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Infantry Breaking to Easily in 4.0?


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Taking a historical example albeit from Desert Storm there are many examples of low grade Iraqi infantry units putting up some resistance, then getting up out of their trenches and surrendering. There are also similar instances from the early days of the Battle of the Bulge where units, perhaps including large numbers of replacements or simply redeployed to what had been considered to be a quiet sector

considering the parameters of slysniper's experiment using a platoon with low morale and relatively poor leadership we might interpret the results in the light of the above. One caveat though unis that h does not give us the troop quality. Was the platoon in this experiment for example a conscript unit (eg a unit which includes a large number of new replacements) o were they a unit comprised of battle weary veterans.

Could I ask slysniper to re-run the experiment but this time  assuming a variety of troop quality levels. To what extent could troop quality make a difference to the way units behave? It may be a software issue as has been suggested but I think the above should either confirm this to be the case or perhaps rule it out. 

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12 hours ago, slysniper said:

But there is similar complaints about infantry fire being able to do this also. But now I know to look for troops breaking cover before they are even suppressed and pinned. That should help anyone in finding when something funny is happening. After that, it is just reviewing the file and selecting one unit at a time that was involved and see if the issue can be produced in a controlled test.

Good idea. I was pondering how to look at that issue.

12 hours ago, Holman said:

One other ting I've noticed just in the past few turns.

We all know that a shreck or bazooka firing inside a building can suppress the team.  Under 4.0, I've seen three or four instances of this suppression causing the shreck team to vacate the building.  Under 3.0, they would have cowered in place.

They are not taking any kind of fire.  They fire the rocket, get suppressed, and stand up and run out into the street.

Interesting, I have not had that happen yet, that should be interesting.

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Just saw a fresh veteran British airborne team run out of a building under mere rifle (not even MG34) fire.  They have taken no casualties at all.

Some mild HE had fallen nearby (not very close) earlier in the turn, but no one was even wounded.

The two or three HE rounds and the incoming rifle fire were the first action the airborne team had seen in the whole scenario.  In fact I don't believe I had taken more than one casualty on my whole side yet.

Needless to say, these are not Iraqi conscripts.

Edited by Holman
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47 minutes ago, IanL said:

Good idea. I was pondering how to look at that issue.

Interesting, I have not had that happen yet, that should be interesting.

Yes there is a lot we should be considering here before we reach any conclusions. The issues raised by Holman,Slysniper and myself all consider a number of different angles in what I think we all realize is a highly complex issue. Holman, in his post just ow mentions a veteran unit. He mentions HE and nearby rifle fire and that this unit was involved i its' first action of the scenario, hence suppression level should be quite low. I would agree that does look a little strange - not a result I would have expected with a unit that is good quality and good morale in a not too pressured combat situation.

We may be looking here at some unintended consequences of a well intended software change. However, while accepting hat possibility I would remain cautious at least until we have the results of more testing as I suggested earlier. I think all of us would agree with that

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I already mentioned it. My selected unit was regulars with no leadership mod. Yes changing to green or conscript does impact how they react. I actually did run some test with onboard arty to see what variances were happening. Nothing unusual.

But off board arty is so busted it is not needed. Basically a whole good order platoon , with no previous issues is routing in less than a minute from off-board arty. This does not need review for tweeks between troop types. there is a major issue.

I am sure if they fix it to match their on-board arty settings, they will get it where they were intending it to be.

6 hours ago, Holman said:

Just saw a fresh veteran British airborne team run out of a building under mere rifle (not even MG34) fire.  They have taken no casualties at all.

Some mild HE had fallen nearby (not very close) earlier in the turn, but no one was even wounded.

The two or three HE rounds and the incoming rifle fire were the first action the airborne team had seen in the whole scenario.  In fact I don't believe I had taken more than one casualty on my whole side yet.

Needless to say, these are not Iraqi conscripts.

If that was off-board arty that hit, then the rest of these things happening do not matter, that offboard arty would cause them to rout. So without seeing a unusual route with no arty fire, then we have nothing to check.

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Can someone confirm that a BF tester has verified there is some type of off-board arty issue and that BF is now aware of a correction needed.

 

I am playing a campaign in FB right now and some Big off-board arty is being used and I am not seeing the issue, so I figure I want to test that in a controlled setting and see what happens. That would be just another challenge if this is only some types fo off-board arty that is not working correctly.

