lowflyer Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Can anyone explain why my Shermans, when given an order to move ahead in their facing direction, all take the time to spin around backwards and advance ass-first straight into the enemy? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bil Hardenberger Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Sounds like you gave a reverse order by accident. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanir Ausf B Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Without a save game file, or at least a pic showing your movement orders, I doubt anyone will be able to explain it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Can anyone explain why my Shermans, when given an order to move ahead in their facing direction, all take the time to spin around backwards and advance ass-first straight into the enemy? You have angered the gods. But seriously, what Bil says strikes me as likely and what Vanir says is the bottom line. Give us more information. A saved game file might be nice. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilM Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Another suggestion: you *may* have inadvertently given a "group order"? If you select a HQ unit, but accidentally double click it, you have then selected not just it, but all of its subordinate units too. You think you are giving an order to just the HQ unit in question; but ALL of the units get the same order, as the game thinks that is what you want to happen. Any units already with move orders will have that same extra movement leg added to the end of their current paths. So, if you have a close in view of the HQ only on screen and don't realise all of the above has happened, and then click the red button to move the turn on, well ... chaos ensues. Ask me how I know this ... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 You can also accidentally issue a group order if you (for whatever reason) don't clear your previous selection before shift-dragging a box round another group that you do want to give a group order to. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pak40 Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Yes, What Phil and womble said. I've done this many times although never with armor and a reverse order. The best way to prevent this is to turn on the movement paths of all your units. This wont prevent you from doing this again but it will show the orders off all the units affected and if you're paying attention then you can correct the situation before disaster strikes. I can't remember the specific hotkey but look in the hotkeys section after pressing the Menu button. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoops71 Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 Yes, What Phil and womble said. I've done this many times although never with armor and a reverse order. The best way to prevent this is to turn on the movement paths of all your units. This wont prevent you from doing this again but it will show the orders off all the units affected and if you're paying attention then you can correct the situation before disaster strikes. I can't remember the specific hotkey but look in the hotkeys section after pressing the Menu button. Alt-P I think. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowflyer Posted April 24, 2014 Author Share Posted April 24, 2014 Thnx for the suggestions. Have had a devil of a time with making sure I have deselected a unit or group of units before issuing orders to the next group. I continuously discover errant paths added unintentionally, which I then must back out of, because I didn't double-click out of the previous selection completely. A very cumbersome part of this series' interface. I will have to pay more attention next time out, but as far as I can recall, I would typically double-click and highlight a small group of, say, 4 tanks, which I had placed somewhere during setup, facing into the map center, then hit the Move Key and set a destination. They will all show a proper movement track, but when activated, they start to jockey wildly around in an insane traffic jam, eventually turning 180° and then backing dutifully along their set tracks, asses to the enemy, after which they are soon toast. Of course, If I have not set a save point just before running the sequence, my tanks are demolished and I have to accept the losses and continue, or back up, reset everything, and try again. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilM Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 Thnx for the suggestions. Have had a devil of a time with making sure I have deselected a unit or group of units before issuing orders to the next group. I continuously discover errant paths added unintentionally, which I then must back out of, because I didn't double-click out of the previous selection completely. A very cumbersome part of this series' interface. I will have to pay more attention next time out, but as far as I can recall, I would typically double-click and highlight a small group of, say, 4 tanks, which I had placed somewhere during setup, facing into the map center, then hit the Move Key and set a destination. They will all show a proper movement track, but when activated, they start to jockey wildly around in an insane traffic jam, eventually turning 180° and then backing dutifully along their set tracks, asses to the enemy, after which they are soon toast. Of course, If I have not set a save point just before running the sequence, my tanks are demolished and I have to accept the losses and continue, or back up, reset everything, and try again. Yep, if you give a group move order, but - say, because the vehicles are very close together to start with, or the actual paths chosen by the AI (to avoid terrain, etc), as opposed to the straight line shown on the screen, end up intersecting - the vehicles can baulk from infringing the "personal space" of another vehicle, and wait and/or pivot around trying to avoid a collision. I've seen traffic jams like this - very unfunny if they are under fire! But I've not seen this pathfinding confusion turn into *reverse* orders to get out of it, and certainly not over any distance? Only because I have seen other posts saying people have had problems with hotkey assignments, having tried to edit the file, I thought I'd ask a "Doh!" type question: you're sure that you haven't given them a reverse order via an errant key assignment? (Check the colour of the move path displayed?) It would sort of make sense if it were the case, as the swivelling around at the beginning to "face backwards" before they move off would not help with the initial traffic jam situation? Just a thought! