Statistical Conversion

[Krazysigmarite]

Ranged weapons are are similar in some sense, but it's really up to the ballistic skill of the unit, as well as the weapon type. Here's the example I'll give, without posting GW stats (as it's illegal I believe).

Bows: Standard range
Longbows: Long range
Crossbows: Long range, +strength
Handguns: Standard range, +strength, armor piercing

[MangyElf]

Ah yes, I was going by memory on longbows and it appears to be faulty since they are indeed S3. I did check but crossbow is listed right underneath and I guess I just read what I expected to read, S4. My bad.

I assume the model animations make a difference too but maybe not. Realistically, which I realise may not be a concern for a WH conversion, bows and longbows had a much greater rate of fire than a crossbow or powder weapon (min delay ratio in the region of 1:8, if memory serves but we've seen how good I am with memory today hehe), though they were harder to train (higher cost, longer build time or both in TW terms).

The mechanically assisted drawing of a crossbow and the chemically assisted energy behind a black powder weapon made them potentially (not necessarily since designs varied a lot and BP weapons could and did misfire) more powerful than a manually drawn bow as well. Contrary to the common misconception, the longbow was not all powerful vs plate armour - the arrow does bounce off and even bend when striking steel plate more in proportion, or even shaped, to armoured plate sizes. Can't speak for better quality steel bodkin arrows but how many common soldiers carried that costly an arrow around? Which btw, is not necessarily a consideration in a WH mod for say, high elves (assuming it makes a difference, seeing as how they included different quality/types arrows/bolts).

Too late to cut a long story short but I guess that means there are potentially more variance factors at work than stats visible on the unit card. The min delay figures in my example were based on other TW figures I've seen but with new models on the way, they were at best a stab in the dark.

I'm not entirely happy with range as far as variety is concerned. That's because even with supposedly improved (modded) AI included, a computer opponent seems to struggle with how exactly it should act. It too often decides on walking them, not always but enough that even shorter range weapons have potential to get off far more shots than they would in WH. Reducing range to below TW averages might help but I suspect this will be hard to balance, given the discrepancies in AI behaviour I've seen.

[Tsarsies]

MangyElf, your approach seems very reasonable for converting WH over to TW. I dont, nor have i, played WH so i dont knwo what kind of statistics you are actually trying to convert.

But i have played and toyed with TW statistics.

if i may throw some suggestions out there.

before even considering to assign numbers or find equations for WH units i would suggest getting a list of all weapons in WH and all armor and shields. then using WH stats, put them in order of least lethal to most lethal, least defense to most defense. somthing like...

Dagger
Short sword
axe
staff
mace
Longsword
bastardsword
broadsword
spear
2-handed sword
battle axe

Leather
Padded
Hardened Leather
Partial Light Mail
Light Mail
Light Brigandine
Partial Splint Mail
Partial Heavy Mail
Splint Mail
Heavy Splint
Heavy Mail
Heavy Brigandine
Breastplate
Light Plate
Partial Platemail
Platemail
Heavy Platemail
Full Platemail

Buckler
light shield
Heavy shield
tower shield

etc. etc.

I dont know all the equipment in WH but this is just an example. then assign WH numbers to those items. if a dagger does 1-3 damage in WH then assign it 3 etc. if WH is like D&D2nd ed. and armor values are in reverse then simply reverse the number. as in leather provides 9 and plate provides 0, reverse it so leather provides 1 and plate 10. then if your using magical based items add the magical property. +1 +2 +3 etc.

someone mentioned wounds and toughness. i assume wounds are similar to hit points. try converting wounds to stat_health. this is somthing that will obviously need to be tweaked, but a general unit in TW has 2 health and most other units 1. there is no reason why you cant try increasing that number to 4 or 10 even (battles will surely last longer, but if you also have higher values for attack (like 35) then there is no problem right?) its somthing that just needs testing on the battle map.

toughness sounds like somthing i would be associating with armor rating (seeing as it would still aid the unit when shot at - defense skill does not apply when shot at)

if you try using the WH stats first then you can comprimise from there to balance units out. i dont know what other factors you have in WH that people keep saying cant be converted. but everyhitng ive read so far in this thread look slike oit could basically be converted straight over.

