Subordinate To Commander Ratio

[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.