pandakraut

There's a damage reduction curve. I've never pulled it because it seems to work as expected, higher cover = lower damage Fortifications are weird. Some get flanked from visually ridiculous directions, others seem impossible to flank at all. I don't know what the deal is with the southern fort at Distress call but any fire from the north seems to inflict insane morale damage. Some of that might be that it's usually a 10 morale unit sitting in the fortification getting fired at by a 3* unit, but I still won't use those fortifications at all other than for melee defense. Fortifications also apply a damage penalty to infantry units which is party of why they are so bad early on. The potomac fort fortifications apply a .3 damage penalty. The day 1 cold harbor defenses apply a .7. These are all defined individually so I don't have a full list. Unfortunately the last time I looked into it modifying the tooltip to show the damage percentage isn't possible. I will be able to fix the terrain damage reductions at least. Those are all broken currently so you do full damage no matter where a unit is standing which also contributes to the current state of the game where fortifications are a bad choice in most situations.

I need to look up the melee dependency. Will post that along with the efficiency dependency later today. Edit: Following line was updated to correct an inaccuracy. Morale regen gets fairly complex but a units morale stat doesn't appear to affect it. No I'm not sure how useful trying to completely cut out chance is when evaluating weapons, given how much of it is present in the game. But if that makes more sense for you go for it. For example, reload times have randomization factors applied to them. So sometimes units really are slower to load. I think that method will find the most success with rifles where the accuracy high tends to be the same across all of them. A bit less so with carbines, though in my opinion range is the only stat that really matters with those. Artillery is where I think your method will have the most problems since the accuracy high is all over the place. Using an average between high and low works out pretty well I've found. Maybe with a high medium and low variance flag so you can choose which situations you are willing to accept the risk of a low roll. For example, I don't like 3in cannons for my close support slots because when an enemy unit is charging a low roll means the charge probably lands and I take losses. But for counterbattery, a low roll is fine because it's going to take a dozen shots to destroy the unit anyways, so the occasional low roll is acceptable to me.

Doing some more comparisons, the big outlier is Cross Keys and 1st Winchester where I could have added several thousand men for little to no scaling. I'll freely admit I was somewhat keeping units smaller to prove a point. The smaller units definitely work better in the Rebalance mod where rifle damage is lower.

To follow up on your question of difficulty when using 2k vs smaller here are Kristoph42's comments from a Steam thread. He's actually played through both campaigns with multiple sizes. "I used to play like Bobcat, all my INF were 2k and bigs were 2.5k + strong. I tried a campaign like Panda where my INF were all about 1.1k and the bigs were 1.6k+ strong. My current play now is very similar to PaloAlto, average size is 1.5k and bigs are 2.2k. Each way has advantages and disadvantages. Like someone said, "it comes down to your playstyle" and "your tactics". Im currently liking the 1.5k size army more and more. The game is about the same with either style because the AI plays like you play. If you have large units, the AI will have large units, and small units equals smaller AI units (although the AI still tends towards outnumbering you). Im not sure there is a better way. It all balances out and comes down to the tactics you use and your playstyle. Personally, I like the 1.5k and 2k bigs style."

Excellent numbers overall. I was surprised that our numbers didn't match at Potomac Fort. There must be some randomness involved that I haven't been able to pin down. Many of those early battles I could definitely improve upon. From what I've seen I tend to average a 10-15% increase in casualties when I actually record. I would swear it changes the game RNG since the AI starts doing odd stuff and I discovered commentating and playing at the same time is harder than I expected.

I'd disagree with that for infantry. The lvl 1 accuracy perk is usually enough to perform decently. I rarely take accuracy again at lvl 2 as it leads to the unit being extremely slow and it gets hard to not get run over by charges. Leveling skirmishers is definitely a problem. I usually just level them with infantry weapons and then once they get close to lvl 2 then I'll switch them over to snipers. This should also get addressed in the next release. Basically consider accuracy a damage multiplier. So +100% doubles your damage.

That can definitely come up sometimes. The last few side battles for the CSA and Union are pretty close to being grand battles.

