Clear explanation of ground combat please.

BOTF Strategy Guide

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TurboC
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Clear explanation of ground combat please.

Post by TurboC »

So I always have trouble with invasions. I usually have to bombard them to a paste and send in way too many transports, to avoid being "repelled." This one just took the cake though. Vanilla game, me as Fed invading a Cardassian system. I had bombarded 1 turn, prior to adding transports:

System stats: 3 Planets, pop. 111, ground combat 158, planetary shields.
My attacking stacks in order: 9x Destroyer II, 4x Destroyer II, 9x Troop Transport 1, 7x Troop Transport 1

Repelled.

HOW????

16 troop transports couldn't beat 158 ground combat?? Can someone PLEASE clearly explain the math that the game is using??

All I can figure is that either the shields lowered my tech 1 transport effectiveness almost completely, or the math is just completely broken and you can't ever ensure victory in ground combat.

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Spocks-cuddly-tribble
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Re: Clear explanation of ground combat please.

Post by Spocks-cuddly-tribble »

It's a quite intricate RNG implementation elaborated here: viewtopic.php?f=156&t=1632#p22232

Based on this you have to calculate your success chance each time (e.g. final result 2:1 = 80%).

One problem being to poor RNG engine in BotF. If you get a bad random value for the task, you fail no matter what.

Don't get us started about the random issue of re-sorting of ships and task forces against OBs (random loss of TTs might lower the base chance without any notice).
I don't know how many bugs is too many but that point is reached somewhere before however many in BotF is.
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TurboC
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Re: Clear explanation of ground combat please.

Post by TurboC »

Thanks!! I will take an in-depth look at that code & procedure. I want to know what the odds were in this case. I might even write a simple program to run the calculation and tell the odds for a given invasion, as well as tell the necessary transports to reach certain % success against a given target.

* Actually, even looking through all the links I can't seem to find the needed info. I see the list of the formula, but not everything is clear:

MAGC = modified attacker ground combat = (sum of transport strengths (but are these lowered by 10??) * racial GC bonus)^2 * racial empire bonus
MDGC = modified defender ground combat = (listed ground combat strength (?) * racial GC bonus ? * racial empire bonus ? * ??)^2

-- How do buildings, shields, orbitals, etc... modify defender strength? And are they inside the squared quantity?
-- Is it correct that the attacker squares before empire bonus, and defender squares after the empire bonus?
-- Where are the GC and empire bonuses for each of the 5 races? I couldn't find them in any of the links.

Chance of success = [MAGC / (MAGC + MDGC)] * 100%

If this formula is correct then it seems wasteful to dedicate a lot of transports to 1 invasion, since you will never even get close to 100% let alone reach it. But rather you'd have to figure out an optimal number to send in on each attempt, depending on the situation. I'd also like to mention that it feels like the computer nearly always succeeds at invasion just with 1 or 2 transports, so it cannot possibly be using the same formula.
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Spocks-cuddly-tribble
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Re: Clear explanation of ground combat please.

Post by Spocks-cuddly-tribble »

The first link in Gowron's post is broken due to a forum update. These topics used to be one but somehow got separated and some links got messed up: viewforum.php?f=155

The right post with the missing data you need is this: viewtopic.php?f=155&t=2930

In such cases try this link with F3 keyword search: viewtopic.php?f=214&p=40658#p40658
I don't know how many bugs is too many but that point is reached somewhere before however many in BotF is.
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TurboC
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Re: Clear explanation of ground combat please.

Post by TurboC »

Thanks. This gets me closer, but it still doesn't list some values, instead telling me to "find them in UE." I've never used that editor before. Can someone list them? I don't care about every single minor race, just the 5 major empires. In the example, Cardassians were listed as 1.1, so I just need the other 4.

For transport strength it says 40 for T1, 160 for T2, however in another thread there was mention of transport strengths being effectively reduced by 10. Can you confirm this?

Lastly I'm unclear what "Gowron" meant in the attacking formula when he listed "...the race-specific ground combat factor" and then listed "the empire-wide bonus factor of the attacking empire." I take it the race-specific ground combat factor is the same as the above, i.e. 1.1 for Cardassians? But then empire-wide bonus factor, I don't know whether that includes global structures like the Naussican recruitment center, whether it includes (1 + 0.1 * weapon tech), or both.
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