Combat mechanics.

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way2co0l
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Combat mechanics.

Post by way2co0l »

So I wanted to bring up the combat mechanics to see what kind of suggestions we could come up with in order to try to get the type of static trench warfare you see in this era. Obviously this era was unique period where entrenched positions and machine guns made it extremely difficult and costly to take ground. No one truly understood what these ramifications would be and continued to hold to more traditional ideals when it came to combat believing they could organize an offensive that would end the war, throwing away many many lives in the process.

The problem we run into is that the way the SR series has always represented combat as more fluid in nature. The closest I've ever seen the game emulate this style of warfare was in the Korean wars, along that very small front. But even there, the combat tended to be somewhat fluid along the flank away from the city centers surrounding Seoul, and casualties ran so high with so many munitions expended that the wars would always end relatively quickly, usually with South Korea winning due to the North running out of munitions unless they were being propped up by Russia or China.

These are the main things I'm personally going to be looking at in my suggestions.

First, war munitions. All of the main combatants need to be self sufficient in armament production for at least 75% of the conflict they're going to see. If they lose ground and those factories are damaged, that's an entirely different thing, but they need to have the base production in place to be self sufficient to continue waging war without relying on foreign subsidy. Factual production is irrelevant in my mind on this point. Gameplay performance is more important on this point, because watching the war effort fizzle out 6 months in with one side simply steamrolling over the enemy without any further resistance simply isn't fun and was one of the issues with the 36 scenarios at release. Munition production to support the war effort is simply essential for a fun game where the war is allowed to drag on for an impossibly long time unless one side is able to find an actual advantage to exploit somewhere.

We're going to need large numbers of basic infantry units to simulate any kind of long front, and those infantry need to be relatively cheap to build and maintain (especially if you're using my suggestions from the other thread). Infantry need to have a desire to take fortified defensive positions when possible and to avoid moving unless it's actually necessary to do. They should also try to fill in the gaps between those major defensive positions to avoid weaknesses to encirclement. Infantry move slowly, so reinforcing front lines will take a long time. I understand that one of the major considerations of WW1 were mobilization times and were even of vital interest to the German war plans for example when it came to how long it would take the Russians to put a credible force into the field. Having said that, infantry need to be on the lines by the time the war starts for gameplay balance purposes. At least enough to hold the line while the rest of the reserved force can mobilize and get there. As the war is underway, the AI should make an attempt to have some infantry defensively fortifying behind the line so that even if the enemy is able to push the front line back, they now have to deal with an entrenched second line. This would obviously require a large number of infantry units, but to help ease this issue, I'd encourage them to try to form lines that are no deeper than 3 units per hex. Obviously having fewer units in a hex would seem to be a weakness, but I have suggestions for that which I'll get to shortly. But maxing it at 3 per hex in regards to AI consideration for unit placement (with important defensive points along the front being an allowed exception) will allow you to fill the line more easily while maintaining reserve lines behind the main ones without having the unit counts blow up into numbers that cause engine lag issues.

Now, with these considerations in place, you'd be able to fill the line, infantry would be able to take defensive positions and to actively gain entrenchment bonuses to help them hold more effectively. The one issue they'll be dealing with is local superiority when the enemy chooses to launch an offensive by mass assaulting at a specific position. Which brings me to my next suggestion.

Unit damage capabilities need to be very very low. For one, aircraft at the time had very limited ability to effect ground combat with it primarily fulfilling a reconnaissance and air superiority roll (I'm really looking forward to seeing zeppelins in game though :D). And land combat was tailored to hardened defensive positions over offensive ability, but that is partially represented through the entrenchment bonuses. But if you leave damage numbers too high, then when combat begins, units will be destroyed at a very fast pace with the conflict raging everywhere. Infantry is too slow to be able to fall back from the line when it takes heavy damage so will rarely escape destruction. Even when the army attempts an organized mass offensive, they'll have the advantage of their larger stacks vs the smaller 3 unit stacks, but they'll be attacked by multiple different hexes at once when they attempt to attack, have to deal with entrenchment bonuses, and it shouldn't be easy to push them back without a very dedicated offensive to do it. The numbers advantage will make it possible for a properly determined attack to pull off, but difficult. Even with the low damage numbers, units will still take plenty of damage, and it should result in prolonged battles making it both more intense but also realistic. And again requiring the MG production to supply this type of conflict to make it possible in the first place.

