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Question about positioning units on ridgelines


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The ridgeline problem is as much a map issue as it is a soldier issue. When setting elevations in the editor you set them per action spot. So if I'm making a ridgeline that is one action spot wide and several action spots long then by the necessity of the way it is made in the editor the action spot is set at a higher elevation than the surrounding terrain. Since soldiers occupy part of a single action spot then you have the issue as described in the first post. In other words, in order for the individual soldiers to position themselves just behind the crest they would need to be positioned between two action spots rather than in either one action spot or the other. The only way to mitigate that somewhat would be to have the elevation difference between the higher elevation action spot and the lower action spots be the minimum of one meter. Soldiers can see over 1 meter height obstacles from the kneeling position but they cannot see over 2 meter obstacles while standing. The terrain mesh for elevations can only be set in 1 meter increments. This is clearly demonstrated with the way the ditch lock feature works in the Market Garden module.

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??? 1:1? With 3 men being displayed to represent a squad of 8-12, and the entire squad being considered to be a point entity? I think you might have a different concept of what 1:1 means.

In CMx1 you controlled one thing that was then one thing on the map. That is 1:1.

In CMx2 you control one thing that is then represented by many things on the map that is not under your control. That is 1:N.

I don't think anybody would deny that the example in the OP is a result of this split.

I am interested in realistic combat results. The more detailed graphics representation does nothing to me.

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I am interested in realistic combat results. The more detailed graphics representation does nothing to me.

Me too (dare I say "us" too and speak for others:-). So we are on the same page. The thing is, the way the game is designed these are not separate things. We get realistic combat results because we have each solider represented. So the ones standing up and moving are more exposed than ones with their heads down because the bullets are being tracked and hitting them - or not. So we all need to take a step back and realize that the detailed graphics representation is not a frivolous add on. It is part of the way the game works. Granted we could get the results if the soldier models did not have animation and were just greenish coloured like plastic toy soldiers.

So, I guess you could argue that they wasted time making colours and uniforms etc. Personally I am happy with the balance they have struck in that regard. Others can feel differently or course.

Back to the topic at hand. To fix this kind if issue the Tac AI needs to handle positioning of the soldiers differently. It would be like you are the section commander and your guys are sitting on the down slope instead of peaking over. If it were RL you would chew them out and get them to move up. In this game we only get a certain level of control and the Tac AI squad leader deals with this part. What we have is a situation where the Tac AI squad leader is not doing the right thing. Similar to toops not looking around corners.

So call it what it is - sub optimal troop placement for this situation. Hopefully this will be something that can be looked at and make it onto the list of work to be done. Anyone care to comment on that - does BFC feel this should go on the back log?

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In CMx1 you controlled one thing that was then one thing on the map. That is 1:1.

In CMx2 you control one thing that is then represented by many things on the map that is not under your control. That is 1:N.

Ah. I see you use it from a different perspective. I see what you're getting at but can't agree that the old way was better.

I don't think anybody would deny that the example in the OP is a result of this split.

Wot Ian sed.

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Me too (dare I say "us" too and speak for others:-). So we are on the same page. The thing is, the way the game is designed these are not separate things. We get realistic combat results because we have each solider represented.

The situation in the OP is not realistic. No soldiers in a squad would simply refuse to come up to LOS and fire at the enemy.

Back to the topic at hand. To fix this kind if issue the Tac AI needs to handle positioning of the soldiers differently. It would be like you are the section commander and your guys are sitting on the down slope instead of peaking over. If it were RL you would chew them out and get them to move up. In this game we only get a certain level of control and the Tac AI squad leader deals with this part. What we have is a situation where the Tac AI squad leader is not doing the right thing. Similar to toops not looking around corners.

So call it what it is - sub optimal troop placement for this situation. Hopefully this will be something that can be looked at and make it onto the list of work to be done. Anyone care to comment on that - does BFC feel this should go on the back log?

The commander wouldn't "chew them out". That would be cowardice that would get soldiers executed if they persisted. And they wouldn't do it since firing from cover is relatively low risk, as opposed to -say- jumping out of a trench and running toward the enemy.

If we had 1:1 this wouldn't be an issue.

