Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: June 09, 2024, 10:46:23 AM »FFD is only used to allow orbital support. It has no effect on ground units.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: June 08, 2024, 08:46:50 PM »Anyway, another two questions regarding FFD, since I made this thread and I might as well use it: when you have FFD in an offensive unit, and it is directing fire from orbital support, how is it decided which unit(s) are fired upon?
Per the post I linked previously, ships or fighters supporting units with FFD have the same targeting options as MBL/HB units. In most cases this should mean they target the same unit that ground formation is targeting, but I believe there is also a counter-battery mechanic for HB which would also apply here.
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Second, if that offensive unit gets to make another attack due to breakthrough, does the supporting ship (or fighter, I suppose) also get a chance to attack?
Not to my knowledge, no.
Posted by: Jovus
« on: June 08, 2024, 08:18:26 PM »Agreed wholly that it's not much of a test, though it wouldn't be hard to do better, as you've indicated. I was doing a quick and dirty to see if the question was even worth asking instead of just going with the received wisdom I'd already heard.
Anyway, another two questions regarding FFD, since I made this thread and I might as well use it: when you have FFD in an offensive unit, and it is directing fire from orbital support, how is it decided which unit(s) are fired upon?
Second, if that offensive unit gets to make another attack due to breakthrough, does the supporting ship (or fighter, I suppose) also get a chance to attack?
Anyway, another two questions regarding FFD, since I made this thread and I might as well use it: when you have FFD in an offensive unit, and it is directing fire from orbital support, how is it decided which unit(s) are fired upon?
Second, if that offensive unit gets to make another attack due to breakthrough, does the supporting ship (or fighter, I suppose) also get a chance to attack?
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: June 08, 2024, 02:33:05 PM »It is a very small statistical sample, so really not even vaguely suggestive of a difference. You would need to run that test a few hundred times and compile the results before it was sufficient to demonstrate anything.(I don't expect you to do several hundred tests it is way too much of a time sink for me to even think about)
I think you would "only" need about a dozen tests to reach a statistically sound conclusion here, probably not more than two dozen.
Posted by: Andrew
« on: June 08, 2024, 02:19:04 PM »It is a very small statistical sample, so really not even vaguely suggestive of a difference. You would need to run that test a few hundred times and compile the results before it was sufficient to demonstrate anything.(I don't expect you to do several hundred tests it is way too much of a time sink for me to even think about)
If you want to find some evidence that FFD is effecting bombardment weapons which I doubt, the hit probabilities of the bombardment weapons with FFD should be different so look for that in the logs, make sure though that the Defensive force has not accrued any fortification. Setting both sides to offense would eliminate that factor which needs doing for a proper analysis
If you want to find some evidence that FFD is effecting bombardment weapons which I doubt, the hit probabilities of the bombardment weapons with FFD should be different so look for that in the logs, make sure though that the Defensive force has not accrued any fortification. Setting both sides to offense would eliminate that factor which needs doing for a proper analysis
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: June 08, 2024, 02:04:27 PM »That test above is very far from conclusive, but it does appear to indicate the possibility FFD has an effect.
This I don't agree with. These tests don't pass the bar for sufficient statistical rigor to demonstrate any significant effect. Ground combat casualties can vary quite a lot from round to round, I have seen variance on the scale of +100% from one round to the next on occasions, so a net +8% advantage after ten rounds is minor by comparison to the variance.
We can make a rough estimate of the variance here by assuming that (1) the kill counts are uncorrelated, allowing us to use a simple Poisson distribution, and (2) the number of kills in each round is the same, which almost certainly underestimates the uncertainty but it is the best we can do with this data. For a total kill count K, the uncertainty is then Utot = sqrt(K), or a relative uncertainty of 100% / sqrt(K).
Results with uncertainty:
| 10 Rounds: | Blue | Red |
| FFD Yes: | 910 ± 9.3 | 833 ± 13 |
| FFD No: | 896 ± 10 | 899 ± 10 |
I want to emphasize that the second assumption we made above lowers our estimated uncertainty. In reality, the effect of one statistical outlier combat round could drastically shape these results, so even claiming 80-85% confidence here is probably a big overstatement.
