Brian Rock

"Even worse is "scripted" AI... This form of AI is so bad that we are pretending that it doesn't even exist It barely works in games like Warcraft and Quake, and totally falls down in a fluid wargame." Thank the gods of war that you aren't going down that route. The only reason it semi-works in those games is that the player's path is channelled. What usually happens is that the scenario becomes a puzzle. Annoying and dull. It's what put me off the C&C style game, as well as quite a few otherwise good flight sims. I recall BTS saying you were using fuzzy logic algorithms for the AI. I think this approach holds a great deal of promise, as do neural nets and genetic algorithms. To date the games I've seen that have applied these techniques have been fizzers. SWAT 2 springs to mind - supposedly very intelligent little AI agents, but in practice they'd stand there and refuse to return fire as the bad guys took them out one by one. I _never_ had the sniper take a shot. Big disappointment. Not sure where they went wrong. The principles for fuzzy logic are fairly straighforward. Either their values or models were screwed up, or maybe the programming was just buggy. Dunno... but I'm a lot more confident that CM will be closer to the mark. I reckon the first great test of an AI program is if the AI continues to surprise the designer/programmer. Of course the other great test is that the surprises are sensible and effective ones... The team working on the German panzer game (you know the guys - I've forgotten who they are) had that happen. I've read interviews with a few other programmers who have talked about this. A good quality control mechanism to test for this is when the people who write the program want something that's good enough for them to play. Hey, isn't that you guys? Rocky

The time-delay system, modified for troop quality, sounds good. RE: Michael's point that "In this theater and time all tanks had radios that were fairly reliable. So it is not too much of a stretch to say that tanks are always in command control even when not within sight of the unit commander." I'm not so sure that tanks should be exempt. Just because a tank has a radio doesn't mean it is effectively in command control. There is still a psychological factor in being able to see supporting forces from your unit. Also, there's no guarantee that radio communication will lead to effective communication: "Attack the hill?" "What hill?" "The one by the farm!" "What farm?" "Near the bridge on the stream!" "I don't see any bridge... in fact I don't see any stream..." Even in these days of IVIS and GPS systems units get lost and confused. The old Mk 1 eyeball is still a handy and reliable command tool. So I'd be inclined to build delays in for tankers as well. RE: Michael's other point about the East Front... I reckon over there it'd be the same, but _worse_ Rocky

Something I'm still not clear about - it seems orders are given on a "unit" basis - but what constitutes a "unit" in terms of CM? It appears to be the squad for infantry, and the individual vehicle for vehicles. If so, is there anything in terms of command and control considerations to stop (discourage may be a better expression ) players from splitting their forces up into non-historical ad hoc formations? Cheers, B