Vehicle navigation

[Redmarkus]

I doubt I'm the first to raise this, but the poor quality of vehicle navigation ruins this game for me:

- Vehicles seem to be unable to simply follow a road through the woods and end up meandering through the trees.

- Drivers keep on bumping into those meandering vehicles to their front.

Other games have effective 'follow the road' orders (which should be default, no?) Why not this one?

[Fizou]

I think it works as expected. Without pictures and more details its hard to understad what might be happening. My guess is that you are handling the controls in a bad way. If you dont want that level of micro.. Well then CM is not for you.

[PanzerMike]

No follow command as of yet, unfortunately. So you will have to babysit vehicles more. Give them waypoints with short distances to move (and follow the road) and create a chain of these. Also give some pause orders so the first vehicle can get a head start.

It can be somewhat of a pain now and then, but it certainly does not ruin the game IMHO.

[Oddball_E8]

I suspect you are giving vehicles an order to move from point A to point B and expect it to follow roads and such between the points.

That's a bad idea.

If we make vehicles do that, then you'll be cursing that vehicles constantly move up to that road that you know is mined instead of driving next to it through the wooded area that you know isn't mined for vehicles.

The reason you have to micro manage vehicles in this game is because if you didn't you'd be swearing because they didn't pick the route that you wanted them to... potentially exposing themselves to enemy ambushes and clear shots and whatnot.

[A Canadian Cat]

I doubt I'm the first to raise this, but the poor quality of vehicle navigation ruins this game for me:

- Vehicles seem to be unable to simply follow a road through the woods and end up meandering through the trees.

- Drivers keep on bumping into those meandering vehicles to their front.

Other games have effective 'follow the road' orders (which should be default, no?) Why not this one?

Correct you are not the first. If you do a search of the forum you will see lots of discussion and some explanation of the difficulties / effort that would be encountered making things better. I still hope they make some changes to improve things but until then...

People have developed strategies to manage things. Here is a post where I linked a few videos I created to show how to manage vehicles in convoy:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1384126&postcount=35

I hope that helps. I just do this now as a matter of course automatically. For small amounts of vehicles it hardly bothers me at all. In fact I often get to the point that the pauses are set spacing the vehicles well from the start and I don't have to do much management after the fact.

[GhostRider3/3]

I rarely have issues like this..

I know it can be cumbersome to a few but setting up waypoints like PanzerMike says is the best way.. I can make an entire Company of Track vehicles head down a road, around a few corners and setup in town with ease.. I use different speeds and the almighty Pause button to orchestrate my Ballet of vehicles.. its easy when you get the hang of it so I would say.. start small until you get used to micro-managing your equipment. Its fun to turn off all the icons and see all your equipment move into position and such.

[Michael Emrys]

Give them waypoints with short distances to move (and follow the road) and create a chain of these. Also give some pause orders so the first vehicle can get a head start.

That's the secret. If you want them to follow a road or any kind of a complicated path, put a waypoint on every corner. Maybe put a few along every long stretch of straightaway too. It's okay to change speed once in a while too. Generally, a vehicle will follow a path more accurately moving at a slow or moderate speed than going flat out.

Michael

[Blazing 88's]

It has been this way since the beginning CMx1, what 14 years? like others have mentioned above, that is the key to having success with movement. I actually enjoy the plotting to an extent. A sense of accomplishment when it goes the way you plotted it.

I am all for a 'follow' command though if at all possible down the road... no pun intended. I might as well mention 'formations' with the ability to set the distances between each vehicle to go along with it.

[Holman]

It can be tricky at first, but once you get used to the "chain of short moves" method, it becomes second nature. Setting pauses for following vehicles is an important part of managing the flow.

I'm playing a scenario right now with literally dozens of vehicles on a bocage-and-obstacle-rich map, and I find the problems of vehicle movement to be more absorbing than frustrating.

[MikeyD]

If you were to follow convoy protocol what distance would you keep between vehicles, something like 80 meters between vehicles due to artillery threats? manhandling vehicles on a map with that kind of separation would be child's play. The trouble comes when you try moving everyone nose-to-tail. That's difficult to do even in the real world, cars tend to accordion-out on a road depending on speed. The old '2 car length' rule gives you 30 feet between.

[wadepm]

Exactly Mike, if you are having problems with vehicles bumping into each other on the roads then they are too close together. If anything, the game should sense that and drop some mortars on the grouping just because...

[Childress]

That's the secret. If you want them to follow a road or any kind of a complicated path, put a waypoint on every corner. Maybe put a few along every long stretch of straightaway too. It's okay to change speed once in a while too. Generally, a vehicle will follow a path more accurately moving at a slow or moderate speed than going flat out.

Good advice.

