What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is a turn-based World War II strategy game stretching across the entire Eastern Front. Gamers can engage in an epic campaign, including division-sized battles with realistic and historical terrain, weather, orders of battle, logistics and combat results.

The critically and fan-acclaimed Eastern Front mega-game Gary Grigsby’s War in the East just got bigger and better with Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: Don to the Danube! This expansion to the award-winning War in the East comes with a wide array of later war scenarios ranging from short but intense 6 turn bouts like the Battle for Kharkov (1942) to immense 37-turn engagements taking place across multiple nations like Drama on the Danube (Summer 1944 – Spring 1945).

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fbs
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What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

Say I take one 152mm Gun-Howizer (left side) and compare with one 152mm Field Gun (right side):

Code: Select all

 Range = 18,800         Range = 29,500
 Accuracy = 250         Accuracy = 500
 Rate of Fire = 4       Rate of Fire = 1
 Blast = 10             Blast = 10
 Anti-Soft = 249        Anti-Soft = 270
 Cost = 79              Cost = 107
 

Now, I understand accuracy, rate of fire and blast, but I have no idea what is "Anti-Soft". Is that something that combines range, accuracy, rate of fire and blast? Or is something that is applied on top of those stats?

You see, for the 152mm Gun-Howitzer, anti-soft/cost = 3.2, while for the 152mm Field Gun anti-soft/cost = 2.5, so both would look very similar.

But if anti-soft does not include ROF, then the 152mm Gun-Howitzer would get anti-soft x rof = 996, while the 152mm Field Gun would get anti-soft x rof = 270, eliminating completely any reason to keep the 152mm Field Guns around (should retire all of them, burn them and use the scrap to build gun-howitzers)...

So, anyone knows what's used to calculate this "anti-soft" thingie?


ps: same thing about "anti-armor"; if a weapon has anti-armor = 150 and penetration = 0, does that make it terrible against tanks compared to another one that has anti-armor = 100 and penetration = 80?
Denniss
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by Denniss »

AFAIR it's effect vs non-armored targets
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swkuh
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by swkuh »

Denniss has it right AFAIK. But combat code takes account of rate-of-fire so higher rate of fire gets more on target during any engagement. Not so sure how range affects all this as greater range of the gun might occasion more action in any engagement.

Wonder, though, why Soviets get to do arty bombardments from two hex distant but Axis only from one. Anyone?
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

After spending several hours checking anti-soft values, I'm coming to the conclusion it's basically linked to type/caliber. That's particularly clear for small arms:

1 for pistols
2 for SMG
3 for rifles/mg up to 9mm caliber
4 for 12.7mm and .50"
5 for 15mm
6 for sniper rifles
8 for 20mm
12 for 25mm
20 for 37mm (with tweaks)

for larger guns the amount of tweaking increases and is more varied, with no apparent pattern. So there seems to be a basic system for anti-soft that depends on caliber alone, and then selected guns were tweaked using external information. I can only guess the reason for the tweaking is due to the shell, not to the gun.

The important thing is that anti-soft doesn't seem to depend on range, blast or rate of fire at all, so I'd imagine the game probably uses a method like: use range to determine where the weapon is on the firing line, then rate of fire to see how many times it fires, then accuracy and blast to see if it hit something, then anti-soft to determine the if the target is damaged or destroyed. That's of course all guessed (except blast being used to determine if it hit anything, that's in the manual), but perhaps it uses something like that - the whole thing seems to inherit from Steel Panthers quite a bit, even converting ranges in meters to range in 50m hexes, which is Steel Panther's hex size.
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pompack
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by pompack »

Now in the original Grigsby code back when (this is significant because I don't think he ever throws away a good idea just because it was originally implemented in assembly language for a processor that was obsolete two decades ago [:D]); there was a distinction in "anti-soft" values for things that go boom (i.e. non-zero blast) and things that don't. The final anti-soft value for a no-boom (e.g. an MG bullet) was a function of range, but the value for things that do go boom (e.g. artillery) was not (which makes a lot of sense if you think about it). Now the probability of a hit was always a function of accuracy and range, but given a hit, the damage inflicted by artillery is independent of range for soft targets.

Things were easier "back when" because he provided formulas and explanations for what was going on under the hood. I realize why he stopped (some really ugly forums where people got rather nasty about how "stupid" his formulas were); however I was always more interested in how it worked in his games than in arguing with his approach.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

Me too.

