Vokarya's Workshop: Units

[Vokarya]

Here is the first thing I noticed about air-to-air combat. The damage dealt by an air unit per round of combat is equal to its intercept percentage divided by 2 (technically multiplied by the global variable MAX_INTERCEPTION_DAMAGE expressed as a %; this value is currently set to 50). Air-to-air combat never lasts more than 5 rounds (another global variable, INTERCEPTION_MAX_ROUNDS). This means that a unit with an intercept chance less than 40% can never kill an unwounded enemy unit in intercept combat. Or at least shouldn't, if I'm reading things correctly. 40% intercept times 50% max interception damage yields 20 hp per round, which kills the opponent IF the air unit wins all 5 rounds. To win in 4 rounds takes 50% intercept; to win in 3 rounds takes 68%; 100% intercept wins in 2 rounds. Both the Fighter and the Jet Fighter in BTS have 100% intercept and can kill in 2 rounds.

I have not a game that I can remember with air-to-air combat. Has anyone noticed what actually happens in air-to-air combat with early air units? Like Fighter-vs.-Fighter?

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

what happens in fighter v's fighter. They both take damage, you get a notification,

Unit x had dealt 68% damage to an enemy fighter.
Unit x has been intercepted and taken 45% damage from an enemy fighter.

If unit x is sent out again, there's a good chance it'll be shot down on interception.

NB: I've lost a jet fighter, injured, v's a fighter on intercept. But I've won many battles with an injured jet fighter as well.

 

[<Nexus>]

It hasn't. Airship and Bomber are range 8, but the Early Bomber in between is only range 6. I'll lower Airship to range 6 and keep the rest.

Good. THX

Since we're keeping Stealth Fighter as a unit, even if it has radically changed stats, it probably should have a different name so that no one thinks of it as a fighter. I think we should rename the Stealth Fighter to Nighthawk. Numerical designations for units don't work for me, except as flavor names, but the Nighthawk name works. Also, the SR71 should be Blackbird. I think it actually conveys that these are both secret units from the Secret Army Base.

Blackbird: Okay
Nighthawk: Well... maybe... Unless the first thing coming to your mind is this:

Spoiler :

We also need a better name for the Modern Fighter. I'm going to preemptively say that anything ending in -generation Fighter is not going to work. It just screams "We have nothing better to use." If we can't find anything else, I'm probably going with Interceptor. It's fairly concise and still conveys the unit's primary purpose.

Interceptor sounds good.

 

[nionios]

Modern Fighter isn't the only one can make interceptions.All fighters in game are interceptors.What about naming it Stealth Fighter?The ex-Stealth Fighter is going to change to Nighthawk.

 

[Vokarya]

Modern Fighter isn't the only one can make interceptions.All fighters in game are interceptors.What about naming it Stealth Fighter?The ex-Stealth Fighter is going to change to Nighthawk.

No. If the original Stealth Fighter doesn't get the name, no one gets the name. If you see the name Stealth Fighter, you're going to expect the F117, and if the F117 is named something else, then it's too confusing.

 

[Vokarya]

what happens in fighter v's fighter. They both take damage, you get a notification,

Unit x had dealt 68% damage to an enemy fighter.
Unit x has been intercepted and taken 45% damage from an enemy fighter.

If unit x is sent out again, there's a good chance it'll be shot down on interception.

NB: I've lost a jet fighter, injured, v's a fighter on intercept. But I've won many battles with an injured jet fighter as well.

That's what I'm expecting. Just from the way I'm reading the code, units with low intercept % can drive off enemy air units in intercept battle but not kill them, unless the enemy unit is already damaged. If an intercepting unit can't destroy the unit it's intercepting, I think that's a problem.

 

[Samson]

That's what I'm expecting. Just from the way I'm reading the code, units with low intercept % can drive off enemy air units in intercept battle but not kill them, unless the enemy unit is already damaged. If an intercepting unit can't destroy the unit it's intercepting, I think that's a problem.

Is it a problem? My understanding was that in BtS no air combat could kill an undamaged unit.

 

[aggri1]

I've never understood how air combat works. This would be really useful info' to have in the Civilopedia.

If air-to-air combat uses only a unit's intercept percentage value, and not at all the strength value, then when is the strength value used? Only against ground units? Love to know how that works too.

