Random arty battery pos? / Reuseing Ai groups?

[Pandur]

since i got the game 2 days ago i almost spend all my time in the editor makeing a map. about 10h work in it already, 50% of the map is filled with stuff and is ready to go into fine tuning and eye candy consider mode. the other half of the map is still empty, and befor i go there i was thinking about objectives. i have objectives for the first half of the map, but i look for ojectives for 2nd half of the map. its a fictional axis attack so anything goes.

my first question is about an idea i had about an objective. in short, is there a way to get a "unit" you paint 3 seperate setup locations for as AI plan, to set up together in one of the 3 locations instead of takeing a random one and a unit with 3 guns possible ending up in 3 different locations. i want a arty battery that sets up in ONE! of the 3 or 4 possible loactions and NOT randomly one gun here and one gun there.

any scen designer has an idea if this could work somehow?

now about re-useing AI groups. last map i had static AI defense with movable elements, i think this is there CMx2 AI is good at, and it will be Red Stream all over again, the map will have lots of defenders and i will probably run out of AI groups(thank god i never try to get the AI to attack).

now i had the idea to reuse AI groups in the following way. units that you can say for sure will be destroyed in like 60 to 120 turns and are gone afterwards should make it possible to use a AI group twice for much later reinforcements.

example, you know for sure unit 1 in AI group2 will be destroyed by at least turn 60, now you should be able to add units to AI group2 that will come as reinforcements way past turn 60 and they should be controlable with AI group2 orders again without odd behavour from unit 1 as unit 1 is dead? or is this wishfull thinking on my side?

some scene editing pro can give me his view on this stuff?

[JonS]

I had the idea to reuse AI groups in the following way. units that you can say for sure will be destroyed in like 60 to 120 turns and are gone afterwards should make it possible to use a AI group twice for much later reinforcements.

example, you know for sure unit 1 in AI group2 will be destroyed by at least turn 60, now you should be able to add units to AI group2 that will come as reinforcements way past turn 60 and they should be controlable with AI group2 orders again without odd behavour from unit 1 as unit 1 is dead? or is this wishfull thinking on my side?

I think that would work. I can't really see any reason why it wouldn't, since reinforcements do follow orders.

You could probably test it over a 20 min scen by ensuring something dies within 5mins, bring on some reinfs at 10-15 mins, then seeing if they'll follow orders.

There's a couple of things you'd have to be careful about. Firstly, and obviously, the guys who are supposed to die would have to die, else you'd get some weirdness when the reinforcements start moving.

Secondly, you'd need to be really careful and exact with the timings for the reinforcements. Even without sharing the AI slot, trying to get reinforcements arriving in the distant future to move correctly, coherently, and intelligently is tough, in my limited experience.

Finally, you might run out of timing slots. IIRC, there are only 20 (or 18?) timing slots which orders for each AI group can occupy. So if you use 10 for your initial Die A Lot Now guys, you can only give 10 discrete orders to your reinforcements.

Still, it's a very interesting idea. And, actually, you wouldn't even need to always kill off all the starting guys. You could have your reinforcements arrive and then the two discrete groups move to a location where they 'marry up', then give them orders which they'd then carry out together. For example, there's an infantry platoon initially on map, and they have orders from 0 to 10 minutes to advance to occupy a building. At 10 minutes a tank arrives as reinforcement. At 11 minutes both the tank and the platoon move to a convienient wood to 'marry up' ( I think this step would be necessary to ensure that they carry out subsequent orders as a team), then at 15 minutes whte platoon with the tank in support move off in unision to attack a farm.

Regards

Jon

[Paper Tiger]

Hi Pandur

Glad to hear you're back on the designing wagon.

