Possible ground combat bug??
 

I experimented a little bit in the combat simulator with ground combat and troop designs (SE Version 1.49) and found some strange things:

1.) Shields seem not to work. If you make troops with identical weapons but one with 240 shield points and the other with 100 armor points, the armor troops will clearly win if in equal number.

2.) Weapons range seems without effect. It seems not to matter if you use the small incinerator beam with a range of 1 or a weapon with higher range with the same damage.

Because this is completely new for me, I would appreciate any confirmation or contrary observations before I mail it to MM.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

1) Please try a test with units with stronger shields against units with weaker shields, and/or reverse sides in your ground units, to confirm. My impression had been that shields were working in ground combat.

2) Yes, I'm pretty sure ground combat ignores range (uses range 1). Range only comes into play when those weapons are mounted on a space combattant, like a fighter.

PvK

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

That's what I did now in SE IV Gold demo:

Troop 1: Cockpit, 1x ground cannon I, 1x small shield III generating 60 shield points, 1x small combat sensor III, 1x small ECM III. Total damage resistance without shields 10kT, with shield 70kT!

Troop 2: Cockpit, 1x ground cannon I, 1x small armor, 1x small combat sensor III, 1x small ECM III. Total damage resistance 9 kT.

You must keep in mind that the shield generator has a damage resitance of 4kT besides its shield generation ability! So this design was the closest the equal damage resistance of the two designs I could imagine.

If the shields work, there should be an important difference in the performance of the two designs in ground combat: 9kT against 70kT resistance!!! However this is not the case.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

You did it on the smallest planet you can find, testing each on attack then defense, right?

Just making sure you didn't forget about the militia http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Correct.

One more strange thing:
Shields on troops work if you attack from the space!!!
And if you have troops and weapon platforms on a planet an attack from space seems always to destroy troops first.

It is hard to believe for me that more than a year after the release of SE IV I am the first to realize this. So I am still uncertain if I made some mistakes and would really appreciate if someone could try this and confirm or refute my results.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Q, I have tested it and you are right, shields do not seem to work.

I have created the same designs you used. You slightly miscalculated, the Armor trooper has a health of 13 plus 3 points of emissive ability, so 16 in total (emissive armor always subtracts 3 points of damage, even if damage is greater then 3, as I found out)

In a battle 100 defenders plus 20 militia against 100 attackers the attacker always lost about 180 to 190 health points. This resulted in ~11 lost armor troopers and 18 lost shield troopers.
Conclusion: Shields are not working at the moment for troopers.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Thank you very much Mephisto.
What do you think is this something that should be corrected or do we just keep this in mind when we design our troops?
The reason why I ask is that if shields will work in ground combat troops will be extremely powerful against the militia!
An other observation: if you use weapons with a reload of 2 for troops, damage is still done to the militia every turn.
About the emissive armor effect: I thought that the emissive armor was not working the way as you describe it (and as it should!) but once the damage goes beyond the limit the emissive effect gets completely lost. But this was only for the large ship components not for the small troop/fighter component. I never tested this myself but there is an long topic about it in this forum.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

I think it is a bug and so it should be corrected. Else shields are nearly worthless.
I too thought that emissive wasn't working, but look at this:

Armor troopers have a health of 13:
I lost 11 of them in battle -> 143 hit points.

Shield troops have a health of 10:
I lost 18 of them in battle -> 180 health points.

Difference: 37. Ok, I know that this is not equal to 3x11 but it is quite close and I have no other explanation.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

not use shields on troop, I do use armor and such, I find the more guns the better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Small troop GCIII = lotts O troops to be put down http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Well, I sent our observations to MM.
It's up to them to decide how it is supposed to work, but they should inform us.
Until now almost all troop designs had useless shield (unless you want to use the troops as cannon fodder for attacks from space).
For me it is clear not to use shields for troops anymore but armor instead of it.

Mephisto, I think there is always a chance for hit or miss. Therfore combat simulations hardly ever get exactely the same results. But perhaps you are right and the emissive ability works after all in small armors.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Q:
Mephisto, I think there is always a chance for hit or miss. Therefore combat simulations hardly ever get exactly the same results. But perhaps you are right and the emissive ability works after all in small armors.<hr></blockquote>

Of course, that's the reason why I did run all this 10 times and averaged it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Ok, here's a potential problem. A small shield generator produces 40 shield points. A militia unit does 10 points of damage. IIRC unit components do not store partial damage. If that is correct then a single troop with one small shield will be able to conquer any size planet.

Geoschmo

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by geoschmo:
Ok, here's a potential problem. A small shield generator produces 40 shield points. A militia unit does 10 points of damage. IIRC unit components do not store partial damage. If that is correct then a single troop with one small shield will be able to conquer any size planet.
Geoschmo<hr></blockquote>

Actually, damage is not recorded for the components but it isn't lost either. It is stored until the total damage scored on the units present on a planet/battle/fighter group equals or exceed the hit points of the smallest unit present. The hit points of this destroyed unit is subtracted from the total damage. This is repeated until the total damage is less then the hit points of the smallest unit (i.e. the one with the least health points). Damage below the treshhold is not lost but will be added to the next hit. This is the reason why troops are always first to be killed in a planetary bombardment - they are the units with the least hit points...
Note that shield points are just added to the hit points of a unit, i.e. a shield generator level 3 is a 64 point component.

I hope this makes sense. Feel free to ask if it isn’t.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

I was under the impression that damage from all units (that won the roll to hit) was added up and fired as one burst. Any leftover damage was lost.

I had one ground combat going, where 10 of my tanks simply could not kill the one enemy militia. (I knocked out all the units they built each turn)
After 6 months or so of fighting without losses and without a win, 10 more tanks arrived.
After two rounds of ground combat, they finished off the one militia.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

All partial damage vanishes between combats, just not between combat rounds.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

For space combat, yes.
For ground combat, maybe not.

10 tanks couldn't kill one militia over 6 months of 10 rounds each, yet 20 tanks killed one militia in 2 rounds.

Unless theres a better explanation that I don't know about...

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Do the Small combat sensors and Small ECM actually make a difference? Enough to justify the cost?

I gave up on the expensive shields a long time ago. I found out that armor survived better against the militas first round. My Abhrams has 2 GC and normal armor.

If I can build 20 good units a turn vs. 10 better units, who would win?

------------------------------------------------
So many ugly women, too much time. GOT BEER?

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Currently, ECM and sensors do work in ground combat... in fact, they apply to the ENTIRE army. So you only need one, as long as that unit survives. Since units are currently killed usually from left to right http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif , make sure your sensor units appear on the right in the list of units on a planet, or on a transport. This has been reported and may change.

PvK

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

One more small oddity in ground combat:
Small shield depleters do normal damage and are therefore extremely powerful!

However this can be easily corrected if you allow small shield depleters only for fighters and no more for troops.

I got an e-mail for MM, that they will take care of the shield bug in troops.
I made some more tests to see what would happen if the shields work and the result is as expected, that attacking troops get extremely powerful against the militia. To compensate this I increased the militia per population by 2x, the attack strength of the militia by 2.5x and the damage resistance of the militia by 3.3x. In this setting 300kT large troops can still conquer a colony with 300M population, but about half of the attacking troops are lost in that combat.

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
...Since units are currently killed usually from left to right http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif ...
PvK<hr></blockquote>

The guys on the left must be the ones with the red shirts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

OR... have a bummer of a birth mark....

Re: Possible ground combat bug??
 

Shields fixed in the new beta. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif