Hit chance % and realism

[Seth]

Saving shots didn't seem to have any effect on my opfire. I played Maus that Roared, and during my turn, I would try to destroy all the tanks I could see, and let opfire take care of trucks and other junk.

[Kilo33Recon]

Gentlemen, in my experience regarding the percentages to hit have nothing to do with variable odds, number crunching or Programming. I think SPWAW does a good job of portraying what happens when you have grin in your eye, powder burns across your check from hot ejections, lead burning away the leaves and grass all around your body and loud concussive blasts ripping to hell and gone. The truth of the matter is that You cannot even BEGIN to make comparisons of world war II combat with present day military knowledge. Training, weaponry, battlefield conditions, electronics and moral are so vastly different that one cannot even begin to speculate. When I play the game, the effect for example of "Brave Men at Betio" conjures the stories of Frustration, chaos and tear wrenching futility that was described to me by my father and my uncles and cousins - Two of which were actually at Tarawa. The stories they tell me have nothing in common with the stories I have of Liberia, Somalia, Haiti, Shield, Storm and others - except the fact that some dumb sod on the other side of the fence decided that being a Marine deserved that I be shot at. I went into combat with the knowledge that I had superior training, Quality weaponry, 4 other volunteers just as highly trained in my fire-team as I was, Massive air capability and eyes in the sky that could pinpoint threat-ups. Sure... I would love to see a little work done to Opfire to take in effects of "drawing the bead" and ambuscade but as far as "s**tting and getting" are concerned I find it pretty accurate. Good work.

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Semper Fi Mac!

[Paul Vebber]

You don't have to, but the more "shots remaining" the better the chance of opfire occuring.

Its fairly random, I still think there is not enough of it (ie its still to easier to either sucker shots off and attack a defenseless unit, or you don't see enough "gun duels" its too easy to get the AI to shift fire back and forth and lose targeting benefits.) To me the unit that you leave targeted, should remain the principle target during opfire, unless something really threatening shows up.

What do you think? Should the "Target lock" be more of a "lock"?

[Desert Fox]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:

What do you think? Should the "Target lock" be more of a "lock"?

Damn fine idea. How bout if you get to set opfire stance for units/formations/battalion sometime during the game like advance/defend stance? You could give them orders to fire only at current target, only at hard targets, only at soft targets, at all targets, or at no targets. That, combined with the max. range setting could make ambushes so much more lethal or at least more effective. I hope this is even possible to implement into the game.

[Fred]

Paul,

no, I don't think that the target lock should be adamantite.
The current target should be the primary target as long as a direct threat appears that could do damage to the firing unit (it should not switch targets if a truck comes around the corner).
I.e., a Tiger engaging a T-34 or KV at a range of 10 hexes should pound it with op-fire if it moves or fires, but if suddenly another KV appears on the flank in a 2 hex range, the Tiger should react and engage the new threat.
If, on the other hand, the second KV appears in front of the Tiger at a range of 12 hexes, the target should not be switched.

Fred

[Pack Rat]

I like the idea of more op fire control period. The more the better. Any strides in this direction would be tremendous. What it would consist of, the team should see what could be done code wise and go from there. I would think this would add greatly to human vr. human play big time. If it could be handled in a manner where it could be preset in the scenrio editor things could really get hot.

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Hell On Wheels

[Charles22]

Sort of same subject here, but I really love one improvement on SPWAW over SP3, and that is that a PZIVC may be shooting with reduced maximum range at infantry, left with that range as the maximum, and expended all shots to fire anymore that turn, when you end your turn. Then come the opponents turn, and he opens up with that dreaded Polish 75mm flak. Guess what happens next? That same PZIVC counterfires the flak gun, in other words it bypasses it's range limitation to give counterfire. It seems to me as though when you get back to that unit, it will still have the range you set on it, though, and that you don't have to constantly rerange the units when they counterfire more distant threats (the range stays the same, but receiving fire, allows the unit to counterfire if it's normal maximum range is within range of the enemy fire). Here's a related question though, how does the unit counterfire if it's shots were expended? If all units get a queue of counterfire capability above and beyond any unused shots, would the next turn's queue for shots be larger if they don't counterfire? Or do all units get perhaps two or three counterfire shots in a queue (besides left over shots), and if the counterfire queue is not expended they're not added to the player's shot queue?

[Dave R]

Rather then put some sort of op fire control in for the player, wouldn't it be simpler to put in some sort of AI routine that checks each unit and makes a decision as to whether or not the crew will stay with the original target or swap to one that is percieved as a bigger threat!

[Charles22]

There's no larger threat to the unit being fired at, than the unit that is firing at it. You see what I mean? If you, have the unit in question as a Sherman, and one of the units if view is a King Tiger greatly in the distance, whereas an SGIIIG is ten hexes away opening fire, which will you worry most about personally? What if the seen King Tiger's gun is disabled, and you're wasting shots on a non-threat? How could you very accurately determine whether the KT's gun was knocked out? It's more points, but is it a "threat" to the unit and can you knock it out anyway? Perhaps it's playing possum?

[Charles22]

PERHAPS, this op fire I've seen, which prevails despite using all the fire orders before, is GOOD that it's saved only for counterfire, whereas, PERHAPS any regular fire saved for op fire, will aid in countering the big threats. For example, the unseen counterfire queue would shoot at the SGIIIG, while IF the Sherman had saved any fire for the players turn, it will possibly join in the counterfire against the King Tiger if it fired. Of course, any counterfiring it would do to aid another unit shot at, would then proably be within the limit of the maximum range the player had given it. Anyone have anything more solid on counterfire observation?

