Naval Gunfire Strangeness

[KitH]

Hi,

I was playing the Battle of Chumonchin Chan scenario when I noticed something that in my mind is very strange.

Whenever targeting an enemy unit to be engaged with guns, the ship would turn towards the target.

This is not behavior I would expect from a naval vessel. I would instead expect the ship to put the target on its beam
to unmask all of the gun batteries. There is absolutely NO need to turn toward the target.

This happened both when I selected Engage Targets Auto and Engage Targets Manual.

Is this a bug or am I missing something.

Thanks,

[miller7219]

I noticed the same when I played that scenario. My solution was to manually plot a course with target on the beam. Even though there's no way to see weapon arcs, I know enough about naval stuff to know abeam is the best place to put a threat to unmask as many weapons as possible. I think we have two issues here:

1. AI behavior in general - Specifically in this case, does it consider weapon arcs on the attacking platform and try to position itself to bring as many weapons to bear once it is given an auto attack, or is the logic to simply plot an intersect course, period?

2. Missing weapon arcs - Again, no way to know without pulling out the naval reference books or online research.

Both AI behavior improvements and missing weapon arcs have been brought up in other threads and hopefully will receive some attention in future updates.

[thewood1]

I think weapon arcs are modeled. I have tried firing a patrol boat and it kept turning away from the enemy. I checked Janes and saw it only had a gun on rear position. So it was trying to unmask the gun on its own. I have tested this a couple times. Now is it able to handle every opportunity, I don't know.

I was targeting manually. The question is where can I see what arcs are modeled.

[miller7219]

Yep. Ive seen the same thing. Adherence to weapon arcs is in there for sure, but what are they for each platform is the question! Fortunately I did a good deal of database building back in the Harpoon days and for whatever reason I happen to remember mount placements on many platforms. It's amazing how much useless information sticks in your brain!

[ComDev]

Mount arcs are taken into account for targets closer than 5nm.

If you want your units to stick to their plotted paths, simply right-click on the unit, select Attack, and uncheck Ignore ålotted path when attacking [8D]

Thanks!

[Dimitris]

Two things to keep in mind here:

1) Closing with the enemy means your guns get more accurate (of course so do the enemy's). So there is a built-in incentive.

2) If the enemy units have been classified/identified, you can instruct the ship to exploit its gun range advantage (if it has it), by using the "Maintain Standoff" doctrine option.

[KitH]

Manually plotting the course and forcing the unit to stay there worked.

For this scenario, Maintain Standoff is the default, yet it still closed. Staying outside of an opponent's weapon range when you have a huge range advantage is pretty basic. The AI should take things like that into account.