Sniper ?

[sleepercell]

Hi,

Wondering if anybody has solved this little problem. In theory, sniper teams can be great for picking off enemies at range with limited reveal to their position. However, it's frustrating when I target a unit that is say btw 200 & 400m away, the assist will start popping off sub machine gun rounds along with the marksmen (w/ an effective range of only 100m) and of course reveals the position that would otherwise remain much more concealed if it were only sporadic rifle shots from the marksmen only. Targeting light also does not solve this problem. So.. is there a way to have only the marksmen fire & not the spotter unless you have an imminent threat to your team? Thanks!

[YankeeDog]

Hi,

Wondering if anybody has solved this little problem. In theory, sniper teams can be great for picking off enemies at range with limited reveal to their position. However, it's frustrating when I target a unit that is say btw 200 & 400m away, the assist will start popping off sub machine gun rounds along with the marksmen (w/ an effective range of only 100m) and of course reveals the position that would otherwise remain much more concealed if it were only sporadic rifle shots from the marksmen only. Targeting light also does not solve this problem. So.. is there a way to have only the marksmen fire & not the spotter unless you have an imminent threat to your team? Thanks!

Yep; this is still a problem. Other than going in to the editor and putting sniper teams at 50% casualties so they have only one member, I don't know of a complete solution.

One thing, though -- when you manually target an enemy unit, the unit treats this as an order to go all-out an put everything it can downrange against that enemy. In the case of sniper teams, this means that direct target orders actually make it more likely the spotter/security man with an SMG in a sniper team will use his weapon against the target. So in general, you want to avoid giving sniper teams manual target orders, and just let them engage the enemy as they see fit.

This doesn't completely fix the problem, but it does make it less likely that the SMG will fire, especially at ranges over about 250m.

In general, I've had very good luck with sniper teams by positioning them in good cover with a ~300-500m LOS to the enemy, and then keeping my hands off of them and them shoot at whomever they please.

[Amizaur]

Sometimes I wished there was a possibility of ordering the sniper to execute the second member .

Hmm... just hit the idea - I wonder if I gave a sniper team an area fire order for few turns, would they waste all their ammo on it ? I wonder then, who would be empty first - the sniper with the rifle, or the assistant with his SMG ?

Maybe it would be possible to deplete the second member's pistol ammo (for his SMG) while keeping at least part of rifle ammo ?

Probably not practical at all but have to try it just out of curiosity .

It would be more easy to make such workarounds, if one could set in the editor the exact amount of ammo for each vehicle/squad.

[sleepercell]

Thanks for the tips amigos! Vaya con carne... AHHHHH!!!!!

[phil stanbridge]

As long as you don't order the team to fire at targets it seems to help. I've just been using one myself - he inflictedd 3 casualties by the end of the mission. One of them was a tank commander too which was a tasty distance shot, but more importantly the second member didn't fire. Probably because of the distances involved.

I also tend to have this problem with 2" mortar teams. If the target is say 200m away the other men in the team seem to prefer to suppress with their small arms. Only after a few shots will the mortar actually fire. I'm not sure if this is intended or not. Again though if you let the team manage itself they are actually much more efficient.

[womble]

SMGs still open up at pointless ranges. I watched a lone sergeant (never did find out if he was the only member of his team/unit with LOS, or a solitary survivor) trying to button up a Panther from over 200m distance recently. I don't think the 'tracers' ever got into the same AS as the tank, and the commander certainly didn't feel the need to button up.

[Amizaur]

I tested a simple setup, and it seems for me that a 2 man sniper team (SMG + rifle) with area fire order would consume ammo in a way that both men would be out of ammo at about the same time. So the only way to deplete SMG-man ammo would be to first deplete all the team's ammo with few minutes of area fire, then go to jeep/truck/haltruck and acquire only rifle ammo .

During this testing on a small 320x320m flat field with some bocages and some sniper teams and a FO team on each side, I had strange situation. Both sides were positioned behind some bocages, at two corners of an empty field. Occasionaly some of soldiers seen some of the enemies and shot at them. After about 15 minutes of occasional shooting, after all my ammo-depleting test were finished, out of boredom I took a FO team's jeep and driven it out of cover, to the center of the open field, to check how quickly would it die against about 7 sniper teams from 150-200m . To mu surprise, no one was shooting at the jeep circling around the open field. I checked the enemy sniper teams (scenario author test difficulty) - lot's of ammo left, but noticed then that NO ONE from the enemy side can see the jeep that is driving 100m from them in the open field. No enemy icon was lightened, the jeep icon was not lightened too for any of enemy sniper teams. The jeep was circling in open for about whole turn, once I ordered it to drive to the enemy's rear area so he actually SEEN the enemy teams looking from the other side, but they didn't see him. Next I ordeed the jeep to drive 50m in front of the enemy bocage line, the occupants of the jeep spotted the enemy FO team (spotted a Geran FO team behind a bocage from 50m out while riding in a fast moving jeep) and OPENED FIRE (from a moving jeep) at this FO team, and STILL for several seconds (like 15s) NO ONE from about 7 German teams (all with clear FOV on whole field) has noticed the jeep !! Even the German FO team which was fired on by the jeep occupants - didn't see it !! The jeep was suddenly noticed by several German teams at once only about half a minute later, and then died quickly. But first, it circled on open field 50-100m from seven German sniper teams, got tho their rears (and seen them), got within 50m from the front and opened fire on them - still unoticed. I can't explain that. I wish I had a save but didn't thoght about it untill it was too late. It was RT play. I'll try later to recreate it with the same scenario doing the same things.

