Infantry TAC AI - trying not to rant

[Ardem]

Thanks guys for the feedback, I have implemented a lot of the stuff here, it takes a hellva lot more micro management but it is saving lives.Occasionally my teams get hammer by that one guy with the AK in the building, but on the majority lots of pauses and smaller points are doing the trick.

 

I will not lie I do feel that AI is too slow to react to incoming fire, and I do feel they should react more aggressively with firing back and retreating or firing and moving forward. I think when the point person goes down the AI should do one of two things open up in the general direction and move forward or open up and hold positions, regardless on any moving command other then fast. But this is a personal opinion.

[TheVulture]

I'm just pointing out that some of this stuff is tracked per solider because you can combine an OK team and a Nervous team and get some thing for the whole squad and then you can split them apart and still have an OK team and a nervous team.  Just like you can have some members of a team surrendering while other keep fighting.  Pinning is the same if you split a pinned quad they will not necessarily all be pinned (obviously sometimes they are all pinned it depends on the situation).  I think we are seeing a status in the UI that reflects some kind of summary or worse case but that underneath all this stuff is tracked per solider.

 

Suppression is tracked per solider (as your observations on splitting / merging squads shows). But the problem womble is talking about is that with the assault command, the soldiers in the overwatch portion gain suppression from fire directed at the maneouver portion. I've seen it myself, with the maneouver portion taking fire, and the 'overwatch' portion out of sight  behind a high wall and a few buildings, and absolutely 100% not taking any fire themselves, is pinned and starts crawling for cover.

 

This remains true when the maneouver portion gets wiped out, so there is no-one who has actually taken fire contributing to the squad 'average' status - the guys who didn't take fire are still heavily suppressed and crawling for the nearest house.

 

Forget realism questions for the moment, this is simply a mechanics question. If you had split the squads instead, the overwatch squad would be 100% unsuppressed. That seriously hurts the utility of the assault command.

[Jock Tamson]

Suppression is tracked per solider (as your observations on splitting / merging squads shows). But the problem womble is talking about is that with the assault command, the soldiers in the overwatch portion gain suppression from fire directed at the maneouver portion. I've seen it myself, with the maneouver portion taking fire, and the 'overwatch' portion out of sight  behind a high wall and a few buildings, and absolutely 100% not taking any fire themselves, is pinned and starts crawling for cover.

 

This remains true when the maneouver portion gets wiped out, so there is no-one who has actually taken fire contributing to the squad 'average' status - the guys who didn't take fire are still heavily suppressed and crawling for the nearest house.

 

Forget realism questions for the moment, this is simply a mechanics question. If you had split the squads instead, the overwatch squad would be 100% unsuppressed. That seriously hurts the utility of the assault command.

Also hinders the AI quite dramatically if their AI Plan gives them Assault waypoints.  Mind you there are other issues with that too, if the unit size becomes too small to use Assault

[Skinfaxi]

I am wondering how many customers stop playing CM because they become frustrated?

I mean most games are just an insult for the intelligent person. They please the stupid mass.

I personally LOVE that finally I have found a game which punishes bad tactics and also offers unpredictability. If something goes wrong, I ask what did I wrong, or what could I have done better? But most people don't function that way.

Maybe Battlefront should offer game levels, that give the player some advantages, but without calling it that way (even the most stupid people love to be called intelligent, wise and clever...) and the current level being renamed to something like "super duper harder than life level"...

 

ps: I must add, that I am totally amazed how the individual soldiers behave when they receive the appropriate orders (i.e. how they are placed along walls, hedges, how they shoot at different targets,...)

Edited February 10, 2015 by Skinfaxi

[womble]

Having been using Assault a lot recently with some Italians who I can't split, I have seen situations where one team appears to be thoroughly suppressed, but the squad as a whole remains above "Pinned", and the other team keeps moving. I think there is probably a middle ground, where the belaboured team is effectively pinned, but that state isn't shared to the other half of the squad, but the transition to the whole squad being pinned occurs fairly soon thereafter, and the fact that it happens at all is an issue that encourages splitting squads.

I also think I'm seeing troops with Assault orders stop to shoot at targets of opportunity more frequently than "Quick" movers do. But that could just be a target rich environment.

[A Canadian Cat]

the problem womble is talking about is that with the assault command, the soldiers in the overwatch portion gain suppression from fire directed at the maneouver portion. I've seen it myself, with the maneouver portion taking fire, and the 'overwatch' portion out of sight  behind a high wall and a few buildings, and absolutely 100% not taking any fire themselves, is pinned and starts crawling for cover.

