weta_nz

Thanks PhilM for the reply. Yeah re-reading it it does seem pretty clear it will be 3.0 - I guess, they might surprise us with a couple of little tweaks to the 3.0 engine. Anyway still looking forward to the new stuff!

Hi Steve, Great news. Always good to hear what you guys are working on. Probably a dumb question but will Bulge be basically the same game engine (e.g 3.0) as the current games or will it have some 'under the hood' improvements? From what you said above - I infer game engine 4.0 which you are working on will be a separate upgrade for all base games e.g CMBN, CMFI, CMRT and CMBS. E.g it won't come standard with the new base game CMBulge?. Sorry still a little confused cheers,

Hi Bil, After having a quick read through this thread I am definitely interested to see how this 'plays' out. Actually I am surprised their are not more comments as this seems to have some very interesting possibilities. As a primarily single player, I for one (as MOS:96B2P already commented) think this could actually force me to come up with a proper plan against the AI and stick to it. As I play mostly small maps with a small number of units the spread-sheet wouldn't be too burdensome to update so thanks for coming up with the workbook and making it available. Also without having looked into it too deeply I think there could be a possibility for Battlefront to use a similar logic to what you have presented here to expand upon the scripting for the AI. Certainly for scenario designers a tool like this could help keep track of the various units and plans when building AI scripts. One crazy idea I've just had is that Scenario designers could write an AI script for the defense then use a version of your Excel Work book template to create an attack plan (which is saved with the scenario). The 'player' then does the 'grunt' work and tries to adhere to the given plan/timetable using the rules you have given. I can just imagine the defeated 'player' blaming the 'General' because of his inflexible plan . Potentially would make for a great learning tool for us tactical novices! Now to download the workbook and actually check out how it works

Sounds good - thanks!

Thanks for the info Phil.

Hi, I've been on holiday and have not had a chance to play with the V1.03 patch. I read in the patch notes that the TAC AI logic is improved. Does anyone know what this means or have they seen any 'improvements' ? Sorry, if this has been answered before. cheers

Seems a bit excessive!

I think it works o.k. I'm pretty sure most of the time tanks should have some sort of support so infantry can't close assault without taking casualties, getting pinned and wiped out. I'd imagine a lone tank sitting in a field with no support is probably just a blind steel box waiting to blowup in ww2. Unless the tank is named fury of course

great news

I'm sure it will - I look forward to it. CMFI is still my favourite!

Hi, I have had some success with moving past the objective then moving them up to the objective from the direction you want them to face (if that makes sense). It means an extra order and associated time delay but as there is no facing 'order' it is about the only thing to do. cheers

I 2nd (4th?) the idea of a time of a time penalty of some sort

If Battlefront could add some code to at least add that functionality to the current system - that might be a way for a scenario designer to control where the AI lays down artillery later in a scenario without the AI needing to identify a specific target. I'm guessing none of the ideas suggested will be new to the brains trust but it would be interesting to know if any of the ideas are on the priority list

I agree with Hellas that designing the AI for scenarios can be tactically interesting in itself. When I tried designing an AI plan - it was a lot of fun trying to come up with a AI defensive plan that simulated what i would do if I was in control. The way I would describe the 'fun' is imagine telling your troops at the start of a scenario what they need to do for the whole battle (with some limited desicion making throught the battle) but basically you need to try to figure out the best plan for what you think the enemy might do with enough coverage for some variability in how the enemy might attack. You then hop out of the drivers chair and into the backseat, sit back and watch what happens. It's almost like another game in itself . The more tools Battlefront can give the scenario designer, the more able the scenario designer will be able to get the AI to react to that variability in a 'human like' manner and therefore the more fun/harder the single player experience will be (without resorting to giving the AI xx% more units as cannon fodder or creating restrictive terrain so the player only has one direction of attack) Note: There are many great scenarios which don't resort to these tactics. One idea which might be helpful for scenario designers is if you could test an attack AI plan against the defense AI plan - you can then kill two birds with one stone for generating quick battle maps. Also it would be like a game within a game, you could come up with plan for the attack and the defense for a map and see which AI wins the battle! I won't hold my breath on that one but I would find it fun!

Not sure if this is the same thing but I have had a couple of instances (v2.12 or earlier) where there was 1 AA gun crew member was left cowering under the AA gun (I think it was the quad 50) immune to multiple teams right next to the gun firing and throwing grenades for multiple turns. As the AA crew member was prone under the gun - it appeared that the undercarriage of the gun was making the bullets richochet alot and it seemed to provide an excellent barrier. Prior to my squads getting in close in close to the AA gun I had found it impossible to destroy via small caliber mortar rounds (81mm and smaller). I just put it down as one of those 'corner cases' which doesn't make too much difference to the battle, but in my limited experience they do seem to be harder to kill then AT guns in some instance (this is prior V3.0 as I haven't really played with AA guns).

Don't get me wrong I think it would be nice to have that option in some situations but personally I like the fact that you have to use different tactics. I find they really need to stick together as there firepower is very weak IMHO. To answer your question - I don't recall Battlefront saying they would allow splitting squads for the Italians.