as for magic attacks, well, they would be balanced in the WH universe to work with the values in WH already, so converting them would be easy.

on to mounts. does WH use any mount other then horses?... if not then once again get a list of your mount types, pony, barded horse, work horse, war horse etc and simply convert WH stats to each horse type. (horses should give defense aswell as add charge bonus to the unit). if there are no stats in WH for horses you can simply start with 2-4-6-8 (for defense and charge) - experimentation will ofcourse yeild results to balance them.

if WH uses strange mounts like lizards or dragons or whatever then you can assigne them as camels and elephants to use the mount_effect that TW uses where horses are afraid of camels etc. (i belive that is hard coded, so naming your lizard or dragon a camel would only be in the files, in play the player would still see the name dragon or what have you).

armor upgrade levels. in TW they range from 1-6. each level gives the unit 1 point to defense. this is not hard coded, you can have 12 upgrade levels, or 18. then assigne 2-3 to each smith. in a mini mod i tried using for awhile i had 18 upgrades, 3 for each smith level. so a leather tanner would upgrade from unarmored-leather-padded-hardenedd leather. each unit can only have 3 upgrades (that is hardcoded). take spear militia, you might want them to start unarmored (o), but be able to upgrade to light mail. there upgrade leves would be (1,3,5). i found this approach made upgrades very valuable. it all depends on how many different tyoes of armor you plan to have. i assume chaos armor would be the highest and there fore only availabe to a select few.

the general idea is to get a list of all items, upgrades, mounts and assign them values straight from WH. i dont recommend basing any unit off of vanilla seeing as you are playing with a fantasy universe so your stats are going to be completly different... then try playing with those stas on the battle map (even if the unit has an attack of 50) try it. i think the limit is either 99 or for some reason the number 65 comes to mind.

ive done some statistical conversion before, id be happy to help out, but i dont have any WH reference material.

[MangyElf]

Since you're also thinking about this I'll give you a run down of how WH stats work. Hopefully you'll see the problem in converting it, if not accurately then at least in the right ball park.

Each unit has the following stats, at least in the version I'm looking at:

M (movement), WS (weapon skill), BS (ballistic skill), S (strength), T (toughness), W (wounds), I (initiative), A (attacks). I've ignored mental stats for now.

A couple of examples of average racial stats:

Human
M3, WS3, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I3, A1

Dwarf
M3, WS4, BS3, S3, T4, W1, I2, A1

Skaven
M5, WS3, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I4, A1

There are some variations within the racial lists - usually elite units get a point added to one or more stats, while cannon fodder units like peasants or slaves take a point off WS and BS.

Melee weapons have various modifiers to those stats, your basic one handed weapons (like sword, mace and axe) being the norm, having no modifiers. A 2H weapon, for example, is -1I, +1S and also reduces target's armour save by 1. There are not that many weapon variations, presumably because the way in which stats work (by virtue of the tabletop nature of the game) means the number of variations is limited. This doesn't have to be the case in a TW conversion but it's adding a whole other layer to peel back so I figured to try and get what's already there sorted before even thinking about that.

Ranged weapons come with their own S value (thrown use unit's own S value), a range and, in some cases, an armour save modifier at closer range.

Armour saves depend on the armour: light/shield (6), light+shield/heavy(5), heavy+shield (4) and whether the unit is mounted or not, plues whether the mount is armoured or not reduce the save number even further (by 1 or 2 points respectively). They also give a movement penalty, though I forgot to consider that in my previous conversion (doh!).

There are a range (not very complex) of other, situational modifiers but here's how basic combat works:

All rolls are made on a D6. Initiative determines who goes first. Attacks determine how many dice the unit rolls to hit.

To hit: for melee you compare the attacker's and defender's WS on a table that gives a number from 1 to 6. Very high vs lower WS's require any 6's be rolled again and another number from 1 to 6 needs to be obtained to hit. Any dice that that show the required number or higher, and remember you'll be rolling one D6 for every unit that can attack, counts as a hit.

For Ranged attacks you don't have an opposing defence value, just a straight chance to hit on a D6 (BS3 means you need to roll a 4 to hit, BS4 means you need to roll a 3, etc).