That observation actually runs counter to what I believe - that suppression is tracked per solider. If what you are seeing is true the I am flat out wrong. Which is certainly possible it has happened before I have not observed such a thing but I have also not been looking for it either. I feel a test coming on (if I can only find some time)...

Edited February 10, 2015 by IanL

[A Canadian Cat]

I am wondering how many customers stop playing CM because they become frustrated?

I mean most games are just an insult for the intelligent person. They please the stupid mass.

I imagine there are a few - sometimes we even see them make a final appearance on this forum

 

I personally LOVE that finally I have found a game which punishes bad tactics and also offers unpredictability. If something goes wrong, I ask what did I wrong, or what could I have done better?

Same

 

Maybe Battlefront should offer game levels, that give the player some advantages, but without calling it that way (even the most stupid people love to be called intelligent, wise and clever...) and the current level being renamed to something like "super duper harder than life level"...

Hummm I don't know about that. If they are having good success with their niche market why not just keep rolling. I think that if they tried to dumb it down they would risk spending time on things less important to their niche customers. I guess that would be OK with them if it mean making more $ but I don't think that is their whole goal here.

The upside of a niche like this is we players stick around and play the games for a long time. Heck there are still active players playing the heck out of the original CM1x titles. Not to mention all of us. We will be playing these games for years. The type of gamer you are talking about might spend some time on a hypothetical game like this for a while but they move on and find something else after a while.

 

ps: I must add, that I am totally amazed how the individual soldiers behave when they receive the appropriate orders (i.e. how they are placed along walls, hedges, how they shoot at different targets,...)

Yeah, it is a thing of beauty to watch. At least when they are doing the right things it is

[Pelican Pal]

That observation actually runs counter to what I believe - that suppression is tracked per solider. If what you are seeing is true the I am flat out wrong. Which is certainly possible it has happened before I have not observed such a thing but I have also not been looking for it either. I feel a test coming on (if I can only find some time)...

 

I suspect you are sort of right.

 

Suppression being tracked per soldier makes sense. Especially with how squad splitting interacts with morale.

 

However, i also think there is a element level suppression. Which is, most likely, the average of the suppression in all soldiers in an element. So you can have 4 soldiers in a fireteam be pinned, and that suppression will bleed onto the unengaged element. Causing them to cower.

[womble]

I'm certain suppression is tracked per soldier. Every soldier cowers on his own timetable! But there is also the "threshold" over which an entire element is "Pinned", which triggers a different set of restrictions: they'll drop their movement orders, and possibly set some self-preservation waypoint once the Pin passes, if their morale state dictates. I suspect that it takes a few more bullets directed at the intact squad, even if they're all directed at one team of that squad, separated spatially by an ongoing Assault order, for example, to trigger that phase change than it does a split team, but it doesn't take as many bullets to Pin an intact squad as it does to Pin two split teams.

As a result, an intact squad prosecuting an Assault order loses the support of its firebase element more readily than a squad split into teams and moving in approximately the same manner via alternating Quick orders and Pauses at waypoints. For my money, this, plus the additional advantages of specialisation (so your firebase element is best equipped for being in support at longer range, and your leading element has all the handgrenades and SMGs) makes splitting splittable squads preferable in most cases in the WW2 titles. I can't speak for the modern warfare, as I have only very limited experience with the SF demo.

[MOS:96B2P]

it doesn't take as many bullets to Pin an intact squad as it does to Pin two split teams.

As a result, an intact squad prosecuting an Assault order loses the support of its firebase element more readily than a squad split into teams and moving in approximately the same manner via alternating Quick orders and Pauses at waypoints. For my money, this, plus the additional advantages of specialisation (so your firebase element is best equipped for being in support at longer range, and your leading element has all the handgrenades and SMGs) makes splitting splittable squads preferable in most cases in the WW2 titles. I can't speak for the modern warfare, as I have only very limited experience with the SF demo.

 

Good information.  This pretty much clears up any lingering uncertainty reference split squad tactics vs the assault command.

 

I hope you get around to buying Black Sea sooner than later.      The more analysis of game mechanics, new equipment and the resulting new tactics we can get posted on the forums the better.   

[tyrspawn]

One thing I found in the new black sea is that the US army troops in particular seem to be extremely prone to being pinned and cowering. One or two shots from an AK will send an entire rifle squad into laying down and being shot one by one, even when surrounded by AFVs and having good command lines etc.

 

It's extremely unrealistic. US soldiers and marines would only devolve to such behavior under the most extreme conditions (continuous artillery suppression or continuous supression by a MG etc). It seems like the us army guys are pajamas to the worst extent in black sea.

