Originally posted by Paul Vebber: THe extra shots is a way to compensate for the idiocy of the AI. OPfire is random and strange circumstances ocurr, in pbem your're stuck with it - against the AI you can confirm opfire and it can't so the extra shots compensate.
Rewriting the AI may one day be a major project we under take down the road, but that is on a difficulty scale we can;t undertake right now. Its alot better than it used to be!
That's the most brutally honest assessment I've ever heard! You guys definitely have other fish to fry - doing what you can to get it close enough (such as brute force AI handicapping) is all we can ask.
I point of clarification, Only "special opfire" causes increased suppression, not "normal opfire" though there is no longer an indication of the difference between the two except the suppression increase.
The target lock bug is not solvable becasue of the way OPFire is triggered. If OPfire is triggered the "targeted unit" becomes "targeted" and the other is lost. IF you decline the opfire there is no way to "go back" to the old target.
Also a couple of posts he made it sound like the AI gets an advantage - you get the SAME chance for special opfire in your turn and have all along. THe AI just has a higher chance to get "an extra shot". I will but I think the Human gets a 3rd OPfire unit to shoot occasionally now in an opfire "pulse".
Without a major rewrite of the AI the unit selection is random with some range and ROF and experience in there. THe AI has no concept of "threat" it just responds to "triggers" of movement or fire.
ANother thread should be started if folks wan to get in to the definition of "threat"...it quickly gets VERY complicated (particularly assuming the "cyber-troopers do not have the players "***'s eye view" perfect knowledge.
The idea of user created "triggers" form conditional "rules" about when the "conditions are right" to shoot is a MAJOR undertaking that we are attempting in Combat Leader. It requires a major game engine redesign to incorporate.
Thank you Paul. In any case, and of course it may not be fixable as well, but shouldn't we be able to lock a target, assuming ideal conditions between turns, if the unit never prompts to opfire because it's range is cut to zero?
I can't confirm this right now, but it seems as though another oddity has crept up, even within the player turn. It seems as though, if I were to take C0 and target it on something and fire it's first round, that every unit in that platoon looses it's previous target and switches to that. Now this may not be that important on the first round fired, or if one only fires with one unit at a time, but what if an entire platoon has 6 rounds to fire. C0 fires three rounds, but then the player decides to counter counter-fire by not firing with that unit any more, but with a subordinate, at a different target then C0 has been firing on. If what I think is happening, is, then when the player returns back to C0 to commence firing on the one it was locked on, it will have lost it's lock and have to build up accuracy all over again. Perhaps it switches targets, but still doesn't lose the built up accuracy just as long as you can recall what the locked target was. In any case it appears to me that somethign screwy is going on even within the player turn regarding this. Thanks.
Please let me know if I'm being a looney about the last two things I brought up (1. Firing at a unit, cutting it's range to zero, with ideal conditions happening during opponent phase (such as the target never leaving LOS), and it still switching it's target. 2. That basically one unit in the platoon, retargeting to something else, shifts all units in that platoon to that target, thereby possibly loosing any buildup of accuracy that one of them might've already had against it's target.), but at least I was correct about losing targets between turns. I don't have the game with me here.
Actually, if both conditions I described here are occurring it's obvious that the reason the odd one unit that's having it's range cut to zero, retargets during opfire, even though it never prompts to possibly opfire, is because one of the units of the platoon DID get promted for counter-fire, or indeed did fire, not just refuse all prompts.
Paul Vebber: First thing when I got home I tested the situations I spoke of. I must admit this test was under slightly different conditions, as I played two-player a game I had started against the AI, but it's not doing what I thought it was doing. I'm not going to run through a whole another turn just to try the same against the AI, but I'kk pay special attention to a single platoon once I get to playing some with V5.0, and see if it happens, and if it does I'll repost. Sorry about what seems to be an error on my part.