This is usually an issue even on the hardest difficulties. The Union units start small and don't scale much larger so it's pretty easy to just win on day 1. If you want to see the rest of the battle you can just not take the last victory point in the south east corner. The Union brings in more units for the later days so at least day 2 should be more interesting to play.

Yeah, that's what I expected would be the case. The changes don't work as well together as I'd like, but some people are also having fun with it so it's good to have it as an option. If you want the brigades to deal damage at range you really need the accuracy perks currently. We're going to be moving a lot of that power out of the perks and into the firearms stat in the next version so units should be generically better at shooting. Progress has been slow for various reasons though.

Commentating on the randomness the Unity engine provides is a bit above my ability. Never was good enough at the math side for that. What the game appears to be doing is when the accuracy range is calculated, 1024 results of UnityEngine.Random(returns a value between 0 and 1 inclusive) are created into a RandomValues array. I can't tell exactly how the game determines which one of those to use as that part of the code is not available to me in the decompiler. But it appears that some kind of randomization is used to choose one of the 1024 instances and then the following is returned. low + RandomValues[num] * (high - low) Hopefully you or someone else has enough math background to tell if that means something is weighted.

In general yes, though it really depends on what engagement range you are looking for. I tend to try and keep targets out of canister range so the Napoleon drops out of my armies very quickly. Adding in the fire rate definitely inflates the worth of the 3in, though it is still decent. I usually want a unit to hit as hard as possible in a single volley rather than have to fire twice, but that's play style preference really. The 3in really suffers once availability is factored in. The 24pdr is pretty common and performs better at basically all ranges. And if you want mid to long range you're just better off with something other than the 3in. I think the 3in curve is actually pretty bad, take away its huge damage potential due to the large accuracy high and it compares pretty badly to other guns.

moraleEfficiencyRouting,0.8 moraleMeleeRouting,0.7 moraleEfficiencyWavering,0.8 moraleMeleeWavering,0.7 moraleEfficiencySteady,1 moraleMeleeSteady,0.9 moraleEfficiencyConfident,1.15 moraleMeleeConfident,1 moraleEfficiencyEager,1.25 moraleMeleeEager,1.05 moraleEfficiencyHeroic,1.35 moraleMeleeHeroic,1.1 fatigueEfficiencyFresh,0.95 fatigueMeleeFresh,1 fatigueSpeedFresh,1 fatigueEfficiencyWarmedUp,1 fatigueMeleeWarmedUp,1 fatigueSpeedWarmedUp,1 fatigueEfficiencyTired,0.83 fatigueMeleeTired,0.8 fatigueSpeedTired,0.8 fatigueEfficiencyVeryTired,0.7 fatigueMeleeVeryTired,0.6 fatigueSpeedVeryTired,0.7 fatigueEfficiencyExhausted,0.63 fatigueMeleeExhausted,0.45 fatigueSpeedExhausted,0.6 attackFactorFront,1 attackFactorFlanks,1.525 attackFactorRear,1.275 You may want to download the J&P Rebalance mod just for the Mod/Rebalance/UnitModifiersOriginalValues.csv. Some other stuff in there you might find interesting.

Correct, it's all just a lot of things getting multiplied together Both the UI and AI Customizations mod and the Surrender mod use their on size degradation curves so if you are using either of those you will see diminishing returns but adding men always increases damage. J&P Rebalance mod will be implementing new curves in the next version. Firearms affects reload by 1.15 to .85 from 0 to 100. Also affects accuracy low by .85 to 1.05. I'll have to go pull the full efficiency value list, but I think its in the .85 to 1.05 type range. Altitude results in a modifier ranging from -1 to 1. Average numbers are more in the -.5 to .5 range. If the value is positive it's applied to the accuracyLow, if it's negative it's applied to the accuracy high. For example if the altitude modifier was .5 then accuracyLow = accuracyLow + (accuracyLow * .5) He has several posts in this thread but these are the main ones: http://forum.game-labs.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-574298 and http://forum.game-labs.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/?page=2&tab=comments#comment-573686

You're missing out, they are ridiculous even before you get into the exploits Ahh, I see what you were saying with your original Shiloh comment now. That's how I used to do it as well, but I wanted to see if I could inflict more casualties with similar losses to the troops that I keep and I think I mostly succeeded at that. My intention was to have the left flank mostly wrapped up, move those units to take the woods near the landing when it opens and then cap the VP with a few minutes to spare. Going to day 2 was absolutely not expected. I tried it on a test run and wrote it off as not feasible with reasonable casualties in fact. Happy that I managed to pull it off on my actual attempt though, made for a good video.

