What factors improve chances to capture bases intact?

[Jorge_Stanbury]

What factors can improve the chances to capture a base with little damage?

I was somehow able to capture Hong Kong with all its industrial base (light and heavy industry and repair shipyard) intact... that after repeated naval, airbase and ground bombing from day one + artillery bombing since day 3 + at least 7 deliberate attacks
in the other hand, Palembang was captured with at least 200 refinery and oil damage; no bombing at all; one shock attack

For what I understand, after reading some comments, key factors are:
- If defender has engineers, chances are high you will see damage
- shock attack will mean a much higher chance of damage than deliberate
- Naval bombing can do a lot of damage

- maybe a surrender (like in Hong Kong) will reduce chances of damaging vs retreat?

is there anything that can be done to reduce the chance of damage? maybe use of paratroops or engineers?

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury
For what I understand, after reading some comments, key factors are:
- If defender has engineers, chances are high you will see damage
- shock attack will mean a much higher chance of damage than deliberate
- Naval bombing can do a lot of damage

I'd add:

-number of attacks (unsuccessful) attempted before final capture

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

What factors can improve the chances to capture a base with little damage?

I was somehow able to capture Hong Kong with all its industrial base (light and heavy industry and repair shipyard) intact... that after repeated naval, airbase and ground bombing from day one + artillery bombing since day 3 + at least 7 deliberate attacks
in the other hand, Palembang was captured with at least 200 refinery and oil damage; no bombing at all; one shock attack

For what I understand, after reading some comments, key factors are:
- If defender has engineers, chances are high you will see damage
- shock attack will mean a much higher chance of damage than deliberate
- Naval bombing can do a lot of damage

- maybe a surrender (like in Hong Kong) will reduce chances of damaging vs retreat?

is there anything that can be done to reduce the chance of damage? maybe use of paratroops or engineers?

Naval "bombing" does not per se do more damage than air or land "bombing".

What you are confusing is that unlike either air or land attack, the facilities which are targetted by a naval bombardment task force is under computer control. It is therefore possible that a naval bombardment TF would specifically target industry and thereby damage the industry. In an air attack the same effect can be achieved if a city attack mission is selected by the player. Players do not normally choose a city attack mission for their bombers against a base they are attempting to capture.

Alfred

[inqistor]

The only factors, I am avare of, is number of active engineers, during losing a base.

I remember in old WITP, I have used too small force to take Palembang, and it was forced to retreat. After some time, and reiforcements, and lots of air, and sea bombardments, I have taken base intact (not much left from Allies unit, after all those bombardments).
While for Batavia, I prepared lots of forces, marched them from nearby base, and took Batavia in one attack, without earlier bombardments - base was completely trashed.

Of course it would be harder in AE, because there is now chance, that bombardment will target industry.

[treespider]

To me the primary determiner is Shock Attack.

I rarely if ever shock attack and I rarely if ever capture bases with significant industry damage.

When I do shock attack...the base's industry is usually significantly damaged.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

Against the AI... first game. I did a shock attack at Palembang... this obviously happened before I posted this threat... big mistake; but live and learn; I am not going back to a previous turn; the total damage was like 250 points for both oil and refinery

big mistake #2: I didn't land with enough force in Balikpapan and Tarakan, so I am sending more ships to the meat grinder; I already lost one "good" transport and another nice one will be in dry dock for hundreds of days.
I might have reduced the damage with a naval attack, but as already mentioned, AI can decide to target oil and that is a no-no.
I was also planning to send paratroops (they are already in a TF coming to Jolo) but since they will force a shock attack; I will use them for Ambon or Kendarri

So, I will just send more transports... this time I will use the smaller/ slower AK-t to reduce the painful loses

[dr.hal]

ORIGINAL: inqistor

The only factors, I am avare of, is number of active engineers, during losing a base.

I remember in old WITP, I have used too small force to take Palembang, and it was forced to retreat. After some time, and reiforcements, and lots of air, and sea bombardments, I have taken base intact (not much left from Allies unit, after all those bombardments).
While for Batavia, I prepared lots of forces, marched them from nearby base, and took Batavia in one attack, without earlier bombardments - base was completely trashed.

Of course it would be harder in AE, because there is now chance, that bombardment will target industry.

Inqistor, I think as time moves on it makes less and less sense to refer to the old WITP because as time goes by the relationship gets less and less distinct. Hal

[inqistor]

ORIGINAL: dr.hal

ORIGINAL: inqistor

The only factors, I am avare of, is number of active engineers, during losing a base.

I remember in old WITP, I have used too small force to take Palembang, and it was forced to retreat. After some time, and reiforcements, and lots of air, and sea bombardments, I have taken base intact (not much left from Allies unit, after all those bombardments).
While for Batavia, I prepared lots of forces, marched them from nearby base, and took Batavia in one attack, without earlier bombardments - base was completely trashed.

Of course it would be harder in AE, because there is now chance, that bombardment will target industry.

