Tank AI wasting ammo

[SlowMotion]

Here is a problem I encountered while playing a scenario. CMBN 2.01

A tank of mine spotted some enemy infantry maybe 300m away. Between the tank and the infantry there is a destroyed tank. When my tank started shooting at infantry, shells hit the destroyed tank instead. This continued shell after another.

I wonder if AI could be made smart enough to recognise that after enough hits to an obstacle, it is wasting ammo and should stop shooting.

Or should player prevent this from happening by using covered arc or something?

[Childress]

How does you tank know the enemy tank is destroyed? Unless it's burning...

[James Crowley]

Yes, I have had that and, just as annoying, an SP firing some of its limited AT rounds at PIAT team, even though it had HE.

The same SP also fired four AT rounds into a Bren Carrier when, again, it would probably have had a better result with single round of HE.

[SlowMotion]

Initially it wasn't burning, but how do AI tanks know in general that some tank is destroyed? That map has plenty of destroyed tanks and I don't see my units wasting any ammo to them.

But surely after enough hits the tank did start burning.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Tanks used to do this all the time with trees. They would pump a dozen consecutive rounds into an ironwood tree 100m meter in front of it. BFC put in some code a while back to make it less likely IIRC. Maybe they could do the same with destroyed vehicles.

Here is a problem I encountered while playing a scenario. CMBN 2.01

A tank of mine spotted some enemy infantry maybe 300m away. Between the tank and the infantry there is a destroyed tank. When my tank started shooting at infantry, shells hit the destroyed tank instead. This continued shell after another.

I wonder if AI could be made smart enough to recognise that after enough hits to an obstacle, it is wasting ammo and should stop shooting.

Or should player prevent this from happening by using covered arc or something?

[Childress]

Initially it wasn't burning, but how do AI tanks know in general that some tank is destroyed? That map has plenty of destroyed tanks and I don't see my units wasting any ammo to them.

They don't- at first. Can the crew tell if a hostile tank at 800m was destroyed if the only evidence is a 6 inch hole in the hull and the fact that is no longer appearing to move? The historical tendency was, given the uncertainty, to pump them full of AP . Eventually the evidence becomes irrefutable. I believe this was called the 'death clock' in CM1.

[SlowMotion]

I understand that in real life it was much more difficult to know the status of a tank or identify infantry soldiers (think about all the game details you know about soldiers you see from 200m distance).

But in my case the fact that the tank started burning did not stop ammo wasting.

And I do remember the hit tree problem that Vanir Ausf B mentioned. It was there already in CMSF

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Is that the MkIII block tank you depicted or the MkIV? It's hard to tell without the roadwheels showing.

Regards

KR

[JonS]

I believe the infantryman's name is TIMMEH!

[sburke]

I believe the infantryman's name is TIMMEH!

rotflmao I was gonna comment on why is the tank even bothering to shoot at a quadraplegic, but I thought "no way, that is in excessively bad taste".

[SlowMotion]

Some big scenarios are only playable if I use lowest gfx quality settings and trees always hidden. My tank is actually a Tiger.

[c3k]

To give a serious answer, the "issue" is known. Enemy tanks do not block LOS, but they do block LOF. Note the "enemy" part of that sentence. (Wrecks may be agnostic...I've forgotten.)

This leads to the friendly tank seeing through the enemy tank and trying to fire on a target. Unfortunately, the LOF is blocked by the intervening enemy vehicle. Gamey bastiges can take advantage of this.

There are MANY reasons for it to be this way.

Ken

[Redwolf]

Here is a problem I encountered while playing a scenario. CMBN 2.01

A tank of mine spotted some enemy infantry maybe 300m away. Between the tank and the infantry there is a destroyed tank. When my tank started shooting at infantry, shells hit the destroyed tank instead. This continued shell after another.

I wonder if AI could be made smart enough to recognise that after enough hits to an obstacle, it is wasting ammo and should stop shooting.

Or should player prevent this from happening by using covered arc or something?

There are more problems like that, e.g. guns firing into hill or other obstacles when firing indirect with a spotter. The engine is not only not tracking obstacles, it also doesn't have any code to stop the firing when it consistently hits obstacles.

[SlowMotion]

If the engine does not care what happens when a gun shoots at target, how can it decide what to do next? Like if you shoot at a far away target and the shell hits ground before the target, then you raise the barrel and shoot again.

Maybe "Enemy tanks do not block LOS" is the fundamental reason why this is happening. And the situation is rare enough that it's not high priority on BF's things to fix list.

[Redwolf]

If the engine does not care what happens when a gun shoots at target, how can it decide what to do next?

It is indeed very hard to make a computer make good decisions how to solve problems like "I am on this ridge and I can't depress the gun enough" and "there was LOS to that punk a second ago but now a vehicle blocked LOS how do I gain LOS back?".

In both cases you don't want the current state of TacAI make decisions to regain LOS (by moving in a random direction) or to solve the depression problem by driving forward until that's achieved. Both would lead to very unrealistic suicidal movements.

However, it seems sub-rocket science to stop firing when the engine (the combat engine, not the tacai) determines that you cannot reach the target because there is a fixed obstacle. "Stop firing" is a realistic and safe reaction.