So those are my main thoughts on this. I'd love to hear what anyone else has to say on the subject?
Hullu Hevonen
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Re: Combat mechanics.

Post by Hullu Hevonen »

I would say I agree with most of what your saying. The unit values should be easy tonfix when adding in units from the era. I'm more concerned with the AI behaviour. Currently the AI basically mounts it's best offensive when a war starts, when it basically throws all it's got at you until it runs out of steam and starts feeding one unit at a time. Which granted is more related to manouvre warfare than trench.

-The AI would basically need to check if it has units in the next hex to right or hex and fill accordingly, in a smart manner. The give orders to the line as bulk to move 3 hexes forth etc.
-While not moving would automatically give an entrench command to the line.
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way2co0l
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Re: Combat mechanics.

Post by way2co0l »

Hullu Hevonen wrote:I would say I agree with most of what your saying. The unit values should be easy tonfix when adding in units from the era. I'm more concerned with the AI behaviour. Currently the AI basically mounts it's best offensive when a war starts, when it basically throws all it's got at you until it runs out of steam and starts feeding one unit at a time. Which granted is more related to manouvre warfare than trench.

-The AI would basically need to check if it has units in the next hex to right or hex and fill accordingly, in a smart manner. The give orders to the line as bulk to move 3 hexes forth etc.
-While not moving would automatically give an entrench command to the line.
Personally, I think that if they form defensive lines 3 deep which are only tasked with defending their point in the line, and complementing it with true offensives which pull reserve units that aren't tasked with holding the line to try to force their way through a specific point to break through should work fine. Most infantry will be tied up in the main 2 lines of the front, and everything that they have spare can be used for their crazy offensive plans, because frankly, they were normal for this time. The offensives won't have a whole lot of luck pushing the enemies lines back and will result in large numbers of casualties on both sides, but typically weighted against the attackers, which is also typical of the war, especially early.

That's honestly my main issue with my suggestion though. While it's very historically accurate, the player has the obvious advantage of just building an entrenched line that they know the AI can never force them out of and can bleed the AI heavily in the process. I created another thread in the regard of what sort of motivation we could create to convince the player to attack even though it's not the optimal choice which basically boils down to political and military pressure. It was simply expected for commanders during this period to orchestrate a massive victory that ends the war immediately, and the player should suffer large penalties for failing to make an effort towards accomplishing that task. The difficult part in my mind is knowing what the measurement for determining that should be, and my current best idea is casualties. You'll suffer large casualties regardless whether you're attacking or defending as the entire front trades blows with each other, but you suffer even more when you launch an offensive. The player should be forced into a position of launching an attack simply to appease internal pressure, and trying to at least get something of value in the process.

But yeah, I do agree that the AI needs to be capable of forming lines along the front, centered around defensive points (cities, fortifications, ect) and then simple thin lines connecting those together to ensure they can't be surrounded and cut off easily. I don't think it's necessary to have those front line units try to advance though. If you only keep them 3 deep when in a defensive stance, that allows you to bring many units forward for a zerg attack that would have a large numerical superiority over their 3 man lines which is the advantage they'll need to even have a chance. Being in combat should make attritional losses (another one of my threads) higher so the first and second lines will routinely need to swap with each other, but also encourages the player not to put too many units on the front line because they'll all suffer more than the second line or reserves will. You should ideally only mass units on the front line when preparing an actual offensive IMHO. That offensive for AI purposes should probably be local city centers or locations of value rather than just trying to push the line a certain number of hexes. If they manage to make gains on the front, the rest of the line will adjust to fill in the new territory and make it difficult for the enemy AI to retake, though losing territory should prompt the AI to organize a mass counterattack to at least stop the enemy offensive if they can't retake the territory outright. A counterattack should probably take precedence over an actual offensive in terms of pulling reserve troops, which again was a common trend during this period. Many offensives can arguably point to troop redeployments to other areas as a key reasoning for their ultimate failures.
Hullu Hevonen
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Re: Combat mechanics.

Post by Hullu Hevonen »

You also need to consider gameplay value, a largley passive line is 'boring'. I agree on the counter attack aspect. The problem is that a human player will easily defeat a passive line formation, just make a strong spear force and bust through. Now when I play SRU i often use shorten thrench lines to gradually take new positions, has proven very effective against both AI and players. In our frontline case I would simply switch tactics. I think in an ideal situation, the AI would need to make the line, prefferably supported by artilley. Then have reserves as you say that uses the old AI currently in the game that counter attack when a breakthrough risks. When going on the offensive they would use most of their available forces, including reserves. Basically by mixing old and new AI you get a more flexible AI that is better able to cope with losses.