I've never considered a full right flank at Shiloh, could see that working though. Would be less fun with a mod that fixes the gunboat damage to be relevant. Not sure how far you've made it in the campaign, but you'll find that I often bring a minimum of infantry. Part of this is play style to minimize losses(artillery and snipers deal damage for free) part of it is that with the UI mod I'm using those max size artillery batteries really really hurt and I want to be able to get rid of them without having to close to rifle range.

I think the core of the differences in how we approach the missions might mostly due to how much the Rebalance mod changed how I approached missions. It takes me a while before I really start playing the base game more optimally again. No detached skirmishers to abuse and rifle damage goes down quite a bit so you can't rely on it as much. Having cavalry available to get rid of artillery is also more important than in the base game. At the start of Potomac Fort, do you bypass the skirmishers guarding the river entirely then? Or are you driving them out with detached skirmishers? Skipping the contested river crossing is definitely worth considering. That section can go poorly so easily and end up getting crocker damaged beyond the point that he is useful. I'll have to try your way the next time. At Bull Run I've never tried those positions on the left. Not sure about that spot, but it does seem like it'd protect your bridge force from getting flanked like sometimes happens. Usually I am able to bait the units on the left into attacking the northern point of the river. Normally I hold the bridge for much longer but when so many units slide over to the ford I usually just pull back rather than risking getting caught up there. I haven't tried the full VP give up on Stay Alert. If it works more consistently than the skirmisher line I might use that instead. You still full clear the map with it? The skirmisher line is amazing when it works perfectly, but as you saw in the video if the ghost cav bug happens you're somewhat screwed.

The range degradation is just one part of the damage formula where everything gets multiplied together. There are enough factors that I didn't add them into the spreadsheet as many of them are hard to get a standard value for and things tend to get misleading. Base Damage Calculation is Weapon damage * Random value between AccuracyLow / 100 and Accuracy High / 100. Range degradation, unit size degradation, efficiency damage multiplier, altitude damage multiplier, fortification damage multiplier, terrain damage multiplier, any modifiers from shell/canister, etc. Firearms and canister/shell also modify the random low value. The damage range between accuracy low and high is what I display in the UI mod, you could try graphing average damage with the degradation applied but that doesn't represent the high variance weapons very well. Check out some of Technosarge's work for accounting for the reload speed. When evaluating weapons I put very little stock into that attribute.

Can you comment more specifically on where you would use different tactics? I'm definitely interested in having that conversation. I absolutely abuse many mechanics in the game in pursuit of finishing battles as cleanly as possible. Finding out ways to completely break the AI and trivialize the battles is an interesting challenge to me. I'm assuming that you're mostly talking about the spawn camping though. It's basically impossible for me not to take advantage of knowing how the battles play out in some way so I don't see the point in actively deploying my troops into what I know will be a bad situation. I don't think any of these tactics are necessary to complete the campaign, but the standard approaches to battles are pretty well documented on youtube already, so I wouldn't be adding much by showing those. There are several exploits that I do consider a step to far and have not shown, but where that line is will definitely vary by player. It really varies by battle, but from comparing against Ray RiverssGaming and Something Compass's campaigns the main difference is that I usually face anywhere from a few thousand to 10-15k less infantry. The other unit types also get pushed up a bit by this, but that is harder to directly quantify. How much of this is due to the random campaign variables affecting things is hard to tell. The difficulty impact of this depends on if you're playing the straight base game, or the UI mod that I am using. In the base game the large skirmisher and artillery units do about as much damage as a minimum size unit, so increasing their size(or infantry since the scaling is related) actually makes the game easier. Having that bug fixed is a noticeable difficulty increase. While facing more infantry can make some battles harder, you also can gain more experience and capture more guns for very little increase in losses in many cases. Though with how tight the CSA timers are it will also be harder to full clear maps since you have that many more men to grind down even after you completely surround them. With the larger units I would think politics becomes a higher priority as does trying to make sure you get the max recruit return from captures in every battle. In some cases larger units would definitely have been a good idea, the side battles post Shiloh for example. I don't see much reason to ever go much above 1500 though unless I'm just making a pure recruit melee brigade. I don't like how clunky the larger units feel and it starts to get harder to fit them into cover and have them close enough to support each other. Also the ranged damage benefit drops off pretty hard past 1500 so I wouldn't get much benefit out of it with the way I play. Here are some sample numbers of damage output by size. 1000 men does ~30 damage per volley. 1250 does ~34 1500 does ~37 2000 does ~38

