defensive fire - the most important issue

[gemini]

one of the key issues was the use of defensive fire. units would fire at units moving in their path. The frustrating part of this was that an attacker could throw decoy, cheap or uimportant pieces against a defending piece, make it use up its shots...then rush it with his tanks or the like so as to destroy it easily. in the close combat genre of games by atomis,this is removed as it is purely real time, so a defender actively chooses where and when to fire, not the AI. How is this issue being dealt with in the new steel panthers so at to to avoid this problem???

[Larry Holt]

Amen! While still allowing the opportunity fire range setting, if an op fire is possible, a targeting line could pop up and if a certain key is hit within x seconds, the fire is taken or a second key passes on it, otherwise the game goes on after x second delay. The delay for x could be set in the preferences, as the messages are. It should also have a never timeout setting so that the game would pause indefinately waiting for a response.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

[Paul Vebber]

One of the problems I have always had with the game is they idea of a set number of "shots" that once expened, leaves a unit defenseless. Along with that is the problem of givinig players more control over what gets shot at in defensive fire.

The first would require a different game system to address, teh second proved too timeconsuming to fix in this release. IT may be addressed in the future.

The underlying problem however is one that is largely driven by player tactics and force selection, Since Panzer Blitz, if a player wants to use trucks as scouts and decoys, there not a lot that can be done to stop him, other than agree not to do that.

Poor quality troops are easy to confuse and get shooting at anyting that moves, elite units will prove quite a problem to defeat this way.

In other SP games the "one hex bonus" encouraged the tactic of rushing up adjacent to an enemy and getting an easy kill after you "soak off" his opfire, That tactic no longer works very well, becasue you loose shots for moving, and accuracy for moving, so waltzing up in front of an enemy will more often than not, leave you adjacent and an easy kill in the enemy turn.

So, bottom line, while teh tactic can still be exploited in teh extreme, in the ordinary employment of forces, the old "soak off his opfire and charge" will fail more often than it succeeds, and success will occur when you have a significant advantage in numbers, which is actually not that unrealistic as a defender can't engage large numbers of targets at once and SHOULD be overwelmed.

SP:WaW is an ENHANCEMENT to the original series, it can only change so much so fast.

[This message has been edited by Paul Vebber (edited 04-27-2000).]

[Drake666]

I think its good the way it is. with the way you guys want it, their would be no Decoying at all in the game. Decoying a tank with infantry and stuff was used a lot in combat to destroy tanks and thats the way it should be. Every tank commander was not perfect and made mistakes quit a lot by going after a decoy.

[O de B]

By the way, will it be possible to control the ammo type used when firing, or will the AI still chose what it thinks is best suited ?

[Paul Vebber]

AI still chooses. At the scale of the game, you as Btn or Rgmt CO have to put up with the troops not always using the optimum round in the heat of battle.

[Alby]

Originally posted by Drake666:
I think its good the way it is. with the way you guys want it, their would be no Decoying at all in the game. Decoying a tank with infantry and stuff was used a lot in combat to destroy tanks and thats the way it should be. Every tank commander was not perfect and made mistakes quit a lot by going after a decoy.

I and many others who play sp3 online frankly despise players who run trucks,jeeps,ect ect.. at tanks to use up shots, this is poor tactics, hence, we outlaw the tactic. and i cant believe in real life, someone was ordered to drive his truck at the enemy tank to use his shots..lol...We at mplayer sp3, have a saying, "junk tactics are for the tactically impaired"

[Drake666]

Maybe not trucks, but a lot of strange and crazy tactics are often used in war. Their is more then one case were a KV-1 commander would ram a german tank in battle and I have read report of stuff just as strange as that. I think if you are good player you would find tactics to counter this and not try and lemit it. Becouse when you do you also end up lemiting a lot of other stuff that would have happened in combat and that makes the game fun.