Subordinate To Commander Ratio

[Charles22]

To me, the leader must be taken out of the quotient to affirm his main mission isn't firing, and will fire little or none at all against superior fire. For example, unless I was dead certain he was safe, I wouldn't fire with a PZIVB against a T34 if that firer were the CO. The others will fire at that same superior tank, simply to suppress it if for no other reason (or perhaps track hits).

With that in mind, your comparisons, though valid in a lot of situations (Germans vs. Poles for example) must be looked at differently. IOW, you can always count on the subordinates to fire, so think fire terms on them alone in this case.

In terms of subordinate firepower alone, your comparison is set further apsrt. One thing is unclear to me, however, why it is that you expect the 5 unit platoon to have less shots for the exact amount of movement, when I have never found that to be the case. I have never seen smaller platoons with any variance. In any case, discounting the CO, we are loooking at 4 units vs. 2. A greater ratio than 5 vs. 3. My experience that the smaller units don't have less shots, makes the difference greater still: 4x3=12 and 2x3=6. Since that is so, the only question that I can come up with, is if I am better off with a 4 unit platoon, or two 2 unit platoons for example. Because they cost the exact same thing, and come with the exact firepower potential, that is, if you want to fight full force with the HQ. Since I conclude that is not such a good idea for long campaigning, then we have to figure out whether the increase in the firepower with fewer CO's, is worth the somewhat less ability to rally.

When you say 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3, I'm not sure what you're talking about. It sounds to me as though you're counting on some radical rallying ability by the CO, but even the CO's, excluding company commanders, I haven't seen any difference in their ratings to rally based on the platoon size (though I never bothered to look). When comparing the 4 and 2 unit subordinates, it is only when the 4 unit one reaches the third unit that you might see any difference because of increased units, and both CO's could fail to rally, since they do have the same ratings, on the very first unit if it failed to rally itself. The CO just has more units to cover percentage-wise in the one case. You could have the 2 subordinates never rallying themselves and the CO always failing, and you could have the 4 subordinates never needing the CO to rally them if they rally themself always, but we know that there is an average somewhere where the CO has a tougher time being helpful with rallying. The only question remaining therefore is if that general lesser rallying is worth the decreased firepower.

Remember, it's not just the CO doing the rallying and actually it probably does the minority of the rallying for the platoon. If the CO has to rally itself as in my prior example, that complicates things still more. Take this as a typical example of a 5 unit platoon, with the leader not needing rallying (fairly typical in how I use them). All units will require three rallies ot get them to 1 supp. point. Unit one rallies itself twice and the player leaves it alone. Unit two rallies itself twice and the player leaves it alone. Unit three rallies itself once, but fails the next time, thereby generating a successful CO rally. Unit four fails the first time, the CO rally fails, and now look at what you have (this being perhaps a typical German force). You have 5 rallies to subordinate self-rally, while only 1 CO rally. Oh, should the CO be more successful, say 3 rallies, he is still down 5 rallies to 3. IOW, for a stronger force, as we concluded earlier, the ability to rally with the CO is less important in the very immediate short term. What I conclude, therefore, not that all my rallying is due to the CO and therefore very important, but only that though he rallies seemingly at a highe rate than any of his subordinates, his rallying often doesn't play as big a part as we may think. In the much poorer nations, that rallies are so far and few betwen that it's almost a joke to count on them.

I think I'm starting to come to the conclusion I was seeking. The conclusion is that a higher subordinate to CO ratio is the better thing, but not entirely, because when fighting against units that are entirely superior (PZIVB vs T34) rallying can be at a premium, that is, if the dreaded unit "also" can fire greatly too. A T34 has one major disadvantage over a PZIVB that has seen 3-4 battles already, that it clearly will down in number of shots, given equal circumstances such as both having moved one hex, in that it will be down close to a 2-to-1 count in being able to fire, not even getting into the inability to fire there may be from not being able to rally as well as the PZIVB's. Should the general superior unit have just as great experience OTOH, then it is probably better that the player's platoon have a greater rallying ability of a 3-4 sized platoon against superior firepower.

I guess the conclusion I am drawing, and there are exceptions, that when you are expecting a bad time of it, it is better to have a lower subordinates to CO ratio, and it is better to have a higher subordinate to CO when your experience is higher and you want something of a firepower edge. The higher subordinate to CO ratio vs. the lower subordinate to CO ratio, in certain circumstances, will arguably flip-flop, because we can see in certain circumstances that what we have may had come out quite differently if we handled the situation the other way.

Oh, one other thing I thought about concerning the CO rally ability. If you use him in the heat of battle, and he gets heavily suppressed, but let's say still safe, part of the problem you then run into, is that the ability to rally the others is affected, because the next turn may find that he has to rally himself one or two times first. How likely is he to rally others when he has done such thing? If the subordinates are on a hill, and he along with them, just further back, and bombardment comes, that's the situation you may face, but if he is behind the hill, he may get no suppression whatsoever. Was having him there to fire, if even safely, worth his getting good suppression from the bombardment and therefore very likely less rally ability to the others?

