Macisle

The Alley Cats don't run in front of the Panther, but instead attempt to park themselves just to its front-right. The lead man doesn't even get a chance to think about pulling out a grenade, though. SMG fire from enemy infantry down the street cuts him down as soon as he stops. The two remaining Alleys displace again. Where you ask? Why... Back down the alley! Meanwhile, a tank is ordered to move up and finish off the perimeter threat currently duking it out with Based LMG Guy. He pulls up and stops on the north side of Pointy's building, being very careful to avoid the LOS of Ranbo and his panzerschreck. The tank puts several rounds into the perimeter threat's location. Speaking of Pointy...despite getting off a number of rifle rounds, Ranbo recovered, switched back to his MP40 and won the duel with Pointy. RIP Pointy! An adjusting friendly artillery round then lands right beside the north tank, damaging a track lightly, but luckily nothing else. Let's hope that's the last one of those because... The reserve platoon of 1st company is taking position to join in a combined arms assault on the Panther and Ranbo. The pieces are in place and it's time to avenge Pointy! Tune in next time for the plan and the action!

Thanks! Haven't played it yet, but the next one should be interesting.

Meanwhile, another German unit defending the inner perimeter of the current macro block opens up on Pointy's building and the small Soviet-held factory beside it. This rattles the "Alley Cats" who are at the northern end of Pointy's building. They exit out the back and head toward the friendly factory. However, they don't go in. The Alleys are practitioners of the "Scout by Rout" school of infantry tactics. There's an alley down on the left. And the Cats just can't resist a good Alley. On the plus side, the based LMG gunner on the east side of the factory proves himself a rising star by dropping two of the perimeter Germans in quick succession. Not bad for a regular Joe! As he does this, the lead Cat (Alley motto: "Run fast, die young") passes one of his dead comrades from their last jog around the block. The smoking tank beside him tried to dislodge the Panther's infantry screen before the barrage, but when they let up on the HE a little too early, the former owner of Ranbo's panzershreck didn't waste a second in giving the tank crew its final exam in thermodynamics. They all failed. So, the Cats jaunt down the alley, take a right and...why...look where the Orange has Clockworked us! We're back at the peak moment of the high noon duel between Pointy and Ranbo! Now, someone like Pointy or Based LMG Guy might hesitate when stumbling onto a live Panther. Men like that might, say, stop and chuck a few grenades at the rear of the beast. But not the Alley Cats! Are you kidding?! Not when an unexplored road into enemy territory is right there only a hop, skip and jump in front of the Panther's MGs and canon. To be continued...

That's my recollection as well - that the spacing change was in response to community request. The tendency of one or two guys from a squad to drift outside when on the ground level seems to happen most often with long narrow building types. It can sometimes be fixed with a face command to point the squad at one of the long walls. However, it is often faster and easier just to have them go to the second level. I always stay with the most current Engine version. For the last couple of years, I've spent most of my game time working on my dense urban map for CMRT. Aside from suicide rout, which did seem to get slightly worse in the .02 patch, Engine 4 has worked rather well overall for that combat environment. Part of that could be the specific dynamics of typical Soviet attacker vs high-quality German defender, though. In terms of current CM, that fits the environment like a glove.

After an extended barrage of Soviet medium howitzers lifts, squad leader Ranbo von Assenkicken notices that his Panther's infantry screen appears to be down to him, his MP40, and a newly-acquired panzerschreck. No matter, he'll stand his ground. Do or die! He opens up at the first red to sniff around the barrage zone. But who is he firing at? Why, it's none other than our favorite Point Man from a few posts back! Ranbo decides the small arms duel isn't cutting it and he goes for his 'schreck. BOOM! That'll teach...oh, wait..it looks like Point Man is ready to do a little Assenkicken of his own!

