Tac Ai

[Snols]

Watch the movie:

http://youtu.be/fu6Cn91Y3oU

all PzIV have target arc. All PzIV TC unbuttoned. When T-34 drives out of arc they decide to chill out and leave him alone. Is this normal? Does TAC AI ignores serious threat and stick to bad orders? Or is capable only to change movement type of infrantry and return fire?

Second mission of German campaingn.

[db_zero]

I have found the target armor useful in some circumstances, but probably 95% of the time I avoid using it. I've seen this sort of behavior myself

I also notice that tanks don't seem to fire when the turret is rotated and the tank isn't facing in the same direction as the gun is pointed at-or so it seems.

[weta_nz]

Hi, I'm no expert but my understanding is that is exactly how the command is supposed to work. The unit you give the cover armour arc will only breakoff the cover arc if it is under direct fire I think. Think of the cover arcs as orders to your troops to ignore units outside of the zone. So use them carefully. With tanks it is better to keyhole your tank by positioning them so they only see the area your are interested in 'covering' and if you do use a armour arc make sure it encompasses any positions which a enemy tank could wander into and might see your tank. P.S I am very bad at keeping my tanks alive so tajke what I say with a grain of salt:)

[Freyberg]

Only times I use armour arcs with tanks is to stop them taking on infantry, when I use a 360° arc that goes right off the edge of the map.

[Andrew H.]

What crew quality did the tanks have? I don't know if this is still the case, but it used to be that troops with higher morale levels would follow covered arc orders more strictly that lower quality troops.

[Bil Hardenberger]

IMO you made that awful easy for the T34.. this is not the game's fault, but your orders that caused this behavior.

Those narrow covered arcs are only useful when at long range,. One other thing.. never group your armor together like that.. spread them out, use one or two to cover the move of the first, then when it is in position, move the others in, but do not place them right next to each other, that's asking for trouble.

Bil

[Peregrine]

I wish the 360 arc had a direction to get the turret pointing somewhere then not having to worry about stuff creeping outside the arc.

[womble]

Unless they've changed it for RT, Fanatic troops will almost never ignore their CA orders (really useful when you want to test firing at targets that you don't want to fire back; sometimes suboptimal on the battlefield). Other Motivations are progressively more likely to forget/ignore their target arc, for self-preservation or other reasons, but they're generally pretty "firm" orders, even for Green troops.

[Bulletpoint]

Would be nice if we had a simple "turret facing" order, that had nothing to do with target arcs.

So I could face the turret right, and it would keep pointing at the right side, even if the tank turned. With target arc, the turret would face east for example, then rotate to keep facing east as the tank turns.

Then the TacAI should fire at infantry when possible, but immediately switch targets if a tank or other big target appeared.

[Snols]

All tanks were regular.

I don't argue that i issued a bad order for this situation, but IMO TAC AI sholud brake target arc command and continue firing at T-34. This is tottaly unrealistic to leave alone such a threat (visible). Maybe is possible to consider and change that behavior.

Mr. Hardenberger, with all due respect to your knowledge and your work, that was last T-34 on battlefield, have been spotted earlier by my inf teams, there were no enemy AT assest (or any) nearby and only threat to my forces was that running away T-34. I assumed that my panzer platoon moves and kill him on sight...

I'm proud student of your battle drills, thanks a lot for your scenarios.

IMO face turret command should appear.

From this day I'm more cautious with target arc command

[womble]

All tanks were regular.

AFAIK the experience level of the troops has no effect (or at least only a marginal effect) on whether they'll disobey an order.

I don't argue that i issued a bad order for this situation, but IMO TAC AI sholud brake target arc command and continue firing at T-34. This is tottaly unrealistic to leave alone such a threat (visible). Maybe is possible to consider and change that behavior.

Actually, what's totally unrealistic is you telling your tanks "Only fire at these narrow arcs" when you're hunting the last T34 on the field. If you'd let them alone, they'd've picked him up and chewed him up just fine. TAs are there for a reason, which you have now, hopefully, learned. Now you know what they're for, you'll be glad that units obey them as far as they do.