[Sakai007]

In the screen shot thread I posted a pic of a Canadian sniper team killing an MG crew member at 425m! It can be done, but as mentioned, this was just letting them pick their own targets, not manually targeting. Also, sniper teams carry binoculars, and without the second soldier (spotter I say) those binoculars would be useless!

[Amizaur]

So we need some way do disarm the second member

BTW - during my observation of Sniper teams and them taking casualties I observed such situation - if a 2 man sniper team carries let's say 60 rounds of rifle ammo and 150 rounds of 9mm pistol ammo (for the second member's SMG) - and the SMG guy dies - the ammo count for this team is cut in half to about 30 rounds of rifle and 75 rounds of pistol ammo.

It seem that his dying comrade managed to give him half of his pistol ammo - "Argghh... Listen... take... this.... ".

But also somehow grabs half of his rifle ammo .

Or maybe the sniper was asked by his dying SMG comrade to take his pistol ammo and give it his son (of the dying one), but sniper couldn't carry double amount of ammo so he chosed to drop half of his rifle ammo, to be fitfull the last wish of the friend... ?

[zmoney]

So we need some way do disarm the second member

All you need to do is give them a cover arc. The smg generally doesn't fire unless given the target order manually.

[Amizaur]

The SMG guy HAPPILY fires - without order - at enemy targets inside about 200m... And if I put a cover arc, I will restrict the range for sharpshooter too. If I only could put a "negative cover arc" - something like "do NOT shoot to targets inside this circle" I would set it to 200m.

[A Canadian Cat]

Yeah the only real solution is let them choose targets but place them where they have good long LOS so the SMG team does not feel the urge to open up. I would advise against running the SMG team out of amo. I remember one urban fight where I had a team covering a park. The sharp shooter had a good time taking out guys at the other end of the park until an enemy squad appeared in front of their building (they had advanced on a side street). The SMG team took out 4 guys in seconds and I was able to at least try to extract the team from their building. They still got nailed though because they became surrounded because the rest of my defence was not properly setup to protect them. Lesson learned.

[Amizaur]

I wonder if we are supposed to see - someday - a soldier combat behaviour alghoritms in CMBN improved in a way, that when the team was noticed and targeted (and it was were ordered to change position, or maybe the enemy was already too close), the SMG guy spreads bullets on the enemy while the sniper guy disengages quickly using all available cover, and then the roles are reversing the sniper guy puts few quick rounds on the enemy from his new position to allow the SMG guy to disengage. Or if they stay and engage in firefight, the team members (with experience of veteran and up, or maybe crack and up) periodically change their indyvidal positions in the same way - one is shooting, the other get's away few meters and starts shooting at the enemy from new position (osition not covered with enemy fire), then the roles are reversing.

Not that both stays stupidly on place - either shooting or covering, or both are running/crawling away simultaneously.

(Or soldiers at least breaking their activity and taking all available cover, and better yet cravling away or running away like hell, if they SEE a that a tank points it's barrel at them... That should not be THAT hard to code. If there is a tank, and targets an enemy, do a check if the targeted enemy sees it. And if the tank is seen by the targeted team then with probability based on distance between the tank and the team, starting at 10% on long range and rasing to 90% at very close range - give an "hide" order to the team, so they duck and hide their heads. And if the cover is not good enough (some smart alghoritm to estimate the quality of cover) and a covered withdrawal is possible (team is not in an exposed foxholes, but let's say behind a bocage), then order them to crawl away/run away to a better cover, or just change position under cover, so the tank shells would hit empty position. It can't be done by human player in WEGO, and it's also not possible to micromanage several squads this way in RT, especially if the fight is going on in more that one place. Let's code a bit of sense of self-preservation into the pixel soldier's minds... That would prevent them from doing suicidal things and increase a bit their chances for survival under fire.

I believe such behavior is possible to code, only laborous and time consuming (developing and testing). I hope we are going to see a bit more inteligent troops in the future versions of CMx2/CMx3.

The infantry behaviours and tactics are the CORE of this game, improving them means improving directly the game quality more than any other change/improvement.

[womble]

I wonder if we are supposed to see - someday - a soldier combat behaviour alghoritms in CMBN improved...

I think it's unlikely in x2. "Tactical" direction seems to be issued at the team level. Each soldier acts individually, but only to achieve the general objective of their team. They may panic as individuals but they don't coordinate in that way.

There are reports that using Assault as a retrograde maneuver when you have a full squad produces the desired covering fire withdrawal.

[Amizaur]

Well, then I whish the same thing ("Assaulting" withdrawal with covering fire) was possible with any team that has more than 2 soldiers - for example a sniper team.

[John Kettler]

Too bad you can't issue separate cover arcs for the sniper and the spotter. That'd solve the problem in a hurry. Wonder if it's patchable?

Regards,

John Kettler

[leakyD]

Probably codeable only as separate units, and not as a team.

[womble]

Yeah, maybe when processor speed and memory sizes have doubled a few more times, they'll be able to create a new engine that deals with everything on the soldier level, but still has "handles" for the player at team level. Right now, domestic machines just don't have the grunt to handle everything at the soldier level in RT.

And then a couple of generations of processor later, the handles can go down to the individual soldier. But I don't think even I would bother with that level of control, and I start every battle by splitting my squads. It would be better to develop the AI a bit more so it has more sense of context.