What are the stats for a unit of hastati?

[Mr Frost]

So I wonder do you have a rule of thumb for working out the melee combat power of two units, that also factors in lethality and animations etc? In STW and MTW, there was a formula by which the differential between attack and defence stats determined kill chances. CA have not released the formula for RTW - they said it was a commercial secret when I asked - but maybe modders have inferred something?

As a I first stab, I would say:
Pr(kill) =f[lethality * (attack-defence)]
but I have not got a clue where swing speed would fit in.

I know we're straying into Ludus Magna territory here, but no one visits me there anymore so I am hanging out where the action is.

According to C/A , Swing Speed , is the "time between animation cycles" in multiples of 1/10th of a second . Thus the default is 2.5 seconds {all units} for vanilla and 0 seconds and/or 2.5 seconds {varies by unit and weapon} for RTW .

For units using the same attack animations it does seem {to me , and just a rough observation} to be close to a straight forward progression at higher numbers {say 10+} that 25 gets 4/5ths of the kills per minute than 20 , however the closer you get to 0 , the smaller the increase in kills {though still a supprising difference between 5 and 10} .

I personally use it in my own mods extensivly to help differentiate between certain weapons performance and also certain qualities of soldier ; some are slower than average due to not being suited to melee combat {many archers for example and a few very poor melee units like Sparabara} and some are much faster as they were the born naturals whom invariably gravitate towards the cream of elite units{Gaesate and Hypaspists for example} . Between modifyed Lethality and Attack Rates I am quite satisfyed thus far in what I can make units do except for missiles ... I'm *this* close to a full blown rant over that towering C/A "we didn't think it was important , even though we went to the great trouble of codeing the damned thing into the engine in the first place then not really using it after all" geekery Arrrggh !

Apologies to all non oblivious geeks .