Redmarkus Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 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? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fizou Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PanzerMike Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GhostRider3/3 Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 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 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blazing 88's Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holman Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wadepm Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 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... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Childress Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 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) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
76mm Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 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". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holman Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 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.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 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). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
76mm Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 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... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 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 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 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). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baneman Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 ... 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 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
76mm Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 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... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poesel Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 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. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted June 2, 2014 Share Posted June 2, 2014 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 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.