Guide on Impact of Bulletins

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Posts: 1021 | Subs: 1

Guide on bulletins for infantry, mortars and hmgs

Introduction

We have to remember, that there are dozens of variables interacting with each other to consumate a battle. Positioning, cover, movement, support, LOS, etc.

These should always be taken into account in a laboratory setting: that is, ideal conditions. Skill is always the largest determining factor in a firefight, since it reduces the luck factor.

Nonetheless Bulletins seem to make a notable difference, especially in early game, as you will learn in this guide!

All numbers from:
http://coh-moderncombat.com/CoH2Stats/

First of all, there are many Bulletins i wouldn't use at all:

the 10% faster build/recharge of units. dou you want your units to be 4 seconds earlier on the battlefield or 30 minutes stronger? i think the answer is obvious!
10% faster mines. either you have the time to set a mine or not. the one second won't save you in most cases.
the costs x% less. It makes a faust 1 munitions cheaper, which is not that much! And you dont upgrade the flamerhalftrack that often in a game, that this bulletin might help you a lot.
~~10% more/less surpression. you run frontal into a hmg? you will get surpessed. you don't do it? you won't. and if you have a batesquad, you want it surpressed, because it takes less damage!~~ WIP
faster vet. you can either get vet by killing more units, because your units is strengthened by a bulletin, or you can get faster vet with a bulletin itself. killing more enemies will result in more mapcontrol and less manpower for him. that is, why i think, that strengthening the unit is far superiour!
+5% damage for unupgraded Combat-Engineers. Your Combat Engineers are 4 men, who do 7 damage per shot, that means, they do 30% of the damage a conscript squad will do.
So even with this bulletin, their damage is quite low. With flamethrowers, this bulletin might be more helpfull though!
+10% armor for your german sniper. 10% more armor means, that in the cases of penetration=1 the chance of healthdamage will be lowered from 50% to 45.5%. in cases of higher penetration, this bulletin is utterly useless,. this, and the rare use of the german sniper make this bulletin not the best choice.

Infantry:

Most of your first engagements will be a fight between Grenadiers and Conscripts. Winning these first few engagements will be a big advantage! Therefore, i will talk about the bulletins, you might want to use.

Health buff by 3% for Grenadiers and Conscripts, 5% for Guards

Conscripts/Guards shooting Grenadiers:
the damage of the mosin nagant is 16 per pentrating Hit (only 66% of the shots actually penetrate, because the armor of grenadiers and Pgrens is 1.5, the penetration of the mosin only 1, so calculated with penetration/armor we have 1/1.5=0.66)
without health buff:
80hp/16hp/s=5hits
with health buff
82hp/16hp/s=6hits

so if you get the health buff for your grenadiers, they will survive 1 hit more each, which means, the conscript damage is effectively reduced by 16 percent! This means, you can stay approximately 20% longer in combat.

Grenadiers shooting Conscripts:
damage of the kar98 is 20 per hit, penetration=armor=1
without health buff:
80hp/20hp/s=4hits
with health buff
82hp/20hp/s=5hits

so if you get the health buff for your conscripts, they will survive 1 hit more each, which means, the grenadier damage is effectively reduced by 20 percent! This means, you can stay approxmitely 25% longer in combat.

Grenadiers shooting Guards:
damage of the kar98 is 20 per penetrating hit, penetration/armor=1/1.5=0.66=66%
without health buff:
80hp/20hp/s=4hits
with health buff
84hp/20hp/s=5hits

so if you get the health buff for your guards, they will survive 1 hit more each, which means, the grenadier damage is effectively reduced by 20 percent! This means, you can stay approxmitely 25% longer in combat.

Shock-Troops get a -5% damage buff, which is ~5% health buff, so comparable to guards. Note that the shocktrooparmor is 2.25, so only 44% of the hitting grenadiershots will penetrate.

As you can see, in standart fight, a 3% health buff means +20% to +25% effective health which is HUGE.

Countering Health-buffs
Hot to counter these bonuses? One option is to go for low damaging but fast shooting units like pioneers, panzergrenadiers or an unupgraded halftrack, which can hugely influence a battle. Basically a single stray hit can already negate the massive bonus the enemy would otherwise get from his bulletins versus slow firing weapons.

Another Option is to go for Bulletins, which increase damage by 4% for grenadiers and by 5% for CE's and Conscripts. However, this damagebuff is only good for NEGATING, so if the enemy doesnt have healthboosts, this damageincrease is worthless, the only exception being units with high RoF, but they just get a very small bonus.

However, the damage buff can be negated by having the 2 health increases for Grenadiers/Conscripts, which are unlocked at level ~20 and ~80, so you can count this case as no damagebuff for your enemy, one healthbuff for you.