For my part, using my modular building constructions, I'm not finding the protection level of buildings to be a problem. The problem is that when my units rout, the often don't use the buildings in the protective way that real soldiers would. I agree that soldiers bunching up can lead to annoying, undesirable outcomes. However, the only areas where I'm seeing a problem that definitely needs looking at is with group spacing inside some building types and Soviet MG teams (maybe other Allied as well, but I haven't played them lately). As I'm sure you know, some building types tend to cause a soldier or two to stay outside when the squad takes position on the ground level. This, of course, gives away the sqad's location and can draw fire. I often put units on the second level as to avoid this. The issue with the Soviet MG teams is that a crew member often has part of his body sticking outside walls of the building they are in. This gives away their position and draws fire. The protruding body also seem to be treated as being in the open with regards to received attacks. Facing can help, but the guy is often the first casualty for the team. I don't notice this with German HMG teams. Understood on not leaving setup to the Engine. I do the same thing...at least I did until the new patches. Now, I think a good way to go would be to see what the Engine does on its own first and then use that as a starting point for micro-managing setup as the designer. That's what I plan to do for my SP work for my map slices. Like I said, the AI has a knack for finding some excellent ambush points. So, analyzing what it comes up with, keeping the wheat and manually fixing the chaff might be a good working method. But, honestly, I'm having a lot of fun with my semi-blind quick testing for newly-completed map areas. To simulate SS German motorized units, I take a standard Grenadier battalion with excellent equipment, up the stats, reinforce each platoon with 1HMG, 3 LMG, 1 scout, 1 TH, 1PS and one PaK40. Then I divide it into 9 groups (HQs above Plt are usually stripped) and divide the German area into 9 solidly painted areas, which are usually large block areas of the urban map. To this, might add a dedicated HMG group and/or a FO group with more possible locations than teams, so I don't know exactly where they are. Those are single painted tiles spread all over the map. To that, I add say, two platoons of tanks (usually Panthers) and choose the locations for those. Then, maybe I have one or two combined arms counterattack groups that are terrain triggered. Plus lots of arty (Oh, PROBLEM, in this dense urban environment, I'm seeing very little enemy arty use, unless I place plentiful TRPs). Then, I take a typical Soviet 44 infantry battalion (44 has best splitting options) with a customized "combat engineer" platoon, plentiful AFV (I economically pull platoons piecemeal from the pool to avoid having to set up reinforcement waves) and arty support up against it. Having the AI be 1:1 or more in infantry is intended to simulate a human player being dynamic with his forces. It's not perfect, but it is quite fun and gives me pretty good traction for testing my map areas. I really like not know where the enemy infantry is. Another thing I try to do is set up when I'm sleepy so I forget things. Like with the current playtest, I actually forgot where the counterattack triggers are and exactly what paths they take. Just remember it's Tigers and infantry.

Muscle applied, but the "sniper" MG team remains elusive and still controls the street. Where are they?

'Nother suicide rout example. This time, multiple units. First up, the highlighted team on the second of two levels panics, due to fire from an infantry team, marked "Threat." There is another infantry team out-of-pic in the same NE diagonal direction about 70-100 meters away. Both enemy infantry teams are firing rifle grenades, along with small arms fire (and a grenade from the marked team). As with the previous example, which was this area a few turns ago, the picture top edge is N and bottom S. N is enemy edge and S friendly. Rather than simply dropping back an action spot S into safety, the panicking team runs downstairs and exits NE via the side door, running directly towards the Threat unit. One man is lost exiting and the other is gunned down in the street by the Threat unit. Next up, we have the point man, who has drawn fire and is under orders to stay put and hide. He decides to boogie and moves SW. Better, but closest safety is directly S into the factory two action spots away. He turns rounds the corner and moves N a few meters. This is unscouted territory. Luckily, he does not draw fire. During the same minute, another team has freaked out. Rather than move to one of the safe adjacent action spots, they exit the building, some men going N and some S. One of the men exiting N is gunned down. Rather than entering the safe S block where the company and battalion HQ are, they follow the scout, round the corner and head N unto unscouted country. Whereupon, the unit size draws enemy attention and a previously unknown MG42 covering the street opens up, promptly dropping the team leader. Now, at the end of the turn, they are in quite a bad spot.

Yeah, it's very useful. I often cancel before using up all the alotted time, but it's saved my bacon many times.

He's still alive. Drew fire from a few new locations. Good work. Hope he makes it.

No ground given lightly. Point man earns his pay.