An example: Target Arcs are used, and intended to be so used, for, amongst other things, maintaining fire discipline in ambush situations. Imagine that you set up a clever ambush for your enemy which required that your tanks not expose themselves by firing until the enemy were well into the kill zone. You'd be livid if they opened up early just because a T-34 rolled past the end of the trap, but happened to be in LOS of one of your vehicles but outside the TA.

The lesson here is not "covered arcs are broken" it's that covered arcs serve the purpose solely of telling your troops not to fire anywhere other than in the arc (with the side effect of pointing their weapon(s) at the centreline of the arc). If you rely on them disobeying your orders, you're doing something wrong.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

This is what happens when you issue target arc commands to moving units, As several people have said the orders given were unrealistic - I would say it was more unwise than unrealistic.

What you did was issue a target arc to the right flank of the platoon, presumeably because you antipated a threat to the right flank. Actually the AI will, if left to work on its own (i.e. without target arcs) will notice the threat (in this case the T-34s) and rotate the turret to fire.

Had I been issueing the orders to that platoon I would have ordered them to move and then either change face in situ or ordered one or more additional orders to chang the platoon's facing to face the anticipated threat.

he only times you should be issueing target arc commands is when you are either on the defensive and want your units o hold fire until the enemy enters a kill zone or when you want a unit to overwatch a specific area while othe units advance.

[Skwabie]

Had I been issueing the orders to that platoon I would have ordered them to move and then either change face in situ or ordered one or more additional orders to chang the platoon's facing to face the anticipated threat.

he only times you should be issueing target arc commands is when you are either on the defensive and want your units o hold fire until the enemy enters a kill zone or when you want a unit to overwatch a specific area while othe units advance.

agrees.. from the video i do see the situation somewhat tricky. without using covered arcs, it's either

1. move the tanks close to the road, issue a face command at the last waypoint;

2. move the tanks close to the road, then issue another move/hunt command to change their facing

with option 1 the problem is obvious. it takes a century for a tank to do 90deg hull rotation in CM. if the T-34 gets the spot when the Pzivs are stuck in the rotation process it isn't good. i mean even if the pzivs also spot the T-34, they weren't be able to shoot until the rotation is finished. to make matters worse, when the pzivs arrive at their last waypoint they're facing the threat sideways which greatly reduces spotting ability.

option 2 i think is better, but in such a close quarter fight, the space is tight so it might take some effort to navigate the tanks. the effort probably needs to be taken indeed, but in the heat of battle it's understandable to just use a CA to save some mouse clicks to keep up with one's "inner pace"; another perspective is with CA i sometimes simply means to tell the tank to "there's an enmey tank here look this way!" instead of "don't engage anything outside the arc", the latter probably is the correct interpretation of the CA but i don't find another substitute of "look this way" except the often useless face command. anyway i'm just imagining here...

[womble]

Or issue wider TAs. If you want your turret to be slewed 90 right, you can have a TA that pretty much runs down the length of the tank. In this case, that would have allowed the PzIVs to engage the T-34. Also, in this case, you could have had the TA centred on the "2 o'clock" bearing, covering 10 o'clock to 5 o'clock. Or had your tanks each covering a slightly different bearing, just to be sure. As it is, there was an assumption that the T-34 would stay put, and the PzIVs were issued orders that were "target fixated" and didn't allow for a changing battlefield. Lucky it was a 2-man-turret 34/76, as opposed to the faster-reloading 3 man turret on the 34/85 or all three might have gotten nailed.

[Amizaur]

I think that it would help if the target arc worked this way:

- unit ignores targets outside of the arc (as now), but

- if unit "locked" (started aiming/firing sequence) a target that was inside the arc and during this the target moves out of the arc, the unit should NOT break the aiming.

It should continue aiming/firing seqence even outside of the arc - my proposition is that it would continue targeting the "escaped from the arc" target for at least 15 seconds (so like single "target briefly" command).

15 secons should be enough to fire at least one shot. After 15s unit can break the "lock" and return to guarding it's arc.

