the departure from every other civ game. 'Very weak', as you put it, I guess.

Thanks for all the details.

 

[Wolf Dreamer]

Ships bombard each other back and forth with artillery.

You can use a ship to go along the coast and destroy roads, farms, mines, sensor arrays, and other things.

Artillery is mostly useless in this game, and it really shouldn't be.

Remember, poison gas isn't an atrocity once you lift the ban on it at the planetary council. Once this happens, it does no ecological damage either. Poison Gas: Always the best option with dealing with unruly subjects. A solution to anything and everything.