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 Sadly the colours chosen are not the best to distinguish between Fast, Quick and Reverse, if you have any red-green colour vision deficiency. You have to select the waypoint and see what the move order is in the order pane. But I'd say it's almost certainly misclicks or mis-hot-keys that's causing this. A tip though: don't give tight groups of vehicles group orders. They will get in each others' way and there will be tears before bedtime. Or, if you do give group orders, make sure you go back to each individual (cancel the group select) unit and give them staggered Pause orders before they start trying to butt heads. A second tip: vehicles will try and obey the straight line of their move order in situations when they really shouldn't; better by far to plot precisely where (and when) you want them to drive on an individual basis. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 Are your friendly unit icons off? Having them on will make it obvious when you still have multiple units selected. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowflyer Posted April 24, 2014 Author Share Posted April 24, 2014 My habit so far has been to use the N key to give movement orders. If I require a reverse order, I have usually used the mouse to click on that selection. It's rather moot in the setup phase anyway, as I have never, so far, willingly issued a reverse order on the opening turn. It's quite a sight when it happens. They act as though they were given a reverse order...sort of...but, they first rotate 180° BEFORE reversing! I just upgraded my version to V2. Will see if it continues to happen. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 Are your friendly unit icons off? Having them on will make it obvious when you still have multiple units selected. Not always, it won't, at least not to the full extent. Plenty of times you can pan away from the unit you have selected before you shift-drag additional units (that weren't meant to be additional, since the unit(s) you had before should have been deselected). And, again, orange isn't a very useful "warning" colour, when mixed in with earth tones and vegetation and compared to green, for about 10% of the demographic of this game. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 Thnx for the suggestions. Have had a devil of a time with making sure I have deselected a unit or group of units before issuing orders to the next group. I continuously discover errant paths added unintentionally, which I then must back out of, because I didn't double-click out of the previous selection completely. A very cumbersome part of this series' interface. Yes, accidentally giving group orders was a common occurrence when I started. I find them useful but it is easy to forget you have group selected. I do not experience it much any more because I have trained my self to clear the selection as soon as I give the group orders. And I usually check at least a few of the members of the group afterwards - which also encourages me to only have one unit selected. Where I still get burned some times is mechanized troops. Once the troops disembark from their vehicles and start moving out on their own I sometimes for get when I group select the platoon the HTs or trucks in the back field are also selected. That has lead to a few surprises - oops As for tanks bunching up, that is another problem. The AI is not good at avoiding or clearing traffic jams. It is a simple fact that you need to mange that yourself. And I do find tanks doing all kinds of crazy stuff when they get into a jam like that. If it happens the best thing to do is cancel all move orders for those involved. Look at the blob and pick the easiest to move away and give them move orders. Do not even bother giving orders to the others until the first tanks have cleared away. Rinse and repeat until things are clear. A while back I wrote a bit about convoy management in this thread: http://wwww.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1384126#post35 convoy management is not quite what you are doing but the principal of making sure following vehicles have space behind their leaders is similar. In particular I recommend watching these two videos I created. This one is about maintaining spacing in a well managed convoy - they still get bunchy and if you don't solve the bunching every turn it just tends to get worse and worse. This one has a bit of a mess in it that I have to untangle. Neither of these have a huge hair ball that often results in turning around and around and reversing - mostly because I have learned not to let that happen any more. Hopefully it will help. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pak40 Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 What we really need is a convoy order specifically for vehicles on a road. The way it would work is: 1. Select the first unit in the convoy 2. Select the convoy order from the menu 3. Hold shift while selecting each successive vehicle in the convoy (each successive vehicle gets a 5s delay from the previously selected vehicle.) 4. Release shift to plot waypoints. All vehicles will follow the same waypoints. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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