There are a number of key aspects to Battle Academy you always need to consider:

There are no health bars in Battle Academy. As in the real world, if a man is hit, it means he is too badly wounded to fight or dead, but either way he is out of the battle. If a tank is hit, the shot either bounces off it’s armour or it penetrates inside and the tank is knocked out. Small arms are ineffective against tanks - you cannot shoot a machine gun at a tank and slowly wear it down. . This is an important thing to remember.

Your men do not fight to the death. Every time a unit is shot at its morale drops. When their morale drops below 50 they are suppressed and will not fire their weapons. When their morale drops to 0, they will surrender if shot at by an enemy on an adjacent tile. Once their morale drops to -100, they will rout and never recover. Morale recovers if the unit goes through an entire turn without suffering any morale loss. It pays to retreat suppressed units to let them recover.

As units make kills, they gain experience and advance to Veteran or Elite status. The rank is shown by the icon above a unit. Veteran units gain 25 extra morale points, and Elite gain 50. Some units also gain new skills such as extra shots, sniper mode, faster movement, so it pays to use these powerful units wisely.

Almost all tanks have their heaviest armour to the front and weakest to the rear. The thicker the armour, the harder the unit is to destroy.

Each type of terrain has different effects. Vehicles can only enter clear terrain. Infantry can hide in non-clear terrain. The % damage reduction for units on that tile is shown on the tooltip. The higher the number the more protection the terrain offers. Some terrain, such as trees and buildings, block Line Of Sight (LOS) and any tiles behind them are hidden. Units on top of hills can see down, but are hidden from units at ground level until they open fire.

When a hidden enemy unit shoots, there is a chance it will reveal itself. If this happens you’ll see the unit appear and Spotted will be shown over the unit.

• Units that are hidden will not shoot and reveal their position unless they have a significant chance to hurt the enemy, or when they feel its time to shoot or die.
• Units that are hunting are harder to detect and your men may not notice them.
• Units always get a bonus shot in the opponents turn for opportunity fire. If they did not shoot in their turn they also get their base 2 shots. If they are elite they can get an additional bonus shot.
• Units that are visible will fire all but their last shot at anything they detect. Their last shot will be saved for something they think they can hurt, or when they feel its time to shoot or die.
• Units that are close to being suppressed will fire their last shot as there is a good chance that waiting for the enemy to shoot will mean you're suppressed and never get the chance to fire back.
• The criteria for damaging the enemy reduces as they get closer. E.g. at long range you might need a 25% chance to use your last shot or fire from cover. When adjacent you always shoot, even with a 0% chance to hurt them.
• Vehicles have variable detection rates. They are best in the forward 90 degrees. Weaker in the side and poor to the rear. Closed top tanks are worse and tanks without turrets even worse. Some tanks were notorious for having poor visibility and these are also heavily penalised on detection.
• Retreating tanks are usually good targets to shoot at as you often get rear/side armour shots. If you missed you were just unlucky. A 35% chance to miss means you should hit 1 in 3 times. There is a ~1 in 8 chance you would shoot 5 times in a row and miss. 1 in 8 is a pretty common occurrence. There is a ~1 in 60 chance you'd shoot and miss 10 times in a row.
• Generally units that are suppressed will not react to the enemy. This is not true of armour. Suppressed armour will still have a chance to react, especially to attacks, but takes large penalties to accuracy. This is to prevent you chasing a suppressed King Tiger around with a light tank!

The scale is abstracted. 1 tile is intended to represent 50-100m. 2 tiles about 200m, up to 8 tiles at about 2km. This may sounds strange but it allows us to get the more subtle differentiations at shorter range without having to make ranges so high you can't see what you're shooting at on screen. This makes it very hard to give you a real ground scale.

Say you have a Sherman and a Tiger. At 2 squares apart, they are close range. Their shots are more accurate and the chance of kill is good. At 6 squares, the accuracy falls and the armour value and type of gun/ammo determines the chance of a kill. At 8 squares the Sherman is out of range and the Tiger can still get a shot but with a low chance of a kill. Instead of needing 20 squares to represent 1000m, you only need 8-10. Like tree rings where the center ones are large and the outer ones are thin.

The penetration works like this. The values referenced are from the squads.csv data file.

APAttack[0] and APAttack[1] values are the base penetration values. The game will randomly select a number within those two values to generate a base penetration value.

Example … Sherman ;

APAttack[0] = 76 APAttack[1] = 169

APEffective[0]-[4] values are the percentage multiplier at the given range. The [0]-[4] is the range(tiles), as follows ;

Range 1 = APEffective[0] Range 2 = APEffective[1] Range 3 and 4 = APEffective[2] Range 5 and 6 = APEffective[3] Range 7+ = APEffective[4]

Example … Sherman APEffective[0]-[4] ;

APEffective[0] = 83 … 83% of APAttack at range 1. APEffective[1] = 83 … 83% of APAttack at range 2. APEffective[2] = 67 … 67% of APAttack at ranges 3 and 4. APEffective[3] = 53 … 53% of APAttack at ranges 5 and 6. APEffective[4] = 42 … 42% of APAttack at ranges 7 and greater.

Summary Example … Sherman penetration at ranges below ;

Range 1 and 2 … (76-169) * 83% = 63-140 Range 3 and 4 … (76-169) * 67% = 50-113 Range 5 and 6 … (76-169) * 53% = 40-89 Range 7+ ………. (76-169) * 42% = 31-70

Now, compare that value above with the Armour[0]-[3] vales for the Panther ;

Front … Armour[0] = 140 Side …. Armour[1] = 60 Rear … Armour[2] = 60 Top …. Armour[3] = 30

Note that the Sherman cannot penetrate the Panther front armour, however, it can penetrate the Panthers side armour 100% of the time, at ranges 1 or 2. At longer ranges, you can see that it can penetrate the side armor, but not 100% of the time.