Inqistor, I think as time moves on it makes less and less sense to refer to the old WITP because as time goes by the relationship gets less and less distinct. Hal

Only assuming, that this part of code was rewritten. But I am not sure any part of ground combat was touched (except monsoon effect).

[Alfred]

In addition to monsoon effects ground combat code has definitely had some other tweaks made.

Alfred

[dekwik]

There was a lot of posts about this in a regular WITP thread a few years ago. I think the conclusion was that luck and the presence of non-disrupted engineers made some difference. It was suggested (see below) that an intact capture had about a 33% probability, a catastrophe about the same, and in the middle 33% there was variable damages.

Uamaga posted this pretty long and very detailed explanation of how it works that may have been wrong and may have been changed.... It seemed incredibly detailed and how would he see this code?

Hi,
here is my second take on Demolition process. Hopefully more precise with few corrections, extensions. Procedure goes like that:


First lucky die is rolled with 33% chance of success. If it will success the procedure ends here with all Resource/Oil Centers left intact. However Japanese player should not count on it in case of Palembang (Murphy's Law at work). Maybe at Miri or Taytay...
Otherwise a number is to be calculated, I will call it Demolition Ability number (DemoAbility from now on). Please note it is a name invented by me - I have no clue about designer/programmer ideas so it is just a guess on my side. Anyway calculation goes like that:

First DemoAbility is set to fixed number (50). In case there is no defender units it will be the final value used to calculate demolition percentage.
For every unit defending the base a product of that unit's Experience and unit's raw E-Value is calculated, divided by 10 and then added to DemoAbility totals. But what the E-Value really is?:

It is per unit intermediate value set (elsewhere) based on unit's composition. I named it E-Value per analogy to E value (and A, G, F, V values) you can see in tooltip when hoovering the mouse over friendly units on map.
Every Engineer team (slot 251) adds up 1 to unit's E-Value.
Every Eng. Vehicle (slot 250) adds up 5 to unit's E-Value.
Apparently disabled elements of the above are not excluded here. This is different then for E value displayed in tooltip which accounts only for non-disabled elements. So I tend to think about this internal E-value as "raw" one. Nevertheless it seems that this raw value is what matters for demolition purposes. If so disabling elements is not enough and to limit losses you need to kill them. Kill'em all if you can . If you can't you take a risk of raising their Experience.
The thing which is not clear to me yet is question if the losses taken in the last combat (one resulting in base capture) have influence on unit's E-Value used here. I tend to think they are not but I'm far from sure here (it is difficult to differentiate here between losses in combat and that taken in forced retreat). Same goes for unit's Experience.

After looping throuch all defenders it is time for "unlucky' die roll. There is 33% chance that bad luck will hit Samurai resulting in multiplying DemoAbility by 10. Doom... Doom is hanging over that precious Palembang R/OCs.

Now another number is caluclated. Let's call it Demolition Targets (DemoTargets):

Airfield adds up its level to DemoTargets totals.
Same with Port adding its level to DemoTargets totals.
Now go through a loop over all base facitility slots (there is up to 20 facilities in base possible).

Exclude Mapower Centers facility.
For any other facility (in SRA area there will be mostly R/O Centers, sometimes also HI factories and shipyards) add SizeOfFacility/100+1 to DemoTargets.
Strange as it is (and intended or not ) loop does not skip over empty slots. So as a result of this loop it is guranteed to raise DemoTargets by at least 19: 20 slots - 1 slot for MC facility which is present in every base with R/OCs.

Examples: For Miri we get DemoTargets=21 (0[AF]+1[Port]+19+1[OilC/100]), for Balikpapan DemoTargets=36 (4+4+19+6[RC/100]+3[OC/100])

Finally we get to calculating achived Demolition Percentage (DemoPctage). It is simply a result of division DemoAbility by DemoTargets. Please note that it is integer division so for example: 50/21=2% of damage (case typical for Miri).
DemoPctage is now applied to Airfield (Runaway) and Port. Please remember that it adds up to already existing damage from bombardments or land combat.
Base Supply and Fuel Storage is reduced by random percentage (between 0 and DemoPctage-1). However as it is not the only place where Supply/Fuel depots can be reduced it is difficult to verify numbers precisly.
Now looping trough all Base facilities again:

exclude Manpower Center facility (again). Actually MCs are reduced but in procedure above of that handling R/OC Demolition.
For all other facilities DemoPctage percentage of facility is disabled. Again integer arthmetic is used. So for example if DemoPctage=2 and RC=10 then no RC get disabled, for DemoPctage=19 and RC=10 still only 1 of 10 RCenters will be disabled.
For Oil facility there is second hit applied (probably to model much higher vulnerability of Oil wells comparing to Resource mines?). After apply DemoPctage as above we repeat the procedure again in the same way. For example: for DemoPctage=6 and OC=300 after first step we get OC=282(18); after repetition final result is OC=266(34) (this is quite typical case for Brunei, though beeing unlucky one can get DemoPctage=60! ).

That's it .