What is actually being shared among units?

[Alfy]

Hi everyone,

 

Here is the situation: I'm playing WEGO, and I got two squads behind a small wall, a few meters apart, under very light fire. I decide to move them both around the right side of the wall, the first squad moving immediately and the second after a 30 seconds pause, all orders quick moves. Alas, what I did not know was that an unseen enemy MG had LOS on a very small sliver of the very right edge of the wall. First squad moves, and when it reaches that edge, three soldiers go down and the squad gets pinned. Bad call on my part. 

But then the second squad starts moving, never slows down, actually tramples its comrades hugging the ground, and three more soldiers hit the dust. 

 

I always read in the manual how information gets shared among units, and I get that this refers to units locations getting shared through C2/C3, but I really think information such as "they're getting shot just a few yard ahead just at the location we're about to cross" should somehow be conveyed between units. Also, the first squad got pinned, meaning the volume it occupied was being filled with flying iron. By the time the second squad arrived, the MG was still firing on all cylinders: I really believe that squad should not have wanted to enter that volume (especially as both squads belonged to the same platoon, so I assume there were little differences in discipline or moral. I don't recall their respective leader's scores, thought). 

 

I understand at times you actually want a unit to continue running despite unexpected incoming fire, but perhaps the engine can be improved in this regard. For one thing, there could be a difference in the movement order between a "charge" ("I want you to go there at all cost") and a normal "move" ("go there but hug the ground if you need to"). 

 

[Michael Emrys]

47 minutes ago, Alfy said:

I understand at times you actually want a unit to continue running despite unexpected incoming fire, but perhaps the engine can be improved in this regard. For one thing, there could be a difference in the movement order between a "charge" ("I want you to go there at all cost") and a normal "move" ("go there but hug the ground if you need to"). 

This is certainly desirable. How straightforward it might be to program might be another matter, however.

Michael

[JoMac]

Alfy, 

You could alleviate part of that issue by playing the game as 'Real-Time. Of course, other things will crop up such as forgetting to pause, or give units orders mid-turn when something bad is happening...However, I only play Turn-Based and it's some of these issues you have to live with.

*Side Note*...Personally, it would be great to have an Option for a One-Minute Turn Based with Auto-Pause every 15 Secs to give New Orders ( I say 15 sec instead of 10 sec, because I like things done in Quarter-Turn increments ). 

Joe

Edited March 28, 2016 by JoMc67

[womble]

Never send a squad (well, a team, but if you're playing with Italians, you have to skip that bit...) where a scout hasn't been...  There is always going to be a delay between things happening and the information about those things being passed to adjacent troops or the platoon HQ and back down again. Unfortunately, the TacAI isn't very aware of things happening to other elements through its own "observation", only through being "told about it" via info sharing. Maybe some observation and extrapolation of likely outcomes might get into the TacAI at some point, but it's not an easily tractable AI problem to code, so don't hold your breath.

Til then, just take things a bit slower

[Alfy]

On 28 March 2016 at 6:34 PM, JoMc67 said:

Alfy, 

You could alleviate part of that issue by playing the game as 'Real-Time. Of course, other things will crop up such as forgetting to pause, or give units orders mid-turn when something bad is happening...However, I only play Turn-Based and it's some of these issues you have to live with.

Actually, such issues with the ai only get solved playing realtime if you keep your eyes on the ball. In this scenario, I had a full battalion, so I probably would have given the same orders before looking elsewhere, getting the same result...

1 hour ago, womble said:

Never send a squad (well, a team, but if you're playing with Italians, you have to skip that bit...) where a scout hasn't been...  There is always going to be a delay between things happening and the information about those things being passed to adjacent troops or the platoon HQ and back down again. Unfortunately, the TacAI isn't very aware of things happening to other elements through its own "observation", only through being "told about it" via info sharing. Maybe some observation and extrapolation of likely outcomes might get into the TacAI at some point, but it's not an easily tractable AI problem to code, so don't hold your breath.

Til then, just take things a bit slower

I'm usually very cautious, going with scouts the way you describe, and that sliver of a los in my example was a freakish, freakish thing! But then, if your fighting an equally mobile enemy, at times your gonna have to move without the benefit of 100% accurate recon.

The type and amount of information that can be exchanged - for the purposes of a game - between friendly units is rather limited: units spotted and direction/volume of incoming fire. The TacAI already knows how to react to enemy presence, so it's really a question of how it should react to the information of incoming fire not directed at it. I'm not saying it's trivial, though.

But for one thing, if there is enough fire targeted at one square to pin a unit down, I don't think another unit of equivalent discipline and moral should be able to enter it. Or it could enter and cross the square crawling, no matter the original order, before resuming its movement, which would actually look rather fairly realistic. I'm just not sure the problem occurs often enough to be worth the effort: it has happened to me a few times, but I usually try not to have squads overlap...

[Ithikial_AU]

Yeah it's one of my persistent bug bears as well. Fair enough you can get ambushed and lose some pixeltruppen can't argue with that - particularly in urban fights. However, it would be great if the TAC AI was smart enough to realise this and where one infantry team are are getting pinned down/shredded any other move orders for those that can view the carnage and have a move order goign through the same action tiles would have those orders auto-cancelled if deemed safe to do so. Troops on the ground wouldn't be so silly to race into the same space where an MG42 is lighting up. Perhaps only have an exception if the move order is say 'fast' where it's a case of push through no matter the casualties type situation.

[Bulletpoint]

I think this is one of the rare moments when the ASSAULT command would have been useful. Because then the second team would also have been suppressed when the first team took fire, and so they wouldn't have completed their movement.

[cool breeze]

The assault command can be great with short waypoints!