My recommendations here if we want to show a real effect (that goes against current understanding, so we need a convincing proof here) would be:
- Track the kills per round to obtain a correct total uncertainty and account for large outlier values.
- Run multiple tests of this sort and obtain correct statistical averages and uncertainties for the aggregated data.
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Also, there's this post of Steve's that appears to have been conclusively drubbed over in thrashing out what FFD actually does: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg105824#msg105824
which is to say that was written, but what we got was different from the implications there regarding FFD.
That is correct. A lot of the changes listed in the "Change Log" were development decisions that Steve may have changed during the C# development process and forgotten to go back and edit the posts. This is one of those cases but far from the only example.
See, for example, this dev post on ground combat which describes the supporting bombardment mechanics. FFD is not mentioned, and if you check this screenshot there are no FFD elements in the formation heirarchy. Note that this post is about 8-9 months after the one you linked, since it is more recent it is more likely to represent the final state of C# mechanics.
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Given that, how do people like to use FFD, if at all?
FFD is more or less only useful for front-line formations, to the best of my knowledge, due to the targeting rules for FFD being the same as for MBL/HB components. Bombardment components fire with the front-line unit they are supporting - i.e., they will not fire in support of a unit which is already firing in support of a unit (there is only one level of supporting fire). Therefore, I only put FFD in my front-line formations, usually 2 units for smaller (~5,000 ton) formations and 4-6 units for larger (15,000-20,000 tons) formations. I like to have at least 2 even in smaller formations for redundancy, so the orbital supporting fire is not lost if one of the FFD units is destroyed.
Posted by: Jovus
« on: June 08, 2024, 12:38:21 PM »what exactly does FFD do for ground units with LB, MB, HB, etc capability?
Absolutely nothing. FFD is only used to coordinate space-to-ground fire.
I'm not sure this is actually the case. That test above is very far from conclusive, but it does appear to indicate the possibility FFD has an effect. Also, there's this, though no extra explanation has been forthcoming that I've seen:
Also, there's this post of Steve's that appears to have been conclusively drubbed over in thrashing out what FFD actually does: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg105824#msg105824
which is to say that was written, but what we got was different from the implications there regarding FFD.
(This is just me showing my homework both to sort it in my head and help anyone else in the future.)
Given that, how do people like to use FFD, if at all? I'm considering at a division-level (translation: highish formation level, but not necessarily the highest) and every higher level having a separated FFD team directly under the HQ capable of directing a warship.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: June 08, 2024, 11:54:11 AM »what exactly does FFD do for ground units with LB, MB, HB, etc capability?
Absolutely nothing. FFD is only used to coordinate space-to-ground fire.
Note that your ships can attack the enemy ground units without FFD and orders to support a specific formation, but their fire will be a lot less accurate so you will cause much more collateral damage (and consume 3x as many MSP to repair weapons failures). Orbital fire support is thus useful when you want to capture the planet as intact as possible. If you just want to wipe the enemy out without such concerns, just shooting from orbit without worrying about ground forces may be a better option.
Posted by: Jovus
« on: June 08, 2024, 11:37:43 AM »Some minor testing indicates that FFD probably does have some effect on ground units capable of bombardment supporting front line units. However, what's not clear is how it interacts? For example, we know that 1 FFD is sufficient for 6 fighters or 1 ship weapon (unless I'm mistaken), but what exactly does FFD do for ground units with LB, MB, HB, etc capability?
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Test setup:
All tech is base TN tech
Redfor consists of 1 PWL inf formation of size 3k
Bluefor Yes FFD consists of:
1 PWL inf formation with
996 PWL inf
1 FFD inf set to noncom
1 MB support formation with
30 units of MB medium vehicles with MB, CAP
1 unit of HQ4k inf
Bluefor No FFD consists of:
1 PWL inf formation identical to RedFor
Same MB support formation as previous
Redfor is set to front line defense. Bluefor is set to front line attack for inf, support for MB
Combat is run for 10 turns, formations are destroyed and then set up for the next test.
Results:
10 rounds Blue 10 rounds Red
FFD Yes 910 833
FFD No 896 899
%diff 0.014 0.066
