Priority given to armor facing versus enemies

[Elmo_Zumwalt]

The unit-level AI does not currently take enemy presence into account during pathing calculations, which can lead to units (especially tanks) exposing their side or rear to an enemy weapon. If more priority could be given to the presence of enemies over other factors, this would probably help in preserving one's force.

[Veitikka]

Are we talking about pathfinding when moving from waypoint to waypoint, or about a stationary unit trying to maximize its chances for survival?

[Elmo_Zumwalt]

Ideally both; I have had several instances where my tanks will (while reversing) expose their side armor to visible enemy that they had been engaging immediately prior. An alternative could be to retain further waypoints after a “contact” waypoint, as in the current setup these subsequent points are deleted upon enemy contact. That is, the only way to make a plan that is preserved after contact is to use waypoints that do not take enemy presence into account (e.g. Advance over Contact).

[Veitikka]

I think we have separate issues discussed here.

When it comes to pathfinding (building a path between two cells in the map grid): Based on some of the feedback and comments there are players who don't understand our simple shortest-quickest-covered path options, and blame poor pathfinding when their units don't take the path they want, even if it behaves perfectly according to the selected option. Updating the paths based on enemy locations would add to the confusion.

The vehicles without a 2-plane stabilizer do stop when they fire at the enemy, so that behavior is there in certain cases. However, there's a great number of variables that should be taken into account to really know if it's good to stop to fire, or if it's better to reverse to safety at all cost. The weapons and their ammunition, protection levels, perhaps even the presence of other units etc.

I'm not sure how retaining the waypoints after 'contact' would help with this issue. Perhaps you mean that a unit should not reverse to safety when using the 'scout' command?

[Elmo_Zumwalt]

Currently, if I issue a sequence of orders including a “Contact” waypoint, and the units encounter enemies during the contact leg, they will forget all subsequent waypoints. This can be problematic when I wish to order units to ultimately move to a certain location while engaging enemies along the way, as opposed to bypassing all enemies. Keeping the subsequent waypoints would be a good QOL improvement, IMO.

My issue with the “Reverse” command is that units will not always (consistently) reverse depending on the pathing algorithm, meaning that some units will expose their weaker side armor while reversing away from an enemy, leading to their destruction. Modifying the unit logic to put more weight on an actively attcking enemy could help to avoid this. Similar logic could be used for the “advance” command, if the proposal to maintain post-contact waypoints is harder to implement.