To your second question, yes, you can re-use AI groups but you have to be really careful doing so. There are a lot of pitfalls involved in doing so especially when you are designing a defensive AI set up. I did a LOT of work way back to find out how all this works for the CMSF NATO campaigns. The Canadian campaign used these techniques in spades but they required a lot of careful play-testing to ensure that they worked right. Especially if you plan to 'empty' or kill off an existing group. The mission 'HOPE' was like that and it was a really complex beast. To the observant player, it must have appeared like I had more than eight AI groups working together

However, if you want to design an AI attack, it's easy to add reinforcements to an existing group. The reinforcements will join the group as long as its first order is timed to a minimum of 30 seconds after the reinforcements are scheduled to arrive. (They tend to arrive about 20-25 seconds after their slot activates) If you have a reinforcement slot arriving at T+15, be sure to have the group that it's about to join's order set to start at T+15:30. Then they'll join the group. If you set it to T+15, they'll arrive after the order begins and will have to sit around until the next one comes along. Again, you'll need to play-test the mission a few times to make sure that everything operates. If the current group falls behind with its orders and hasn't reached the necessary order, it will screw up the plan. A lot also depends on the type of movement order you give them (QUICK, FAST, ASSAULT etc). You'll see this a LOT in the upcoming Commonwealth campaign in the module. Playing in Scenario Author mode will let you see what works and what doesn't, and most importantly, WHY it does or doesn't work

Look forward to seeing what you're putting together.

[Paper Tiger]

my first question is about an idea i had about an objective. in short, is there a way to get a "unit" you paint 3 seperate setup locations for as AI plan, to set up together in one of the 3 locations instead of takeing a random one and a unit with 3 guns possible ending up in 3 different locations. i want a arty battery that sets up in ONE! of the 3 or 4 possible loactions and NOT randomly one gun here and one gun there.

any scen designer has an idea if this could work somehow?

I'm not 100% clear on what you're asking here but I think you might find an answer if you take a look at the German AI plans in the stock mission 'Buying the Farm' or the 'USMC Second Storm' mission for CMSF. I really restricted one side's set up by using all three set-up zones (Red-1, Red-2 and Red-3) and placing one unit from an AI group consisting of three units only into each zone. With this method, I can control exactly where certain units will go in each plan. However, it will severly restrict the playablility of that mission if the player wants to play as the 'restricted' side or H2H.

This technique is particularly good for ensuring that AI platoons stay within C2 of their HQ unit from plan to plan. It really bolsters the AI-controlled sides ability to put up a fight while keeping their experience, morale and leadership values at realistic levels.

[Pandur]

hey thanks for that valuable information!

about reuseing the AI groups. when i was thinking through that in my mind i came to the right conclusions it seems but now i know for sure what i have to be carefull bout and what not.

the thing is the scenario is planned to be minimum 3 houers(180turns)like red strem, i could not go above it as i had a red batallion in reinforcements to keep the AI side from surrendering prematurely. and the last possible reinforcements time is T+180 turns. if i could have pushed out the last reinforcements closer to the 4 houer mark i would have done it.

now the same goes for the current map, minimum 3 hours but if possible and i dont have problems with premature surrender closer to the 4 hour mark. but i think i will have early surrenders again so 3 houers it will be with never ariveing reinforcements.

my problem there is that my maps are so big that viewing the AI fighting force as "one" is not apropiate anymore. in the current example you will face a very challengeing task in the very end and the total amount of enemy needed to make it challengeing is not much and a tiny fraction of the force you destroyed already. yet this tiny fraction is far off and in perfect position, they are a independent force and not the remains of the "rest" you destroyed. that gives me premature surrenders where there should be none.

anyways, as said the scenario will be long and to have 18 or 20 time increments within an AI order of which there are only 8, is huge step up.

i think reuseing at least some AI groups that way, is the way to go.

I'm not 100% clear on what you're asking here...

ok direct example from the current mission. there are 3 farm on the map and the enemy will have "onmap" arty/gun battery with 3 guns.

now i want to be able to set up the battery at 1 of the 3 farms randomly at game start.

the way i see it work though, is that each gun will setup randomly on one of the 3 painted zones at the 3 farms. or 2 guns in one farm and one in the other and no gun in the 3rd farm.

i just want to ensure that the gun battery goes to 1 randomly choosen farm "together" at the scenario start. instead of ending up split up in any of the 3 possible locations.

i dont think setup zones would help there, and when thinking through it i dont see a way to ensure that the battery sets up together in one farm. maybe i have to work around that in some way.

the thing is such guns are fragile and i dont want the player to be able to pre planed arty the gun position on turn 1. or at least i want to make it that tricky that you either use lots of arty and have bad payout for it or have low chance of success in the first place. the player will have some serious arsenal, i plan to add a single 14in battleship with about 10 shots the player has to impose some restrictions on himself, it will simulate the odd railroadgun by shooting its 10 shots in harassment mode, very slow ROF.