 

From a game design perspective:

1. Group suppression needs to be replaced with individual suppression. This is made obvious when in "assault" during bounding overwatch. If the manuever elements gets suppressed the base of fire ellement will immediately start cowering. The whole job of the base of fire is to protect the manuever element and NOT lay down and give up. The guys manuevering are relying on the base.

2. Combat spacing should be maintained.

3. Reaction to contact drills would be nice. Taking fire from the front? Get out of your stupid file and get ON LINE and return FIRE

Edited February 11, 2015 by tyrspawn

[Andy02m]

I agree with the post above. I bought BS on Sunday and have been trying to beat the smallest quickbattle mission. Can't recall the name, but its a US recconing a destroyed command vehicle. My US guys on the hill (tried various setups but I typically have 1 MMG and 1 rifle section up there) get pinned and cowered from one enemy MG. 

[Oakheart]

This stuff comes up every once in a while during ChrisNDs' twitch nights, he said it was in the pipe to make squads do formations and to fix the rubber band effect that make infantry run in place but it was a long way off as it required a major rework of the current system.
It needs to be done though, perhaps this thread could get the ball rolling on things?

Edit: one frustrating things though about this is how the Battlefront fan boys can't admit that this game shouldn't have these problems to begin with, hence they call you a crap player and then tell you to micro the **** out of your troops as a work around to the problem (that isn't supposedly there to begin with).

Edited February 11, 2015 by Oakheart

[vincere]

One thing I found in the new black sea is that the US army troops in particular seem to be extremely prone to being pinned and cowering. One or two shots from an AK will send an entire rifle squad into laying down and being shot one by one, even when surrounded by AFVs and having good command lines etc.

 

It's extremely unrealistic. US soldiers and marines would only devolve to such behavior under the most extreme conditions (continuous artillery suppression or continuous supression by a MG etc). It seems like the us army guys are pajamas to the worst extent in black sea.

 

From a game design perspective:

1. Group suppression needs to be replaced with individual suppression. This is made obvious when in "assault" during bounding overwatch. If the manuever elements gets suppressed the base of fire ellement will immediately start cowering. The whole job of the base of fire is to protect the manuever element and NOT lay down and give up. The guys manuevering are relying on the base.

 

3. Reaction to contact drills would be nice. Taking fire from the front? Get out of your stupid file and get ON LINE and return FIRE

 

My sample of game play is so far small, but fully consistent with your observation that US appear way to easily cowered and pinned.

 

And suggestions 1 and 3 would be great.

[Pelican Pal]

The issue with the whole infantry formation thing is the drag it has on the processing power of user computers.

 

IIRC CM uses only a single core (maybe 2, but I don;t think so) and is a 32 bit application.

 

So, for example, in my computer with an i7 (8 core processor) and 10 GB of RAM. CM can only use 1 processor and 3.2 GB of RAM. So to acquire enough "power" to handle the extra processing needed to calculate what is happening a rewrite of the engine would be requird to take advantage of all those extra processors and that extra RAM.

 

That is a lot of down time where essentially no new work can be done because the two programmers are busy getting the game engine running. This also means that you are effectively gonna cut out customers with low end computers.

 

Point is the whole infantry problem is a big one and is probably a ways down the pipeline.

 

 

RE: infantry being pinned to easily. So far I would have to agree. In my time playing Infantry seems much more likely to go to ground than in previous games. Especially units who are not taking any fire whatsoever. I suspect there is some sort of bug in the current incarnation of CM:BS. I mentioned this in the post I made about morale propagation and CEK mention that it was a known issue. So this might be part and parcel of that.

Edited February 11, 2015 by Pelican Pal

[A Canadian Cat]

Edit: one frustrating things though about this is how the Battlefront fan boys can't admit that this game shouldn't have these problems to begin with, hence they call you a crap player and then tell you to micro the **** out of your troops as a work around to the problem (that isn't supposedly there to begin with).

Well I guess I don't need to post now

Look I get it too. Would love to have improvements with the way troops move too. But there are some are workarounds. Those are useful to know. If you are going to stop playing until these things are fixed you will have a less happy life

Separating squads and micro managing is one workaround. Another is to use short movement orders. The bunching up and conga line stuff gets worse and worse the further the squad moves in one order leg. If you give them shorter movement legs the will stop at each way point and spread out a bit before starting the next move. So if you use three or four movement orders to cross 150m distance they will spend more time spread out than if you use one.

[A Canadian Cat]

RE: infantry being pinned to easily. So far I would have to agree. In my time playing Infantry seems much more likely to go to ground than in previous games. Especially units who are not taking any fire whatsoever. I suspect there is some sort of bug in the current incarnation of CM:BS. I mentioned this in the post I made about morale propagation and CEK mention that it was a known issue. So this might be part and parcel of that.