It's quite possible that something changed/got fixed with the recent patches. For example, prior to the patches, AI infantry would generally not set up in buildings, unless the painted action spots were actually limited to building tiles. That's why SP QB infantry was always found outside hugging walls and hedges. Post-patch, you can paint a general area on an urban map and have most/all of the AI infantry set up in buildings. My experience of the current AI setup on my urban map is that it tends to leave perimeter defense gaps that a human player would not, but is actually quite good at finding juicy ambush spots. Pretty frequently, it finds devilishly clever spots that are hard to gain fire superiority on. As I mentioned before, the AI is still crap at positioning tanks in a mixed group (again, assuming an urban block environment), but if the designer sets up good tank positions with the tanks in a separate group, he can paint whole blocks with an infantry+ATG group and they seem to support the tank positions pretty well, and sometimes very well. So, even though it didn't get much attention, there was a pretty massive fix for AI infantry set up in the patches. Maybe something happened with map edges, too.

Definitely. My SOP is to put 1:15 of targeting to make sure I have a continue fire option next turn if smoke is blocking new targeting. T-34/76s make such ammo expenditure an easy call.

No survivors. My gut said keep the HE up for a full minute. I went for 30 seconds. Got greedy on hitting a second location during the turn. This time, Krugeroff was wrong.

Firm intel that the hard point has not been completely reduced.

I just finished the core building all the way through. Now, I'm in the polishing phase. I need to fine tune the elevations and knock out internal walls in a lot of buildings I did before I caught on to the technique. Then, it's on to filling out the flavor objects, working on a texture pack and getting the scenario/campaign/QB slice work done. I need the CMRT module for textures and flavor objects, though. Oh, and I've got some funky church constructions in the German alamo area that I need to test for pathfinding a bit more. I actually could start having folks battle test most areas now. The main problem there is that I've got a texture glitch that seems to block using more than eight textures unless you have my exact mod folder installed and I don't want testers seeing a texture vomit. Never could figure out why. Probably somthing incredibly simple. In addition to scavenging the new module for textures, I'm hoping installing it will fix the texture weirdness since I think it will expand the stock number to more than eight. The last area of the map I built was the most dense area and it turned out to have some really funky constructions. Lots of variety. There is what looks like a university campus that yielded some pretty neat stuff. I am so, so, soooo looking forward to having folks go weapons free on ma' baby!

On a positive note about the protection factor of complex modular buildings... I had time for a couple of turns today in my playtest. I'm still working on the one that I posted the suicide rout example shots from. Well, the northern threat was beaten into hiding, so I sent in a tank to deal with the east alley threat. Due to LOS, it had to target the ground in front of the enemy wall, rather than the wall itself. However, in my experience, that can give good results, too. -Sometimes better, as the HE splash can knock out walls across multiple adjacent building sections, along with perhaps causing casualties. Anyway, I put in a few shots and knocked out their wall. Here's what happened as soon as the smoke cleared: No survivors.

That's good info. Thanks, RockinHarry. So, the Engine is taking into account faction-related map edge assignment in general and applying it to rout/evade. However, the undesirable suicide evade is resulting from the TacAI at the micro level being unable to properly assess its immediate environment in relation to current threats. So, for example, it doesn't value nearby building cover adequately, or, similarly, will take a deadly path, rather than a safe path, due to some unfortunate weighing of the criteria it uses for path choice. Two first thoughts on this: One: the problem doesn't happen all the time, which means the TacAI decision process must have something good in there. So, eliminate the wheat from the chaff? Also, although we haven't determined if it's really true or not, if higher-quality units are less prone to suicide rout, maybe find out why and apply that to all units. Then penalize lower-quality units in a different way. A good option I mentioned before might be extending the "cool off" period from the panic, so that it takes longer for lower-quality units to accept new orders. In other words, they rout/evade safely, but stay in their new safe spot longer - like bailed out AFV crews often do. Second thought: In terms of CM being what it should be (the best, that is), units really need to have better situational awareness regarding buildings/cover and how to use it versus threats. That sounds like a beefy coding job, but I think the game needs to go there, at least eventually. I was planning to start a "QB AI Plan Design: Best Practices" thread when I get to that point with my map, as I want to offer a number of QB slices with it. I'm still hoping for some surprise Engine improvements before then, since my map won't be finished until after the CMRT module is released. Maybe not looking so good on that, but there is always hope. The current state of QB AI Plan functionality is a bit of a head-scratcher. We know from Steve that most players play CM solo. That means the QB system must be heavily used by players when they can't find a scenario/campaign they want to play. Yet, so many obvious design tools are still missing that would allow designers to really enhance the solo QB experience. For example, I'd really like to be able to funnel specific unit types into specific groups in a QB AI Plan. That seems extremely basic to me -- at least this many years in. But yeah, it would be good to have some fresh threads for both Scenario and QB AI Plan design. Can't get into that yet, though. No time right now.