To wound: All dice that didn't hit are removed and you determine whether any of the hits that landed had the chance to cause a wound. You roll all the dice that hit again, cross-referencing attacker's S vs defender's T this time, to determine the roll required on a D6. Too low S vs high T means you can't wound that target. Any dice that roll the required number cause the opposing unit one wound.

It's not over yet though, the defending unit can roll armour saves if it has armour. Any that succeed negate one wound.

The number of wounds determines the number of models removed from combat, dependant on the value of W on the target.

As you can imagine, there's a lot of dice rolling on a per attacker basis but it's made quicker by rolling all at once and removing any that don't get the required number to go to the next step. There is no variable damage involved, except in the case of certain magical effects that cause multiple wounds to a target they damage. It's all pretty simplistic stuff, potentially very much unlike TW where the computer can calculate many more variables a lot faster than a guy with some dice.

Everything I've done so far doesn't even touch on converting mental stats to morale and discipline, nor does it attempt to determine unit costs or fill in stats like terrain modifiers per unit type so still much to think about aside from my musings so far.

[Tsarsies]

Hmm ok, now i see how some of those stats or values would be difficult to convert.

I guess you need to decide what factors are important and what are least important.

Some of them seem like they could convert rather easily. the rest of this post may contain ideas/thoughts you have already covered but ... if i may...

below are stats from WH to the EDU equivalant as how i see it anyway. :)

WS (weapon skill) = Attack Factor

BS (ballistic skill) = Attack Factor (keeping in mind that archery units main weapon is the ranged weapon, thus secondary stats would be for melee)

W (wounds) = stat_health

A (attacks) = Min delay between attacks (in 1/10th of a second), this is somthing that would need to be altered and tested through tedious adjustments with the sprite animation (somthing i know nothing about, but i assume bwian does from the look of his models thus far). note that each units attack animation is set up to correspond with this number in the EDU (i belive). so adjusting it as i said, would be tedious and very drawn out for who ever has the task of doing each and every unit. good luck with that! might be easier and definatly more time saving to balance this number into the attack factor.

T (toughness) = Armor rating. in the EDU this number is followed by 3 other 'upgrade levels'. meaning you would need to decide what levels of armor the unit could obtain with the correct building to upgrade. lets take the dwarves toughness of 4 for example. i assume this would be an unarmored dwarf. and using my previous post about armor upgrade levels (just for argument sake) lets assume this dwarf is also wearing leather armor. which is the first upgrade level from unarmored. so add 1 point. giving 5 armor (T). now, this dwarf wants to upgrade to the next level of padded armor. 4 + 2 = Armor rating or (T) of 6. and so on. if the dwarf was able to wear scale mail, then the result would be 4 + 9 = 13 armor rating. the same would be for all the races of WH. just take the toughness of the creature/unit, add the appropriate armor level the unit/s will begin with and you have your initial toughness. then as the game plays out, the unit may be able to upgrade. in which case you NEED to have already decided what upgrades are available to it. can a peasant wear plate armor??? etc. Also, there are 2 other factors to consider for armor rating over all. these two factors are not used in all situations, only the basic armor factor is used ALL the time (as in when flanked, or shot at from afar). the first is shield, does the unit carry or use a shield. in your post you stated the following,

"Armour saves depend on the armour: light/shield (6), light+shield/heavy(5), heavy+shield (4) and whether the unit is mounted or not, plues whether the mount is armoured or not reduce the save number even further (by 1 or 2 points respectively)."

those values decrease. do these values ever become negative numbers in WH? or is an armor save of 1 the best armor save you could have. fomr those values im guessing a shield generaly lowers the armor save by 1-2? depending on shield type... so in the EDU assign 1 or 2 to the shield factor depeding on what kind of shield the unit uses. as for mounts, that defense value should be assigned to armor rating, not armor skill or shield factor... the second value to consider is defense skill. i saw nowhere in your post about how skillful a unit is in defense. but generally this value determines whether the unit is well trained or not. is the units training that of a peasant or of an elite corpe. most units range from 1-6 in the EDU for this value. but i dont know what value form WH could signify this.

then we still have M (movement), S (strength) and I (initiative).