I do not think those are the same thing. The morale issue is there is a "quantum" effect of platoon level morale when one squad gets into big trouble and takes casualties: other squads that are out of contact are instantly effected and can drop a level in morale or even become shaken or panic too if they are already a mess. That is the issue that is known. I seriously doubt this is high on any list to fix but I don't speak for BFC so who knows.

The teams in a squad not under fire getting pinned issue is not quite the same. The actual reaction to being shot it is tracked soldier by soldier so those that are not under fire should not be cowering. If it turns out that when a squad gets pinned as shown in the UI that state effects the behaviour of all soldiers that sounds like a bug. Someone would need to do some tests comparing the behaviour of a combined squad under fire separated by the assault command vs the behaviour of a squad that is split.

[Pelican Pal]

The relation here is that:

 

It seems troops are much more likely to cower in CM:BS than in previous games.

 

^ This would imply that the morale of units is more fragile in CM:BS than in previous games.
 

It also seems that the shared morale has more impact than in previous games.

 

^ If unit morale is indeed more fragile in CM:BS than in previous games then the shared morale would have more instantaneous impact than previously.

 

Hence the greater fragility of troop morale is a part of both of these problems.

 

 

Rereading my post I can see I wasn;t very clear in my meaning. Hopefully this clears up what I was trying to say.

 

 

In addition to the above. I have also noticed that troops that are within, say 50 meters, of impacting small arms, grenade, and RPG fire. Seem to cower much more often than I feel they should. I noticed this repeatedly while testing a scenario where an AGL with a green crew spent quite a lot of time cowering. Even though they were not under fire and no fire was directed near their vicinity. The crew was also not part of the elements that were taking fire.

[c3k]

I think your 50m estimate is off. If not, that should be shown in a savegame.

Brits did a test where they showed rounds snapping by within a few meters cause suppression.

The game did not, to my knowledge, change how units behave to incoming fire (morale sensitivity). Maybe it should, based on confidence in body armor, small bullets, aggressive training, and ready examples of men in past firefights getting hit and it not being too bad. Or, that's all hogwash.

The single biggest determinant is unit motivation and experience. Green troops cower more readily than veteran.

[Pelican Pal]

I'll see if I can't get a save of the situation later today.

 

The AGL team was situated between two atttacking infantry platoons. This was in scenario author test mode so I saw that the defending troops could not see the AGL team. The two attacking platoons were within a 50-75 meter radius of the AGL team and were taking heavy small arms and grenade fire.

[A Canadian Cat]

The single biggest determinant is unit motivation and experience. Green troops cower more readily than veteran.

This!

I have to say that I do not feel there is a difference in basic troop behaviour in CMBS. I'm not sure if you are seeing something you expect to see or you are seeing something that I am not - beats me.

[cool breeze]

I'm thinking its because pretty much every single element is packing more firepower/shooting it more accurately.  If they keep about the same morale model but all the weapons systems are more powerful, then the suppression and related negative moral effects go up.  And I think the proliferation of radios makes everyone more aware faster of the bad stuff that happens to their mates.  But the increased c&c should make the leaders morale boosts spread better too so if you keep the suppression exposure short that should balance it out. 

 

I think it makes sense for body armour to reduce suppression less that it reduces the guys getting killed.  Like I feel my guy are tougher/more survivable than before in a lot of situations because the amour got so strong.  but those situations still involve more firepower than ever so to me it makes sense that they freak out more than before, even though its less lethal cause of the amour.  I think in order to get the same level of freak out resistance as before you need to get better motivated and trained guys than before to balance the increased firepower.  Otherwise expect guys to freak out more than in the past because the battlefield is freakier than ever.   I don't know about the specific situations your talking about but my gameplay has seemed fair so far.

Edited February 11, 2015 by cool breeze

[Zveroboy1]

I am not seeing this thing where units get suppressed more easily than in previous games, unless you are talking about Shock Force where mgs were neutered and had a lower rof. Compared to Red Thunder it looks exactly the same to me, only difference being that firepower and lethality have increased.

[Jock Tamson]

If you watch footage from helmet cams etc in Afghanistan, there is a heck of a lot of hunkering down in wadis when rounds are incoming while everyone tries to work out where the hell it is coming from (no laser like tracers here).  I wonder if "cowering" is an unfortunate expression in game?  Is it possible for a squad to become pinned by volume of incoming fire without there being an associated morale drop?  Or does a drop in morale precede the cowering?

[AttorneyAtWar]

I agree that units under fire should attempt to find cover before just lying down and waiting to die.