Glubokii Boy

Shows that this indeed is a difficult thing to get right. It also shows how high demands we have on this game... And where it shines ! Realism !

The 16 AI group limitation we currently have makes designing AI attacks that is recembling a human controlled attack somewhat tricky. We may simply not have enough AI groups avaliable to do things like well executed continues wave attack that is succesfully supported by AFVs and suppressing heavy weapon possitions. I guess that the real scenario designing pros might be able to do it. But it is tricky imo.

I don't think that this evasive behavior of the AI troops is something that is limited to defensive situations (be that in trenches or inside buildings or what ever). A few weeks ago i mentioned in another thread that i felt that the attacking AI had an increased tendency to cancel their attack orders when they come under fire. I had been working on a scenario (AI attack-scenario) for some time and playtested the AI plan multiple times under V.3. Everything worked fine. The AI did what i wanted and where succesful in its attack as long a i did not activly command the player side. After upgrading to V.4 all this changed at ones. No changes were made to the scenario what so ever but now in V.4 the AI had serious difficulties with fullfilling their orders. I noticed a significant increase in evasive behavior (sneaking) amongst the AI troops. Granted these attack where not designed to simulate any skillfully lead attack (advancing over fairly open ground for example with limited coordination between the armour and infantry) but they worked in V.3 and not in V.4. An increased reluctance amongs the AI troops to advance under fire might not be a bad thing though. I just thought that i would mention that this increased evasive behavior is not something that is limited to defensive possitions and HE.

I've used that program also and it works fine. I doubt it will work on a campaign save-game file though to allow you to split out single missions with previous casualties intakt. You could quite easily tweak them in the editor though. Change things like headcount, ammo and moral as well as removing any piece of equipment that you lost when playing the campaign. Here you can go as detailed as you wish or simply do some quick overall tweaking.

The risk of ending their lives with a friendly bullet in the back ought to have been a decent motivator for holding on to their possitions as best they could also. I don't know how common this was but atleast german and russian ww2 soldiers had this to considder i think.

One way to do it could perhaps be to create a separate sub-folder within the Battlefront-folder and name it something like'saved campaignmission' and simply move the save-game files created when playing the campaigns from the original saved-folder to this one for storage and then simply move them back to the saved-games folder when you wish to replay them. Would this not work ?

This might be a good thing when the attacking forces are commanded by a human player. Not quite so much when the AI is commanding the attack. A human player will be able to change his attack-plan on the fly to adjust to the current sitution but the AI will be locked to the pre-programed orders regardless of how things play out. If the AI attack fails after only a few shots by the player it might screw up a scenario. The AI troops should obvously not be some sort of supermen but if they break to easily it might be tricky to design succesfull AI attacks.

I might be missremembering now (i have not played a QB for a long time) but i seem to recall that when playing a QB the AI would deploy pretty much all of its troops outside of the buildings in a wierd way rather then inside them. I think that this was tweaked atleast to some degree a few patches back If this is correct Could perhaps the AIs apprisiation of the cover that buildings provide be upped yet another level i wounder ? Maybe also fortrifications ? .

"theAI plan for the ukranian defender continues to send out IFVs and tanks in strange pointless attacks" I dont know if this is the case here but as it works now the triggers (terrain) have some limitations that makes scenario designing a bit tricky right now and still a bit of a guesswork on the part of the designer. The terrainobjective trigger will allow the designer to start an AI move . Wich is obviously good ! But there is no way of knowing what kind of player-force that will trigger that move. It could be a single armoured car or an entire tank company that moves through that terrainobjective and triggers the AI move order. If the designer belives that the player will move a large force through that area and the player does not do that it might lead to some strange looking moves by the AI. On the other hand if the designer have set up an AI move intended to deal with a smalll initial reconmove by the player and the player decides to attack through that area in force this AI move might also look wierd. The terrain objective trigger will start the AI action regardless of the player force strenth triggering it

How did your Javeline supply look ? Does not those Strykers carry a bunch of those lovely little things ?

There will always be a few people who complain about the pricing of things no matter what. The by far dominant wiew amongst the forum members around here though is imo that the products released by BFC are the best spent money they ever do. - the products are well worth it ! - The majority of the comments in the CMBS thread are possitive. This post by Erwine are chaired by many i´m sure. " all very welcome as good quality content is vital, and its clearly very hard for users to create these kinds of labor intensive materials. Looking forward to these proffesionally produced offerings". I'm sure that everyone want that but there is only so much these guys can do - at ones - maybe they are currently working on things for CMFB right now. I don´t know but it has been my understanding that a new module for both CMFI and CMRT are scheduled to be released prior to CMFB. Meaning that the next module for CMFB is probably not going to be released for quite some time. A vehicle/formation- pack could be a nice first step to shorten the wait. I don't think that the fact that some forummember will upload scenarios covering some of the more famous battle in the timeframe of an upcomming scenariopack by BFC will be a problem. Every one here knows of the quality of the scenarios being produced by the guys you mentioned and will most certanly by a pack from BFC even if they have already played a community- made scenario covering the battle of Antwerp for example.