You will never have actually working TacAI without UI support. In this case you would need a command, a UI element, where the player is able to express which point in the terrain he/she wants the soldiers to be able to see. Then the TacAI could move them up the ridge. Without such a command you cannot fix the TacAI since it doesn't know where you would want LOS to.

UI support in CMx2 is far from it, too, because implementing tricks like that would finally push the UI over the edge. BFC has (unwisely) decided to not use a smaller number of commands and then have SOPs and instead uses a large number of commands that each combine a certain movement and a certain SOP. The resulting explosion in number of commands is obvious and you can't pile on more.

You could abstract it, e.g. you could just let all guys in the squad fire if some can fire. That would make a realistic emulation of a real squad having all members in a firing position. But now you open a can of worms of subsequently required changes since now you need to make them vulnerable to incoming fire, too.

That is precisely why giving up 1:1 was problematic and people warned BFC of it since the first minute.

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The situation in the OP is not realistic. No soldiers in a squad would simply refuse to come up to LOS and fire at the enemy.

Who says they're refusing? They're just waiting for the point man to spot the enemy.

The commander wouldn't "chew them out". That would be cowardice that would get soldiers executed if they persisted.

I think you overstate the case.

If we had 1:1 this wouldn't be an issue.

If we had "your" 1:1, no it wouldn't, because you would have no idea what Larry, Curly and Moe were actually doing, and you'd always be able to get all your squad's firepower onto whatever target the point entity representing 12 men so all-fired realistically was told to fire at. And the berm would be below the abstraction layer.

You will never have actually working TacAI without UI support. In this case you would need a command, a UI element, where the player is able to express which point in the terrain he/she wants the soldiers to be able to see.

Like Face or Target, maybe? Works pretty well at linear obstacles and in houses.

You could abstract it, e.g. you could just let all guys in the squad fire if some can fire. That would make a realistic emulation of a real squad having all members in a firing position.

Oh, that's right. All squads always have all their members in a firing position. Yep. Every time. That's the very definition of realistic. Oh indeed.

That is precisely why giving up 1:1 was problematic and people warned BFC of it since the first minute.

I'm so glad they didn't listen to the lackwits who were telling them such nonsense.

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You will never have actually working TacAI without UI support. In this case you would need a command, a UI element, where the player is able to express which point in the terrain he/she wants the soldiers to be able to see. Then the TacAI could move them up the ridge.

We have such a command: Face. What is expected to happen is the face command would direct the squad to position themselves in the terrain so they could best fire / see that point. Which in this case is along the top of that ridge. Quite frankly the Face command works pretty well the majority of the time. This just isn't one of them.

Without such a command you cannot fix the TacAI since it doesn't know where you would want LOS to.

Already have it, so it is fixable. What ever design path you choose there are compromises and you inevitably have defects / make mistakes. BFC have demonstrated that they know what they are doing and that they work towards making the game better. I see no reason that making this better could not be one of them.

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We have such a command: Face. What is expected to happen is the face command would direct the squad to position themselves in the terrain so they could best fire / see that point. Which in this case is along the top of that ridge. Quite frankly the Face command works pretty well the majority of the time. This just isn't one of them.

Already have it, so it is fixable. What ever design path you choose there are compromises and you inevitably have defects / make mistakes. BFC have demonstrated that they know what they are doing and that they work towards making the game better. I see no reason that making this better could not be one of them.

You are arguing with a guy who has not agreed with the move in CMx2 to 1:1 since CMSF. I doubt you are going to change his mind. But good luck!

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We have such a command: Face. What is expected to happen is the face command would direct the squad to position themselves in the terrain so they could best fire / see that point. Which in this case is along the top of that ridge. Quite frankly the Face command works pretty well the majority of the time. This just isn't one of them.

Already have it, so it is fixable. What ever design path you choose there are compromises and you inevitably have defects / make mistakes. BFC have demonstrated that they know what they are doing and that they work towards making the game better. I see no reason that making this better could not be one of them.

I don't think face alone would do it since to position all the men up the ridgeline you would need the target elevation, not just direction.

I guess I agree I am a bit frustrated about the time it takes to sort out these bugs. This isn't the worst. This just takes firepower. There are plenty more bugs along these lines that leave men unrealistically exposed. I mean it has been years and years and years and quite frankly if BFC moved away from a 1:1 control:unit scheme they should have had this very early, like in one of the first patches after initial release of CMx2.

