Jump to content

1-1 Infantry - Improvements


Recommended Posts

CMSF has brought definite advances to CM, you’ll get no arguments out of me about that. The graphics are far superior and the vehicle models are spot on. A lot of the new commands and the ability to give orders on waypoints are one of the biggest steps forward in my opinion and the artillery system is also great. One area though that I see as needing more work is the crux of CMSF and presumably all future CMx2 games, the Infantry.

The infantry models are good and on the whole, bar a few glitches, so are the animations but for me the whole thing is let down by the infantry actions. After playing with them for 2 years they haven’t learned anything. They run around in bunches like raw recruits and fire and move in an RTS style without a thought for theirs or their buddies’ safety.

In an ideal world my infantry will be able to form a few simple formations, line, extended line, arrowhead etc. When they get ambushed they wont all be together, as real infantry aren’t trained to run in a couple of bunches into buildings or over open terrain. I also don’t want my infantry to get killed giving buddy aid to a guy under fire. I would also like to know that my guys will react under fire in the correct way, carrying out a few simple IA [immediate Action] drills.

Now, Im no where near a PC game coder and have no idea of how hard or easy the above would be to program, but I do know that if it was possible to have infantry formations and a basic IA drills, then the game would have improved immensely. CMSFs reduced scale means that infantry is much more important than in previous games and as such I think a more representational infantry would make the game so much more immersive than it is now.

Are there any plans to attempt this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 164
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I would also love to see IA drills in the future.

As IA's drills are drilled into every soldier to the point where they don't have to think about it I think they should be simple enough to code in as a new part of the TacAI and they would massively add to the immersion of the game.

The TacAI is already very good so IMO it would just add to what is already there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do the different militaries have different IA drills? Would a Syrian reserve battalion have different drills from a Syrian airborne company? Would uncons use drills? Should American units set to Conscript react with IA drills under fire?

I dunno. Seem like there would be a lot of complications, on top of the actual coding of the things... and if different drills / code were needed for each unit type in each military, I'll bet that's a lot of code. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The bunching up is a consequence of having limited computational resources. The engine has to keep the soldiers together on as few action spots as possible to limit the necessary LOS checks. The result is that the game runs fine even on my business laptop (which I appreciate).

Soldiers in Eric Young's Squad Assault were true 1:1 and there you could see squads strung out over dozens of meters (when moving, at least).

With the current engine I notice the lack of corner peeking/shooting.

I had a very bad experience yesterday, when I tried to take down a recon vehicle trapped in a cul-de-sac. Whenever I tried to sneak a squad up to it (around building corners) the turret turned and mowed them down, even when I tried to attack from two directions simultaneously. In reality, this vehicle should have been killed with ease, with only the AT guy exposing himself briefly. It was painful to watch.

Best regards,

Thomm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do the different militaries have different IA drills? Would a Syrian reserve battalion have different drills from a Syrian airborne company? Would uncons use drills? Should American units set to Conscript react with IA drills under fire?

I dunno. Seem like there would be a lot of complications, on top of the actual coding of the things... and if different drills / code were needed for each unit type in each military, I'll bet that's a lot of code. :)

You have a good point but think about how much information it would give a player! That Syrian reserve battalion just did some very smart looking drills when it came under fire - maybe this will be tougher than you think!

I think most NATO armies have similar(ish) drills in the first seconds under fire and are based on the squad - this would be the tricky one. Soviet influenced ones are very simple and based mainly on the platoon so all that you would need to code there is a stop/go decision for all units in the LT's command with discipline/command variables.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I certainly don't think the current infantry modeling is bad; by and large I think it's a vast improvement from CMx1 and I enjoy infantry fights in CMSF immensely.

And I think it's good to recognize the considerable improvements made to the infantry TacAI since the initial release. Just this past weekend I was playing a game where I lined up an entire platoon along a crestline and created a very effective fighting crest position. I don't think this would have worked in the state CMSF was in at initial release. In the initial release TacAI tended to either leave too many soldiers back behind the ridge where they had no LOS, or leave some soldiers "hung out to dry," too far over the ridgeline and exposed.

And when it came to small arms fire, CMx1 didn't model the cover provided by a fighting crest position at all. So no question there's been a vast improvement since the "old days," at least for this kind of tactical situation.

I was also impressed by some very good TacAI "fall back" behavior in this same game: I ordered a 3-man team to scout around the base of a small rise into an open area, and on entering the open area, the team immediately started taking small arms fire. Miraculously, no one got hit by the initial salvo and the team immediately, and without orders from me, ran back behind the rise and into cover. So long to the days of the old CMx1 "crawl of death"!

So there have been some great advances and I appreciate this.

But I'll certainly sign on to any petition requesting that improvements to the infantry TacAI should continue to be a high priority. I really don't want to have to micromanage the position of every single soldier in a squad myself, so I agree with BFC's decision to not allow the player to issue orders to individual soldiers. But this means that it falls on the TacAI to position all those little pixel soldiers at least reasonably intelligently given the tactical situation at hand, and that's a tall order. I can definitely see room TacAI improvements in all of the areas GSX mentions, and then some. Immediate action drills, pulling a wounded comrade back into cover instead of trying to treat him out in the open and under fire, better behavior entering buildings and rounding blind corners... I'm very happy with the game now, but that doesn't mean that there's no room for improvement.