One thing that might be interesting on TacAI placement on my urban map that I noticed: If I mix infantry, tanks and an ATG in a group, the tanks and ATGs are usually in terrible positions (like, inside the building block, so no LOS to anything important) when I assign them to defend a block (whole block painted for setup order). However, If I separate the tanks into a separate group and make sure they are in good positions (micro-managed setup), the Engine appears to set up the infantry to support the tanks reasonably well, and sometimes very well. The ATGs also tend to be in much better positions, despite being part of the infantry group with the whole block painted for setup. With its infantry setup, the Engine/TacAI offers a mix ranging from head-scratching gaps in defense that a human player would never allow to devilishly clever ambush points that really put the hurt on. So, say I have a number of blocks to push through, I'll find some juicy spots empty, but run into a little nightmare in others. Still using the tanks as the bones via direct placement and then having the AI place other units around them via area painting seems to offer some benefits.

You may be looking at the wrong thing. I always optimize my pics, but I'm sure I've posted a lot more than that since I've started using the feature.

To me, it really feels like the more elaborate modular constructions I'm doing are offering better general protection in addition to easy acess to out-of-LOS action spots. Lots of close-range action going on. SMG teams don't seem nearly as uber as you might expect. Yeah, the time it takes infantry to organize itself can be painful. I had a veteran team intended to close assault a tank dick around for about 10 seconds at a building corner around from the tank. Despite the team having a man where he should have seen the tank, the Panther managed to notice them first and turn its turret 45 degrees before they decided who should actually take the corner (not the time for paper-scissors-stone). They were about to throw a grenade when BOOM. Soviet MG teams in buildings often get into trouble. The time it takes them to deploy makes them vulnerable and if they take fire, they can go into a loop of trying to displace and deploy. They tire themselves out and never get off any shots. Also, pre-move LOS checks may prove to be wrong when the MG actually sets up. I assume they just can't use the window at that angle, but is sucks to find out the hard way. German HMGs being able to drop to LMG mode gives them a nice little edge. I often find German teams being able to fire at my MG teams without them being able to respond. I think that might be realistic in these circumstances, though. So, I just wish the pathfinding was better and the LOS info more user friendly. The actual battle mechanics are probably fine there. My SOP for Soviet MGs is to put close cover arcs on them and try to sneak them into good positions (ones I'm confident they can fire from) and hide until I'm ready for them. Yes, I'd love for CM to model different wall materials and give the designer some tools there. Speaking of walls, on my map the larger modular constructions have all inner walls removed where possible. That has lots of benefits. The units are much easier to see for players (wall clutter gone and floor is like a AS grid), the building is weaker vs arty (I think), and the combat actually seems better than with doors. The overall action is the same as with doors, but movement of men is less restricted. I like it a lot. Another big benefit is when building sections collapse, the remaining sections have missing walls that are much more realistic tactically and visually than a high-rise of doors into the sky. I've had some way cool firefights with those. Currently, I"m going back and removing inner walls wherever possible on most buildings of any real size.

From what I've seen, the friendly map edge setting doesn't seem to impact frequency of suicide rout in my urban map setting. Most of my play has been on a diagonal and I always check to make sure the settings are correct before I start any slice testing. Also, I've noticed that even when I set the axis and allied map edges and paint setup zones before purchasing and placing units, the units are often initially spawned facing at odds with the map edge settings. My SOP now when setting up for a scenario-type playtest is to manually make sure that all units are facing the right way -- especially ATGs and AFVs. Experience has shown that when the AI moves them to a painted setup zone during battle setup, ATGs and AFVS will often keep their wacky first spawn facing. So, you can't just set your edges, setup zones, purchase units and expect them to be facing whhere you want/expect. You need to deploy all units during scenario design and make sure they are facing the optimal way before actually saving and running the scenario. Of course, there is the face command, but that can be tricky to use depending on the variables at play and results must be tested as well. What I said above is assuming it's not being used.