Also a side note, I remeber reading somewhere that artillery where the biggest killer on the front, machine guns and rifles only came to play when the enemy was much close to you, unless the frontlines ran close to each other. Plus Artillery could kill even if the enemy was hiding in their trenches.
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YoMomma
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Re: Combat mechanics.

Post by YoMomma »

The main thing that should happen is AI entrenching and falling back when it failed to over run the enemy. Also allies helping in entrenching border cities. If you can't take the city you cant get the supply. And you need ALOT to take a big, entrenched, city suported by airforce.

In some ways i find SR2020 mechanics harder in the way the AI is more passive, i had some hard time taking Bejing or Paris with all the cluster cities suported with artillery AND infantry. In SRU it's easy pickings for me. Just need to defend your border cities and when the swarm stops (you killed 95% infantry and tanks) you take out the ai in days with airforce suport. I guess passive AI was one of the complaints and instead of improving on it, it's now an all or nothing kinda thing, but yeah, i think ai entrenching should be a thing since it's one of the orders a human can do.

Does this make any sence?
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way2co0l
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Re: Combat mechanics.

Post by way2co0l »

It does actually make sense to me Yomomma and I agree. I agree with Hullu also that there are gameplay considerations as well. A more or less static front with hundreds of infantry on lines firing back and forth with each other but making very little actual gain isn't necessarily the most exciting in general, but the fact is that is exactly what you get from WW1 warfare and is actually a FEATURE in this case. lol. Gains should be slow and hard earned. Finding a massive breakthrough win like you can in later eras simply won't be as possible here because they defend everywhere, your offensive will progress painfully slowly, and will be met by an enemy counterattack that's just as massive as your own offensive which should grind your advance to a halt. The fact that you're advancing through enemy territory where no supply exists for you, and they are reinforcing from defensive territory, often with rail at their back means that they will be able to respond to your offensives better than you can organize them and the sheer difficulty of attacking against even odds means you'll lose more troops.

My biggest concerns are to get the AI to form up and handle line warfare properly, and properly motivating the human to actually attack knowing full well that they're going to suffer massive casualties for it when hindsight tells them to just defend and bleed the enemy out, at least until technology catches up to the point where attacking entrenched positions becomes somewhat equal again.

That's interesting about artillery, though I believe that's only in regards to combat casualties. I'm pretty sure you're right that it inflicted more than actual gunfire or melee fighting even taking machine guns into account. The only real way to launch a successful attack was through massive coordinated artillery efforts. But I still believe those numbers pale in comparison to those that suffered from trench foot, hypothermia, dysentery, and multiple other ailments that had absolutely no relation to actual combat. When you're looking at the largest killer on the front, it's important to make the distinction between combat inflicted and more natural attrition because it was by far the biggest killer in this war.
Hullu Hevonen
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Re: Combat mechanics.

Post by Hullu Hevonen »

I was refering to lines being passive with my boring comment, meaning even if there was an opening to attack, the AI would prefer to stay defensive. Which wasn't the case in ww1, both sides tried to breakthrough, though due to very well fortifies/entrenched poitions supported by arty, a brakethrough became very hard and costly. As for air force, it is not comparable to ww2 or modern day warfare, air warfare was at the time in it's infant stages. Often even the aircrafts them selves malfunction in air and the process of building and maintaining wasn't either advanced yet. Cities/towns where mostly destroyed in battles, due to the heavy emphasis on artillery, unlike ww2 where manouvre warfare was the thing, tanks basically out ran all other types of land forces. I actually find it easy to clear cities in game, because I move my army with support assests like aa, supply and arty.

Look, I'm confident I can beat the current AI as well as an trench AI, because both types have their weaknesses. Also reserves where used to plug holes when a breakthrough happend and used to push offensives. Thus I also think keeping what the AI already know, combined with teaching it to defend and entrench is the most realistic and gameplaywise most challenging.

Creating the code to make the AI isn't a cake walk, but if the engine is able to indentify between individual units, you can start the line from one unit, then check it's surrounding, and start issuing commands to other units to form up on its flank etc. Looping through the line. I would argue this is easier than teaching the AI to form complex army formations that it has to send to different objectives.

I was talking about combat casualties, there isn't any function in-game for trench foot.
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