And I do recognize that all this stuff is a MAJOR coding/AI challenge. But I'd much rather see BFC putting its efforts into stuff like this than adding bells and whistles like helicopters or motorcycles, or even additional tank types that are tactically of of very similar capability to what's already in the game...

Cheers,

YD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You have a good point but think about how much information it would give a player! That Syrian reserve battalion just did some very smart looking drills when it came under fire - maybe this will be tougher than you think!

Agreed - it would be really amazing. A lot of time would need to go into it, though, I think. I don't know CM:SF's AI architecture, but when I think about how *I* would go about programming those things into an existing engine, it seems like a lot of work. :)

And British squads using american drills or vice versa. Maybe not perfect but a huge improvement.

That's a possibility, I guess - everybody uses the same set of drills. The drills themselves would probably still be a good bunch of code.

YankeeDog - yep. I think the TacAI does pretty darned great. I was playing some heavy MOUT this morning and was very happy with what I saw and experienced. I would be very happy if the TacAI looked more realistic, but in the abstract I'm pretty happy with the results that I get.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, if we're going to give suggestions, then let's figure it out...

What actions do we want?

*Looking around corners. The ai seems to be able to line up against walls, so maybe they could have one guy peeking around with a smaller chance of being spotted. And if the squad peeks and sees a vehicle and you order a Target command, he should pull out an at weapon and fire.

*Immediate action drills. The icons already flash (1.20) when a unit is under fire. The ai could calculate a rough distance between the shooters and shootees and perform an action based on that. Either it's a near ambush and they should return fire or a far ambush and seek cover. This may already be modelled but maybe the squad formation could be improved. I'm not sure what other IA drills would be necessary.

*Formations for moving. It would be nice to be able to choose between line abreast and ranger file at the least. The ability to spread out would be great too. They would have to add an extra menu or something.

*Formations for fighting. The ability to spread out is probably the major thing. This would add to the calculations for LOS and other things, but it would be nice to have.

*As far as moving multiple squads/vehicles in formation, it would be nice but I can live without it.

*One thing I would love to see is a better waypoint system. I really liked the Company of Heroes way. When you click a destination, you see the little green dots of where the guys will line up, and you can drag the direction indicator to change their facing. CMSF shows you the two squares that your troops will end up in, but it's a little cumbersome and you can't always get it the way you want it. What would be ideal is you could click the waypoints as usual, but when you reach your last planned waypoint (destination), you could drag the mouse in the direction you want them to face, and the highlighted squares would move accordingly.

Btw, my pop just had a stroke this morning, so any prayers would be appreciated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fighting Seebee,

You can move multiple squads in formation. You just have to place them in formation and move them with all selected. So I place three squads across with the platoon leader, AT and machine guns in the rear. Maybe I run some scouts to the flanks or a sniper team.

After you get the spacing, give the move command.

Only good in open terrain but saves time as I can move them as a group.

As much as you play, this is probably not new news for you, but thought I'd mention it since it achieves the results I am looking for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many of us share these concerns about 1:1. But the question is, what to do about it?

In CMx1 is was easy since the squad was a single point on the map and you would just do statistics on who gets hurt when.

Once you go 1:1 in the representation but not in player control all hell breaks loose. There is a TacAI problem to solve here compared to which the Panther dance of CMx1 looks easy. The action spot concept as implemented might or might not make it extra bad.

But overall, in my mind the only way to go for a new 1:1 game is replace most TacAI with SOPs and formations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd be happy to have the units spread out to cover more than one action spot for 4 men. But if it's 2 men per action spot then you double the resources needed for the first LOS pass.

Still - I think for something so fundamental, if possible, I'd like to see it improved.

Even doubling the size of the action spot so that each action spot was 16m * 16m and relying on the units within it to act accordingly could work. Just get rid of the bunching.

How to do it without cluttering the UI is another question.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to admit that I fail to see the difference between the single point and statistics of CMX1 and the generic squad level 1:1 that we have now with regards to player control. We had no formation control then and we have very little now.

For me, much of the joy of the CM games has been the somewhat frustrating lack of control and my individual units doing their own thing. I'd love to see an improvement in the tactical skill of my subordinate units. What I would not want to see is the implementation of something that means I have to do everything for my pixeltruppen. I want to tell them to take that house, maybe from a particular direction, not to have to tell them to take a house with a reverse echelon sweep by pairs with a corkscrew element and a cherry on top. I'd like to see that as part of the unit experience.

Part of the reasoning behind that is that much of a green units problems stem from doing damn fool things, which is something that miniscule control removes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to admit that I fail to see the difference between the single point and statistics of CMX1 and the generic squad level 1:1 that we have now with regards to player control. We had no formation control then and we have very little now.

