Battle mechanics test: armour and melee defence

[Robin de Bodemloze]

While doing some tests on the new DLC units I came across some very interesting findings on bow monks, who managed to kill nearly as many katana samurai as yari ashigaru. I did a bunch of tests and the results are as follows.

All tests were done in custom battle, 1 unit vs 1 unit, my bow monk was ordered to walk into range each time and the number of kills before melee was recorded.

Yari ashigaru (3 melee defence, 2 armour) - 83 kills
Katana samurai (4 melee defence, 5 armour) - 69 kills
Katana samurai (ranked 9) (11 melee defence, 5 armour) - 64 kills
Naginata samurai (6 melee defence, 9 armour) - 32 kills

Conclusions:

- contrary to my initial reaction, bow monks do not have armour piercing (see other thread)
- going from 2 to 5 armour resulted in roughly 17% fewer kills, but going from 5 to 9 armour resulted in 54% fewer kills
- seems to imply that armour has a parabolic effect, i.e. much more effective at higher end
- melee defence does very little to protect against arrows (a 9 ranked katana samurai still got eaten up by arrows
- implies that building master armourers/armoury encampments would be very effective for samurai units who have a naturally higher armour, and much less so for ashigaru (? - can anyone confirm this?)

Thoughts on whether this matches actual experience would be welcome.

Is there a way to add armour to units in custom battle? Seems there should be but couldn't find it.

[crzyrndm]

More than one test run for each type needs to be run to reduce the effect of the random element(accuracy) to draw accurate conclusions. But you may be right in the increasing effectiveness of armour

[spicykorean]

I forget if the topic is here or over at .com but yes, armor's effectiveness increases exponentially rather than linearly against arrows.

If you don't mind, would you please run your tests several more times so we can get a better baseline?

Also, something else that I've been wondering about is how much armor helps in melee. Supposedly, melee defence + armor works against melee attack in determining casualties.

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Also, something else that I've been wondering about is how much armor helps in melee. Supposedly, melee defence + armor works against melee attack in determining casualties.

I'm assuming it's a combination of melee attack, melee defence and armour? There's no direct way of testing this really without the ability to administer armour upgrades in custom battle, but yari samurai and katana samurai both have 5 armour, katana samurai has 12 attack and 4 defence (16 total), yari has 6 attack and 8 defence (14 total), yet katana > yari every time.

Naginata samurai have 9 attack and 6 defence (15 total), and still lose to katanas consistently despite the 9 armour. If one assumes the +1 difference in total melee attack and defence doesn't make a world of difference, this makes me think that armour plays very little role in determining melee, or it could be coding from the rock-paper-scissors mechanism dictating that swords > yari that overriding all the melee stats??

[jadesympathiser]

I'm assuming it's a combination of melee attack, melee defence and armour? There's no direct way of testing this really without the ability to administer armour upgrades in custom battle, but yari samurai and katana samurai both have 5 armour, katana samurai has 12 attack and 4 defence (16 total), yari has 6 attack and 8 defence (14 total), yet katana > yari every time.

Naginata samurai have 9 attack and 6 defence (15 total), and still lose to katanas consistently despite the 9 armour. If one assumes the +1 difference in total melee attack and defence doesn't make a world of difference, this makes me think that armour plays very little role in determining melee, or it could be coding from the rock-paper-scissors mechanism dictating that swords > yari that overriding all the melee stats??

apparently yari suffers a penalty when fighting katana.
Can this be confirmed?

Oh and for matchlocks, do they do better against armour then arrows (stats aside)

[daniu]

apparently yari suffers a penalty when fighting katana.
Can this be confirmed?

No, in fact I think Jack Lusted stated that there were no explicit weapon type penalties.

Oh and for matchlocks, do they do better against armour then arrows (stats aside)

Yes, I think they ignore armor altogether; or reduce it to half, not sure.

[Robin de Bodemloze]

The tests were done x4, and the numbers presented were the average of the closest 3. The units started in their default positions on the completely flat map (grassy fields or Aki) and walked in straight lines towards each other.