M (movement) = Attack bonus. the bonus gained when the unit charges. for mounted units you would need to add the mounts value ofcourse. but this may unbalance some units, because using your example skaven calvalry would have a higher charge attack then dwarves or humans. (not that dwarves would be riding a horse anyway). although this may be desirable i dont know.

S (strength) = to me seems like a value that should have varying effects on the unit. a stronger unit is obviously going to hit you with more force, so therefore it will aid in attack factor (you also said archery units have a seperate S value, so that would correspond here aswell). it may also depend on whether strenght in WH also corresponds to the units endurance and stamina, if so, then i would associate this value with wounds, and thus the 'stat_health' aswell as attack factor.

I (initiative) = another interesting value. in WH i assume it corresponds to who goes first, and how often they get to attack in a round? maybe combine this value with movement and attacks.

as for how the basic concept of combat works in WH i guess you would be ignoring most if not all of that due to using TW's engine and physics. i mean, 6 sided dice wont be thrown. but still, knowing how the table top combat is played out would help in balancing certain units. and of course, it all comes down to final balancing. when you get to playing the game you may find those skaven peasants are walking all over the dwarven generals. and there ofcourse will be some tweaking that has to be made. although i hope that the discussion in this thread helps the modders out in deciding how to figure those valuable WH stats for M2TW conversion.and maybe my input helped a little ;)

as for mental stats and such, ill let you guys discuss that so i can read up on what stats are used in WH for mental attributes and moral before i throw my 2 cents in :)

hope my 2 bob helps out here :)

[alexader]

skaven and dwarves don't have cavalry and possible the won't have in the mod either

[MangyElf]

WS (weapon skill) = Attack Factor

As explained earlier in the thread, it isn't just attack factor. It represents both attack and defence in WH, being an opposing roll of attacker's WS vs defender's WS in order to determine if an attack hits. This is why I suggest it adds both melee skill and defence when converted.

A (attacks) = Min delay between attacks (in 1/10th of a second), this is somthing that would need to be altered and tested through tedious adjustments with the sprite animation (somthing i know nothing about, but i assume bwian does from the look of his models thus far). note that each units attack animation is set up to correspond with this number in the EDU (i belive). so adjusting it as i said, would be tedious and very drawn out for who ever has the task of doing each and every unit. good luck with that! might be easier and definatly more time saving to balance this number into the attack factor.

It isn't really a delay factor in WH and TW does have space for a secondary attack, though whether this is solely for melee attacks by ranged units and 'stuff' (that isn't the mount) is the reason I put ?? after I suggested that's what gets used if a unit has multiple attacks.

T (toughness) = Armor rating. in the EDU this number is followed by 3 other 'upgrade levels'. meaning you would need to decide what levels of armor the unit could obtain with the correct building to upgrade.

Toughness isn't an upgrade, it's a representation of how difficult a unit is to wound during combat and thus 'always on'. Clearly, in TW terms it is some type of defence value though, so I suggested it is converted to the TW armour value. That is because this value is the only one out of armour, defence and shield that applies to ranged and melee attacks equally (as does WH toughness). As I understand it, shield applies circumstantially to ranged attacks and defence doesn't apply to ranged attacks at all.

lets take the dwarves toughness of 4 for example. i assume this would be an unarmored dwarf...

Armour and toughness are seperate stats in WH so IMO you're over-thinking what should be a straighforward conversion: armour type = x armour value, while n amount of toughness = y armour value so that total armour value = type adjustment + toughness adjustment.

There is no need to conjoin these two seperate entities during the conversion process, merely note the result will be two seperate adjustments to TW's final armour rating. It shouldn't really matter that a dwarf wearing no armour is the equivalent to a vanilla TW unit wearing, I dunno, chain or something, because it's all relative; there is no toughness stat in TW, or more than 2 types of armour, 1 shield, 1 mount and 1 barding adjustment in WH so there is some leeway to making multiple uses out of TW's armour value.

[armour...]do these values ever become negative numbers in WH? or is an armor save of 1 the best armor save you could have.