Hi, There hasn't been a huge amount of discussion about stuff for the future on the Forum lately so I'll bring up one of the subjects that interests me. I would like to see what other people think and/or hopefully even get some comment from boss man Steve A bit of background: I enjoy single player scenarios, generally smaller ones, which I can finish within a couple of hours. There doesn't seem to be a huge number of these types of scenarios - so I found Quick battles to be a nice alternative with the added bonus I get to choose my forces. However after playing a lot of these there is a 'sameness' to the AI setup and the way the AI responds in quick battles. So I thought I'd have a a go at creating a scenario with a more dynamic AI. Having never tried to make a scenario (for any game) it was with some trepidation that I went into the scenario editor, loaded a quick battle map and started trying to make the AI setup and then react in a more dynamic way that would make sense to me if I was controlling the pixeltruppen. It turned out to be a lot of fun learning how the triggers work and watching how they actually play out in the game. Results ranged from heart warming (Mini ambush with a successful covered retreat to the next line of resistance) to frustrating... but after many hours of testing/experimenting I was able to get some sort of a flexible defense happening with remaining units eventually making a last stand in the village. With more design experience I could get better results and I think working with small scenarios definately puts more pressure on the AI (e.g if you have a limited number of squads and squads get pinned down it affects the 'strategy' quite a bit). A human can can respond to these changes in situation in a much more flexible way then the AI ever will be able to but here are a couple of ideas which may be useful to some scenario designers and may or may not be easy to implement 1) The conditional statement - I remember Steve said this may occur for V4.0 which would be great as I think this could be the single biggest improvement for the AI to be more flexible. I imagine a group of reinforcements been able to be sent to the correct part of the map depending on which flank the human player's main effort is coming. E.g If terrain objective 'left flank trigger'is reached by the enemy then the AI defenders reserve group will carry out the orders branch which advances to the left flank OR If terrain objective 'right flank trigger' is reached by the enemy first then an alternative set of orders will mean the defenders reserve group will advance to the right flank. Currently the scenaro designer needs to guess which flank the human player might choose or somewhat artificially channel the player down a certain part of the map. It seems the coding to follow one branch or another could be fairly straight forward but the user interface for setting up Ai triggers would need to change obviously. 2) Delayed or Tiggered support targets. Currently the AI can create a great smoke screen or get the defenders heads ducking for cover with a well aimed barrage at the start of a scenario but there is know way (That I know of) to delay the smoke screen or pre planned barrage occurring. So my suggestion would be to add a delay to support targets. Again this would hopefully be fairly easy addition to the code and would allow the scenario designer to create a more formidible AI attacking scenario as smoke and HE barrages could be delayed to occur with the estimated time it takes to advance to certain parts of the map rather then requiring the AI to actually get eyes on target. An even more flexible solution would be to allow support targets to be triggered. E.g Support targets 'A' and 'B' are designated to be fired upon when a friendly unit reaches an objective trigger. This may be a bit harder to implement though but it would certainly help the 'AI' to execute the attack in a more coordinated fashion - like a human player. Remember these are just ideas for discussion but it does seem to me that the bulk of the code is already there (with regards to the AI user interface and getting the objectives/triggers to work). So I think it would be great if Battlefront puts some more effort (assuming they aren't already) into expanding upon AI plans/triggers as I think there is huge potential As I said at the start of the post - it would be great to hear other people ideas and/or what Battlefront is planning to do with regards to AI triggers in the future

Yes, I agree it depends on what forces are selected. I have had many a good battle lately where the AI does just fine if I choose infantry (probe) vs infantry (Ai on defense) and don't give myself too much artillery. A Russian smg platoon placed in the forest doesn't mean that the AI is a tactical genius but it does mean I have to think very carefully if I want my German rifle platoon to not get decimated without resorting to masses of artillery. The best part is I can finish a small game in a couple of hours and have a bit of fun - rather than spend a month playing a PBEM. I really hope Battlefront continues to work on the AI for us single players

Personally - I was a little surprised that fire units and tank riders didn't make 3.0 upgrade. But I totally respect Battlefronts decision not to include tank riders based on the amount of work required. C'mon guys they can only do so much with your $10. If they could have put in the features I'm sure they would have. What I don't understand is the attitude of some people. As a consumer you have a choice to buy or not to buy depending if you think it is of value to you. Otherwise you need to design and market your own game to decide what features should or should not be included. Good luck with that!

Awesome - can't wait to try it. Still one of my favs due to sentimental reasons

I've had fun with infantry vs infantry battles with the AI picking its own forces

scary! haha

Agreed. I think it is great that they keep all the theater's up to date. I might be wrong but I think the ability to upgrade the diffferent games is pretty unique in the gaming world. I think we are very lucky but I also think it works great for Battlefront too - given they have a small development team

Is anything easy when you are under fire? (Which happens a lot in CMs tactical battles). Of course I know nothing about clearing mines - so you maybe right

Putting aside some of the more negative and emotional comments - I think some good points have been raised and I have a better understanding of the spotting system. So I'd just like to say thanks to those guys who have taken the time to provide examples and reply with some constructive comments. My 2c is: I think BF have reached a good compromise for most situations. However, I can understand how it could be more frustrating if you like playing tank battles in non-open terrain e.g bocage or around buildings. For me I'd rather the occasional wtf moment then waiting 10mins for a turn to resolve los calculations . Also, I think BFs track record over the last ~15 years (has it really been that long? omg!) has been for continuous improvement -so I think things will only improve over time. cheers