Annoying UI Bug That Everyone Knows About...

[scJazz]

Now that was interesting...
In CB 1.6
Apparently 5000 hvy infantry and 800 light infantry can get the job done in around 10 turns taking around 20% losses against a full 4K Homeworld with no infantry protection. My forces have a small ground combat penalty for being Braniacs with a Strength buff of +10.

[Will]

Ok, I just tried things out in the simulator... and it does not work like I have observed in actual game ground combat results. In the simulator, the first troops put on the transport are the first damaged, and successive drops damage the new drops before moving to the old. But I have observed that a few of each type of troop gets destroyed after ground combat, and it seems to be weighted to the number of the troops.

I'll run a test game later, to try to verify a few things... but in my experience, troop order has no impact for the actual ground combat.

[Fyron]

Maybe that bug was not fixed in simulated combat when it was in real ground combat?

[scJazz]

What I've seen is that the troops in slot 1 take the majority of damage 95%-100%. Slot 2 takes some damage 0-5%. Slot 3 takes some damage 0-1%. My guesstimate is that if there is damage left over from killing <integer> troops in slot 1 it is applied to <integer> troops in slots 2 and 3 in a nice even manner. I've seen this repeated in hundreds of CB invasions.

[Fyron]

You would see that if you always load infantry first, as troops with the most hit points are likely to be hit first. CB infantry have massive numbers and massive amounts of hit points.

[scJazz]

I wanted to say something stupid like are you sure about that but then I caught your post count out of the corner of my eye. OK... All my CB troops have 50 hp. I rarely use heavier troops. I nearly never see significant damage to the slot 2 or 3 troops. I might even have a log of the damage sustained over dozens of troop drops. I'll go look for it.

[Will]

Ok, so an in-game "test" shows me that simulator ground combat does not work like actual ground combat at all. For simulator, it appears that troops are in a stack (as in the compsci data structure), so that the troops you drop first are the last to be targeted and destroyed, and the troops you drop last are the first to be destroyed.

It appears that actual ground combat works a lot like component selection for ship damage. Add up all the total hitpoints, pick a random number out of that range, and whichever component/troop that falls on, gets destroyed. So, masses of infantry and heavily armored "guard" tanks will soak up most of the troop damage, allowing your high firepower tanks to get in more shots.

[Suicide Junkie]

scJazz said:
I wanted to say something stupid like are you sure about that but then I caught your post count out of the corner of my eye. OK... All my CB troops have 50 hp. I rarely use heavier troops. I nearly never see significant damage to the slot 2 or 3 troops. I might even have a log of the damage sustained over dozens of troop drops. I'll go look for it.

Right, but it is not the hitpoints of individual troops that matters:

5000 x 50 = 250k hp worth of light infantry.
800 x 50 = 40k hp worth of heavy infantry.

Thusly you should expect the light infantry to absorb about 5/6ths of the damage because they have 5/6ths of the total hitpoints.

[scJazz]

Suicide Junkie said:
Right, but it is not the hitpoints of individual troops that matters:

5000 x 50 = 250k hp worth of light infantry.
800 x 50 = 40k hp worth of heavy infantry.

Thusly you should expect the light infantry to absorb about 5/6ths of the damage because they have 5/6ths of the total hitpoints.

Which would be exactly what you would expect except you got the figures backwards.

800 light infantry x 50hp = 40K hp of light infantry
5000 heavy infantry x 50hp = 250k hp worth of heavy infantry

Light infantry are in slot 1 and absorb the majority of the damage. Transports are all loaded with 100 light infantry in slot one and the rest heavy in slot 2.