Commander deaths in combat

[Cardinal Ape]

I've begun to question the effects of a divisional commander dying in battle and how it influences the battle outcome.

When a commander dies in battle, like so:
[ATTACH]39543[/ATTACH]
How many hits have actually been inflicted? Is it 1, or is it 298? Of those hits, how many count towards the battle outcome for determining the amount of NM gained or lost. I know the battle report shows them as dead, but they aren't dead; they have just been kicked out of the division and still live.

I used to think that when a division commander dies in combat, that the total hits of his division would be falsely reported as dead. One could mark the hits of the division and erase them from the total hits done in combat. However, I now think that those hits count toward the outcome of the battle, mainly when dealing with the gain and loss of NM.

I had a battle where I trounced the enemy by a significant margin, enough so that I would expect to see a hefty NM change come from it. After rerunning the battle, I get NM changes within the range of 4-8. Though, in the one instance where my divisional general dies, I gain nothing. I believe this is because the game counts the one hit against the general as killing his entire division. So one hit equates to 298. It is not false reporting erroneous data, the game really thinks it killed an entire division and the battle outcome backs it up.

So, I arrived at the theory: Any battle that includes the death of a divisional general will have grossly inaccurate rewards or penalties that do not properly reflect the battle.

Someone, please tell I am wrong 'cause this is really bothering me.. Is this really a bug where the game can be off by roughly 300 hits in a battle outcome for each divisional general killed?

[DrPostman]

If that's the case it's in serious need of fixing.

[Durk]

I am not as much of a technical guy as many of you, but I think what happens if the division commander is a casualty early in battle resolution is his troops are dumped and the army suffers from being out of command; and this is the source of the loss. Just my thought that it is this factor which adds to losses.

[Captain_Orso]

The outcome of the battle will be influenced by the loss of a division commander through the battle mechanics. IMHO the mechanics do not take into account that the senior brigade commander would take over command of the division--like at the end of a battle-round--, because we do not have any such thing. But the idea that the division would simply flounder around the rest of the battle just seems poor mechanics to me.

At any rate, there should be no hit penalty for losing a division commander, or any other commander for that matter. The outcome through the battle engine should be the only thing considered. This seems like a bug to me.

[Captain_Orso]

The outcome of the battle will be influenced by the loss of a division commander through the battle mechanics. IMHO the mechanics do not take into account that the senior brigade commander would take over command of the division--like at the end of a battle-round--, because we do not have any such thing. But the idea that the division would simply flounder around the rest of the battle just seems poor mechanics to me.

At any rate, there should be no hit penalty for losing a division commander, or any other commander for that matter. The outcome through the battle engine should be the only thing considered. This seems like a bug to me.

[Rod Smart]

While it is a bug, I would point out that losing generals should affect NM outcomes more than losing privates.

The headlines of Pickets Charge and Franklin are the total deaths. The first paragraphs in the stories deal with the number of officers killed.
Chancellorsville was great for the South and Gettysburg was great for the north... but Stonewall and Reynolds



So its broken... but the correct outcome may be the same anyway.

[Captain_Orso]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, Rod.

[Gray Fox]

Cardinal Ape, I'm a firm believer that the Battle Report is mostly eye-candy. The actual iBattlelog file should report if the entire Division was indeed wiped out/routed away as well as the Commander...or not.

[Cardinal Ape]

I finally got around to doing some testing on this.

I don't think a divisional general dying in combat (like the one pictured in the OP) has any affect on NM or VP awards. The battle report lies, falsely reporting around 300 hits per divisional commander death. Sorry for raising an alarm - it seems to just be a display error.

For testing the dead generals I added a line to one factions generals: CombatDeathChance = 999. They dropped like flies. The NM results from battles with many dead generals was not out of the ordinary. 1,500 hits worth of dead generals didn't give any extra NM compared to the same battle with no dead generals.

I ran a bunch of battles to compare the results between the out of game battle log to the in game battle report. There was not a single instance where the results were the same, not even close. Regardless of generals deaths, the results seemed like two different battles...

[DrPostman]

Thanks for checking on that.