A few points/questions

Santa Klaus · Post by **Santa Klaus** » Wed May 31, 2000 12:30 pm

Hi all,
I'm far in my WWII campaign and just relized/experienced the following points/bugs. They may have been reported before - if so I appologize for the waste of time.
-I'm fighting the Brits in the desert 1/43 and it seems as if the Grants are "cheating" as they can fire their 75 Bow Gun, even if facing the other direction - I was setting up an ambush and cought them from the side, immobilizing them, and still they fire their 75

-How can I keep my 88 AT/AA from firing at infantry - thus giving their position away and wasting precious shots? I know the AI now moves Infantry first to absorb shots, but I'd like to keep my 88 from engaging them and rather shoot tanks - as thei're supposed to be.
-I have a group of Infiltrators (8ea) that now (14 Scenario) do not appear in the deployment menu. They seem to be set to reinforcement group. After setup and end of my 1st Turn the game ends with a decisive victory of mine - the game only runs properly if I let the computer do Auto Setup (with the same force) on Human setup the game ends immediately with a decisive victory and I cannot look at the player2 forces. Any help here??
Thanks for your patience and help
Santa

Wild Bill · Post by **Wild Bill** » Wed May 31, 2000 2:56 pm

I can help a little, well at least with info.

1. We know about that one. I think the French BIS1 does the same thing. Its a long standing bug from earlier SP.

2. Another AI problem that needs to be remedied. It would require some major coding (what else is new). Seems the AI wants the easy kills and what it considers the most threatening enemy (the closest, usually).

I don't know if these will be changed in the first patch. I doubt it.

Someone else will have to respond to #3. I am just not a generated campaign man. Sorry...WB

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Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

tow-2 · Post by **tow-2** » Wed May 31, 2000 5:19 pm

I have a suggestion for #2 - with regards to the player's 88s (or anything else) firing at AI infantry instead of better, "priority" targets. What about a couple of toggles for units, something like:
1) don't fire at - a. infantry, or b. vehicles
2) unless they within __ (range)

I have the same problem with my 88s using up all their Op fire on infantry 20+ hexes distant. Also have that happen with some of my AFVs, which I would much prefer to engage enemy armor at long distances! The suggestion above would allow players to set priorities for various units, but still preserve the neccessity to engage anything that moves within a certain range.

O de B · Post by **O de B** » Wed May 31, 2000 5:30 pm

Maybe a workaround for the 88's could be to remove their HE allocation with the OOB editor. Therefore they will only fire at vehicles.

You might also want to disable the main gun or lower the range fire if you want them to stay hidden. But you won't fire at tanks neither.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Wed May 31, 2000 5:41 pm

I find that OP fire with 88's is not such a good thing. OP fire usually gives you 1 or sometimes 2 shots at one enemy unit. That is rarely enough to build up accuracy needed to hit and kill a unit. OP fire with AT guns isn't so much of a problem as even if they miss, they probably aren't spotted and can survive. If the large 88 fires, its almost always immediately spotted and vulnerable to counterfire. If you save your 88's for direct fire on your turn, you can direct them to the most dangerous targets and build up the "to hit %" to get a kill and also be able to move them if they are taking effective counterfire.

By the way. If you put an AT gun in a building, its stuck there as it can't move and a vehicle can't move into the building to pick it up. I gave all my AT guns a movement allowance of 1. Even the heavy 88 could be manhandled a short distance.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Wed May 31, 2000 6:16 pm

The "opfire dance" of alternating moving units to spoil the enemy's accumulated shots is a tough nut to crack.

We are thinking about...

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Wed May 31, 2000 8:03 pm

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
The "opfire dance" of alternating moving units to spoil the enemy's accumulated shots is a tough nut to crack.

We are thinking about...

Hmmm, IRL units do move by alternate bounds to minimise this. I'm not sure that this is a bug, it might be a good feature.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Desert Fox · Post by **Desert Fox** » Wed May 31, 2000 9:00 pm

Originally posted by Larry Holt:

Hmmm, IRL units do move by alternate bounds to minimise this. I'm not sure that this is a bug, it might be a good feature.

Well, this is more for overwatch than to eat up opfire. A platoon of tanks may split into two sections for overwatch, but a real life enemy does not break off his attack on the forward units to turn to engage the overwatch units starting to move forward. Once you engage a target, you don't break engagement unless it has been disabled, destroyed, surrendered, retreated, if a greater threat came into range, or if ordered to break off. Opfire in the game does not seem to present this reality.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Wed May 31, 2000 9:16 pm

Originally posted by Desert Fox:
Well, this is more for overwatch than to eat up opfire. A platoon of tanks may split into two sections for overwatch, but a real life enemy does not break off his attack on the forward units to turn to engage the overwatch units starting to move forward. Once you engage a target, you don't break engagement unless it has been disabled, destroyed, surrendered, retreated, if a greater threat came into range, or if ordered to break off. Opfire in the game does not seem to present this reality.