The difference is that in CMx2 so far your soldiers become casualties when the TacAI had them wander off into the wrong spot. The classic "walked around the house into the enemy LOF zone" is just the tip of the iceberg.

In CMx1 you had a statically controlled approach, as in "hmmm, this squad with 9 men received a firepower burst or a blast of '44' and it is in solid woods, that means I execute a 14% probability on each man to label him a casualty". You (as in, the engine) has direct control. You can dictate realistic outcomes by directly setting these probabilities in the program's code.

In CMx2, whether a man becomes a casualty or not is determined by screwups of the TacAI and the game engine has just lost control about the casualty statistics.

(execptions apply, of course, since the CMx1 TacAI could screw up, too, namely with auto-sneak-exhaustion and other suicide features but this was rare compared to finding CMx2 individuals on the wrong side of the action spot concept)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The overwhelming problem for me, silly as it may be, is that it looks wrong INTERMITTENTLY. If it looked wrong all the time, like the squad representation in CMX1 your brain would just learn to ignore it, but good, good, good, BAD, good won't let my brain settle on a way to interpret what's going on. It is not a huge problem since I usually play with a fairly high camera but it would nice to bump it up the list.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

FightingSeabee: prayers for your dad are on the way.

On topic: You know, if the units just... you know, peeked around corners, popped a single head over a wall instead of everyone crouching and staring over it, fought AWAY from windows... even without IA drills I think more self-preservation would go a long way. I see guys standing outside doors, running out in the street when I tell them to bolt around a corner, running reeeeeallly slooooowly when I tell them to run Fast (what is the deal with that, by the way - an animation timing thing? sometimes they run super fast, sometimes they look like moon men).

My experience would be improved by the rectification of my remaining pet peeves. But then, I suspect that's probably true for all of us. ;) And - my experience, as it is, is pretty damned amazing already as I've mentioned. Of course, *improved* amazing would be awesome... :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The difference is that in CMx2 so far your soldiers become casualties when the TacAI had them wander off into the wrong spot. The classic "walked around the house into the enemy LOF zone" is just the tip of the iceberg.

In CMx1 you had a statically controlled approach, as in "hmmm, this squad with 9 men received a firepower burst or a blast of '44' and it is in solid woods, that means I execute a 14% probability on each man to label him a casualty". You (as in, the engine) has direct control. You can dictate realistic outcomes by directly setting these probabilities in the program's code.

In CMx2, whether a man becomes a casualty or not is determined by screwups of the TacAI and the game engine has just lost control about the casualty statistics.

(execptions apply, of course, since the CMx1 TacAI could screw up, too, namely with auto-sneak-exhaustion and other suicide features but this was rare compared to finding CMx2 individuals on the wrong side of the action spot concept)

Statistics do funny things sometimes as well and you have no control over it. You could look at it along the lines of "statistically the soldiers in CMX2 have a probability to do odd things that lead to them getting killed." The big difference is that you see it while in CMX1 you could pretend that it doesn't happen. The doing odd things is of course on top of the variability of enemy action.

Citing your example, how do you explain it if each 14% chance comes up for a whole 9 man squad? Granted it's pretty unlikely, about 2 in one hundred million, but that shows that the squad has to have done something pretty dumb to get it to happen.

In CMX2, you may lose the direct control that the designers had over the statistics in CMX1. In compensation you have to tweak complex behaviours to control the emergent statistics. Since the CMX1 stats are guesses anyway, you aren't really losing anything. What does firepower 44 mean anyway? How does deep woods affect things?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Statistics do funny things sometimes as well and you have no control over it. You could look at it along the lines of "statistically the soldiers in CMX2 have a probability to do odd things that lead to them getting killed." The big difference is that you see it while in CMX1 you could pretend that it doesn't happen. The doing odd things is of course on top of the variability of enemy action.

Citing your example, how do you explain it if each 14% chance comes up for a whole 9 man squad? Granted it's pretty unlikely, about 2 in one hundred million, but that shows that the squad has to have done something pretty dumb to get it to happen.

In CMX2, you may lose the direct control that the designers had over the statistics in CMX1. In compensation you have to tweak complex behaviours to control the emergent statistics. Since the CMX1 stats are guesses anyway, you aren't really losing anything. What does firepower 44 mean anyway? How does deep woods affect things?

The difference is that in the CMx1 you can directly coerce the game into giving less or more casualties by just playing with the casualty probability or the firepower rating or by putting in new modifiers.

If you have a 1:1 game where people become casualties not directly because of probabilities you control, but instead as a result of the TacAI putting them where they are not supposed to be then you have to have a much more difficult task at your hands. If you decide casualties are too high you have to program the TacAI to not move them there and we all know that this is much different than tuning a couple variables.

Or in other words: the difference between the two methods is not that one is more or less likely to give realistic results in the first implementation. Both will be off, there's no chance to get it right out of the blue. The difference is what happens after you decide which way to tune the initial parameters. In the CMx1 method you can directly adjust. In CMx2? You have to do real programming. And as with all programming, if you fix X you break Y.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...