Grenadiers shooting Conscripts:
damage of the kar98 is 20 per hit, penetration=armor=1
without damage buff:
82hp/20hp/s=5hits
with health buff
82hp/20.8hp/s=4hits

this works same with Conscripts shooting Grenadiers, so the health buff is negated.

BUT:
Grenadiers shooting Guards:
damage of the kar98 is 20 per penetrating hit, penetration/armor=1/1.5=0.66=66%
without damage buff:
84hp/20hp/s=5hits
with health buff
84hp/20.8hp/s= STILL 5hits!

So having the Damagebuff for your Grenadiers will not help you against Shocktroops or Guards, which means, that these bulletins are very important, especially if your enemy doesnt go T2 pgrens!

Accuracy Increase by x%
Conscripts: with the lowest accuracy being 25% at far you can consider this one pretty much senseless. The formula is 25% * 1.02=25,5% this means 2% more damage, which is nothing at all.
Pgrens: getting 5% more accuracy is better, but still, its only 5% more damage. Consider this one, if you go always T2, especially if you go fast T2.

Faster reload by 5% for sowjet snipers
It will help you, when you snipers stand still and shoot and shoot and shoot.Bit in most cases, you will try to relocate your snipers after every shot to not get countered. Decide yourself whether it suits your playstyle!

5% armor penetration for Guards

WIP

MGs
Health buffs seems to be pretty much the same for MGs, but Damage buffs are not worth it, because you cant negate health buffs, because the damage per bullet of an mg is pretty low, so one more or less bullet means not +20% effective damage but +3% or 4% which is not that much.

Mortars

Health buff for Mortars: are you kidding me? Here, the Damage buff seems to counter the health buff, because all Mortars have exactly 80 damage and might not be able to kill a 84 hp men!

Summary

Still don't know, what to take? Think of your average game. What units do you get?
4grens-->buff grens, not mgs
6maxims-->dont buff conscripts
Thats why i would not buff mortars or mg42s at all, because you will most likely not get more than two. Buffing your Grens/Conscripts will help all of them, simple as that!

Getting and negating health buffs is a huge deal in early game, because it seems to drastically change the first minutes and the first engagement. The guard and shock-troop health buff cannot be negated by a bulletin, so they are very good, because your enemy might waste a bulletin slot.
If you are playing a tournament, it may be important to see, which buff your enemy has, and then have a loadout ready to counter it.
In Mid- and Lategame these buffs become less important, because of high RoF Weapons from Pgrens and Shocks, and because of very high dmg wepaons from tanks.

Any tips, mistakes, etcetera?

Edit:
Corrected some misspellings, words, ...

Posts: 1164

a few notes:
the "xx% longer in combat" is a bit misleading, since, most of all, this depends on luck more than anything else (i'd just leave it out, the rest of the information is the important part anyway).

i would guess that 20.8 dmg is treated as 21, but i'm not sure about that tbh.

as for "shots" and "shots that don't penetrate 100% of the time": call them "hits" and "penetrating hits".

lastly, take note that the "20-25% increase in effective hp" is only true for certain weapons and especially disregarding any criticals.

other than that: good work :-)

Posts: 29

Great points. I would be interested to see if the bulletins that provide faster veterancy would be the way to go. I'm thinking that it is a no brainer to always select +9% vet for PzGrens. Given that the bonuses from Vet2 and Vet3 are so powerful, the faster you get there the better.

Posts: 934

Wow 3% plays a much greater factor than I originally thought it would. Thanks for the information!

Posts: 54

This was a great read, awesome info keep it up.

Posts: 604

This also shows how low damaging but fast shooting units like pioneers or an unupgraded halftrack can hugely influence a battle even when their own damage looks kinda neglectable. Basically a single stray hit can already negate the massive bonus the enemy would otherwise get from his bulletins versus slow firing weapons.

Posts: 881

You must remember that these stats are not the only things affecting a conscript/grenadier skirmish. There's also cover, positioning, the chance that shots that roll a miss will still hit a model, not everyone is shooting at the same model, who shoots first, models jumping for cover, models crouching, etc., etc., etc.
Especially Guards rifles will cause grenadiers to hit the dirt or jump around for cover.

There's so many other random factors that I don't really think these bulletins have such a huge effect anyway.

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Posts: 1021 | Subs: 1

thnx guys
@crawler
changed it to hits. are criticals really existing? because in weapon-stats, there is nothing baout criticals, and the damage is consistent.
@qvazar
light cover, mud and ice do not affect the damage, and green cover halfes it, so these things are still true. of course, you need other things than bulletins, but still, their effect seems quite underestimated!

Posts: 90

slighly out of topic, but why everyone instead of talking with normal words like "squad" or "soldier" started using this "models" and similar shit

Posts: 172

'cos dis is 2013 and no wars exist anymore. Oh wait..

Posts: 2425

Permanently Banned

cos we are old farts and still think of them as little tabletop toy soldier models, that move...