No, you cannot have a negative armour value. It determines a saving throw and as such can either be none or a positive value. Roll the required save and you negate a wound, fail and the wound gets through.

fomr those values im guessing a shield generaly lowers the armor save by 1-2?

WH shields come in one variety only. If a unit has a shield it adds 1 to it's armour value. You're only rolling a d6 in WH so there's not much scope to vary too much. I suggested multiple shield values for both variety and to accomodate WH units that are equipped with both shields and 2H weapons. I don't claim this is a perfect solution but it's the only one available so far.

depending on shield type... so in the EDU assign 1 or 2 to the shield factor depeding on what kind of shield the unit uses.

One for one values don't work because the scale is different. A value of 1 in WH is out of 6. I have no clue what 1 represents in TW but it is not on a scale of 1 to 6, that's for sure.

My conversion suggestions were guestimates based on what the end results looked like, ie were they close to a reasonable looking TW unit or not and did they provide variety between one unit and the next. You'll notice I made a 2nd suggestion with adjustments not only to correct errors but as a work in progress.

Adding one for one does not create a resonable looking TW unit at all and allows no room for TW's variety when you'd end up with low value stats and little to no distinction between one unit and another.

i saw nowhere in your post about how skillful a unit is in defense. but generally this value determines whether the unit is well trained or not. is the units training that of a peasant or of an elite corpe. most units range from 1-6 in the EDU for this value. but i dont know what value form WH could signify this.

You did see me mention 'defence' in WH, you just didn't recognise it. To recap, defence is three-fold in WH: 1. a hit can miss and/or the defender's WS is an opposed value to the attacker's WS; 2. toughness is a defence against being wounded, opposing strength as it does; 3. armour saves can negate a wound that otherwise would have occured.

That said, why would anyone bother to convert training as a seperate entity from WH? It isn't a statistical entity all to itself but rather a bonus or penalty to existing stats. It follows that if we work out what WH stats mean in TW terms then we can simply translate the finished unit, complete with elite or peasant stat adjustments already in place. The alternative is to make every WH unit standard, convert it to TW and then assign a value for elite or peasant, in other words a complete waste of time since we still have to do the stat conversion anyway.

M (movement) = Attack bonus. the bonus gained when the unit charges. for mounted units you would need to add the mounts value ofcourse. but this may unbalance some units, because using your example skaven calvalry would have a higher charge attack then dwarves or humans. (not that dwarves would be riding a horse anyway). although this may be desirable i dont know.

Movement does three things in WH. It allows a unit to move, to charge from a greater distance and to close to melee range faster. So thanks ;) By making be consider it in those terms I realise that I did not account for everything in my suggestion - a movement higher or lower than 4 should perhaps also modify the charge value of a TW unit. This has to fall short of the charge value a mount would add, though perhaps I should have added a charge adjustment scale per movement which would have accomodated a mount's high move.

alexander already noted that dwarves and skaven do not have cavalry but for general clarification on races that do have cavalry coupled with non-human movement rates, cavalry movement is based on the mount, not the model. IE you do not add mount speed onto normal move, you replace it. Usually the mount has M8, such as a horse.

I (initiative) = another interesting value. in WH i assume it corresponds to who goes first, and how often they get to attack in a round? maybe combine this value with movement and attacks.

No, "A" determines how many attacks you get. "I" just determines who acts first, a distinct advantage when you have the chance to reduce the number of enemy models that can attack you when it's their turn.

You can't really start lumping stats together to convert btw. In fact the absolute last thing we should do is start trying find a common denominator's between one WH stat and another. If that could easily be done then Games Workshop would have simplified their WH stats already and besides, it's bad enough finding a common denominator between WH and TW. The end result might be that different WH stats adjust the same TW stat but that's totally different, being a result of conversion and not a means to convert.

when you get to playing the game you may find those skaven peasants are walking all over the dwarven generals. and there ofcourse will be some tweaking that has to be made.

Always a concern but that's the idea behind getting a reasonably acceptable starting point. Doing this by eye defies that point, hence the attempt to standardise it with a formulaic approach. An exact conversion would only be possible if we had data on how exactly TW works and even then it may not be possible but without it there is no chance short of extreme luck. I don't think it needs to be exact though, merely consitent, acceptable and enjoyable to play.