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What is the point of arguing the merits of 1:1 in 2014? Does anyone really think they are going to talk BFC into scraping the CMx2 engine and going back to CMx1? If you think the CMx1 games are more realistic then play them.

No, CMx1 wouldn't be much more realistic for this example either. While in CMx1 you would have all guys firing CMx1 would not properly count the ridgeline as cover. If the guys are in a firing position they would count as being as vulnerable to enemy fire as on flat open ground.

The point here is that BFC picked the 1:1 to drop and the 1:1 to go for instead but that they need to live up to fixing the problems with it. The situation in the OP is not OK for a realistic military simulation, and it isn't the worst. There are more positioning problems like that that leave individuals in unrealistically exposed locations (positioned by the TacAI, not the player), such as in front of cover instead of behind it.

Nobody demands magic amounts of output from bugfixing. However, things narrow down a bit with the continued refusal to clean up the player/UI command structure and bring some order and predictability via SOPs.

As it is right now there is such a pile of composite commands that do multiple things at once that it is no surprise that the code is moving so slow.

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No, CMx1 wouldn't be much more realistic for this example either. While in CMx1 you would have all guys firing CMx1 would not properly count the ridgeline as cover. If the guys are in a firing position they would count as being as vulnerable to enemy fire as on flat open ground.

Yes indeed. I was beginning to wonder if your love of CMx1 had blinded you to reality. Infantry in CMx1 didn't get cover from live friendly vehicles either IIRC.

The point here is that BFC picked the 1:1 to drop and the 1:1 to go for instead but that they need to live up to fixing the problems with it.

By your own admission your point about CMx1 vs CMx2 in this situation was a non sequitur since in neither case is the issue addressed to your satisfaction. This leads a rational person to wonder why you bothered to bring up CMx1 at all since it doesn't add to your point, but rather detracts from it. The switch had absolutely no effect on the situation described by the original poster since the end result is the same in both iterations.

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Yes indeed. I was beginning to wonder if your love of CMx1 had blinded you to reality. Infantry in CMx1 didn't get cover from live friendly vehicles either IIRC.

By your own admission your point about CMx1 vs CMx2 in this situation was a non sequitur since in neither case is the issue addressed to your satisfaction. This leads a rational person to wonder why you bothered to bring up CMx1 at all since it doesn't add to your point, but rather detracts from it. The switch had absolutely no effect on the situation described by the original poster since the end result is the same in both iterations.

You are turning around what I said. The 1:1 we had in CMx1 had a weakness that would be much easier to fix than the weakness we have with the 1:1 in CMx2 (the latter either requiring much better AI which is difficult to do or you need much more complicated commands to state intent).

The fact that CMx1 was abandoned unfinished doesn't change that.

Either way, the situation in the OP isn't isolated and it is entirely expected given the pick of which 1:1 you want and how action spots work. BFC should have been prepared to deal with it when they made their choices.

Are you sure CMx2 gives cover from enemy fire from friendly vehicles?

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The fact that CMx1 was abandoned unfinished doesn't change that.

A pair of really smart game designers who have oodles (that is a technical term indicating vast) more experience than you decided it wasn't a question of "abandoning unfinished" but rather a product that was at the limit of what it could do. Based on their relative experience compared to yours and knowledge of the product, I'd have to go with their perspective- no offense intended. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but that simply means it is your opinion. In this case your opinion is based on far less knowledge than their opinion.

Are you sure CMx2 gives cover from enemy fire from friendly vehicles?

Yes actually it is real simple to test and verify, you can have a scenario set for testing in all of a couple minutes. Where it gets difficult is verifying how much cover. Angle of fire, facing of vehicle etc all come into play but a really basic test can show you it does have an impact. How helpful that is to the original suggestion for a movement behavior for following a tank and using it for cover is an entirely different subject.

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What if the AS were split into more - say 3 by 3 - only for unit placement. The player would have greater finesse with the snap-to, but LOS calculations would be unaffected.

I'm not sure that is possible. I think what would happen is that units would of necessity be spread over more AS, and LOS would have to calculated for each of those. Also bullet flight. I don't see any way to get around finer grain=more calculations. There might be a way, but so far I don't think it has been mentioned in this thread.

Michael

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