[Skwabie]

womble i reckon a wide arc is more for limiting engagement than to direct facing for the turret could end up facing anywhere in that say 180deg section... i think my intent on this situation is first spot first shot; secondly as many first shots as possible since the 75l48 is really a pea shooter, it often takes multiple pen hits to take out a tank like the t-34 so i'm not sure multiple arcs would fit the intent. but... i think it's just different ways to approach this in our own way. pretty sure it's a t34/85 tho, the german campaign is full of them and no 34/76 in sight in it.

[womble]

womble i reckon a wide arc is more for limiting engagement than to direct facing for the turret could end up facing anywhere in that say 180deg section...

Then your surmise would be incorrect. The barrel of a turreted vehicle's main weapon will bisect the angle of any TA it's given unless it's tracking a spotted target that's within that arc.

[A co]

I practically never give a tank a covered arc of less than 180 degrees (and extending to the map edge), usually to keep the turret front armor toward the enemy while moving. A wide angle like that might have prevented the problem depicted in the video. Next time you will get him.

[Skwabie]

Then your surmise would be incorrect. The barrel of a turreted vehicle's main weapon will bisect the angle of any TA it's given unless it's tracking a spotted target that's within that arc.

!roger that indeed.

edit: i did post from memory tho. just re-ran the scenario, in the screenies the tank previously engaged some targets in the current turret facing and doesn't rotate it when issued a new CA. maybe it's an inbuild tac AI rule or it changed in cmrt? (screenies are in cmbn)

[womble]

One exception might be when the system "detects" a threat that isn't actually visible but is within the angle of the arc. Have you noticed how sometimes vehicles will point themselves at threats there's no possible way they can see? I see it mostly with AI-controlled vehicles. Perhaps that is applying to distant threats that the gun is "allowed" to point at, or would be if they were spotted... You have icons off, so it may be pointing at a "?" contact. Which is probably desirable behaviour.

[Skwabie]

One exception might be when the system "detects" a threat that isn't actually visible but is within the angle of the arc. Have you noticed how sometimes vehicles will point themselves at threats there's no possible way they can see? I see it mostly with AI-controlled vehicles. Perhaps that is applying to distant threats that the gun is "allowed" to point at, or would be if they were spotted... You have icons off, so it may be pointing at a "?" contact. Which is probably desirable behaviour.

was actually in scenario author mode so i could get to the action faster. sound contacts did make sense, especially that 'AI rotate itself to face threats by 6th sense' thing!

however... it still doesn't explain this. the HT in front of the gun tube was just killed. i immediately issued the CA, and the turret stays still while all sound contacts are on the other side. interesting...more thoughts:o

[womble]

however... it still doesn't explain this. the HT in front of the gun tube was just killed. i immediately issued the CA, and the turret stays still while all sound contacts are on the other side. interesting...more thoughts:o

[shrug] Nope. That's as far as I've got any experience to suggest. Can't say I've ever seen a TA-ordered turreted vehicle stay "stuck" on its last target. You're playing Realtime, yes? That might make a difference, I'm a WeGo Purist so couldn't say.

That last example, though, the tube looks more like it's pointing down the side of the TA than at either of the smoking wrecks in front of it...

[Skwabie]

[shrug] Nope. That's as far as I've got any experience to suggest. Can't say I've ever seen a TA-ordered turreted vehicle stay "stuck" on its last target.

yep i didn't quite notice it before either actually, i play real time and mostly just used very narrow arcs to point the tanks' turrets, once they get the spot i'd just delete the arc and let them shoot...

You're playing Realtime, yes? That might make a difference, I'm a WeGo Purist so couldn't say.

indeed, come to think it whole problem goes away for OP if he's in real time:D

[Vanir Ausf B]

Turreted vehicles will occasionally not aim their guns towards the center of the arc. It has been reported as a bug.

[womble]

Turreted vehicles will occasionally not aim their guns towards the center of the arc. It has been reported as a bug.

Aha! Thanks for the info VAB.