 

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@slysniper If it's worth anything, I just performed a little test... (Red Thunder, 4.0)

 

15 lanes, 1 Action Square wide, surrounded by tall stone walls, 500 meters long. On one extremity, a Soviet weapon, on the other, a German Scout team offset by 3 Action Squares from their friendly edge (so the cowards have somewhere to run to!)

The Germans had 5 types of cover : none, sandbags, foxholes, trench, wooden bunker.

Each of those types of cover were matched against 3 Soviet weapons : Maxim gun, medium mortar (on-map), medium mortar (off-map, 1 tube, medium/medium fire-mission)

Bear in mind, my test was flawed : the 3-man Scout teams are rather fragile and I ran the test once (in my defense, I'm getting tired). This makes for a poor sample, but the results were interesting nonetheless.

Every team stayed in position, even as they took plenty of suppression and some casualties, except the Foxhole/Off-map and Trench/Off-map teams which ran out of their positions shortly after the first shell landed - without effect (no wounded/injuries, barely any suppression).

 

PS.  I also now realize I missed two important cover types : buildings and low solid cover (stone wall, etc...), I've seen units flee buildings quite a lot since the latest update.

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Again, I think this is just showing the issue with off-board arty. But it does bring up some aspects of its issue.

First are you saying the men did not flee from sand bags or the bunker. That would be important to know. What about the group in open ground, did they flee.

Buildings is the other big test. I get the feeling many are saying they see them flee un-naturally. (the problem is, it might require testing all types of different building to find that error.)

Foxholes and trenches are issues for sure from some testing I have done. ( I have not seen the building issue, but have not done any hard testing on them either.)

What I do know is I am playing a campaign with large cal off board arty and it is not dislodging men in bldgs. at times. So I know there is something still missing as to what the issue is and is not.  Could it be the cover, could it be which arty is used, and so on. But let the guy programming the game figure that out, we just need to show issues that are clearly there.

What I have noticed is infantry is more prone to leave a building getting hit by direct fire HE, But I see that as being OK, or at least what they wanted them to do as far as I think that was a intended change.

 

Edited by slysniper
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@slysniper

 

Out of all the cover/weapon combinations, the only ones that fled were Foxhole/Off-map and Trench/Off-map. The Ground/Off-map and Bunker/Off-map teams did not flee. Then again, my sample size was poor, but it does show there is an issue.

Perhaps tonight I will make a better version of the test, using larger teams and run it many times.

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It's almost certainly off-board artillery.  Myself and Miller are doing a PBEM in CMBS at present and my infantry (who are in rather extensive platoon fighting trenches) were doing fine against direct fire weaponry, holding their positions. The moment a single spotting round fell, 3 teams broke cover out of the trenches and got wasted. Mental state was at "rattled."

Save file will be PM'd  to anyone interest with the pw needed to unlock the turn for anyone interested.

I'm going to be re-installing a v.104 copy to see if I can't quantify things, but I think Slysniper has gotten to the heart of the issue.

It's annoying, but not game breaking, but it'll wear me down before long. In deliberate defense circumstances like this, it makes little  sense for what is otherwise a welcome change in AI behavior. As much as I love running rough-shod over a well prepared defense, I like some 'bite' from my dug-in opponents. It seems to have disappeared with the current update.

Edited by Rinaldi
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52 minutes ago, Rinaldi said:

It's almost certainly off-board artillery.  Myself and Miller are doing a PBEM in CMBS at present and my infantry (who are in rather extensive platoon fighting trenches) were doing fine against direct fire weaponry, holding their positions. The moment a single spotting round fell, 3 teams broke cover out of the trenches and got wasted. Mental state was at "rattled."

Save file will be PM'd  to anyone interest with the pw needed to unlock the turn for anyone interested.

I'm going to be re-installing a v.104 copy to see if I can't quantify things, but I think Slysniper has gotten to the heart of the issue.

It's annoying, but not game breaking, but it'll wear me down before long. In deliberate defense circumstances like this, it makes little  sense for what is otherwise a welcome change in AI behavior. As much as I love running rough-shod over a well prepared defense, I like some 'bite' from my dug-in opponents. It seems to have disappeared with the current update.