Unfortunately yes, this one hasn't been kept up to date with the latest J&P changes. The next version of the J&P mod will have several updates to the surrender algorithm that will be different from WVPM's so this mod will probably get retired at that point.

Mansfield: I trade time for kills in a battle with no time limit to secure a good chunk of manpower for the coming battles. Losses: 1459(292 returned from medicine) Kills: 21724

Chickamauga: On day 1 I try to get rid of as many skirmish units as possible. On day 2 I mostly try to stay hidden while grinding down the Union forces until my second corps arrives. Once they come in I take advantage of the gap in the Union line and setup a defensive line to trap all of the reinforcements. Eventually I get bored and start closing in a pocket so very little is left to mop up on day 3. Losses: 10130(2026 returned from medicine) Kills: 57074

60k on MG? That's a bit surprising as I was only facing 40k on legendary with a similarly sized army.

It's been a while, but I think I used to start with 6 infantry and 4 artillery? 2 24pdrs, 2 20pdrs. Can usually get close to taking out one unit of enemy artillery before the infantry arrive. Start with units in the trees, near the bridge/ford. Hit the initial infantry, pull the guns back, then the infantry to the second set of trees where the fortifications are. On the left I stay in the clump of trees and the field and retreat to the back of the trees and the houses in the middle as I get pressured. Goal is to have the CSA push into the center where they get hit from both flanks. Initial infantry are bigger than normal but I think 1400 was enough for me. Reinforcements are mostly infantry with more artillery mixed in. Snipers eventually but those are hard to make much use of in the battle. Second corps doesn't have all that much in it. Some other options include a fighting retreat, giving up the point and falling back to either the woods across the river on the left. Or back to behind the stream to the south. Let the AI extend, then loop around behind it and crush it from 3 sides.

The default sizes on that battle are pretty high. The last time I went through it I was still using 1.1k sized infantry units and I was still facing 2.5k+ units when I was normally facing 1.6k. The weapon defaults are also pretty high, fayettvilles and 24pdrs seem to be almost guaranteed. Finding ways to keep those cannons off of your troops reduced casualties a lot for me. Supply raid can be a pain. I prefer to defend a line further south away from the defenses so that I can take out the reinforcements piecemeal. Something Compass on youtube has an example of this. You can click finish while the VP is contested as well so a quick cav charge can get you a win if nothing else. Overall the new damage curves biggest impact definitely seems to be with skirmishers and artillery. Not unsurprising since those two were most penalized by the old curves but it certainly makes some missions much harder. Rio Hill as the CSA goes from manageable to nearly impossible if the enemy weapons value gets high enough for them to have scoped rifles. I've also had to rework my entire battle strategy a few times when running into 24 gun cannon units. Those really hurt now. With Siege of Suffolk and Supply Raid completed you should be past the worst of it. Some of those later battles can be annoying, but mostly you can afford to just take your time and let your artillery lay waste to everything. Happy to hear you're enjoying the mod and thanks for the feedback.

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