I'll expand the number of tests a bit and post more results later. Does anyone know if there's a way to add the armour upgrades in custom battle?

[crzyrndm]

Without modding, there is no way in a custom battle to increae armour (I really miss the old system where you could upgrade weapons and armour. It was so useful for testing)

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Redid the test with standard bow monks vs. standard units. In each case the bow monks walked up into range and the opposing unit did the same, and then ran once in range. Kills recorded before melee engaged or once the yari ashigaru broke.

kills vs. yari ashigaru (2 armour): 85 / 81 / 69 / 80 /81
kills vs. katana samurai (5 armour): 57 / 56 /53 / 70 / 71 / 71 / 59 / 55 ( I redid this a few more times because of the big difference whether that last volley goes off makes)
kills vs. naginata samurai (9 armour): 25 / 30 / 30 / 41 / 29

Seems like the effect of armour is still not exactly linear but less skewed to the top end than I thought(??)

[daniu]

Note that yari ashigaru and samurai also have different unit sizes; that also influences the casualties per volley.

[Robin de Bodemloze]

Note that yari ashigaru and samurai also have different unit sizes; that also influences the casualties per volley.

How is this so? I'm counting kills - in each instance it's cumulative kills after 5-6 volleys. Surely saying more enemy men die because there are more enemy men to begin with doesn't make sense?

For example, if in each volley 90 arrows are fired, and 30% find their target, 27 enemy men would die - regardless whether the entire enemy unit was 120 men or 1,200 men?

[crzyrndm]

How is this so? I'm counting kills - in each instance it's cumulative kills after 5-6 volleys. Surely saying more enemy men die because there are more enemy men to begin with doesn't make sense?

For example, if in each volley 90 arrows are fired, and 30% find their target, 27 enemy men would die - regardless whether the entire enemy unit was 120 men or 1,200 men?

Accuracy and spread of arrows. A larger unit covers a larger area so some that would otherwise miss hit instead. There are also more targets so less likelyhood of two arrows killing one person when one would have done the same job

[crzyrndm]

The swords beat spears has been removed from the equation now (M2 atleast spears had half attack vs. infantry). You can check this yourself by making the YS a ~4 chevron unit after which they easily beat KS.

It seems that a point in attack is worth more than either a point in armour or melee defence(as shown by KS and YS, who's attack and defence stats are almost mirror images). There was a thread around a while ago which proved by modding that armour works in melee.

Note that yari ashigaru and samurai also have different unit sizes; that also influences the casualties per volley.

Use nodachi instead to isolate unit size, if further tests are carried out

[daniu]

No, we used to do some of these experiments to test what archers do (fire arrows vs normal, loose vs standard formation etc). You will cause more damage vs a large unit that vs a small one; you can easily try it out by doing single volleys and counting casualties against a full as opposed to a decimated ashigaru unit.
A volley vs 120 men ashigaru will cause some 20-25 damage, against 90 men it's only around 15.

[Condottiere 40K]

That would depend on whether the casualty rate is calculated against the total amount of men in the target, or if it's an area effect, which is probably closer, since neighbouring units tend to find themselves suffering casualties as well.

[daniu]

No it's not calculated against the number of men in the target unit directly either, but if there are more men around the target position, a shot that originally missed has a larger chance of hitting someone else and still causing a kill.

[eXistenZ]

havent played a while, but i have the impression armour is useless aka the number in your unit statdoesnt mean anything. (i had it beofre but now i almost got it confirmed)

Before i always choosed my weaponsmith to give me silver armour, and with encampment that become gold, yet i find units dying from bow ashigarus way too common.

Same now, i just ambushed ikko ikki. My nagitana (armour 9) had 40% of its unit killed before it reached the bow ashigaru. Thats pretty much the rate yari ashigaru would die by (armour 2)

[Holy.Death]

havent played a while, but i have the impression armour is useless aka the number in your unit statdoesnt mean anything.

