Tank bug, old or new?

[Thore]

I just started my first red thunder game playing as the germans in the Tankovnyi Desant.

One Stug got blown up from afar without ever firing a shot, even though it was sitting still in the middle of the road some ways back in the forest with an excellent view down the road towards the other side. Commander was out looking around. But hey, this happens.

A bit later a t34 was 15m in front of my right hand stug in the low trees on the edges of the forest. My stug couldn't see it, but i never found out how this little engagement turned out because i ragequitted after the following event, which happened in the same turn and which is definitely a bug:

My left hand STUG had a mediocre view over the crossing points and the road, but since I the turn before noticed that some t34's where rolling over the crossing point area unmolested, i decided to move the stug a bit forward to get a better view. The next turn the stug moved slowly forward through the small bushes and trees and after just 5-10 seconds had a much better view of the side of two t34 moving west. Great, i thought, but then the stug spend the rest of the turn, not stopping and firing, but turning left and right, left and right, while sitting on the same spot untill the t34 finally spotted it and killed it. I then rage quitted and started this thread.

Is this a known bug? I have played all the former cm titles (all of them) and never seen this before.

[Vanir Ausf B]

To the best of my knowledge it is not a known bug. But it could become one if you have a save game file.

[Thore]

I dont have a save file - had i kept a more mature demeanor i might have at least saved the game for that specific purpose. All i thought of was how to find some sort of screen capturer to record the happening, but since I was in the middle of the game I dropped it and exited the game.

[Vanir Ausf B]

It sounds like the Stug spotted 2 tanks moving laterally across its field of view, right? How far away were the tanks, and how close were the tanks to each other?

[Thore]

the distance to the t34s was about 200m, and they where maybe 50 meters apart. It sounds plausible that my stug tried to aim at both tanks at the same time with terrible consequences.

[Vanir Ausf B]

After trying several variations on that theme with different distances, moving, not moving, I got one instance of the Stug changing it's mind on which to fire at twice, but it did then open fire. In all other test runs the Stug picked one tank to shoot first and stuck with it. Just having 2 targets at once doesn't appear to be sufficient to put it into an extended indecision loop so there must have been something particular to that situation.

[Flanker15]

The tank jiggle bug is pretty old I think, like CM:SF old.

I think it was something like the tank can see the target and should be able to aim at it but something goes awry and the gunner can't acquire the target so the tank just jiggles back and forth from it.

[Vanir Ausf B]

That sounds more like the "aiming/firing" loop they get into when the LOS is marginal. Could be related, tho.

[c3k]

If I recall, there is a lot of vegetation around the stream in that battle. When you played, did you have the trees toggled all or partially off? The wiggle could be explained by the gunner's vision being obscured by vegetation. Or, it's a bug.

[Thore]

there might have been vegetation in the way, but not much. The STUG was able to see both targets most of the time during the turn.

[c3k]

I'm not trying to defend a possible bug, but adding this for background information:

Spotting is "pulsed". The spot checking algorithm runs at discrete intervals. These intervals are different for different units and the start times are different, as well. Hence, one unit in the same action spot as another may not see an obvious enemy that the other one sees.

Once spotted by a unit, then the individual with the weapon needs LOS. This is the biggest issue.

Vegetation is non-intuitive. Since leaves can be destroyed, the game checks LOS without leaves. Sometimes it will spot an enemy when the camera shows the LOS blocked. (If a breeze blows the bush over, you'd have LOS, for example.)

Sometimes a slight rotation would block the gunner's LOS. Then he goes back to the secondary target. But wait! Now that he's looking at the secondary target, the thing blocking the primary target isn't in the way. Rotate to primary! Oh, no... Now that thing is in the way! But, hey! I can see a secondary target! Rotate to engage. Whoa! There's that primary target again! Ignore the secondary, get the primary! Ahhh! What are the odds of that? The primary LOS just got blocked again by my rotation. Back to the secondary...

^^^

Does that explain it?

Agreed, it sounds wrong. All the above is just to explain some of how I think the game approaches LOS.

Ken

[MikeyD]

For StuG Commander LOS isn't the same as cannon LOF. So the commander might see it, the gunner might see it (roof mounted site), but the low mounted gun might be more problematic. The Germans, when assessing StuG's performance in Normandy, gave it poor marks for precisely that reason.

[Thore]

c3k's explanation lies closest to the truth, i guess. Since it ,in this case, was game breaking and very unrealistic, it must be a bug. Not just a feature, like so many other odd behaviours in the game (like my example of the other stug not seeing the t34 15 meters in front of it.)