Matrix Games Forums

I'am a novice Spwaw player, but I have a concern that the generous amount of opportunity fire may not be realistic. I'd like some comments from veteran gamers on this subject.

I'm not sure I fit the bill of vetern, but I'll give it shot. I might feel this way if the AI handled the priority of what it was shooting at differantly. Since it kind of shoots at whatever moves it's very easy to bait. You could very easliy just dance a truck out in front and have the AI use up alot of it's oop fire. I don't do it because it takes away from the intention. I'm pretty sure it's being looked into by Paul and Mike. I would like to say that I'm holding back on my comments till I've played alot more. I got chewed up pretty good by aircraft last night and have had fair to middlen results with arty. and getting better at it. Now both these have been commented about being to weak, I'm not sure yet it is the case. But back to your question with a question. Was the return fire effective? I believe you can effect the amount of and effectiveness of the fire by the caliber of troops doing it. You can move slower to avoid being seen. Smoke is also a possable solution.
But anyway welcome to the forum and welcome to playing the new "bad boy on the block", shes a sweet heart of a game and going to get better. Good hunting.

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Hell On Wheels

Good answer, Pack Rat!

There are ways to avoid excessive opfire now. Stealth moves, moving one hex at a time is one of them. You can now sneak up on an unsuppressed tank, impossible before.

If you boldly move a number of hexes in the open, you're gonna get shot at.

But the fog of war works in the Ai just as it does for you.

Try using more cautious moves and see if it improves for you.

And yes, air and artillery are not always as weak as one might suppose, depending on the targets, unit's abilities and defender's status....a lot of variables come into play.

Wild Bill

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Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

Thanks guys for the replies, in fact I should mention that it was the generous amount of opportunity fire that I was giving not receiving that was concerning me.

Originally posted by IronCowboy:
Thanks guys for the replies, in fact I should mention that it was the generous amount of opportunity fire that I was giving not receiving that was concerning me.

One thing you can do which improves the quality of your opp fire, (and can greatly increase your effectiveness on a delay mission), is to Set Range to a very low number for your inf, AT Guns, ATR's and Engineers. AS the Russians, if my ATR's start popping off at their default ranges, their spotted and wiped out while their attacks are bouncing off the German armor. If I wait till the tanks are at a range of 1 or 2 or up to about 4 I think, the Gerry's are in for a nasty surprise. Even nastier with engineers set to 1. "Hello there, have some flamethrower juice. And how about a satchel charge as well..." BOOM.

If your opp fire starts popping off at long range, the Germans will eat you up before you can say "Retreat!..."

Originally posted by IronCowboy:
Thanks guys for the replies, in fact I should mention that it was the generous amount of opportunity fire that I was giving not receiving that was concerning me.

I can only back that. It seems my units have more shots on OP fire than in their phase. And thats true even if I shoot all shots in previous one. So no need to "reserve" shots for OP, there is still A LOT. I don't mind enemy OP fire, I can evade it but in defend scenarios, when my defences are well build, I can just sit back and press "next turn" "next turn" "next turn" maybe get a snack meanwhile. Enemy arty isn't terribly effective against dug-in infantry and almost useless against armour. Maybe as usefull as bad smoke screen. So In well build defences with just my core and few MG bunkers I can survive all early wars without interaction ... another war movie anybody? "NEXT TURN"

Renwor

There has been much discussion about how to get the AI to decide when to Op fire. I had suggested a hot key or pop up box to allow the human player to decide if he wants the shot or not. Obviously this does not work in a dual human game.

Would it be possible to change the OP fire routine from checking the range to the kill probability? Presently I can set the range to trigger OP fire. I'd like that to be changed to a %prob for hits by the enemy. The AI already calculates raw %prob so that value is already in the code. Change the OP fire routine to compare the %prob (instead of range) to what I set the trigger to be. This would allow me to set it low for relatively free OP fire or high to not fire unless I'm really going to get a good kill out of it.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

Many excellent post..Larry and Pack Rat are on target. Target selection by the AI seems to be handled as "Let's shoot the easy ones first"...LOL No Sp version has been able to fix the problem. I expect that it would be easier to build a new AI than fix SP's. When Matrix starts creating it's own engine, I'll bet this problem will be addressed.

Better believe it!

WB

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Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

Renwor's point only supports my premise that the best battle are the human designed scenarios.

Most designers take into account the actions of the AI and counter it with using the various tools in the game to make it much more interesting

If you play a well designed scenario, your "War Movie" will be right in front of you and should have your rapt attention.

Wild Bill

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Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games