It isn't useless. Naginata Samurai are taking fewer casualties from arrows than weaker armored units. No idea how armor influences melee fight. There are some presumtions here and there that it does but nothing precise.

[Robin de Bodemloze]

I was wondering who started another thread like this.

[wewewawa]

Newbie here..

Projectile vs. unit armor

I think that armor does matter against range..as you can notice 200 man bow ashigaru launches a volley of 200 arrows but only 5-15 die in one volley

Factors:

Since arrows and musket balls do not penetrate the body of the units. As for what sir crzyrndm said

Accuracy and spread of arrows. A larger unit covers a larger area so some that would otherwise miss hit instead. There are also more targets so less likelyhood of two arrows killing one person when one would have done the same job

. I don't think there is such thing as projectile spread, its just that the units are not accurate enough. In a raw point of view its not 1 arrow/musket ball hit 1 kill. Speaking of accuracy there is the missile distance for half chance hit, another factor which causes why so many arrows launched only 5-15 die in a volley

There is also the damage value for the projectiles for arrows the vanilla value should be 0.5 for arrows, .75 for musket balls which brings us to unit properties which is the man health. Each man has 1 hp meaning if he his actually hit by two arrows he will die. So in a 200 man ashigaru unit they have 200 hp. Range also affects the damage it deals to a unit that's why more often than not, its 1 arrow/musket ball hit 1 kill. For the bow monks they have attack power extreme range modifiers or was it attack power long range modifier which actually boost the damage but then again now matter how large the damage if 3 arrows hit 1 unit the possibilities of killing 2 more units in a volley is wasted.

There is something called armor missile penetrating divisor and armor missile piercing divisor this is for the missile units firing. At the same time it has a counter part defense missile penetrating and defense missile piercing divisors, I'm not really sure how it works but i think they just negate each other. There a lot of other multipliers and divisors for the efficacy of a projectile. Accurrancy, defense, armor, distance and such.. (this is getting too long)

I think there is a range modifier too, the nearer the the target is the more chance it will find its mark.

How attacking works (I'm not sure about this one): I believe it works like this in a 200 man unit of archers, each one of them picks a target from an enemy unit, just like how infantry charges and melee fights work, I noticed that when I timed the charge right the unit would change from a running stance to a charge stance, then this happens 2 or more men end up trying to kill 1 man in a charge attack (I will try to post an image at later time). I do not know how it works for the cavalry since i noticed that they run over and knock other units when the charge attack hits properly but enough of that. Now what happens is that missile distance for half chance hit kicks in and makes the projectile miss making it go to another unit or it hits the ground.

I think these parts should not be here.. :\

Melee vs Melee...

I think most of you guys already know that melee damage is how fast a unit eliminates an enemy when they fight, as one of the features of shogun 2, they're are 1v1 fights between fighters in the melee. Melee defense how long they can last in a fight. But these are not the factors alone for the kill/casualties in a fight.

So armor actually matters, in melee fights, its just that vanilla values are small to notice much difference.

Factors:
Unit Morale, the lower the morale the easier the unit to break. There are also moral penalties in everything a unit does in a fight in a fight. Moral penalties lower their stats, their fighting potentials are diminished because they start cowering.... or something like that. Like the ranged units these also have penalties, several multipliers and divisors that affect the units base stat, like flanking, captain or the general died, under fire, encouraged, fatigue, environment, that sort of stuff.

This is actually my 1st time posting in the forums, so please forgive if there is something wrong with how I posted this.



I actually tried putting 999 melee defense on a unit just. It took a lot of time for t bring down 1 man in that unit. in a melee fight, but when faced with the bow it took 2 more volleys for a man to fall, matchlock... ehhh they go down like leaves in fall season. But when changed his man health to 5 took more than 5 volleys for one man to go down, 1 more volley of a matchlock to kill 1.



so yes, armor and melee defense but they work separately...i think...
it actually helps in reducing casualties... sorry for the long post although I'm sure u guys know this already u can actually check these values if u want with PFM
data pack ----> db ----> kv rules... just saying.