[Larry Holt]

One of the tennants of SP series is don't use up all your shots so as to have some for OP fire. I employ tanks in sections or platoons. One or more will fire at the enemy using up all their shots to build up the "to hit" probability. I then set the OP fire range to something low to avoid breaking the target lock but allow OP fire if someone does pop up nearby. I then rely upon the rest of the section/platoon to use their shots in OP fire.

[Paul Vebber]

Larry has hit on what the design is trying to reward, think platoons, not individual units!

The comment that the AI should do Opfire for you is exactly what happens now, based on expereince of teh unit, its suppression and the hit/kill chance, and number of "shots" remaing, the AI determines if an opfire is "triggered" by certin events.

The problem is that the "perception of threat" is whats important! What that requires to do right is a list for each unit of what the "perceived threats" are in a priority order. That is the sort of change only a new game could implement.

So we are left with a desires to implement detailed "ROE" or rules of engagment, engage only certain targets with certain round types at certain ranges.

Well think about what that means! Turning units "off and On" or saying don't fire unless fired at until the enemy is within range" are unambiguous. That is a LOT different than assuming a specific degree of target ID, acquisition and threat assessment has been made.

The design assumption is that, while you the player are an eye in the sky with OUTSTANDING situational awareness, your troops are mere mortals (well Ok they have ESP to share targeting and ID data instantaneously, but that requires more "lists" of with whom and how fast info can travel around the force, and with what accuracy - again new game) who do not have the knowledge you the player has about the ID of all the enemy units.

To implement detailed control of ammo type, implies the "troops" all have teh same amount of info about the enemy that you do. Instead the assumption is that chaos regns and your troops, depending on experience, a good deal of time pick correctly, but a are far from perfect and waste a significant portion of their "silver bullets" on the wrong thing!

On a smokey chaotic battlefield where you just saw a TIger disappear behind a bilding, and a few seconds later - motion near teh other side - BANG you shoot that Sabot round - but dang it it was a HT poking around as teh smoke clears a bit and the Tiger is motoringback the other way...

Command, control and communications is teh bugaboo of wargaming. "Realism" form a C3 standpoint just isn't fun because teh reality is there still is very little "control". IT was even worse in WW2.

SO a Game has to balance an inherant lack of consistency between "realism", (which I like to call "detail" because as was stated, anybody who uses the word "realistic" with a GAME loses any credibility in my book...we do it all teh time, but mean "technical detail" 99% of teh time...) and FUN.

Games must be FUN or no one will buy them, but each design picks certain issues to deal with, and certain ways of dealing with it. I deal with C3 issues a lot in my "real" warfare analyst job, so I tend to fail toward "less control is good". A lot of people don't agree, becasue to them, they hate lose a game because their Cyber subordinates screwed up something they knew better of!

To come full circle, as Larry as said, you can adjust your TACTICS to account for this lack of control, and oh by the way they tend to be more "historical" too, becasue realworld commanders can't expect detailed orders about what to engage when with what, and aduft their tactics instead.

OPfire is and has been a "pet peeve" of mine, and will be one of my focal points for possible changes

[Charles22]

Paul: Is my observation correct? Are units which have exhausted all of their fire on the player's turn, then able to counterfire still, or at least against what is directly firing at the unit?

Myself? I like to exhaust all of my shots, because I "hope" my tanks don't reacquire targets (no shots, no reacquires, right?). What could be more silly than to have that inaccurate PZIVC shooting at one of the Polish tanks, building up accuracy for a tank which has some pretty good armor for the period, then leave one or two shots for op fire, only to have the PZIVC op fire on a non-tank threat like a halftrack? Then my PZIVC has to start with minimal accuracy against the Polish tank again next player turn. I suppose, IF I felt like scrolling through all of my tanks, first, I would find that another tank may had been the one doing op fire on the same Polish tank, but it really does complicate things to me. Now, however, if units really can op fire without any shots left over, strictly against only fire against the unit itself, the picture is changed considerably.

Oh, one last thing. I've noticed, occassionally, that when I see the last target in the unit dialog, that it will say, for example that the unit had a distant mortar as target, which unless I'm very much mistaken, was the same target I told it to open up on with my last shot, however, sometimes hitting the target function won't go to the last target fired at, but instead will choose the closest enemy unit. Is this possibly a bug? Is this sort of mixup possibly the result of this weird 'hidden shots' thing that I think I've noticed in op fire?

[Paul Vebber]

Yes, even if you lose all your shots in your turn, you can still Opfire, though the odds of it being "triggered" are less. The shots are then deducted from your next turns allotment.

I use tactics similar to Larry Holt, where I try to keep "overwatching" units that I leave many shots remaining with, or fire one or two at the principle enemies I want to OPfire against, so at least one is "locked on" if the enemy moves or returns fire.

What may be happening is you stay locked onto the last target that "triggered" an opfire check, but that unit failed the experience roll to actually fire at it.

The "triggers" for Opfire likely need some work, but I know that the whole area of Opfire is work that may not be possible right now...

[Kharan]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:

The comment that the AI should do Opfire for you is exactly what happens now, based on expereince of teh unit, its suppression and the hit/kill chance, and number of "shots" remaing, the AI determines if an opfire is "triggered" by certin events.

When we were still adjusting to the new opfire rules in SPWW2, we did a few tests and found out that facing and speed govern the opfire probability.

i.e. a tank opfired an incoming foe at 12 hexes, but if the tank was facing the other way, opfire would happen at 6 hexes, and if the tank was also moving, it would opfire at a few hexes range.

Is the principle still valid?

[Paul Vebber]

In principle, yes, but you will find the relationships more complex...