Sounds like a hottie !! If this copy idea could be done fairly easy with only slight moddifications i think that it might be something worth considdering. To give scenariodesigners and QB players more toys to play with rather quickly. Not everyone will buy a unit pack like this without any scenarios that is for sure but i belive that quite a few will and the rest can buy the whole 'bundle' ones the scenario/campaign pack is released.

True. Another problem with this quick solution is that the scenario designers might want to depict a fight with low quality/ experience defenders. Upping the experience and motivation a few notches to have them remain in their prepared possitions a bit longer might work well as long as they remain in their trenches but ones they are forced out of their possitions they will still remaine maybe elite troops with high motivations wich might not be what the designer wants if he is trying to depict a defensive line held by green troops Some sort of moddifier to the trenches them self might be needed. This nut that may seem like a fairly easy one to crack might not be quite so easy after all. Hopefully some good solution will pop up.

I don‘t think that this is something that relates to only older scenarios. Even if the scenario desigers are aware of this AI behaviour by now it may still be difficult to force the AI to hold on to a prepared defensive possition (trenches) in a 'realistic way' even in newly produced scenarious. Obviously there are many wiews on what a realistic way is though.

On the defence they can be a real pain in the ass for enemy infantry when deployed in ambush possitions inside a built up area (village, town). Especially if the enemy does a poor jobb with recon and suppression. A single flamethrower can decimate an entire squad very fast. Against armour i have found them to be a´ not super-weapon '. It usually takes several bursts to KO a tank. They can do it for sure but in my experience usually not with a single burst.

I wounder if there were major changes made to the commonwealth forces TOEs/OOBs between the end of the CMBN timeframe (including modeles) and the end of the CMFB timeframe ? If not perhaps a quick update to CMFB could be to simply copy the additional countries and formations/vehicles from the complete CMBN bundle into CMFB and sell this as a simple formation/vehicle add-on without any accompanying scenarios/campaigns. A campaign/scenario-pack will follow later and will be sold seperatelly or as a bundle with the first pack.

I'm sure you're right

This is most certanly true. I agree. Many times the friendly AI part in a scenario would not need to be all that great though. - a player controlled company sized force is tasked with securing a river crossing while a friendly AI group, consisting of an engineer platoon, blows up the bridge before withdrawing. - a player controlled company is tasked with securing an area to allow an AI controlled supply convoy to pass through. Things like these.

Yes. Along with CO-OP multiplayer, perhaps.

Having the option to include friendly ( player side ) AI plans in a scenario would be an intresting thing to try. - a company sized attack where the player acts as a platoon comander, commanding a single platoon, the rest of the company is handled by the friendly AI. The player will need to achive both the platoon specific objectives as well as being tasked with suppporting the rest of the company as good as he can. - a friendly infantry battalion is attacking an enemy held village. The player is commanding a StuG unit tasked with assisting the attack. It would be intresting to try and make scenarios like these but i guess that some sort of new feature that would allow the designer to include radio transmissions from the AI controlled frienlies to be displayed on the screen might be neccesary to describe the friendly AIs intentions at various parts of the battle.

I'm afraid there is no quick fix for this. You will need to learn atleast the basics in scenario design to be able to place a static AI defenceforce on the map. Best thing to do here is to refer to the manual i would think. If you want a mobile enemy and perhaps also change the objectives and scoring things get quiet a bit more complicated. Not impossible by any means but it will require some studdying of the manual. This is what i recomend you do first and experiment your way forward with the editor step by step. It's actually quite enjoyable to mess around in the editor and learn it's funtionality step by step. Soon you will have your very first scenario produced. Spend some time with the manual and experiment in the editor. If you get stuck with something ask some more specific qestions and i'm sure you will get help ASAP. I hope you do decide to give scenario designing a go and if so best of luck. And please don't let this reply make you hesitate to ask any future questions that might pop up.R /RepsolCBR

Kind of depends on what you need them for i would say. You will soon find your own prefrences wich option fits best for different circumstances. And yes ! They do look cool.

Agree fully with this.

Huge improvement indeed !

A small point to note regarding on-map mortars. They are VERY trigger happy. If you deploy them in a possition with LOS to the enemy side you may want to issiue them a small circular covered arc to prevent them from opening fire on the first enemy unit they spot and perhaps waste ammo on a target you may not considder very important as well as giving up their possition. As Erwin mentioned - ones spotted they are prime targets for enemy fire.