[narwan]

The difference in number of shots is based on the assumption that the tanks have either started with some supression or get some suppression during the turn. The 3 tanks plus commander (4 total) will have more rallying attempts so a better chance than the 5 tanks of actually getting the 3 shots each. The example is just a theoritical case where three unsuppressed tanks (supp<4) actually have a better hit combined hit chance than 5 tanks with low suppression each (between 4 and 10 approx). For main guns around the 75mm range for medium exp crews (the most common actually) that means the ROF for the main gun will drop from 3 to 2. Especially if moved first for one or two hexes. The tanks with suppr less than 4 will still have 3 shots each. Which makes a big difference.

The math is simple, the 1/3 refers to the first shot (at 1/3 of the max hit chance), the 2/3 refers to the second shot (at 2/3 of the max hit chance) and the 3/3 refers to the third shot (at the full max hit chance). The add the factor of the max hit chance for each round fire by the 5 tank platoon and do the same for the 3 tank (plus leader) platoon and you get a number which is an aggregate for the total hit percentages for the formation. That way you can compare formations of different size.
In this theorerical example the command tank of the 4 tank platoon does not fire at all but is assumed it's rally ability will get each of the three subordinate tanks to fire 3 times where the lack of additional rally attempts for the five assumes they'll be stuck at 2 shots each.

The previous example illustrates that even in absolute chance the 4 tanks have a better hit chance than the 5 tank platoon. But even if 2 out of the five tanks in the 5 tank platoon have three instead of two shots the 4 tank platoon (where only 3 tanks fire at all!) will still be more effective on a per tank basis. I'll save that math for later.

But in short, keeping commanders back to rally their subordinates tend to lead to more effective formations. The real trick is to find the right of ratio of commanders vs subordinates.

Narwan

[Charles22]

That's true, and that's what I have been trying to figure out.

In this theorerical example the command tank of the 4 tank platoon does not fire at all but is assumed it's rally ability will get each of the three subordinate tanks to fire 3 times where the lack of additional rally attempts for the five assumes they'll be stuck at 2 shots each.

That sort of doesn't make sense to me. The difference, between 4 and 5 unit platoons is miniscule and almost not worth bothering with. Probably looking more closely at 2-3 unit platoons, compared to the 5-6 unit platoons is more revealing. Just taking what you said above, however, I'm not clear of it's purpose, seeing as how it is in no way typical of what you could expect from a 5 unit platoon. The examples of either case could happen either way at any time.

Here's another thing to think about though. We say that a 3 unit platoon is generally more able to rally from the CO than a 6 unti platoon, but often that's not that case. But let's just say that in general that is true. Something else occurs to me. Now we already see clearly, since there is such a great disperance in numbers, that despite the 6 platoon likely a "bit" less likely to rally due to the HQ having to account for more subs, let's put this in a game situation.

Let's assume that both of these platoons run into the exact same enemy. That enemy is 6 enemy tanks. If the enemy has less tanks to shoot at, in the case of the 3 unit platoon, will they rally better than the 6 unit platoon? I say no. Why? Because as we discussed earlier, the majority of the rallies will come from the subs themselves, so having only three units to manage "in this situation" is even less likely to make a difference then before, but here's the thing. 6 AI units firing on 3 units will probably heavily suppress the 3 units. Run that enemy against the 6 unit platoon and the enemy suppresses them much less, because there are more targets. IOW, there are times when sheer weight of numbers benefits your rallying capability too, not just that the 6 have better firepower.

So considering that example, modify it a bit and think in more even terms. What if the enemy has what he did, but you have 6 units, only they're divided into 2 platoons instead of one? One sort of bad thing can emerge from such a split, and that is that you are more likely to use them apart from one another, even if they are in the same relative area, 3-4 of the units may encounter the enemy 6 instead of the whole bunch, just because the two platoons didn't have to stick together. As well, if you run into a decent enemy attack with 6 tanks, you may lose two or more in the exchange. This brings to mind what I said earlier on the reduction of platoon units making the HQ rally ability more and more pointless, and the firepower down to nil because we are still talking about at least taking some measure of precaution with the CO. It's real easy to get down to just 1 sub left in the platoon, if all you have is three in the first place. If the enemy knocks out one, you have all the rally potential you could ask for, but it's largely pointless just because one more good enemy shot and it will be entirely pointless and your firepower is severely curtailed since the CO was 33% of your platoon in the first place. Now you're down to only 1 full fledged fighter left, and how long will he last, lots of rallies or not?

So you can see, that if you really want to protect those CO's in the long campaign, there's something to be said for a formation that has enough in it, that it will probably not lose more than half it's subs in any given turn. So 2 3 unit platoons only has 4 units to lose, before the rallying advantage is entirely pointless and the 6 unit platoon has 5 units to lose before the same occurs.