Over watch isn't to "eat up OF" but rather to reply to it and cause the OP firing unit to not be able to calmly fire on the bounding element. And how do you know that the target has been disabled or destroyed? Suppose you are firing on a bounding tank and it stops then another tank starts moving towards you. IRL its hard to know if a tank is really dead/disabled unless its a catastrophic kill. I was in an M1 BN (but not on a tank crew) and our battle drill called for cease fire on tanks that stopped and did not return fire. Its a target rich environment out there and you just can't take time to continue to shoot at a target that isn't shooting back. In this case we would have done just what happens in the game. Now a human tank crew may not be easily taken by the alternating tank dance for long but then again they probably wouldn't keep firing on a stopped tank when another was firing at them so they might be forced into the same response that the AI uses for OP fire.

Of course the distinction of OF and direct fire is a game abstraction caused by the limits of IgoUgo. In this regard the OP fire AI routine does not acurately portray the mechanism of the real life dynamics between bounding unit, OF, and overwatch returning fire but the result is pretty realistic in that the OF is disrupted.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Desert Fox · Post by **Desert Fox** » Wed May 31, 2000 11:25 pm

This is true Larry, but the problem is that none of these tanks ever stop during the turn. Once they start moving, they do not stop until they are immobilized or destroyed. Definitely you assume that a tank that has stopped and is not firing to be a non threat. However, in the time frame of the game, this is really not right. One tank starts shooting at a unit, the unit returns fire to that tank. Then another tank fires at that unit, so the unit then returns fire to that tank. Now the first tank fires another round, so the unit returns fire yet again at that tank. That is not quite realistic. The AI loves to do this. It moves up one tank a few hexes, then moves up another, and goes through the rest of the units this way. Then it goes back to move the first tank up a little more, etc. If some unit takes opfire at one of the AI units, then it starts shooting in the same way it moves. One unit shoots, then the next, and the next, right back to the first unit again, until the target stops returning fire. This is compeltely due to the one unit at a time factor of this game. If it were a real time or simultaneous game, then we could see what you described. But it does not work in this game.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Thu Jun 01, 2000 12:47 am

Originally posted by Desert Fox:
[snip] One tank starts shooting at a unit, the unit returns fire to that tank. Then another tank fires at that unit, so the unit then returns fire to that tank. Now the first tank fires another round, so the unit returns fire yet again at that tank. That is not quite realistic. The AI loves to do this. [further snip]

Ahhh, I had not considered this situation of alternating firing units in this thread and you certainly are correct, it is not realistic. There was some discussion of this in another thread and I suggested that OF be calculated not by ranges but by the raw % to hit of the firing unit. IRL, a unit knows which enemy is a greater threat and fires at it without switching targets. I suggest that if a unit has a target (from the last direct or OF fire), it not OF at a new unit unless that one got (in the case of a firing unit) or could get (in the case of a moving unit) a greater raw % to hit than the existing target. The player should be able to set the % to hit trigger for OF as is done by range presently. The AI should ignore high % to hits that could not be lethal, e.g. small arms against tanks, AP shot against inf, etc.

Then again do we really know if Michael Wood is alive to do this? I have heard rumors of his abduction by space aliens and a government coverup.

Then again, I love to do this also. Does this put me on an equal plane with the AI? <big embarrased blush>

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Thu Jun 01, 2000 5:24 am

The truth is out there...

He has posted tonight, so I can only hope all is well

Getting the AI to distribut fires is no mean feat, several alternatives to "abstractly take it into account. In any case it will be at least patch 2 before we can tackle it!

Tombstone · Post by **Tombstone** » Fri Jun 02, 2000 2:30 am

What if, for the most part, you had to do a units entire move at once? Except in the case of doing a 'stop' move that would allow you to move other units but at the same time cost some movement. It doesn't really solve the problem, but it makes the player pay something for staggering his advance. That way there's a trade off. Full speed, full danger... less speed, less danger.

Tomo

Spartacus! · Post by **Spartacus!** » Fri Jun 02, 2000 7:51 am

[QUOTE]Originally posted by tow-2:
[I have a suggestion for #2 - with regards to the player's 88s (or anything else) firing at AI infantry instead of better, "priority" targets. What about a couple of toggles for units, something like:
1) don't fire at - a. infantry, or b. vehicles
2) unless they within __ (range)

I have the same problem with my 88s using up all their Op fire on infantry 20+ hexes distant. Also have that happen with some of my AFVs, which I would much prefer to engage enemy armor at long distances! The suggestion above would allow players to set priorities for various units, but still preserve the neccessity to engage anything that moves within a certain range]

Excellent suggestion! I've been hoping for something like that to be built into SP for a long time. I've been forced to turn the range down low to only attack immediate threats with Op Fire and leave the picking longer range targets to myself on my turn; not a great solution.

Rick

Dean Robb · Post by **Dean Robb** » Fri Jun 02, 2000 9:55 pm

The workaround for the OF problem (and not just for the 88s) is to disable the main armament or set the range very low (you can still shoot at a longer range during the DF phase).

Just remember to re-enable the main armament for your DF and to enable it for OF when the bad guys get real close

.