Hey Rinaldi, please send me a link, the more info and samples I can collect the better the odds are of a positive response

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Glad to hear you're on the case so to speak @sburke

From my perspective, the Russian infantry was saying in position, even in the face of withering direct fire from 120mm Abrams (at one point 10 Abrams firing at a few infantry teams in a tree line) and Bradley 25mm (which pounded a team in a foxhole for a whole minute, accurately) without any infantry breaking from cover. 

As I closed on the bulk of the defenses, infantry in prepared trench positions, the same thing happened. Direct, accurate fire from both Bradley's and Abrams (mostly Abrams at this point) that is causing casualties or not does not cause the AI to abandon the trenches and flee into the open. 

Dropping on map mortars also does not appear to cause the enemy AI to flee from their fortified positions. 

However, as Rinaldi said, the moment off map artillery began landing near trench positions, the AI immediately abandoned the trenches and were then easy targets for the Abrams in overwatch. 

I agree with Rinaldi that this issue seems to be caused by off map fire support, and that it is in fact an issue. I haven't done any thorough testing, but I've played enough battles since v4 came out (both single and multiplayer) to notice the pattern of behavior. It appears consistent. I have also not tested the effects other off map support such as air and armed drones has on the AI.

I also have saves, from the US perspective of the battle that Rinaldi has saves from, that I am willing to provide to testers if it helps. 

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On 5/26/2017 at 8:47 AM, Xorg_Xalargsky said:

15 lanes, 1 Action Square wide, surrounded by tall stone walls, 500 meters long. On one extremity, a Soviet weapon, on the other, a German Scout team offset by 3 Action Squares from their friendly edge (so the cowards have somewhere to run to!)

I think there might be a problem with your test. As far as I understand, the game doesn't analyse if there's enough space to flee, it simply sets a fallback waypoint some distance behind the unit. If there is no way for the unit to actually reach this waypoint, the unit stays put and doesn't move.

So in your test, if the unit decides it wants to fall back 3 squares, it will do so because you gave it space, but if it feels like running back 4 squares, it won't move.

In short, you should give them more like 10 squares of space behind them, and make sure there are gaps in the walls so that if a unit decides it wants to flee diagonally back into one of the other lanes, it has a way to do so.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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Ok, ran some additional tests today. First, I wanted to see if buildings were acting unrealistically to off board arty. 

The answer to that is

No

from what I can tell. The infantry was not running away from good building cover .

Now before you get to upset, catch the word good. Some of the smaller buildings do not provide good cover in the mind of the infantry anymore. So normally within a minute, they would flee and run to a better building and take cover.

The only building I saw that I did not like them doing that from was the small church. They run from there quickly in general and in my mind, that building should be pretty good cover.

 

I wanted to test different types of off-board arty as to the issue. They all activated the problem.

 

I also noticed the infantry fled from the foxholes and would run and lay down in open ground next to the holes.

In other words, they preferred the open ground hex and they could manage to say there and out last the bombing at times.

 

So at this point, I still see the only issue as fox holes and trenches to off-board arty.

Ian I have sent you my latest test file with some adjustments to reflect how I was running the test.

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21 hours ago, Rinaldi said:

It's almost certainly off-board artillery.  Myself and Miller are doing a PBEM in CMBS at present and my infantry (who are in rather extensive platoon fighting trenches) were doing fine against direct fire weaponry, holding their positions. The moment a single spotting round fell, 3 teams broke cover out of the trenches and got wasted. Mental state was at "rattled."

Save file will be PM'd  to anyone interest with the pw needed to unlock the turn for anyone interested.

I'm going to be re-installing a v.104 copy to see if I can't quantify things, but I think Slysniper has gotten to the heart of the issue.

It's annoying, but not game breaking, but it'll wear me down before long. In deliberate defense circumstances like this, it makes little  sense for what is otherwise a welcome change in AI behavior. As much as I love running rough-shod over a well prepared defense, I like some 'bite' from my dug-in opponents. It seems to have disappeared with the current update.

Hey Rinaldi,

 

Thanks, good info here.  Interesting in that in this second save you can see that as units get a pinned result, shortly thereafter they make their move.  This includes a unit that took no casualties and morale seemed to be okay.  Gives me some thoughts on what to focus in on for a test.

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