Posts: 336

What about the impact of bulletins that decrease the cost of upgrades and abilities? Surely these type of bulletins provide interesting gameplay.

Posts: 1620 | Subs: 2

12 Jul 2013, 18:05 PMThe_Riddler

What about the impact of bulletins that decrease the cost of upgrades and abilities? Surely these type of bulletins provide interesting gameplay.

Nope.

Posts: 1164

12 Jul 2013, 16:50 PMscratchedpaintjob

thnx guys
@crawler
changed it to hits. are criticals really existing? because in weapon-stats, there is nothing baout criticals, and the damage is consistent.
@qvazar
light cover, mud and ice do not affect the damage, and green cover halfes it, so these things are still true. of course, you need other things than bulletins, but still, their effect seems quite underestimated!

of course criticals exist... criticals belong to the entity though. a grenadier squad cannot suffer a destroyed engine or destroyed main gun, while a tiger tank cannot suffer the critical "soldier_flamethrower_explode".

about cover: thats wrong(ish) too. (dmg isn't reduced, but accuracy is, which affects DPS)

every weapon has modifiers for suppresion, penetration, accuracy and damage versus every single cover type.
that means that red/open/yellow/green/etc cover do not give static modifiers, but theses modifiers are different for every weapon. for example, for the k98k, green cover means 0.1 supp, 1 pen, 0.5 acc, 0.5 dmg multipliers, while for yellow cover it's 0.5 supp, 1 pen, 0.5 acc, 1 dmg.

the cover table info is on coh2stats, but other stuff isn't (criticals, or cooldown duration multipliers fore example).

Posts: 642

Interesting analysis, OP.

We have to remember, that there are dozens of variables interacting with each other to consumate a battle. Positioning, cover, movement, distance, critical hits, support, LOS, etc.

These should always be taken into account in a laboratory setting: that is, ideal conditions. Skill is always the largest determining factor in a firefight, since it reduces the luck factor.

What is skill? It is turning an otherwise fair fight, into an unfair one for your opponent.

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Posts: 1021 | Subs: 1

yeah, this is of course not click 2 win, but i helps and is a part of early game. you still need skills and micro and good positioning, but if both sides have it, this might be a big factor, and even if you have been caught offguard, this prevents losses.
@crawler
yeah, cover reduces accuracy, which means, that my calculations still work, but they will need more shots to get actual hits! never wanted to say, that cover doenst change anything!

of course criticals exist... criticals belong to the entity though. a grenadier squad cannot suffer a destroyed engine or destroyed main gun, while a tiger tank cannot suffer the critical "soldier_flamethrower_explode".

where can i look that up? would be very ineteresting to see, but i honestly think, that crits are not crits, but many bullits actually hitting by luck.

@the_riddler
my opinion is same as tychos, i will later edit the guide and wright it under: useless stuff

Edit:
forgot something

Posts: 336

12 Jul 2013, 18:12 PMTychoCelchuuu

Nope.

Hmm, you spam posts about increasing/decreasing costs on all sorts of units, yet you dont value bulletins that decrease costs of upgrades and abilities...?

I would think that a slightly earlier faust or flame HT upgrade, for instance, can favorably determine the outcome of an engagement, especially when you are cut off and your income is +4 or so.

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Posts: 1021 | Subs: 1

these 3% or 5% or whatever cheaper fausts and htupgrades give you like 1 for faust and 5 for htupgrade muni less to spend.
i a typical game you get one HT upgraded and 5 fausts, which means 10 muntitions more. seriously, this is nothing. compare that to a bulletin giving you 20% more effective health, which helps you winnig the first fight!

Posts: 336

I know the cost decreases of my examples are small, but given the fact it has no counters it can be a save bulletin.

Furthermore, I am not sure if your math is correct as you did not account for the chance of penetration. For instance:

12 Jul 2013, 14:20 PMscratchedpaintjob

-without health buff:
80hp/16hp/s=5hits
-with health buff
82hp/16hp/s=6hits

so if you get the health buff for your grenadiers, they will survive 1 hit more each, which means, the conscript damage is effectively reduced by 16 percent! This means, you can stay approxmitely 20% longer in combat.

-without health buff:
80hp/10.56hp/s=7.58hits
-with health buff
82.4hp/10.56hp/s=7.80hits

Guess what? Thats a 3% health increase...

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Posts: 1021 | Subs: 1

im actually not speakign about hits, but penetrating hits. to make this clear, i shloud write phits, which stands for penetrating hits. and the mathmatics is correct, because not all hits do damage, just the penetrating.

so your example is not correct, because a hit does either 0 or 16 damage, so you can see the penetration of conscripts as a 0.66 multiplier to their accuracy rather than their damage per hit!

10 munitions is a so small amount, that you will experience NO difference, except if you are trying to counter IS2s with fausts or stuff like that