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Just to clarify...
Taking into account the basic attack/defense stats of units (Tank attack value is 50%, infantry defense is 30%)
When the attacker brings in a LOT more units then the defender has, do the defense values just DROP or something?
I was in Russia: I lost 2 infantry, 2 fighters, and a bomber. And I only managed to hit ONE tank.
I was in Eastern US, in the last stage of the game. I lost 9 infantry (or 10) and I only killed, I think, 3 in return.
Off the coast of california, I lost a carrier, two transports, and a sub, and no hits back.
Off the coast of Eastern US, I lost a destroyer and two transports, killing nothing.
In all of these cases, the attackers had significantly more units. So it makes sense that so many of my units were destroyed. But, then, why were practically NONE of theirs' taken out with mine?
Luck
is always part of this equation.
It's an interesting question...
And I have seen similar things at times. But I have also seen enough of instances where a defender holds strong while being outnumbered to not be sure thet there is anything more than odds and psychology going on tbh.
And looking at your examples we get:
1) Odds: 2.05 -> Kills: 1
2) Odds:2.7-3.0 ->Kills: 3
3) Odds: 0.85 -> Kills: 0
4) Odds: 0.7 -> Kills: 0
Basically you had a little bad luck but the results really aren't far off the expected outcome.
Still, as I have said before, I would like a "low-dice" system used instead, it cuts down on luck and IMO that's fairer.
think so
I think your right about that. At least in my experience when one side has an overwhelming force they seem to somehow always take little to no losses when they clearly should have. I had 6 fighters defending against a large force and didn't get a single hit with my fighters.
I am sure someone will contradict me, but like I said this is just from what I have seen in my games and my fights.
i bet
the first conradictee(is that right?)will be my good buddy the jester..any takers??i know he cant resist .
adfasdf
I was going to blow this topic off since it looked like it was being handled, but I'll definitely entertain you if you're calling me out.
I won't contridict anything said so far about the topic at hand, but I will gladly contridict you by not replying directly to the topic at hand. ;p
ooo
got me.
...
Just got a new one, as Russia.
It was Karelia. I had 1 infantry, 1 tank, and 2 planes defending. He attacked with 4 infantry and 9 tanks.
I lost EVERYTHING, he lost ONE infantry.
Tanks and infantry defend on 1 or 2! Attackers defend on a 4 (65% in this game). I only hit ONCE? My game is finished now, in turn 4.
As bromley said
your result isn't unlikely at all. The attacker was expected to kill 5.1 units (i.e more than you had) so a clean sweep was always the likely outcome.
I would suggest that you take some time a read up on odds and expected values, feeling hard done by all the time gotta be tiring.
not unreasonable
With the force he was attacking with, he would expect to hit at 5.1 units on average. Your defensive force would get 1.9 hits on average. I didn't do the math for the attacking force probabilities, but there was a very good chance he was going to kill at least 4 units. Here are the probabilities for your defensive force to kill x units:
0 units: 6.0025%
1 unit: 27.44%
2 units: 40.915%
3 units: 21.84%
4 units: 6.0025%
Probability can be rough on you sometimes. It should balance out in the long run though. You'll find that the battles that went horribly for you will stick in your mind a lot more than the ones that go really well for you!
If you want to get a rough idea of how many units your force can reasonably be expected to kill, the easy thing to do is to add up the the total hit probabilities of all your units and then divide by 100. In your case, infantry and tanks defend at 30% and fighters defend at 65%. Total probability is: (30+30+65+65)/100 = 1.9. It doesn't always work if the dice go crazy one way or the other, but it's a good estimate.
Random plane crashes?
Is there some algorithm that allows for random plane crashes? I recently sent 10 planes to attack a soft target -- a sub and a transport (yeah, major overkill). At most I should have taken 1 loss, but for some reason at the end of the turn 3 of my planes crashed into the ocean. I had 4 fighters travel 2 spaces from a carrier to the target, so in theory they should have been able to travel 2 spaces back to the carrier to land safely. Any ideas about why I lost 3 expensive planes for no apparent reason?
Others?
Nope. Every time I've seen planes crash, it's because they couldn't make it back to a base. Even things like AA aren't considered when determining if the planes can make it home.
What other aircraft of yours were present?
The most usual mistake is people trying to land on territory that they didn't own at the beginning of the turn. Aside from that, the other reason for a crash is the loss of a territory/carrier or the movement of a carrier out of range.
There are people who just get it flat-out wrong or who send aircraft on suicide missions. But presumably that's not the case here.
No others
That is the frustrating thing -- I watched the move replay twice and didn't see any other forces, certainly not enough to bring down three planes. I "lost" a battle that I should have won because of losing those three planes. I sent in massive overkill -- 6 bombers and 4 fighters to attack a sub and a transport. The planes had no other available targets that turn, so I figured why not -- there was supposedly no extra risk to me and it guaranteed the enemy's total destruction. It didn't say that my planes were destroyed, simply that they "crashed into the sea" at the end of the turn. The 4 fighters were launched from 2 carriers which didn't move and one of the fighters made it back just fine, so distance definitely wasn't an issue. I was thinking of building a carrier task force, but now I'm afraid to go that route since random losses like that are expensive.
planes
On the right hand side of the screen while the turn is playing out for you is a list of events that have taken place. Every battle you engage in is recorded and the win/loss will show up for each battle if you click on the event. So in this case it might have said something like "You lost forces in the mid-alantic" if you click that it will highlight the area on the map that the battle took place then in the top left it will show the losses that each side (attacker and defender) took.