I don't care too much as what the formulas are, but I care for what does what, qualitatively, and right now there are many sections omitted in the manual. I mean, at least Zhukov could ask someone what is anti-soft thingie in the gun ad brochures.

WiTE oddly varies a lot on how much it discloses: some things are pretty well explained, like how leader checks work, and that's great, while others are just some blackbox that nobody understands what they do (although everybody has some sort of theory, which rarely can be confirmed because of the 50 other undisclosed variables at play, and because the only information we have are final aggregate results).

As there are big gaps in understanding the game qualitatively, people can only use big numbers, that is, adding more of stuff or getting bigger stuff is the only way to get controllable results. So if people find that at some point their Infantry divisions cannot break through, then the most assured way of breaking through is by getting more divisions, or more armor, or more support -- when perhaps they could achieve the same by using a better leader or upgrading the unit's TOE.

While I'm ok with zerging games (I do love Starcraft, and don't mind at all building a 200-unit zergling army), I'd rather prefer to have this more akin to Steel Panthers, were quality was more important than quantity. I'm sure that deep down there is some deep consideration for the qualitative aspects in WiTE, but 2by3's steadfast inclination to hide a lot of that in game and to leave us wondering, that means we can't use any of that to make informed decisions. I was a launch-day WiTE buyer, but I stopped playing the game one month after, because of my increasing frustration with all those unknowns, and I fear I'm going down the same path again.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by jaw »

The Anti-soft rating is the effectiveness of one round of ammunition against a non-armored target. For small arms, it is primarily based on muzzle velocity, for explosive rounds it is based on weight of shell and calculated using a differential equation that slowly reduces effectiveness of increasing shell weight (diminishing returns).

Anti-armor rating is the effectiveness of a non-armor piercing round against an armored target.

Penetration is the effectiveness of an armor piercing round against an armored target.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

Coolnes, thank you, jaw!

That explains a lot! That's excellent! :D

So one more thing, if you would - please-please. Consider a Panther D; it has anti-armor = 17, penetration = 172, HVAP pen = 251; so that gives the effectiveness, as you said, of HE, AP and HVAP shells against an armoured target.

Now, I know it has 79 ammo... but there's no breakdown anywhere (that I could find) of that 79 ammo in HE/AP/HVAP, so can I assume it has some sort of fixed distribution across those 3 shell types, and then it works like Steel Panthers, were say the first 4 shots are HVAP, the next say 50 are AP, and the next 25 are HE?
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by jaw »

No, that's not how it works. To begin with, the anti-armor rating for the Panther's gun is never used in the current combat formula. I put it in originally for completeness sake but as the combat system was ultimately designed the anti-armor rating is only used for weapons lacking a Penetration rating.

Second, the actual ammunition that a gun will used in combat is based on an ammunition probability matrix that considers the firer's nationality and time of the War. Whenever a weapon fires at a target the program uses this matrix to determine if a more effective round can be used against the target than the weapon's standard ammunition.

For example, if an infantry gun fires at a tank and the gun has a HEAT rating, it will use the ammunition probability matrix to determine if it can fire HEAT instead of HE at the target. The same process is used when an anti-tank gun with HVAP ammo fires at a tank.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

That's awesome information, jaw, thank you so much! This is superb, and the system seems to be very-well thought.

----------------

With that I'm ready to make my informed decision about which artillery I'm going to use:

41 BM Howitzer Rgt - standard at Front, as the 208mm B-4 M1931 Howitzer is big, very slow, old, expensive, heavy, has no AP shells and needs 15 people - an offensive artillery barrage equipment.

41 Heavy Gun Rgt - contain, as the 152mm BR-2 M1935 Field Gun is big, slow, old, has no AP shells and needs 12 people; moreover, has no extra guns in pool and is used only by 3 units (120th, 317th, 524th Heavy Gun Rgt), so it's being phased out. Not cost-effective.

41c Corps Arty Rgt - contain, as it has the same TOE as 41a Corps Arty Rgt, and while will upgrade to 41 Arty Rgt RVGK, the number of guns in the 41a and 41 RVGK are the same, while 41c to 41 RVGK has a drop, so there's no benefit on using 41c compared to 41a.

