Revised combat factors

Can I assume that these revised combat factors ignore ‘quick kills’?
And do they match the historical battle accounts of the ancient writers?

Personally, I think that merely fiddling with combat factors is superfluous.
It’s their effect on the wargames table that is important.
And a combat factor is just a means of giving us that historical effect.

May I refer you to the following, showing the effects of combat factors:-
static.wikia.nocookie.net/fanaticus-dba/images/e/e7/COMBAT_EFFECTS_CHART_for_DBA_%26_HOTT.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20190204191800

Now try to give each troop type the correct historical effect within
the limits of the restrictive DBA and HoTT two-dice combat system.

After all, merely altering the combat factors without knowing their
effects just isn’t going to work…or give historical results.

Hmmm…-1 from the die roll or -1 from the combat factor makes no difference…
…the final score will still be the same no matter which method is used.

Besides, a plus or minus 1 is awfully powerful, and effectively doubles or halves
the chances of killing the enemy, or even making them recoil (which then allows
adjacent friends to have an overlap advantage, doubling their chances).

Perhaps something a little more subtle, such as ‘superior troops’ forcing their
lesser opponents to recoil on an equal score, would be less overwhelming.

But this brings up the question of what their corresponding disadvantage will be?
After all, in DBA every element advantage must come with a disadvantage, or
players will field armies of Mongols and Swiss all the time, since they’d be superior.

Something I have tried is this:-
For each ‘superior’ element you have, you must have a corresponding ‘inferior’ element.
So you could for example have up to 6 ‘superior’ troops, providing you also have 6 ‘inferior’.
(I’ll leave it up to players to decide who is ‘inferior’…just downgrading their Ps or LH would do)
To sum up; on an equal score, ‘inferior’ troops will recoil from ‘normal’ troops, and ‘normal’
troops will recoil from ‘superior’ troops.

Works for me.

Later Edit
Oh, I forgot to mention rear-support.
Troops receiving rear-support have the troop quality of the lesser troop type.
(This stops players having 'Superiors' at the front and 'Inferiors' behind them...
...they ALL need to be superior to get the benefit, and inferiors weaken the whole column)

One way to make units a bit tougher is to allow them to add +1 but only if they lose a combat...DBM or DBMM used to do something like this, I think.  Problem is that with ‘drawn combat = knights destroyed’ or whatever it might make some units too tough, tipping a combat from ‘blade loses, gets destroyed’ to ‘scores drawn, knight destroyed’.

Just a wild stab in the dark (which is what I’ll probably get if I suggest any more #### like this).

To create more flexibility for the "double to destroy" mechanism we could explore the mathematics of a d8 rather than a d6. This would allow a review of the combat factors and more grading options (eg horse archers v javelin light horse). The probabilities would change but perhaps not by much (eg a tied roll is 16.7% on a d6 and 12.5% on a d8). Just a thought.

Cheers

Jim

PS maybe this thread may lead to an advanced DBA3 variant

I’m going to do some ‘number-crunching’ to see the actual effects of
Jim’s D8, Martin’s add extra if less, and Haardrada’s +1 if the die roll
not the final score is less (all of which are much simpler than my clumsy
and messy ‘if score is equal’ system).

I’ll post the results here in an hour or two.
Stay tuned…

Well, I’ve done my ‘number crunching’, and here are the results.
Because of the very high chance of a recoil, the results in blue shows the most common situation.


Using D6’s, the present ordinary CF 3 fighting CF 5 outcomes (the numbers are chances out of 36):-
Ax v Bd:-                       CF 3 doubled   CF 3 recoils   Equal Score   CF 5 recoils    CF 5 doubled
CF 3 overlapped twice =      18 (50%)        15 (42%)          2 (6%)           1 (3%)             ---
CF 3 overlapped once =   12 (33%)      18 (50%)         3 (8%)          3 (8%)            ---
No overlaps =                       6 (17%)        20 (56%)          4 (11%)         6 (17%)           ---
CF 5 overlapped once =         4 (11%)        17 (47%)          5 (14%)       10 (28%)           ---
CF 5 overlapped twice =        2   (6%)        13 (36%)          6 (17%)        13 (36%)         2 (6%)


Using D8’s, ordinary CF 3 fighting ordinary CF 5 (the numbers are chances out of 64):-
Ax v Bd:-                       CF 3 doubled     CF 3 recoils    Equal Score   CF 5 recoils   CF 5 doubled
CF 3 overlapped twice =       28 (44%)          26 (41%)          4 (6%)           6 (9%)            ---
CF 3 overlapped once =    20 (31%)         29 (45%)        5 (8%)        10 (16%)         ---
No overlaps =                      12 (19%)          31 (48%)          6 (9%)         15 (23%)          ---
CF 5 overlapped once =          9 (14%)          27 (42%)          7 (11%)       19 (30%)        2 (3%)
CF 5 overlapped twice =         6   (9%)          22 (34%)          8 (12%)       22 (34%)        6 (9%)


Using D10’s, ordinary CF 3 fighting ordinary CF 5 (the numbers are chances out of 100):-
Ax v Bd:-                       CF 3 doubled     CF 3 recoils     Equal Score    CF 5 recoils   CF 5 doubled
CF 3 overlapped twice =       40 (40%)          39 (39%)           6 (6%)          15 (15%)          ---
CF 3 overlapped once =    30 (30%)         42 (42%)         7 (7%)         20 (20%)      1 (1%)
No overlaps =                      20 (20%)          44 (44%)           8 (8%)          26 (26%)        2 (2%)
CF 5 overlapped once =        16 (16%)          39 (39%)           9 (9%)          30 (30%)        6 (6%)
CF 5 overlapped twice =       12 (12%)           33 (33%)         10 (10%)        33 (33%)      12 (12%)


As you can see, the more sides the dice has then the lower the % chance the humble Ax will be doubled.
However, the effect is very slight, and not really worth the bother of using different types of dice.
It does increase the ‘once-in-a-blue-moon’ chances, but DBA has enough pure luck as it is already.

I did try using ‘superior/inferior’ elements with the better quality troops either gaining a +1
if their final score was equal or lower, or if their combat die roll were equal or lower, but in
many cases the chances of getting an equal score increased dramatically, often to twice the
current % chances (which may be good news for Cb/Lb/Bd, but it’s bad news for Kn/Cm).

Final Conclusion
It’s better to alter the equal score effects rather than adding an extra +1 to final scores,
as that won't change the % chances of equal scores occurring.

(Oh well…at least it kept me out of the pub today... )