How to create new hard - soft values for new units Japan 45?

[Mit Sigel]

" Seriously? Values are assigned based on how people feel about how the game plays? "

I wouldnt say values are created on how the game plays but research and OPINIONS.

All these games were built on lots of research, if i remember correct David flew to the Kursk battlefield when he was working on that title.

Alright. Research. I can look at copies of German Explosive Ordnance (Projectiles and Projectile fuses) jointly published by the Army and Air Force in 1953,  Japanese Explosive Ordnance (Army Ammunition Navy Ammunition) another joint production from 1953, and finally TM9-1901 Artillery Ammunition, published by The War Department in 1944.

Let's say I wanted compare the relative effectiveness of some weapons in the 70-75mm range, like: The Japanese Type 92 7cm high explosive projectile. The weight of the fused projectile is 3.81kg, and the bursting charge is .59kg of TNT or RDX and ammonium nitrate. The HE projectile for the German 75mm mountain gun weighs in at 12 pounds total with a bursting charge of 11.6 ounces of "flaked nitroglycerine with nitrocellulose and nitroguanadine." And finally the M48 round for the 75mm pack howitzer weighs in at 14.5 pounds with a filler of 1.49 pounds of TNT. (I don't know why the publication on Japanese ammunition is metric.)

Having done the basic research, I could form an opinion about the relative effectiveness of each weapon. Or, I could apply a common formula, like the one found here.

Bursting Charge Power - The following approximations of explosive power may be used using TNT = 1.00 as a reference point.

• Before and during World War I
  • Black powder = 0.33 to 0.50
    
  • Guncotton = 0.50
    
  • Picric Acid = about 1.05 to 1.10
    
  • USA Explosive D = 0.95
    
• After World War I
  • German and Italian TNT = 1.00
    
  • British Shellite = 0.96
    
  • Japanese TNA = 1.05
    
  • USA Explosive D = 0.95
    
• Other Explosives (torpedo warheads, mines, depth charges)
  • Amatol (80/20) = 1.24
    
  • DD (Dinitronaphthalene/Dinitrophenol 60/40) = 0.82
    
  • PETN = 2.21
    
  • MDN (Mélinite/Dinitronaphthalene 80/20) = 0.88
    
  • RDX = 1.94
    
  • Tetryl = 1.39
    
  • Torpex (TPX) = 1.50
    
  • HBX-1 = 1.17
    
  • HBX-3 = 1.14
    
  • German SW types = about 1.07
    
  • Japanese Type 97 (TNT/hexanitrodiphenylamine 60/40) = about 1.07
    

Two rules of thumb about Burster Power
  1) The effect of the burster may be taken as being proportional to the square root of the weight of the bursting charge.
  2) For the same basic shell design, the size of the bursting charge is proportional to the cube of the bore size.

Norm Koger describes the formula he used for the first version of TOAW here. It looks similar to the formula from navweaps.com

The lethality of a long range indirect fire artillery piece, for example, is based on the size of the round. Lethality per round is equal to the square root of half the caliber of the round (in millimeters) cubed. L=(c/2)^(3/2). Why? The amount of explosive in the round is based on the volume of the round, thus the cube. But the damage done by an explosive round falls off with the square of the distance from the point of impact. So a 150mm round is not simply twice as nasty as a 75mm round. It is almost 3 times as lethal. But lethality per round does not tell the whole story. If you look at the figures for these two weapons in the manual you will see that the 150mm gun is only about twice as lethal as the 75mm gun. Why? The 75mm weapon has a higher rate of fire. Indirect fire artillery lethalities are modified by a function intended to represent the effect of rate of fire on overall lethality.

He never got around to describing the function. And IIRC, there were people at the time that thought he used a different formula once the game included modern weapons. Those conversations could probably be dredged up from the Matrix forum archives.

Of course it is possible to get even geekier. Like at Nigel Evan's website on WW2 British artillery. Here he goes over some of the research done by the British War Office.

It doesn't take much of a search of the internet to find newer and more complex formulas that allow for the comparison of different types of projectiles. Like this one from the Australian Army that cites Nigel Evans.