Shooting and Wound Rates

D-Day, Mariusz Kozik

Eriochrome here to talk about how fast you should be blowing your enemy to tiny bits.  About a year ago, I posted about targets for how many enemy models your small arms should take out per turn.  I suggested about 25% is a good target rate for this to make small arms matter but to limit the first mover advantage.  The idea is that for balanced units the full fire from my unit will kill 25% of the target unit.  So if we set the balance level of 10 Human Troopers to 3 Knights then the troopers should get 3/4 of a knight per turn.

Lets look at ways to make these numbers work. Currently shooting starts with a comparison of BS and Ev where even is 4+ and each point of difference changes the number by 1 so BS 3 needs 6's to hit Ev 5.  Then comes the Strength to toughness which is currently a divider on the hits equal to T/S for S equal or less than T and 1 for S greater than T.  Finally I am assuming a comparison table for AV and AP identical to BS and Ev which is a system were the weapon and armor both matter each time.  This is compared to a system like 40K which your weapon either auto beats armor or has no change on the save rate or a system like WHFB where the weapon creates a shift in save rate regardless of how strong the armor is.
 
Say 10 Trooper with basic weapons fire 2 shots each at 10 enemy troopers.  Current we have troopers having no armor and the same toughness as the basic weapon has strength which means 1 hit 1 wound.  This means that my 20 shots only can have 2.5 hits on average but even only hitting on a 6, that yields 3.33 which is to high.  Now I would set it as BS 3 vs Ev 4 (troopers are better at keeping their head down than shooting things) Gives 1/3 hits.  T 2 vs S 1 yields 2 hits to generate a wound, and a save rate of 1/6 (Comparison scale AP 3 vs AV 1 or AV 6+ with AP - in 40k systen scale).  This gives a rate of 2.77 dead troopers which is pretty good.

Now for killing those knights with the troopers.  If knights have the Ev 4, T3, and AV 4 then we get .74 dead from 20 shots.  Now the Ev 4 here represents the knights being better soldiers at using th available cover but I think we had a target of Ev3 for them so the hit rate goes up which can be canceled by increasing the AV to 5 (5/6 save rate) yields at death rate of .55 knights to 20 shots on average which makes them tough than average but I think that is what we want.  We will probably balance this with slightly weaker shooting on a per turn basis since they last longer.

Now with 3 knights what can they do to the troopers.  Give them 2 shots, BS 4, S 2+, and AP 3 in comparison scale (think explode on contact) then you get 2.5 dead troopers.  What would those stats do vs other knights.  Using S2 it yields .44 but if you increase the S to 3 this .66 without affecting damage to troopers.

These numbers seem to work out pretty well:

Trooper: BS 3 Ev 4 T 2 AV 1  with Weapon Shots 2 S 1 AP 3
Knight: BS 4 Ev 3 T3 AV 5 with Weapon Shots 2 S 3 AP 3

Later I will look at the ordering of the S/T comparison to see if we want it before or after armor saves and how that affects distributions and suppression marker ideas.