You can use the forum attachment system to upload photos as well. That's what I've been doing for awhile now, as flickr did some kind of company merge and access to my account got effed up. The photos I posted for this thread were forum post attachments. Course, don't know how much storage BF has. So far, no probs at my end. Thanks for the test file link. I'll take a look at it when I free up. Still tied up for a few days. Thanks also for your analysis, RockinHarry. As always, you dig deep and bring back great info. Thanks to the others posting as well. I think it's a good thing that this came up now. After all, the next CMRT module is Berlin, a dense city map. It would be a good thing for the game if problems get addressed before that hits. Suicide rout aside, things like it being hard for units to stay in upper levels due to rout/evade behavior is something to look at. The human player can do the work to get units back up, but once the AI drops down, it stays there short of a movement order in the AI plan. Something to think about.

There are very few independent buildings on my urban map, other than a ton of the smallest barns and a number of multi-section large churches. Of course, the barns offer little protection and collapse if someone breaks wind. The churches are very strong and protective. It's been my experience that, other than churches, modular buildings are significantly stronger per AS/level than their independent counterparts. And, when you combine multiple sections of higher and wider modular pieces, you get very strong buildings that take a lot of arty to bring down (and depending on the wall length and module size, a fair amount of HE to knock out a wall). As for small arms protection, modular seems to offer noticeably more as well, but I'd say the bigger difference is in how much HE it takes to damage/destroy the building itself or knock out a wall. So, I'm basing my comments pretty exclusively on multi-section modular builidings. To reconfirm, units on higher levels usually drop to the bottom level of the same section as a first reaction to something like small arms, a rifle grenade, a nearby cookoff, PS hit, etc. If they are already there when it happens, they'll generally move horizontally for good or bad. When they do that, they tend to want to move a number of AS away and change buildings. But not always. It does seem like the defending AI units, who are generally at least highly-motivated veterans, tend to stick in their buildings better. The general pattern with them is to drop from higher levels to the current bottom level when they experience an uncomfortable level of heat. Then, assuming more heat, they will back up an AS or more inside their building if they have room to move. I haven't checked on scenario author mode, though. So, my view of what they are doing isn't complete. It's just what I can gather as the attacker on Iron Mode. Motivation level may be at least as important as experience level in units not opting for suicide rout. However, I've definitely seen my own +1 guys drop down readily from higher building levels when enemy fire comes in. Can be pretty annoying actually, as often, they could just drop back one AS horizontally in their building. Dropping down to the lowest level as a first reaction tires them and adds more time and exposure to get them back into position. Soviet MG platoons can be a PITA to use as effective overwatch when up against high-quality German troops because sometimes single LMGs will flush a whole Soviet MG platoon from its positions. On the other hand, I've seen the German defenders take extended heavy fire from multiple MGs and not seem much the worse for wear once any suppression wears off. Of course, lots of variables here. Anyhoo, RockinHarry, I'd extend any tests to include modular constructions. As for the experience/motivation level impact, I'll try to keep an eye out for it going forward to get some data. I haven't had any game time for a few days and may not for a few more.

A better way to have put it would have been "higher quality troops seem to make stupid, suicidal rout choices less often." I haven't tested things systematically, but I've been spending most of my game time for the last couple of years in an urban environment on the map I'm making for CMRT. It feels like the above is the case. Going forward, in addition to noting game saves that contain examples of suicidal rout, I'll try to keep a log of the unit types. I'm almost always playing as the attacking Soviets using Typical experience and motivation levels as generated by the Editor. The AI Germans are meant to be SS, so they are veteran +1 high as base, with a peppering of higher stats in each platoon. I seldom see them suicide rout. Usually, they go deeper into the building they are in. I'll try to note it going forward if I see the behavior from them as well.