and thats just the goodies, lots of regular arty and limited air support on both sides is planed.

and i design maps and defenders that can take the punch of it, but i just want to make sure the player can not turn 1 arty a objective, that to cheap

[Paper Tiger]

I see... AFAIK I think what you'd like to do is not possible. You can definitely control where those three guns will go in each plan which means 5 possible set up areas, one per AI plan and that would keep the player guessing where they are set up. I understand why you want to introduce as much randomness to the set-up as possible but THAT degree of randomness AND control is not possible... yet.

Good luck with the naval artillery by the way. I wanted to use it in the Commonwealth campaign but it's just too damned precise and that makes an already lethal asset even more effective.

[Pandur]

damn it

but i guess it doesnt matter, i need to work around that...again. i am back in work around mode, when i am in this mode i find a way to make it work in a meaningful way at some point. yesterday i crafted a SW-NE aligned railroad overpass over the main road just for the looks and to give some hard cover in a flat area. took me more then 1 houer to make it work so the bridge is not sunk. i dont care, i am on a mission,...a mapping mission. "CMx2 editor workaround" is my 2nd surname, somehow nothing works the way i want in the first go.

Good luck with the naval artillery by the way. I wanted to use it in the Commonwealth campaign but it's just too damned precise and that makes an already lethal asset even more effective.

i still have the joy to explore a whole new CMx2 game, however i closely monitored the arty accuracy threads and the one about "onmap mortars=superunit!?" was actualy my doing as this issue was already plainly visible in the demo.

so i know that indirect fire in normandy can be over effective BUT, and thats the big but, i did not thought that the 14" battleship is also in the same boat. i would have though that one give this system a good inaccuracy like at least 75m radius around a point target. means 150m diameter.

or can i more imagine this like somewhat inaccurate 155mm CMSF guns? 14" guns on a 30m diameter circle around a point target would be plain wrong and feel alien to me. i guess i have to see.

however the only bonus could be that the super accurate battleship is in my game a reasonable accurate single shot railroad gun, so if you shoot in harassment mode as "intended" by me, the accuracy could actually feel more like a railroad gun then a battle ship.

[Pandur]

so, the "map"(no units and stuff) is done to 95%. damn that was hard work, now comes the painfull part of placing flavour objects and fine tuneing visuals and connecting some loose ends, god i hate it, its a endless timesink on big maps. i read in the forums the flavour objects like to vanish and act funny sometimes in CMBN, oh boy

but then comes the fun part, crafting the battle, and i love to see action on this map. i will post some WIP screens soon when i found out why my "print screen" button returns black screenshots in win7. lol i was not so worked up about a map since i erected the cliffs and mountains that formed the valley for red stream.

[mjkerner]

However, if you want to design an AI attack, it's easy to add reinforcements to an existing group. The reinforcements will join the group as long as its first order is timed to a minimum of 30 seconds after the reinforcements are scheduled to arrive. (They tend to arrive about 20-25 seconds after their slot activates) If you have a reinforcement slot arriving at T+15, be sure to have the group that it's about to join's order set to start at T+15:30. Then they'll join the group. If you set it to T+15, they'll arrive after the order begins and will have to sit around until the next one

Paper Tiger, a lot of really good information here. Thanks for that! One question though...where do the reinforcements appear? do they appear at the spot where the existing group is, or the existing group's original set up zone, or where you deployed the R group initially when choosing your forces. I assume the latter, but then you really have to be psychic to get that timed right, eve

n after testing in author mode. I hope I'm missing

Also, could you weigh in in my questions here?:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=102567

Pander, good luck on this and I for one am looking forward to the finished product.

[Paper Tiger]

where do the reinforcements appear?

The reinforcements arrive where the scenario designer places them in the editor. No possibility of having them arrive somewhere else in a different plan so that's one thing you have to keep in mind when topping up an attack. They will have to drive/run to their order so you need to monitor their movement carefully using Scenario Author mode to make sure that they don't do anything really stupid.

[mjkerner]

Thanks Paper Tiger, that'swhat I thought, from memory. I haven't been able to get to the game much lately to check it out.