If a units has no "can intercept air units" then can it do damage to another air unit? Say, a bomber with no "can intercept" being intercepted: can the bomber do any damage to the intercepting fighter?

Do air units all have 100 hit points, as implied by Vokarya's post 881 above?

Don't like the name "Interceptor", myself. And what's a Nighthawk? Stealth Fighter at least tells us what it is, what it does. Nighthawk doesn't tell us anything.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I like the name Nighthawk, I'm surprised so few people know it's F117's name just like Blackbird is Sr71's.

About air combat, I'm not sure how it works to tell the truth.

 

[Vokarya]

Air Combat Explained is the article I've been going by. In air-to-air combat, it says all units have 100 hp to start. Strength is used to determine which unit wins a round of combat, but intercept % is used to determine how much damage is dealt to the loser of the round. Fighter and Jet Fighter have 100% intercept in BTS, so they deal 50 hp of damage per round. If two 100% intercept units clash, the battle is over after 3 rounds; since 50 hp of damage is being dealt per round, that will equal 100 hp of damage to one of the two after the third round.

There is a global variable MIN_INTERCEPTION_DAMAGE for units that get into air-to-air combat without having an intercept chance. It's currently set to 10, so that means bombers deal 5% damage to a fighter unit if they win a round.

Ground-based units intercepting air units never take damage according to the article. An air unit can still be destroyed, but it's less likely with a lower interception percent.

 

[nionios]

To be honest, there's something I personally don't like in MIN_INTERCEPTION_DAMAGE:
In real life,non stealth bombers used to fly with escorts for protection because they had nearly zero possibility of evasion.WWII bombers had AA guns and could defend against WWII interceptors but they've no hope against modern fighters which carry missiles.Hence I can't imagine how a bomber in the game could even deal 5% damage to a jet fighter.It's hardly more possible to evade interception.
Stealth bombers have great chance of evading interception so don't need escort but don't have any AA defence.I'm not trying to teach you air warfare.I'm just trying to put some things in order,I hope so.
Someone may say that not all CIV4 features are relevant to reality.In that case I'd say OK.On the other hand,the great success of Civilization series is the effort to simulate real life strategy as much as a computer game can.So the aim should be to make it as real(and playable of course) as possible.

 

[Vokarya]

To be honest, there's something I personally don't like in MIN_INTERCEPTION_DAMAGE:
In real life,non stealth bombers used to fly with escorts for protection because they had nearly zero possibility of evasion.WWII bombers had AA guns and could defend against WWII interceptors but they've no hope against modern fighters which carry missiles.Hence I can't imagine how a bomber in the game could even deal 5% damage to a jet fighter.It's hardly more possible to evade interception.
Stealth bombers have great chance of evading interception so don't need escort but don't have any AA defence.I'm not trying to teach you air warfare.I'm just trying to put some things in order,I hope so.
Someone may say that not all CIV4 features are relevant to reality.In that case I'd say OK.On the other hand,the great success of Civilization series is the effort to simulate real life strategy as much as a computer game can.So the aim should be to make it as real(and playable of course) as possible.

I wrote a simulator for air-to-air combat. If you pit a fighter-type unit with 50% intercept against a bomber with the minimum 10% intercept damage and both units have equal strength, the bomber would, on average, deal 12.5% damage to the fighter. The fighter has an 18.75% chance of destroying the bomber outright. I think this is actually a good thing. It helps prevent one super-air unit from intercepting forever.

 

[nionios]

I wrote a simulator for air-to-air combat. If you pit a fighter-type unit with 50% intercept against a bomber with the minimum 10% intercept damage and both units have equal strength, the bomber would, on average, deal 12.5% damage to the fighter. The fighter has an 18.75% chance of destroying the bomber outright. I think this is actually a good thing. It helps prevent one super-air unit from intercepting forever.

If you're talking about Fighter vs Bomber then it's OK.
But, what about Bomber vs newer fighters?How an air combat between bomber and jet fighter could even exist?What about Stealth Bomber fighting against fighters-interceptors?Is that realistic?
The first example in "Air Combat in BtS Explained" says that the Stealth Bomber countered the Fighter.Moreover it says that inflicted damage to the Fighter.In terms of reality,that's unrealistic.The only suitable scenario that comes into mind is that the SB had hypothetical escorts that engaged the fighter.
Also there's no problem with a super-air unit that intercepts forever because the evasion probability check comes first.If I'm not mistaken,an attacker bomber with evasion capability could evade a 100%probability interception .So the survivability of a bomber should rely on evasion not on air to air combat.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm still not changing it. I think it's better for the game if a unit can't sail through all its battles completely unharmed; strict realism is a distant consideration. Especially because this is one variable that affects all units, air or ground, and I don't want to unintentionally hurt some units at the expense of others.

