Leader Bug?

[TheGrayMouser]

My gut instinct is that it's the combat dialog which is bugged and probably not the leader bonus. Combat dialog reports nothing correctly ever. I pretend that all the manual rules are functioning as I presume they do because otherwise I'd rage quit at every severe loss. Would be nice if the reporting were fixed. Was a staple of the early wargame software industry to supply the user with the arithmetic so, you could have a greater sense of a quality product. New wargames just cover their terrible code with 3D fire and blood spatter effects.

I'm pretty sure it is the Leader Bonus... or more specifically, the column attack bonus/penalty.  One of the new things that got added into this engine is that infantry units in column get a rather severe penalty for melee.  That value is definable by the scenario designer (and it can be a bonus or a penalty, depending on the era simulated and the needs of the designer.)

The amount that the leader bonus is being "off" is equal to the defined column penalty, when the standard leader bonus is taken into account.

To wit, in the standard pdt, it's a -60% penalty, but a Leader in combat gives a -40% penalty in tests.  If you think about it, that makes sense, because a leader is normally +20%.  So -60+20=-40%.

I also tested it by changing the column attack penalty, and the displayed amount changed by the same amount.

Now, don't get me wrong.  For UNITS the column attack modifier is working perfectly.  We tested it pretty heavily when it was added, but the fact that somehow leaders are being charged with that penalty is what slipped through. (Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa).

Is it directly affecting combat? That's harder for me to test, because, as you said, the reporting is not as verbose as one might like.  That said, from having done identical tests of melees with and without leaders, it seems to me that the attack with the leader typically does worse than the one without.

I've passed all of this up to Rich, who will pass it to John.

In the meantime... yeah, keep your leaders out of melee

Ahh, very interesting, so the game treated leaders as columns!.   Glad it looks like something that can be (relatively) easily fixed.  Cheers!