If you want to perfect your convoy skills open up The Passage and take the Soviet side. You're loaded with T34/85s and Tankodesantniki and need to secure a narrow opening between two bodies of water. There's a single bridge and one dirt road. Good luck, comrades. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere. (cue Sinatra)

[A Canadian Cat]

If you can make it here you can make it anywhere. (cue Sinatra)

LOL I heard enough of that song last night: the Habs are out Go Rangers.

[76mm]

I have to agree with the OP, especially on heavily wooded maps...I'm playing a scenario now with lots of forest paths, and despite the fact that most vehicles go through them fine (after tediously adding lots of way-points), a few tanks have simply refused to enter the forest and instead break off to the right or left in search of a "better route".

[Holman]

Vehicles won't abandon a route just because it's inefficient; they'll take the shortest possible path between waypoints. Sometimes this will mean painfully slow movement through woods terrain. (Once again, short legs between waypoints are your friend.)

The best way to test whether woods or other terrain can be traversed is to mouse over it while giving the move order. If the move icon turns red then the vehicle can't go there. (Sometimes devious scenario designers will leave a few paths through otherwise ineligible woods, so it can be worthwhile to sweep the mouse across and check.)

[Doug Williams]

To the OP, yes it can be a pain but like the others have pointed out you really have to micromanage using lots of waypoints, different movement speeds, and the pause button.

[Oddball_E8]

I have to agree with the OP, especially on heavily wooded maps...I'm playing a scenario now with lots of forest paths, and despite the fact that most vehicles go through them fine (after tediously adding lots of way-points), a few tanks have simply refused to enter the forest and instead break off to the right or left in search of a "better route".

Probably because you missed a bit where there was heavy forest on the ground... happens to me constantly when going through forests because they look very similar (light and heavy forest ground that is).

[76mm]

Probably because you missed a bit where there was heavy forest on the ground... happens to me constantly when going through forests because they look very similar (light and heavy forest ground that is).

Exactly. Frankly I find this very tedious and frustrating and it has always mystified me why Battlefront forces players to plot moves on a pixel basis.

Should it really be that hard to command a vehicle to follow a road? I don't think so. I can deal with pausing/spacing issues, but to have to zoom in to ensure that every pixel is right for a company of T34s heading down a wooded road is extremely tedious, and in my opinion, unnecessary...

[Michael Emrys]

Exactly. Frankly I find this very tedious and frustrating and it has always mystified me why Battlefront forces players to plot moves on a pixel basis.

I hear you, but to be fair you don't really have to plot it on a pixel by pixel basis, only AS by AS basis, which is a big difference.

Michael

[Erwin]

Every now and then someone has posted about the possibility of seeing the AI plotted moves so one could see where the AI was planning to drive our tanks (or any unit).

I think we had that in CM1... although IIRC you didn't see the plotted path until the next turn. However, at that time it was easy to move the waypoints to a more desired path (or cancel and start all over).

Would be a useful feature as this movement frustration issue has come up repeatedly ever since CM2 came out (with CMSF).

[Baneman]

...

I think we had that in CM1... although IIRC you didn't see the plotted path until the next turn. However, at that time it was easy to move the waypoints to a more desired path (or cancel and start all over).

...

It can happen for CM2 as well sometimes - recently when one of my tanks was performing the "elephant-ballet" on a bridge, the turn ended while it was halfway through one of its pirouettes.

When I selected it during the orders phase, I was able to see a maze of zigzaggy waypoints the AI had plotted for it. By moving one of these to almost directly in front of it, I was actually able to get it off the bridge without further trouble.

But sadly, most of the time we just get to watch and gnash our teeth

[76mm]

I hear you, but to be fair you don't really have to plot it on a pixel by pixel basis, only AS by AS basis, which is a big difference.

I hear you, but many many times I try to plot movement along what appears to be a straight stretch of road, only to find that vehicles are driving in the woods or ditch running beside the road. Not to mention zig-zag roads...

[poesel]

I hear you, but to be fair you don't really have to plot it on a pixel by pixel basis, only AS by AS basis, which is a big difference.

Vehicles do not adhere to AS so it is really pixel by pixel for vehicles.

IME if you plot along a ziggy road from far above you can easily hit the roadside instead and then you have the vehicle plowing through mud instead of the nice street one meter to the left.

It would be a big help if the cursor would change if it is over a road.

[Michael Emrys]

Vehicles do not adhere to AS so it is really pixel by pixel for vehicles.

Okay, you're right. I forgot about that.

IME if you plot along a ziggy road from far above you can easily hit the roadside instead and then you have the vehicle plowing through mud instead of the nice street one meter to the left.

The obvious solution to that is not to plot from far above. I plot all movement in the #3 view with the camera panned all the way down and I almost never have any problems such as are being discussed in this thread. The only times I have are when I got careless and tried to plot movement into/across prohibited terrain.

Michael