 

[Vokarya]

One of the things I think we need to do is increase the intercept % of fighter units, if we're going to get a fair amount of air-to-air kills. Our current range of intercepts for air units is 15-60%, which means even the best fighters have to win 4 rounds out of 5 to kill. In BTS, both Fighter and Jet Fighter have an intercept of 100% and destroy an intercepted enemy with 2 wins. I know we just increased the cost of units, but I'm still not a fan of mechanics that favor both units surviving a fight. Otherwise eliminating enemy units becomes way more tedious than it should be.

I suggest this for revised intercept changes:

• Biplane 50%, Fighter 60%
• Jet Fighter 75%, Strike Fighter 90%
• "Interceptor" (name not fixed), Orbital Fighter both 100%

This means that an Industrial Era fighter has to win 4 rounds to kill an enemy unit. A Modern Era fighter kills an enemy unit if it wins 3 rounds. A Transhuman Era fighter has to win only 2 rounds of combat.

Running the simulator said that, in regular BTS, a Fighter intercepting a Bomber has a 71% chance to destroy it (91% for a Jet Fighter). A Fighter that manages to intercept a Stealth Bomber has a 62% chance of a kill, and a Jet Fighter has an 86% chance.

With the current suggested intercept percentage, a Fighter would have to be around Strength 74, with +50% against bombers, to have the same % kill against a bomber at strength 30. So lowered intercept percentages do make it more likely that bombers get away, unless we start dropping bomber strength, but that means more damage to bombers from successfully intercepting ground units as well.

If we start with these intercept percentages, then I can start finding with appropriate strength numbers. The current numbers might not need to be tweaked as much as I was thinking.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

One of the things I think we need to do is increase the intercept % of fighter units, if we're going to get a fair amount of air-to-air kills. Our current range of intercepts for air units is 15-60%, which means even the best fighters have to win 4 rounds out of 5 to kill. In BTS, both Fighter and Jet Fighter have an intercept of 100% and destroy an intercepted enemy with 2 wins. I know we just increased the cost of units, but I'm still not a fan of mechanics that favor both units surviving a fight. Otherwise eliminating enemy units becomes way more tedious than it should be.

I suggest this for revised intercept changes:

• Biplane 50%, Fighter 60%
• Jet Fighter 75%, Strike Fighter 90%
• "Interceptor" (name not fixed), Orbital Fighter both 100%

This means that an Industrial Era fighter has to win 4 rounds to kill an enemy unit. A Modern Era fighter kills an enemy unit if it wins 3 rounds. A Transhuman Era fighter has to win only 2 rounds of combat.

Running the simulator said that, in regular BTS, a Fighter intercepting a Bomber has a 71% chance to destroy it (91% for a Jet Fighter). A Fighter that manages to intercept a Stealth Bomber has a 62% chance of a kill, and a Jet Fighter has an 86% chance.

With the current suggested intercept percentage, a Fighter would have to be around Strength 74, with +50% against bombers, to have the same % kill against a bomber at strength 30. So lowered intercept percentages do make it more likely that bombers get away, unless we start dropping bomber strength, but that means more damage to bombers from successfully intercepting ground units as well.

If we start with these intercept percentages, then I can start finding with appropriate strength numbers. The current numbers might not need to be tweaked as much as I was thinking.

Looks OK to me

 

[<Nexus>]

Just a small idea: Couldn't/shouldn't we change the name "Main Battle Tank" into just "Battle Tank"? Shorter. Clearer.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I think that's an actual military term, so I'm not sure if it should be changed.

 

[GreedyManul]

Just a small idea: Couldn't/shouldn't we change the name "Main Battle Tank" into just "Battle Tank"? Shorter. Clearer.

Not really, as it's a general and recognizable enough term to not need changing.

 

[Vokarya]

Main Battle Tank is a case where I'm letting the historical term ride.

The tank where I'm looking to drop the adjective is the Early Tank. With the Early Jet removed, the only Early units left are the Early Bomber and the Early Tank.