Argh with the running aways

[gnorffy]

I was playing one of the Commonwealth battles. Small unit action cleaning a cluster of farm buildings from a start line.

This was 3/4 of the way through the mission, and I went to move a section of 11 men across a road into a building that had already been cleared and was being held by an assault team. The road in question was single lane, about 4-5 meters from the building entrance.

When the first men in the section were about halfway across the road, the lone remaining member of a German FOO team opened fire from around 30 meters away with an SMG. Slowly but surely my men went single file through the door, all the while under fire from buddy with the SMG. Just as the last soldier is stepping into the door, a bullet catches him and he drops to the ground, wounded.

Immediately the entire section, inside the building and safe from fire, panics and begins to run back out the door into fire. Across the next turn, they continue their flight until they were right back at their starting position. And they left buddy lying there bleeding out.

Like, seriously. Argh.

A feature of the AI that I would like to see in a situatiobn like this: A panic causes the unit to split. After the split, one part of the unit would engage in whatever activities their panicked state encourages them to (including but not limited to leaving cover to run back to their start line) while the rest of the unit would remain under control... maybe not carrying out their previous orders but at least retaining a certain degree of cohesion.

[John Kettler]

gnorffy,

Verily that sucketh! I'd guess that the AI, when panic is triggered, has no perception whatsoever of the cover state of the unit which has come unstuck. You'd think, though, the AI would be smart enough to not run back into obviously dangerous line of fire. If you have a Save Game of this debacle, I'm sure Phil Culliton would welcome it. Good luck!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Wodin]

The Tac AI awareness needs tweaking..obviously if safe they shouldn't have all run off. Unless we are looking at conscripts or something. Steve said version 3 will have work done on the Tac AI..so fingers crossed we see some improvements in areas like hearing..seeing and reactions.

[dieseltaylor]

The single hit at 30 metres on a file of soldiers is impressive. Not. Was it PBEM or RT?

And this sort of adds insult to injury that the game AI/BF thinks firing a SMG at 280metres is a valid use.

[gnorffy]

In re-reading my post, I did mistakenly give the impression that the gunner was laying on heavy fire. It wasn't like that. He was pretty shaken up and was the last man in his unit. He popped up and fired on them 3-4 times. If we take the first 2 volleys as bracketing, he hit 50% of his aimed shots which isn't totally suck. Just mostly.