41a Howitzer Rgt - standard at Corps, as the 152mm M-10 M1938 Howitzer is fast-firing, very small, cheap, has small crew and hits soft almost as hard as the ML-20 and while it has no AP shell its HE shell has an useful anti-armor effect. But, shouldn't be used for new production, as it's standard divisional equipment and several thousands of them will be released as the Rifle infantries upgrade to ML-20. Notice, though, that the M-10 stops production Aug-1941 and only by Nov-1943 there is a replacement (the D-1 howitzer), so for a long time this TOE will have to feed from the pool only.

41a Corps Arty Rgt - standard at Army, as the 122mm A-19 M1936 Field Gun and 152mm ML-20 M1937 Gun-Howitzer share similar characteristics: are fast-firing, small, have small crew, has a great AP shell (better than most tanks) and have great anti-soft effect. The 122mm is better against armor, and the 152mm is better against infantry, so a mix is good.

41b Corps Arty Rgt - contain, as it starts with M-10 and soon upgrades to ML-20 (there's no way to avoid, support units are always in refit), so it will just dump more M-10 into the pool, and the rifle divs will do a lot of that already.

41a Gun Rgt - contain, as it starts with A-19 and ML-20 and then upgrades to ML-20 alone, so it just loses a pretty nice anti-tank gun.


In WiTE one needs to think ahead in time (or zerg 5,000 rifle divisions on Hitler's rear end).

ps: if there was a TOE with only 122mm A-19, I'd use it, as these are great guns against those pesky panzers.
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morvael
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by morvael »

I don't think artillery should be measured for it's AP capability, because it's employed at long range. AT Gun regiments (available later) have pretty good AT results in that domain.

Most important factor (from my experience) is whether TOE proscribed guns are available for production, without them you risk having a lot of starved regiments (1-3 guns each) that don't switch to other types due to how the replacement/swap algorithms work. I had this problem with my howitzer regiments. Also check to what given TOE upgrades, some nice types end up badly as very small units.

Second important factor is whether the unit needs more support than it can provide from intrisinc support squads. As Soviet most of your units drain support squads from HQs, so it's good to have some units that don't. Look at my TOE overview or details thread to find out. Heavy Gun Regiments are good here, although they have 150% intrisinc support - due to how the game operates they will not be added to provide over 100% need and this will reduce your TOE% to about 61%, but still on 40+ morale the units will be considered ready.

Remember that support units are sent to combat only to help units attached directly to the same HQ within 5 hexes, so it's useless to have front-level artillery. I also had those 203mm Howitzers and ended never using them.

All this experience made me to use Heavy Gun Regiments as preffered types, with RVGK as close second (to save AP I did not disband them).

edit:

Check those threads:
tm.asp?m=3243508
tm.asp?m=3243486

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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

Those spreadsheets are very useful, morvael, thank you so much for them!

So we looked at the same data and came to opposite conclusions, so much for my informed decision.. :(

Now, so you don't believe in artillery using AP, right? I just followed a few combats at message 7, and this is what I noticed: after the air attacks happen, the artillery always fire first (both sides), then the other units (influding infantry guns) fire in some sequence that I can't understand. When the artillery fires, it seems to be just another weapon firing direct. I followed some 150mm leFH-something shooting my BA-10 and T-40 to pieces, before the poor thingies had a chance to shoot anyone -- and you know nothing gets those Political Commissars madder than not being able to shoot anyone.

I give, they don't seem to hit much, but that seems to be a constant for everything that's shooting during combat (trust be, it's incredibly boring to watch 1,000 rifle squads shoot 1,000 other rifle squads at 50m, and get only 10 killed in the process). But still my thinking is that I'd rather have the artillery kill a tank if they hit it, than not killing it...
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morvael
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by morvael »

The facts are:
- major problems with getting units filled up with guns if their TOE uses an obsolete type (most important problem)
- lack of support causes higher "operational" losses, it's better not to increase the problem by using low intrisinc support units if alternatives are available (medium importance) - that's why it's better to build Mortar Regiments than Mortar Battalions, even when both have 36x120mm mortars
- no real use from SUs in higher level HQs, as they don't get assigned to combat; you will constantly have to reassign them to lower level HQs and back (costs AP, major problem if you are low on points and those points are really needed for building Red Army 2.0)
- some units turn to something very weak or don't update at all having eqipment problems in the future, so it's worth checking TOE upgrade paths - edit: unless you want to emulate the Red Army's transition from numerous artillery regiments to artillery divisions without taxing your ARM pool (SUs dump guns to pool as they get smaller, which are taken by the divisions)

