Hit percentage rant
 

OK, sometimes this game really drives me crazy. I cant see my sniper with 60 or 70% hit rate missing and enemy rifle squads elliminating him and a scout section with 3 concequtive hits with 1% hit rate!!! Sometimes I think the game just plain cheats.:mad:

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

You roll the dice. You take your chances :D

Honestly, the number shown when targeting is not the actual percentage it is a close approximation. It also only shows the chances for Weapon 1. Which for infantry is a rifle generally. It doesn't show odds for the squad LMG, or Squad Markman, or Squad Grenade Launcher, etc, etc.

As for the Sniper, never fire more than 2 shots per turn from him and set his range back to 1 hex when your done. This way he won't OpFire during Player Twos Turn unless he gets shot. Never fire and move in the same turn.

Scouts same as Sniper except maybe never shoot with them at all. Scouts are great scouting. They kind of suck at the whole fighting thing.

The designers have for the longest time tried to make things "uncertain". They do a wonderful job of it and I applaud them for it.

:clap:

PS: Sorry to hear about your dead snipers.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

A stationary sniper after taking a shot is a dead sniper ... unless your opponent is out of their range ... or has really poor morale.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Most want to learn the game by trail and error, and take it in the chin every once and while.
Some others just complain whenever they get a bad outcome or two:rolleyes:

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

actually I've had a lot of success using snipers- I rely on them a lot

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

I think she was referring to the tendency of PBEM players to splatter the area where the gunshot came from with Z-Fire and artillery.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Did not help the Soviets against Simo Häyhä...

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Oups double post.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

@gila: I dont think I'm such a bad loser. I know that even if you have a good hit ratio you can miss, or a bad hit ratio can score hits once in a while. But 3 concecutive hits or %1 rate? The possibility of that is 1/100^3, in other words almost impossible, yet it happened to me.

@scJazz: Each weapon has different probablities which show whenever that weapon is being fired. In all of the 3 enemy successes the enemy weapon was a plain old Mosin-Nagant. No LMG, no enemy sniper, nothing else. About the scouts not fighting thing, I agree with you if I play a meeting engagement or I'm attacking (and even then under certain cirumstances I use my scouts for fighting). However I'm playing as the USMC againt NKorea defending the Obon-Ni ridge (sp?) and I'm being attacked by a horde of infantrymen and T34s, so I need every rifle I can get.

@suhiir: my sniper was dug in in a foxhole in defense. IMHO I think it was better to leave him there, especially when no tanks zeroed in on him. But I have to admit I'm guilty of stationary snipers quite often.

Oh and my enemies where visible, so no Z fire spam (not that I would ever do that with a sniper, that why rifle squads and MGs are for)

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

since once shot is not connected to the next, it is not 1/100^3. It is 1/100 for each shot. They don't add up or otherwise connect. The same with the flip of a coin. Each flip is independent and so are the chances.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

I'm not talking about a single shot. I know that this is 1% all the time (assuming the percentages dont change over time which in the game they do, but in the situation I'm talking about they remained 1%). I'm talking about the possibility of taking 3 shots and score a hit every time. This is 1/100*1/100*1/100=1/100^3. For the coin example it's like I'm flipping the coin 3 times in a row and want to know the probability of getting heads (or tails) all 3 times. Admittedly, it's been a while since I fundled with probablity theory, so I'll look into a book I have to see if I'm talking Bravo Sierra...

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Repeating... the numbers shown are not the real numbers. At least not for infantry fire against other infantry from what I've seen.

If it says 1% for a tank firing the main gun then yeah 1%. Ditto SPAA. Infantry squad firing all of their infantry weapons at another infantry squad the odds are higher. Exactly what they are we do not know.

Don or Andy could answer this better. In all likelihood a forum search would reveal the answer :)

EDIT: From MobHack Help

Class 1 - This is the infantry primary weapon class. This covers Rifles, SMG and so forth. Infantry units with a class 1 weapon in weapon slot will have their fire effect adjusted for the number of men in the unit and range in hexes, less bonus at long range. This reflects the number of riflemen in the section. Inf Prime weapons not in slot 1 do not get this bonus.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

That makes sense. Which also means that I have to change my tactics. Previously when my turn came, I blasted a single squad with every available unit until it fled or elliminated. Seems that by causing casualties to every available target I'll lessen the amount of casualties I sustain.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Not so much casualties as suppression.
Even if you don't cause casualties when you fire at a unit you suppress it, this reduces the number of times it gets to fire back at you AND it's chance to hit when it does fire.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

same here, if used correctly they can be pretty deadly.

In a USMC vs Ukraine/Russia game, this lone Marine sniper single handed routed a platoon of men, supported by a Javelin team to take on the BTR's and the BMP's.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

I've noticed that I get different percentages from snipers. I can buy a cheaper sniper and only get 7% or so chance to hit. Which isn't much better than normal infantry squads. I can buy a more expensive sniper and get a 90% chance to hit. Which does make sense. Not all snipers are created equal.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Personally I "love" waterborne craft in the game.
I've never noticed a landing craft or boat/ship to have a hit percentage higher then 5-10%.

Once as an experiment I parked an LST of my own making (1 x 3"/50 DP gun, 1 x Twin 40mm AA, 1 x Quad 20mm AA, 1 x Quad 50 cal AA, each with 180 ammo) 500m from a HMG nest and swapped fire with it for 20 turns. At the end of the test the crew aboard the LST had taken more casualties then the HMG nest.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

The expensive ones have Range Finders and Fire Control ratings of around 10 or higher. Better scopes, better barrels, bipods, etc. Personally, if I use snipers at all I use the very expensive ones.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

I always buy the cheaper snipers and train them,when they get over 95% exp, then buy an upgrade.
Makes it less a heartbreak than losing a expensive sniper in early battles.

As already said before,it just takes one lucky shot to make a dead sniper,unless it's a team.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

I use snipers rather extensively in my current soviet campaign and they are well worth the cost in my opinion. I've managed several times to inflict casualties on a dug in enemy with sniper fire, then the infantry can go in and clean them out.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Snipers ARE incredibly useful.
But keep in mind giving people a sniper rifle does not make them a sniper.
The rifle is a tool, the person with the aptitude to become a highly-trained sniper (reflected in the +5 to +10 FC/RF) is the part that really counts.
And no army in the world has as many snipers as they would like.

Look at the American Sgt York in WW I, he wasn't a "sniper", just a guy with a standard issue M1903 Springfield rifle. Yet his personal skills made him as (or more) effective then any "sniper".

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Snipers are a bear to deal with,exp.if there is so many of them.

I know this is MBT forum,but like to share an unpleasant surprise when playing against a pbem opponent.

Ger v Rus -Barbarossa

We set up rules to limit 0 sized units,imagine my surprise,when this guy bought all elite(no drop) red para's which have a sniper per coy,

I as Ger only had 2 snipers in a Bn of infrantry.

When I queryed him on why so many snipers,the answer was" Russia is rich in people"

Learned something else new on how some exploit the game.

Re: Hit percentage rant
 

Keep in mind that a lot of advice given is general in the sense that it will often apply more to generated battles than to scenarios. I've played 001 Obong-Ni a few times and you're not going to be using scouts or the snipers in the same way simply because of the assumptions of the scenario. You're getting swarmed and it really is a case of every unit firing full blast just to keep from being overrun.

As others have mentioned snipers are deadly but fragile. When I played that scenario the snipers pinned the advance for a bit but always got zapped from the sheer amount of return fire.