Georgie Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 During testing of a scenario that I am making I noticed that a German antitank gun simply was not engaging what should have been an easy target before the "easy target" blew him away. Here is what happened. The gun was set up about 100 yards from a road. The road ran diagonally from right to left across the front of the gun and then made a 45 deg right turn. For the test I deployed a Sherman to the right side of the gun on the road and out of sight of the gun. During the test I had the tank on "quick" speed cross in front of the gun, navigate the right turn and then stop about 150 yds from the gun. The gun spotted the tank at about 90 degrees to its right and started to traverse the gun to target the tank, as the tank crossed in front of the gun the gun CONTINUED TO TRAVERSE TO THE RIGHT FOR ANOTHER 45 degrees and finally started traversing to the left to target the tank. It took so long to do this that the tank had plenty of time to spot the gun and knock it out. What should have happened is as soon as the tank crossed where the gun barrel was pointing the gun should have immediatly started traversing to the left. If it had then there would have been plenty of time to target and hit the tank before the tank spotted the gun. I wonder if some of the slowness that we have seen of a gun to engage a tank can be attributed to this? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Good description, good catch. Do you have a savegame? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 Good description, good catch. Do you have a savegame? Thanks c3k, no I don't but I was able to easily repeat what I described using the editor with a small flat map, no road and a gun and a tank. This also occurs with the 75mm AT gun which is even worse because the 75 traverses even slower than the 50mm so it wastes even more time by overshooting in the traverse mode. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kensal Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Presumably not a bug - perhaps the AI is not programmed to predict that the tank will cross its LOF when the tank is quite close. Instead it my be programmed to traverse to the tank's location which in most cases, when the tank is some distance away, results in the gun pointing in the tank's direction. In real life? I imagine it is quite difficult to traverse a relatively heavy AT gun quickly in the opposite direction in order to bear on a very close moving tank, plus the crew will probably be quite stressed and may not operate strictly according to training and could even be pushing / pulling in different directions 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 13, 2013 Author Share Posted March 13, 2013 Presumably not a bug - perhaps the AI is not programmed to predict that the tank will cross its LOF when the tank is quite close. Instead it my be programmed to traverse to the tank's location which in most cases, when the tank is some distance away, results in the gun pointing in the tank's direction. In real life? I imagine it is quite difficult to traverse a relatively heavy AT gun quickly in the opposite direction in order to bear on a very close moving tank, plus the crew will probably be quite stressed and may not operate strictly according to training and could even be pushing / pulling in different directions Maybe something similar to what you described is happening. Apparently when the gun crew spots the tank way off to their right at a certain angle they start traversing to that angle and keep traversing until they reach that angle no matter what other targets present themselves. When the gun is pointed at that angle and the target is not there then and only then does the gun crew start reacting to other targets? What ever is happening it is causing the gun to perform very poorly in that circumstance. Can the AI be written to correct what is happening? I certainly don't know. I'll do some more testing to see if what I just described is what is happening. And yes, the 50mm gun traverses very slowly and the 75mm even slower. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 13, 2013 Author Share Posted March 13, 2013 Further testing shows that when a gun crew spots a tank at a certain angle they start traversing to that angle and keep traversing until they reach that angle no matter whether the tank has moved or not. When the gun is pointed at that angle and the tank is not there then the gun crew "spots" that tank again at its new angle and repeats the process. Maybe the "spot" angle could be refreshed more often. But the "gun" would have to recognize the tank as the same tank. Not a game breaker but if fighting tanks with AT guns at short range then it could be a battle breaker. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holien Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 Occh that does not sound good with fast moving targets and close range. I think I am about to see that effect in a game I am currently playing. I will keep an eye open to see how the AI handles it. Sounds like a good spot... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 13, 2013 Author Share Posted March 13, 2013 Hello Phil hope you read this. I have a suggestion on a possible modifier for this problem. Once a gun spots a target and is traversing to engage it the AI could at intervals check for the continued presence of a target for the gun at the same angle. The AI would not have to identify the target just check for a target at the same angle. If the AI checks for a target at the same angle and does not see one then stop traversing and check for any targets at any angle rather than continuing to traverse to a non-target. It appears to me that the AI is waiting until the gun traverses to the original target angle before it checks for the presence of the target. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 13, 2013 Author Share Posted March 13, 2013 Occh that does not sound good with fast moving targets and close range. I think I am about to see that effect in a game I am currently playing. I will keep an eye open to see how the AI handles it. Sounds like a good spot... Thanks Holien, your comments on the outcome of your battle and an evaluation on the performance of your AT guns would be helpful. Try zooming in on an AT gun in action and see how it handles targeting. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Crowley Posted March 14, 2013 Share Posted March 14, 2013 Well, as the recipient of a 75mm AT round up the rear end (of a bren carrier, mind) from Holiens' AT gun, I can certainly say that it had no problem traversing In fact it swung around about 90 deg in around 30 seconds, having been under fire at the start of the turn and having at least one of the AT team returning fire constantly. It also got a first shot hit :confused: Be interesting to see what the author of my misfortune has to say 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted March 14, 2013 Share Posted March 14, 2013 Georgie, Consider this read by Phil. I'll post a bug report on it (after verification). Thanks again. Ken 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 14, 2013 Author Share Posted March 14, 2013 Georgie, Consider this read by Phil. I'll post a bug report on it (after verification). Thanks again. Ken Thanks again also c3k. I hope that this is not too hard to fix or at least make better. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 14, 2013 Author Share Posted March 14, 2013 Well, as the recipient of a 75mm AT round up the rear end (of a bren carrier, mind) from Holiens' AT gun, I can certainly say that it had no problem traversing In fact it swung around about 90 deg in around 30 seconds, having been under fire at the start of the turn and having at least one of the AT team returning fire constantly. It also got a first shot hit :confused: Be interesting to see what the author of my misfortune has to say Hello Jim, it depends on the angle from the gun that your bren carrier was first spotted and whether or not it made a large change in its angle from the gun since it was first spotted. And the distance between the bren carrier and the gun will have an effect. At least thats what my test show. Be interesting to see what your opponents observations were. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Crowley Posted March 14, 2013 Share Posted March 14, 2013 Hello Jim, it depends on the angle from the gun that your bren carrier was first spotted and whether or not it made a large change in its angle from the gun since it was first spotted. And the distance between the bren carrier and the gun will have an effect. At least thats what my test show. Be interesting to see what your opponents observations were. Hi Georgie The 75mm PAK 40 had a maximum traverse of 45 deg, so to swing it around more than that required the crew to manually shift it the additional 45 deg. Weighing-in at a tad over 3100 pounds that is quite a job for the four man crew (one was firing his machine pistol) who then had to scramble back to aim and get off a shot. All within the minute timeframe of a turn. I can't recall having read anything about this type of situation but that seems a tad overblown to me. I wonder if anyone has access to some anecdotal evidence, one way or the other? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holien Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 I will post video and spend some time on this over the weekend, wife and DIY allowing... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgie Posted March 16, 2013 Author Share Posted March 16, 2013 I will post video and spend some time on this over the weekend, wife and DIY allowing... Sounds good Holien, looking forward to seeing your video. I found that the problem that I'm seeing is happening at close range, 100 to 200 yds with the tank crossing the field of fire of the gun so that there is a big change of angle to traverse the gun. The gun first spots the tank near the edge of its field of fire and the tank continues to cross the guns field of fire at quick speed. Hope my explanations are clear enough, your video will be much better. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holien Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 I am uploading 2 videos now but taking some time as I live in the country and I need rabbits to carry the message into the BT Hub... I don't think the video will support the bug and I think what happened is pretty fair dinkum. I will post the links and see what people think but to me it seemed OK. More when Videos upload. H 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holien Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 1st clip uploaded I am not sure it really adds anything to the discussion. Shows the Pak40 rotating while under slight small arms fire. Looks like 45% in 30 secs approx? Next clip now uploading... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holien Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 Second clip takes it to end. And shows it just at the end of the minute firing and taking out a Bren Carrier which was moving in a straight line roughly directly away from the gun so along the line of fire... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted March 18, 2013 Share Posted March 18, 2013 Georgie, Aberrant behavior confirmed. Good catch! Thanks, Ken 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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