Observations:
- very low rate of fire weapons seem to be not that much effective (ultra high caliber guns)
- you won't use those ultra high caliber guns to recapture cities taken by Germans in '43 and onwards - by then you will be using artillery divisions
- AT artillery regiments seem to be better at killing tanks, high trajectory artillery is better in it's traditional role - disrupting and destroying large number of opponent's infantry squads and artillery; this is also more "fluffy" (historical) to use them in that role
- to save AP it's good to base on what you get at the start of the game, this usually means targeting 2 41 Army Artillery Regiments/41 Artillery Regiments RVGK per army (they will form from Corps Artillery Regiments) with some armies getting a single Howitzer Regiment (but not the BM one); those two types of Artillery Regiments have the highest number of guns till the end of the war, but they are low on support squads.

This is of course based on my experience with the game, your experience may suggest that other things are important as well.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

Oh... you sure artillery in Front HQs don't participate in combat? I thought they would, provided the Front HQ is 5 hexes from the battle.

I'm looking at the battles from turn 1, and I see the 293rd Corps Art Rgt attached to Western Front being committed to an attack on the 161st Rifle Div from the 2nd Rifle Corps; the command HQ for that battle was the 2nd Rifle Corps, so the 293rd Corps Art Rgt got hit with the 10% penalty. The battle was 2 hexes away from the Western Front HQ at Minsk.

Now, having the Front HQ 5 hexes from the battle location may not be easy on defense, but perhaps it's easier on attack?
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morvael
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by morvael »

The manual says so:
Headquarters units can only commit support units to attached combat units. The HQ unit must be within five hexes of attached combat units and be able to trace an indeterminate path of friendly hexes, which can be in EZOC, to those same combat units in order to commit support units during combat.

...and it is so, from my experience. Command HQ for the battle is not important, as long as you had in the battle at least one combat unit attached directly to Western Front and Western Front HQ was no more than 5 hexes away from said unit, it could commit some SUs to that combat.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by Denniss »

Problem with these artillery guns may be from the combat system - one gun fires at one target. But due to blast effect an artillery shell may hit/damage/destroy/disrupt multiple targets.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

ORIGINAL: morvael

The manual says so:
Headquarters units can only commit support units to attached combat units. The HQ unit must be within five hexes of attached combat units and be able to trace an indeterminate path of friendly hexes, which can be in EZOC, to those same combat units in order to commit support units during combat.

...and it is so, from my experience. Command HQ for the battle is not important, as long as you had in the battle at least one combat unit attached directly to Western Front and Western Front HQ was no more than 5 hexes away from said unit, it could commit some SUs to that combat.


Oh, so the reason why the Front HQ committed its arty to a battle with a Rifle Div attached to Corps attached to Army attached to that Front, was that there was another unit (in this case a NKVD Border Rgt) that participated in the battle!

Got it, thanks.

So that's a huge bummer, uh? If the Front will not commit artillery to battles that only have Army units in it, then there's no point having any arty with the Front, at all!

The long scenario is then very misleadingly set, because the Southwestern Front starts it with 20 support units attached, and Western Front with 12. I used to play just leaving these attachments in place.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

Meh, back to the drawing board. When I think I understand something in the game, I find out I didn't... :(
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morvael
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by morvael »

Yeah, I only put construction and AA SUs in Front HQs, since I don't attach any combat units to them.
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RE: What is "Anti-Soft"... ?

Post by fbs »

So, I was hoping that the artillery would fall in a nice 3-level hierarchy as it did in real life: smaller, fast weapons with at Corps level, heavier weapons with the Army level and the big guns for demolishing fortifications with Front or STAVKA level. That would produce some richer game play.

But, can't attach artillery to 1942 Corps, and Front-level artillery is useless, so it really comes down to choosing one or two pieces from the list below for Army level, and building a few hundred regiments with them for artillery support. Just brainless zerging with no subtlety, uh?


Image


hmm... do you know if artillery attached to Front is committed when an Artillery Division directly attached to that Front participates? That would give a way to get those heavy guns into play - if only for the role-playing around it.
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