As for aircraft landing you need to make sure they still have somewhere that they can land at the end of the turn. Like Bromley said, they will fly over enemy AA and other aircraft when landing. Nothing will prevent them from landing other than not having a place within distance. Only exception I can think of is if you were landing 4 planes on two aircraft carriers ad one got sunk or moved away. Also, you need to be careful if you sent some planes from multiple areas and they took different amount of movement points to get there. If you had two planes use 3 movement points to get to the fight and 2 others that just used one. Then you will want to make sure the ones that used 3 movement to get there land in that place 1 space away and the others land in the area 3 spaces away.
Lastly, if your planes attack somewhere and you instructed them to land in a territory that you no longer control, they will then land at any place that they can make it to with the remaining movements that they have left. If there is no safe place in range, only then would they run out of gas and die. you would be able to watch it turn by turn though and see what happened.
Events
I think I looked at all of that and still couldn't figure out any reason for the losses. The flight path was simple -- 4 fighters left the 2 carriers, travelled two spaces over water, attacked 2 enemy units, then they should have travelled two spaces back over water to the carriers. No AA was possible, and only one enemy plane was within range, but I never saw it move. Maybe I just ran into some random bug in the program?
AA on transport?
I don't suppose that AA on a transport could fire???
No transported AAs don't
No transported AAs don't fight and about your 3 lost planes it sounds like you messed up and set the wrong landing sites tbh.
Sometimes it's just lucky dice...
as I've lost two major territories that were abundantly defended to lesser attacking forces. The invaders were not only successful, they suffered very few casualties in both attacks and will probably prevail in this game because of it.
Shit happens.
None of the above
Radiant has been quite clear that they crashed rather than were shot down. Also clear that the two carriers were still there at the end of the turn and that there were only 4 fighters involved in the attack (the rest being bombers).
So the only two possibilities are:
(a) It is a bug. Seems unlikely IMO, as I've not bumped into it myself or heard of it before. Still, it is possible - people have reported things I've not seen.
(b) Radiant accidentally moved his fighters 3 squares on the way there, meaning they couldn't make it back.
Setting the wrong landing site wouldn't matter if the planes had only been moved 2 squares, as they'd just reroute to a valid landing spot (in this case the carriers).
So I wouldn't let this put you off using carriers Radiant. Although personally I almost never build new carriers - they're pretty-much unnecessary in most cases.
Carriers
Yes, I'm not convinced that carriers are all that cost effective either. However, I'm playing the new Hex Armada map and decided to experiment with different strategies. The most popular ship in this game seems to be the subs, but I've been pretty successful in keeping enemy fleets away from my shores using bombers (since the subs can't shoot back), so I thought I would extend my range a bit by adding a few carriers to the mix.
And most useless unit award goes to . . .
A joint award: destroyers & carriers.
Subs rule :) .
I'm playing a Hex Armada map as well. As you might expect, fighters are proving to be far more useful that destroyers. My opponent has 17 destroyers which sit off my coast doing nothing whilst my 14 fighters defend against his invasion. Once I have a massively superior fleet, I'll switch them to offence.
Obviously, the only problem with a bomber patrol is if they intercept a fleet with aircover. Even if you turn up in force, your expensive bombers take hits.
I hate subs
I consider subs to be useless, myself. Typically, I want my "naval task force" to stay together - subs don't act that way when the task force is intercepted. I HATE subs for that, and will only purchase them in a desperate-Naval situation.
I consider destroyers to be very useful, but I consider a "stocked" aircraft carrier to be the "king of the seas", to be honest. Only two aircraft carriers (with the requisite fighters) make a VERY powerful fleet all by themselves.
Well . . .
. . . whilst I agree that having your subs wonder off whilst the rest of your fleet is blocked is a little annoying, you've got the same problem with your "king of the seas" and their fighter excorts. So you're often limited to single-square moves unless your fleet is just destroyers & transports.
A fleet of destroyers may or may not be better at sea than a bunch of fighters, but those fighters gives so much flexibility on land and sea that they're hard to argue with. Even if AA can make it too risky to attack major centres with fighters, they're still excellent units.
Cost wise, the carriers are a massive investment and little direct value in a fight. So that fleet you mention would cost 190 with a summed attack of 270.
I could field a fleet of 3 bombers & 4 subs, with change. As you couldn't block the subs, it's highly unlikely that you could force an engagement where only a part of my forces were present. Whereas it's perfectly possible that I could intecept your carriers if you got frisky and tried to move more than 1 square.
When we do fight, the summed attack values would be your 270 vs my 315.
And you'd be losing your fighters, costing 30, to my subs, costing 20.
And you'd lose your high-combat-value units immediately, whereas mine would be shielded by the subs.
Although there aren't any guarantees :) .
[When writing this I found that bombers are only 65% attack when I could have sworn that they were 85%. So they're not quite as good as I thought they were.]
fighters v destroyers
Fighters >>> Destroyers imo
For the same cost you get so much more.
Fighters move 4, Destroyers 2, Advantage fighters
Combat at sea, both 50%
Combat on land, obv advantage fighters
I'm in the hex game with Bromley vs. the 17 destroyers, twice that player has tried to land on Head Island and take it from Bromley, and while the destroyer group pretty much ensures no one engages his fleet, Bromley has no trouble defending the land with his troops + large air force. Eventually someone will engage that fleet, and it will likely be with lower cost subs to take hits + a big air force, would be my guess.
Fighters
I agree, which is largely why I think the carriers are so powerful.
I like subs
The fact that subs can block other naval vessels whilst not being blocked themselves, for the minimal naval unit cost, I find very useful. ;)
subs
are like the infantry of the water..with a usefull counter amphib.capabilities.they are both usefull and pathetic,just like infantry.