The Combined Arms Penalty

[Plain Ian]

Mmmh well I still don't understand this rule? Are we saying pure armour attacks are better than a supported infantry attacks whether the support is 'adequate' or not? That doesn't make sense?

Start adding infantry to an attack and there is a chance your armour will be penalised?

I don't think that's the case. Take Green's second example: 20 tanks assaulting 50 men results in 5 unsupported tanks.

Now add just 10 men to the attacking hex. You have a total of 10 supporting infantry. The defending infantry exceeds the supporting infantry by 40 men, and that translates to 4 unsupported tanks.

So even this small amount of infantry is beneficial. Hope I got all of that right...?

So does this mean then that if there are 0 supporting infantry then all 20 tanks are penalized? I've always assume that they attack at full strength?

They don't all attack at full strength, but only 5 of them are penalized. Let's see the breakdown for a given HEX involved in an attack on a *non-clear hex containing enemy infantry*:

Attacking force: 20 tanks
Defending force: 50 men

Attacking supporting infantry: 0
Defending infantry in excess of attacking supporting infantry: 50

Tens of defending infantry in excess of supporting infantry: 5 (since 50 - 0 = 50, i.e. 5 tens)
Ergo, penalized tanks in attacking force: 5

No what I mean is if you attack with NO infantry then do all the tanks get penalized?

Sorry folks. The penny has dropped. I see what you all now mean. I've just tried an assault with ON Map results off and see where I am going wrong. Its the defenders infantry strength.....doh. Not sure why I kept missing this bit.......

Attacking with armour only



Attacking supported by 158 Panzer Grenadiers.



Why does the US infantry defense strength jump from 32 to 96? Edit: Wait a minute. Is it because I had Alternative Assault toggled on?

[Green]

Why does the US infantry defense strength jump from 32 to 96? Edit: Wait a minute. Is it because I had Alternative Assault toggled on?

Ian,

The Assault Status dialog is not showing the US infantry units defense strength. It shows the assault values for both attacker and defender. Remember that an assault is basically made up of two simultaneous attacks. The attacker and the defender both attack the other.

You are correct that it is the Alternative Assault Rule that is affecting the calculation. In the first example with only tanks attacking, the US assault is lower as it is using its hard attack value. In the second example, its assault is proportioned across the three German attackers and it uses it normal assault value against the two soft targets. So the overall assault is higher. Of course the German total assault value is also higher as it is attacking with two extra units.

And it is worth noting that the assault values shown are before the modifications that are displayed in the dialog.   

John

[Mr Grumpy]

Honestly, I think it should be called ‘Unsupported Armour Penalty’ as Green suggests for clarity.

David

If you insist. But perhaps what we need is an easy to remember acronym. I was thinking of something like Buttoned Up Going Gets Expected Reward. The added bonus is that it is more or less the word the tank commander would utter in this situation.

Your call.

  

  

[Plain Ian]

Why does the US infantry defense strength jump from 32 to 96? Edit: Wait a minute. Is it because I had Alternative Assault toggled on?

Ian,

The Assault Status dialog is not showing the US infantry units defense strength. It shows the assault values for both attacker and defender. Remember that an assault is basically made up of two simultaneous attacks. The attacker and the defender both attack the other.

You are correct that it is the Alternative Assault Rule that is affecting the calculation. In the first example with only tanks attacking, the US assault is lower as it is using its hard attack value. In the second example, its assault is proportioned across the three German attackers and it uses it normal assault value against the two soft targets. So the overall assault is higher. Of course the German total assault value is also higher as it is attacking with two extra units.

And it is worth noting that the assault values shown are before the modifications that are displayed in the dialog.   

John

Marvellous. That's a pretty clear explanation John. So basically both units are 'firing' at each other and this shows the casualties they are likely to inflict on each other.

A lot going on under the 'bonnet' there...... (or 'hood' in US) 

Ian

[Green]

Obviously the manual needs some improvement. Here is what I would propose;



Unsupported Armour Penalty



When vehicles assault attack into non-Clear hexes, they may suffer from a lack of infantry support. If there is at least as much attacking supporting infantry as there is defending infantry, then no Unsupported Armour Penalty occurs. For attacking infantry to be considered supporting, it must be stacked with attacking vehicles and only that portion within 10 times the number of vehicles is considered.



This means that for each attacking hex, if that hex has both infantry and vehicles, the number of attacking infantry and the number of attacking vehicles times 10 are compared and the lower of these two figures represents the supporting infantry for that hex. So, if there are 10 men and 2 tanks in the hex the number of supporting infantry would be 10. But if there were 100 men and 2 tanks the number of supporting infantry would be 20. If a hex has only infantry attacking or only vehicles attacking, it has no supporting infantry.



The number of supporting infantry form each attacking hex are added to together to give the total supporting infantry. If this total exceeds the total defending infantry, then no Unsupported Armour Penalty applies. Otherwise, the number of supporting infantry is subtracted from the number of defending infantry to determine the deficit. This figure is divided by 10 (rounded up) to give the number of vehicles that are not supported. These unsupported vehicles have their assault values halved. 




Is that clearer? Any suggestions? Apart from how to spell 'armour'!

[Strela]

‘Form’ is ‘from’ in the first sentence in the last paragraph...

[Green]

‘Form’ is ‘from’ in the first sentence in the last paragraph...

Thanks, David. I suspect I could have read that a thousand times and not noticed. I see what I expect to see.

[Green]

Marvellous. That's a pretty clear explanation John. So basically both units are 'firing' at each other and this shows the casualties they are likely to inflict on each other.

A lot going on under the 'bonnet' there...... (or 'hood' in US) 

Ian

Yes, it shows the relative attack values before modifications. But in assaults the casualty calculations are different depending on whether you are the attacker or the defender.

The casualty range relevant for a given attack is determined using the High and Low 'Combat Losses' values in the parameter data. For assaults the High and Low values for the attacker are typically twice those of the defender. So given the same attack values the attacker initiating the assault will suffer twice the casualties, on average, than the defender would.